When you don’t have a record to run on, and your attacks on your opponents aren’t working, attack the process:
I almost posted the actual Obama ad because I thought it was so awful, it needed more attention to push women into Romney’s camp. But this parody does the job just as well while wonderfully mocking that gawd-awful ad allegedly directed at loathsome hipsters:
We blogged the comedy of the Obama campaign previously claiming their small crowds were on purpose. Now the press are saying even the small Obama crowds are likely an exaggeration:
And that 6K is generousRT @zekejmiller Worth noting, Obama drew a crowd of 8,000 here in September, 2008. just 6,000 here today.
— jmartpolitico (@jmartpolitico) October 18, 2012
Obama is rallying today in Manchester, New Hampshire.
When I posted the video earlier of Mark Halperin criticizing Obama for no 2nd term agenda, I meant to post back-to-back videos of Joe Scarborough saying the same thing (and thought I had). It got me to thinking it would be great to have a rapid fire run-down of the media or non-Republicans who have identified this glaring weakness in Obama’s re-election effort. Well the guys who are paid for these types of things are on top of their game because the RNC Rapid Response team has the list out this morning Clink on this link where they give you the context and citations for each one of these damning quotes:
That’s the impression I got from the lead-in to Howard Fineman’s latest column. These are types of columns that get written via campaign leaks on a sinking ship (think backstabbers Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace in 2008):
Last spring a leading Democrat in the Hispanic community begged top officials in President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign to find at least one new, inspiring idea for the 2012 campaign. It didn’t have to be costly, this adviser said, just something to project optimism and a crusading sense of novelty into what, even at that time, was a nasty, essentially defensive campaign against Mitt Romney. Obama officials hinted — but didn’t quite promise — that they would unveil a new proposal at the Democratic convention in Charlotte. The convention came and went. Nothing.
Fineman, who for four years has been a complete “in-the-tank” Lefty for Obama proceeds to itemize all the reasons why Obama is faltering should he actually lose this election:
THE AXEMAN COMETH — Axelrod [is] an instinctive fighter with a former reporter’s penchant for eviscerating his foes. Beginning a year ago, the Obama campaign’s central, and negative, plan was to make Romney an unacceptable alternative. The Obama campaign and its allies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the effort, and have spent most of their time attacking Romney on everything from Bain Capital and his tax returns to Seamus the dog and the elevator in his splendid new garage. Arguably, the Obama campaign put Romney in a hole that took him months to climb out of, but climb out he has. His “favorables” are finally on the plus side and are approaching those of the president.
This is probably the most obvious planted storyline. Axelrod is a notorious jerk with many enemies within his own camp, notably Stephanie Cutter. Interesting to the claws come out with 3 weeks left. The internals must be horrible…
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS — The Obama campaign, and the Obama presidency, haven’t done a consistent or convincing job of touting whatever good news there is — and there are increasing amounts of it — about the economy. Yes, the unemployment rate remains high; yes, the “right direction/wrong track” poll numbers remain negative (though not as negative as they once were); yes, millions of Americans remain underwater on their mortgages while big banks horde cash and pile up huge profits. But there is another side to the story, and the Obama campaign hasn’t sold it well, beyond talking, justifiably, about the success of the auto bailout. Consumer confidence is at its highest point in five years. The stock market has come back from the late Bush-era crash. Home starts and hiring are up. Venture capital groups are lending money again. If you don’t talk about the good stuff, no one else will.
By the way, Fineman probably knows better but the above litany of economic good news is illusory which is why Obama doesn’t tout it.
FAILURE TO PACKAGE A LEGISLATIVE ATTACK — The president does have a new proposal to sell: a job-creation package that sweeps together several ideas. He and fellow Democrats say that it would create at least a million new jobs. Obama mentions the package but hasn’t made it central to his campaign.
Again phony “jobs” bill that doesn’t create jobs.
CALLING IT “OBAMACARE” — In private polls for members of Congress, majorities of voters support the individual measures that comprise the landmark Affordable Care Act. But in most polls, the percentages drop when votes are asked if they support “Obamacare” — in one poll in a swing district, support dropped by 15 percentage points.
Vanity thy name is Obama…
FAILURE TO PHONE, PRETEND TO FRIENDS — Obama’s aloof (some would say condescending) attitude toward Democrats in Congress is legendary, though not in a way that is helping him now. Many, if not most, leading members of his party in Congress have never had a serious, lengthy conversation with him. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been lectured to more than wooed.
