An Early Romney Campaign Autopsy

Conservatives and Romney campaign insiders are fudging the truth about why Romney is losing

Politico published the kind of piece that every campaign dreads before an election: a finger-pointing, off-the-record pre-postmortem filled with criticisms by staff and advisers about why a candidate is losing.

This particular story seems to shift most of the blame to Mitt Romney's top strategist, Stuart Stevens, and the rest to Romney himself. My take is that neither Romney nor his top strategist are totally to blame, although obviously both share in it. I agree with the general sentiment that Romney is just not a great candidate. But as Ezra Klein and others have noted, the false narrative in the media, that due to the poor economy it was really Romney's race to lose, overinflated expectations from the beginning. I recall many delusional Republicans last year proclaiming that any candidate with a pulse would beat Obama so they wanted to nominate the most conservative candidate possible. The bottom line is that no matter what the unemployment rate is, as long as the rate is roughly the same or decreasing leading up to the election and the economy is growing every quarter, the incumbent is the favorite to win, not the challenger.

In short, before 2009 Romney seemed like a reasonable competent technocrat. And now he is forced to lead a party at exactly the wrong time for someone with his resume. The id of the party the last few years has been Donald Trump (Birthers), Sarah Palin (anti-elites), Ron Paul (Libertarians), and the Tea Party wings. Only these people or someone from these groups would have excited the base of the party. But the elite establishment in the party understood that any candidate associated with those groups would have no chance of winning over swing voters in the general election. And Romney was the most electable alternative.

However, Romney was handcuffed coming into this race, as any recent Republican governor of a blue or purple state would have been. The party has moved so far to the right in just the last 4 years that any Republican governor who actually had to make moderate compromises to, you know, govern was going to have a really difficult time talking about his accomplishments without depressing the enthusiasm of the base. What were mainstream conservative positions just a few years ago are now poison because Obama and the Democrats supported them. Remember this is the party that is suddenly too conservative for "lefties" like Robert Bennett and Richard Lugar.

The base was always more energized about beating Obama than about voting for Romney or any of the candidates who were running in the primary. So add in some bigotry toward Romney's Mormonism and his inconsistent positions on social issues, and it was obvious a segment of the base was going to be ambivalent towards him. And many of the swing "white working class" voters, in the Rust Belt in particular, were never going to warm to him because of his record at Bain Capital. So in the middle of September Romney is still trying to shore up and energize the base, unable to move far enough to the center for fear of losing the base.

I'm sympathetic to Romney's plight in this campaign. Don't get me wrong - I view him as a complete phony and I've disliked the blatant dishonesty that has been at the core of Romney's arguments. But gaffes aside, given where the Republican party is now, the demands on the candidate to hew to the party line on everything, Romney's own personal appeal problems, and the limits placed on what parts of Romney's bio he allowed his campaign to trumpet, all in all I think the campaign has done about as well as you could have hoped.

Conservatives dumping on the Romney campaign are doing so to explain why Romney is losing in a way that validates their worldview. The reality is that Republican agenda is not all that popular with the public. The party brand is still damaged from the Bush presidency and generally polls confirm that voters prefer the specifics of the Democrats' plans to the Republicans' plans on nearly every issue of importance. You wouldn't know that if you got your news from the Right-wing media bubble, but with the exception of the "deficit", voters give Obama/Democrats more trust and support on every single issue that matters. Obama is even beating Romney on the economy at the moment.

Romney himself may not be trusted as a true conservative by the base, but make no mistake - his campaign and his economic plan are the most conservative in years. Romney has been forced to take a very hard line on social issues. And his economic plan is the most conservative in decades. As noted during the DNC, Romney's campaign is ultimately Bush's economic plan, Cheney's foreign policy, and Santorum's views on social issues. It's a combination of all of the unpopular things the Republican party has advocated over the last decade with a flip-flopping Gordon Gekko as the chief messenger. And people are surprised he's trailing?

The Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc., nexus will inevitably spin a Romney loss as a result of him not being conservative enough or not communicating the specifics of those swell conservative plans well enough. They haven't come to grips with the possibility that their ideas just aren't that popular right now. Romney has acquiesced to every demand of the far right and even put golden boy Paul Ryan on the ticket, yet somehow he's not being conservative enough to much of the base?

This was an election that was always going to be much more difficult for Republicans to win than they had anticipated. And the selection of Romney as the candidate made it nearly impossible to run a coherent campaign that could also appeal to swing voters. It is not the fault of the campaign, it's the fault of this particular candidate and the cynicism of the party that made it so difficult for the candidate to be himself. After four years of obstruction and incoherence on policy, Mitt Romney is without a doubt the candidate the party deserves. He might even be the candidate they need too if it results in a decisive Electoral College loss as well as the loss of the House majority.

Did Clinton's Response to the Medicare Attacks Win the Election for Obama?

(CBSNews)

We still won't really know what kind of post-Convention bounce Obama will get until early next week. But one essential goal in this convention was for the Democrats to clear up any confusion over the Medicare issue. Since the 2010 Midterm elections the Republicans have hammered the Dems over the "cuts" to Medicare in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and in the process drove up support among voters 50 and over. When your base is old white people, this issue was teed up for them.

Of course President Obama was never going to win a majority of voters in this demographic, but he had to close the gap that opened up 2 years ago. Let's face it, older white voters typically lean Republican anyway. And when you add the race factor, it was always going to be an uphill climb for Obama with these voters. They were preconditioned to believe the distortions about the "Medicare "cuts" with Obama, more so than they'd be with President Clinton for the same reason that a lot of older white women put both hands on their pocketbooks when they see a black guy walking down the street.

But much like Republicans always have a built-in edge with voters on matters of the military and foreign policy, Democrats have always enjoyed a historical "trust" edge with voters on health care, particularly Medicare. This is for good reason, since the Democrats created the Medicare beneficiary program and have defended it from Republican attempts at cuts and privatization for over 40 years.

Some voters may not remember, but President Clinton "cut" Medicare in the 1990's. In exchange for slight benefit cuts (i.e. higher premiums for seniors, most of which were directed at the more well-to-do seniors), Clinton reduced the rate of growth and plowed the savings back into the Medicare trust fund to extend the life of the program.

The ACA essentially did the same thing. It reduced the rate of growth and cut payments to providers and insurance companies, which was estimated to save $716B over 10 years. And then it used that money to close the Medicare prescription drug donut hole (created by a bill Paul Ryan voted for, by the way) and extend the life of the program. Providers and insurance companies agreed to the Medicare payment cuts in exchange for the millions of new customers they will now be getting as a result of what the ACA does to provide access to insurance for people who are under the Medicare eligibility age. You have to look at the ACA in its entirety and not just the Medicare portion to understand how it all works.

Anyway, Clinton explains it better here:

Now, there were two other attacks on the president in Tampa I think deserve an answer. First, both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly “robbing Medicare” of $716 billion. That’s the same attack they leveled against the Congress in 2010, and they got a lot of votes on it. But it’s not true.

Look, here’s what really happened. You be the judge. Here’s what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits at all, none.

What the president did was to save money by taking the recommendations of a commission of professionals to cut unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that were not making people healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the service.

(APPLAUSE)

And instead of raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program.

(APPLAUSE)

And -- you all got to listen carefully to this. This is really important -- and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is solvent until 2024. So...

(APPLAUSE)

So President Obama and the Democrats didn’t weaken Medicare. They strengthened Medicare.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, when Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as, quote, “the biggest, coldest power play,” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry...

(LAUGHTER)

... because that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of Medicare savings that he has in his own budget!

(APPLAUSE)

You got to give one thing: It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.

(LAUGHTER) 

It’s important, because a lot of people believe this stuff. Now, at least on this issue, on this one issue, Governor Romney has been consistent. He...