Be nice to the people on your way up because you’re going to be seeing those same people on your way down …
This isn’t a Battleground State topic but I have blogged the fundraising for this election so I should at address this scandal in a cursory manner. This subject could be hugely important to changing public perception on Obama’s trustworthiness and erode any soft support that is out there for Obama. Importantly, many of the flaws outlined in the report were known by the Obama campaign and intentionally flouted while the same security measures were in place for Romney donors. Other people are doing a great job on this topic so I’ll highlight some choice write-ups:
Unsurprisingly Breitbart.com had the details up first on the 108-page GAI investigation into the threat of foreign and fraudulent Internet campaign donations in U.S. federal elections
This scoop builds on Breitbart.com’s earlier report that of $181 million in donation only 2% are “reportable”
Jim Geraghty over at The Campaign Spot blasted out some of the embargoed details on the illegal foreign contributions in his Morning Jolt
The Washington Examiner reports that 68% Of Traffic To Anonymously Registered Obama.com Is Foreign; the site was linked to a specific donation page on the official http://www.BarackObama.com campaign website for ten months
Instapundit has his usual invaluable links to key stories that I’m sure will be smartly updated as the scandal unfolds
Examiner.com reviewed the GAI report and breaks down the nitty gritty in the scandal
The much rumored Newsweek/Daily Beat story on this scandal he been published
Here is the tweet sequence on the exchange this afternoon in Cleveland, Ohio where the shopkeeper tells Obama his appearance is killing his business:
Pool: Obama asked the proprietor at Rolston Poultry how business was going.
“Terrible since you got here,” the man said.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) October 5, 2012
Pool:Potus didn’t appear amused by the sentiment.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) October 5, 2012
Cue the face saving forced smile just like in the debates when tried to catch himself:
Apparently the TV pool report says the exchange was in jest.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) October 5, 2012
Something tells me this wasn’t “ha, ha” funny but more teeth grimacing gallows humor funny:
Ok, we can confirm this was not “ha, ha” funny. Direct from the restaurant/deli:
Reached by phone, a person at Rolston’s who did not give his name explained to POLITICO that the presidential visit had put a dent in sales.
“I couldn’t sell chicken for an hour. Now I can sell chicken. I got to go,” a man said before hanging up. He did mention that he shook Obama’s hand.
Politico has a fun re-cap of quotes from President Obama that have dogged him throughout this re-election process and may well get a rehearing in Wednesday’s debate:
[A]s the president and his team well know, Obama in Denver on Wednesday will be defending a first-term record that looks strikingly different than the one he imagined when he took office in January 2009. Obama’s own words, and those of his closest aides, culled from his first campaign and the early phase of his presidency, tell the story. Cumulatively, the quotations are an anthology of lofty aspirations that fell to earth, and boastful predictions that didn’t come true. All presidents have plans that don’t work out. But many of Obama’s off-the-mark quotes echo because—as a president with a short history in Washington and no previous executive experience—he faced an especially jarring collision between his confident assumptions about how he would govern and the reality of what was possible.
“Washington is broken. My whole campaign has been premised from the start on the idea that we have to fundamentally change how Washington works.”
In retrospect, Obama’s exaggerated belief in his own capacity to transform Washington—not to mention his own wavering self-discipline in resisting nakedly partisan politics—looks like his most naïve miscalculation about his own power.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Obama biographers and even friends have noted his tendency from a young age to sometimes to let self-confidence curdle into excessive self-regard—a trait he will try to suppress in Denver. But the main problem with Obama’s quote was not that it was immodest but that it was inaccurate. Obama has not presided over an especially skilled political operation. Relations with key members of Congress and with key political figures in states have been frayed, driven by complaints that Obama does not do enough outreach and political fence-tending.
“If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
In this quote, from a February 2009 interview on NBC’s “Today” show and widely repeated this year by taunting Republicans, Obama was referring to the pace of economic recovery. Obama’s explanation, of course, is that his policies, including the $787 billion stimulus package, averted depression and made possible a slow but still incomplete comeback. But the words haunt Obama because they were a reminder of how profoundly he and his economic team misunderstood the long-term nature of the crisis that confronted them upon taking office.
Could be those union members have long memories after getting stiffed by a President who said he’d march the picket lines with them and then found himself too busy in every state around Wisconsin to stop in to support their recall efforts:
President Barack Obama will hit the campaign trail following the Wednesday presidential debate, stumping in four states rated on the CNN Electoral Map as toss ups, according to schedules released by his campaign and the White House. On Thursday, Obama will hold an event in the debate host city – Denver - then continue on to Madison, Wisconsin, to meet with supporters, his campaign said.
He will then return to Washington before holding events in Virginia and Ohio on Friday. His Virginia event will be in Vienna, the White House said, before an event in Cleveland. Obama’s campaign said it was rescheduling a previously announced event in Columbus, Ohio, for the following Tuesday.
His Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, has not yet announced post-debate campaign plans. Both candidates are in debate preparation mode. Romney is in Massachusetts but plans to travel to Colorado on Monday, while Obama heads to Nevada for debate prep on Sunday.