(LAUGHTER)

He attacked President Obama, too, but he actually wants to repeal those savings and give the money back to the insurance company.

(BOOING)

He wants to go back to the old system, which means we’ll reopen the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and we’ll reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight full years.

(BOOING)

So if he’s elected, and if he does what he promised to do, Medicare will now go broke in 2016. Think about that. That means after all we won’t have to wait until their voucher program kicks in, in 2023, to see the end of Medicare as we know it. They’re going to do it to us sooner than we thought.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. And you won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming 10 years. Of course, that’s going to really hurt a lot of poor kids.

But that’s not all. A lot of folks don’t know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors who are eligible for Medicaid.

(APPLAUSE)

It’s going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities, including...

(APPLAUSE)

... a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down’s syndrome or autism or other severe conditions.

And, honestly, just think about it. If that happens, I don’t know what those families are going to do. So I know what I’m going to do: I’m going to do everything I can to see that it doesn’t happen. We can’t let it happen. We can’t.

And then he dropped the mic.

Not only did he set the facts straight on Medicare, he also reminded everyone that Medicaid isn't just a program for poor people (as noted by Alec MacGillis on Twitter), that seniors and people with disabilities depend on Medicaid too.

Wow. Medicaid spends 5x as much on each senior in long-term care as on each poor child. This was WJC's point: M'caid cuts will hit seniors.
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) September 7, 2012

And the cuts Romney-Ryan want to make to that program would devastate many families.

Recall, even with a booming economy in 1996, Clinton only managed to get 49% of the vote. With Ross Perot running again, he was still able to win an easy re-election partially by convincing many seniors that Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and the Republicans in Congress would follow through on their long stated goals to "let Medicare wither on the vine and die." Voters trusted Clinton and Gore on Medicare even after the cuts because Dole was stuck defending a more radical plan. Most voters believed that Clinton really did want to strengthen Medicare because that is what Democrats have always done. And most voters believed that Republicans really wanted to dismantle the program because that's what they have always tried to do.

Sound familiar?

If the Obama campaign doesn't end up using snippets of Clinton's comments in campaign ads this fall, they are really missing out on a golden opportunity. With post-Presidential approval ratings hovering around 70%, Clinton is the closest thing we have in this divided country to a statesman who most people like and trust.

With a slow recovery and unpredictable job growth, Obama is going to need to emphasize Medicare, foreign policy, and tax code fairness, among other things, the next few months. And Clinton may have helped him enough with seniors in states like Florida and the swing states in the Rust Belt in November, to allow Obama to make the closing argument on protecting Medicare, Medicaid, and ultimately the ACA.

Return of the Bubba

For some reason after this POTUS bro-hug......

 

I thought of this.

To many of us Democrats, 2008 was A New Hope, 2010 was The Empire Strikes Back, and hopefully 2012 will be Return of the Jedi. I guess that makes the 1990's and early to mid-aughts The Clone Wars, the Ewoks are the Occupy movement, and oh, right - focus.

Continuing this analogy, last night Bill Clinton was much like the veteran Jedi master reminding everyone of the battles he had to fight against a similar obstructionist GOP Congress and providing an argument for a path forward.

The theme of the night was the contrast of "We're in this together" vs. "You're on your own." Most of the speakers hammered this point home repeatedly.

This would be an ideal theme song for the campaign:

Ben Lee - "All in This Together"

Paul Ryan is a Fraud

 I can't tell them we really plan to end Medicare as we know it. I'm running for President for pete's sake. (CNN)

It'll be interesting to see how the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan ticket handles criticism of their budget plans in the upcoming days. The next week or so will likely frame how both campaigns talk about his issue from now until November, barring a potential reboot during the conventions.

At least when it comes to specifics, both are already distancing themselves from the budget blueprint laid out by Ryan nearly two years ago, which Romney had previously voiced support for up until about 96 hours ago. Romney even went so far as to say he'd sign Ryan's budget into law within the first 100 days of his administration.

Previously we've heard how "courageous" Ryan is to put forth such a budget that compels us to have a "serious conversation" about changing Medicare from a contribution program to a voucher program and potentially changing other entitlements. The beltway media love to have serious conversations about having serious conservations about cutting entitlements, as long as their sizable beltway media incomes aren't taxed at a higher rate.

But now that his plan is receiving more scrutiny outside the beltway and outside the base of his party, so far Ryan is backtracking awfully fast and Romney is claiming Ryan will fall in line and disavow his plan, even though it's the same plan Romney said he would sign if he were President.

That would seem to be the opposite of "courageous." It isn't all that courageous to propose a budget plan that carries out a 40+ year goal of the movement conservatives in your party, which includes upper income tax cuts and entitlement and spending cuts that transform the budget in a way that most  Americans do not support.

In 2003-04, a young rising star in the Democratic Party named Barack Obama received some coverage for his "courageous" stance against the Iraq War. Much like Ryan's budget plan, his position was very popular among the base of his party, but less popular with independents and the other party. And then imagine a world where during the 2008 campaign, Obama attempted to run away from that position, or at least perhaps tried to muddy the waters to try to conceal what his original position was, when it turned out 2/3 of the country held the opposite opinion. There would be a lot of terms to use to describe Obama's new messaging - politically savvy, hackish, etc, but "courageous" would not be a term anyone would use. Yet with Ryan, he's still portrayed that way by most of the balance-obsessed media.

Here's the thing, either Ryan's plan does what it says it does or it doesn't. If it does, then all the attacks the Obama campaign is going to make on it are mostly accurate. If it doesn't, then the plan was a fraud to begin with and Ryan should have no credibility on these issues. Or as Paul Krugman, Jonathan Chait, and others suggest - perhaps the plan is honest about the massive cuts, while being fraudulent when it comes to revenue estimates and deficit reduction. And the clarity isn't helped when Romney keeps signaling that the Ryan plan is great, but also is different from his plan in many, many secret ways that he'll be glad to tell us all about after we elect him President.

In any case the Republicans have a huge problem right now. At least one of the following three things must be true: 1)their Presidential ticket plans to end Medicare as we know it, while cutting taxes for upper incomes, 2)their budget plan couldn't possibly work, not should it be taken seriously, and/or 3)the result of their plan will severely increase the deficit, painting their 3+ year campaign in favor of deep spending cuts to reduce the deficit as nothing more than a charade to co-opt the Tea Party and re-take power.

So which is it?

Phila. City Councilman Kenney tells Chick-fil-A to "Take a Hike"

 Phila. City Councilman, Jim Kenney (WHYY)

 
I disagree with how Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is handling the Chick-fil-A controversy, trying to block a new one from opening in his city.  However, I agree with Philadelphia City Councilman, Jim Kenney's handling of this issue. This week Kenney wrote a letter to Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A in response to Cathy's anti-gay position.
 

I wrote a letter to Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A, to express my outrage and condemnation of the... fb.me/1QaZxuLAi
— CouncilmanJimKenney (@JimFKenney) July 25, 2012

Here's a link to the letter, where Kenney tells Cathy he personally feels he "should take a hike and take your intolerance with you."

Cathy has freedom of speech to express an opinion on any issue or to "speak" monetarily with campaign donations to the party and politicians who best reflect his worldview. And he has, as it was uncovered that Chick-fil-A has donated to anti-gay groups detailed here.

And if this opinion is unpopular and becomes public we then have the freedom to not patronize his business, if we so choose. The majority of customers will likely continue supporting a business, no matter the owner's politics or very public religious beliefs, but to those who would take their business elsewhere, at least they will have the ability to make an informed decision.

The reason large companies are against campaign finance disclosure laws is they are afraid of losing business when customers find out what potential reprehensible policies or controversial politicians they are supporting via their campaign donations.

So bravo to Councilman Kenney for shining more light on this issue.

(h/t to William Bender)