Funny that he said the same thing again in a moment of candor in 2008 and it was only right-wing meanies who thought this was a window into who is the real Obama while today the media is jumping on the Romney video whole-hog as the calamity to end all campaign calamities:
I like that Mitt Romney didn’t back away from his comments leaked from a private fundraiser, especially since it is nothing new and simply just a more relaxed candid version of what he says in his stump speeches. But he can really run with this if he focuses the message on that persuadable middle he mentions in his remarks. His script should go something like this:
I have a message for that middle of America getting squeezed in today’s economy. Help is on the way. My solutions will be for all Americans but I know plenty of people don’t want to change the status quo. That is the strength of a democracy, we have choices. But I want to talk to the person who has lost out in the Obama economy — the person who lived within their means during boom and bust times and pays their bills. They bought the house they could afford and they make their mortgage payments on time. Who is looking out for them? Their grocery bill has skyrocketed while home values sag. They are working longer hours for no increase in pay. To fill up their car at the gas station, their costs have doubled. Their tax burden grows. Their days grow longer, their breaks grow shorter and the deficit only tax-payers can rescue gets even larger. And what about the people who have fallen in this Obama economy and want to get that new job? Where is Obama’s plan for a second term? He offers no solutions except more of the same. We’ve tried that and it failed. I want to offer those people a chance at a new job –a roaring economy that puts people back to work, not on government doles the country can no longer afford. The people who want to get back to work are who I want to talk to. A growing economy offers greater long term help to that middle part of America than any quick fix government solution that helps in the moment but gets in the way of the longer-term solution — a new job, affordable food at the grocery store, cheaper gas at the pump, stable housing prices, a brighter future and a secure legacy for our children and grandchildren. That is the middle of America I am talking to.
This will contrast with today’s news after four years of Obama economics:
Mark Halperin posted a couple documents regarding ostensibly a dispassionate credible assessment of the state of the Presidential race by Democrat Doug Sosnik:
Doug Sosnik is one of the smartest people in American politics. A Democrat, who worked for, among others, Bill Clinton, he is the rare partisan who is able to engage in dispassionate analysis about the two major parties and their candidates. If you want a good a snapshot of where the race stands today — and why — read Sosnik’s analysis here and look at his PowerPoint slides here.
While some people have serious issues with Halperin I actually like his work a lot despite his occasional lurches to the Left. That said, I wanted to thoroughly analyze the points Sosnik makes to get a better sense of the state of the race. I genuinely enjoy smart opinions that challenge my own — it only makes us sharper. This 8-page write-up and slide presentation makes some good points regarding Romney’s weaknesses (‘failure to connect with voters’) but I did not find his arguments either factually accurate nor persuasive. He largely identifies 8 characteristics of this campaign followed by extensive exposition why these factors likely add up to a President Obama re-election. I will offer counter-factuals point-by-point:
1. Obama’s Job Approval Ratings have Held Steady (at 48%)
2. Obama has Maintained a Year-Long Lead in the Race
3. Almost 9 in 10 Obama and Romney Supporters are Certain about Their Vote
4. Obama’s Support has Remained Stable Despite Voter Disappointment with the Direction of the Country
First they throw the Cairo Embassy under the bus for their apology that drew the appropriate ire of Mitt Romney (despite aggressive media protestations to the contrary). Now Egypt gets tossed aside and we get reaction on the ground to President Obama ending 40+ years of the United States and Egypt as allies with an incredulous Richard Engle of NBC in Cairo. I love how Engle in disbelief points out the incredible hypocrisy of President Obama siding with protestors against our ally Hosni Mubarek only to now say the regime he strongly helped usher in is not our ally. Any other countries — in addition to Israel, of course — Obama’s brilliant foreign policy would like to turn over to extremists who want us dead? Might be helpful to know that before his second term:
The media are aggressively touting clips from President Obama interview following the Embassy attacks where Obama critiques Romney’s response as “hoot first and aim later.”
But that critique had a ring of familiarity for election historians and Charlie Speiring dug up another President seeking re-election who had that exact same critique of his opponent:
Obama’s remarks, however, echo frequent criticisms made by President Jimmy Carter of Ronald Reagan, then his opponent for the presidency. Carter criticized Reagan’s views on foreign policy during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1980, slamming Reagan for living in a “fantasy world” and noting his inability to understand the “complex global changes” in foreign policy. “It’s a make believe world. A world of good guys and bad guys, where some politicians shoot first and ask questions later,” Carter said.
But that’s not the only familiarity between the two campaigns:
After Reagan’s nomination in July 1980, Carter criticized Republicans calling it “a party with a narrow vision, a party that is afraid of the future, a party whose leaders are inclined to shoot from the hip, a party that has never been willing to put its investment in human beings who are below them in economic and social status.” As Philip Klein noted on Twitter, the Carter campaign ran fearful “man on the street” ads during the campaign, fretting that Reagan would be a president who would “shoot from the hip.”
And through the miracle of modern technology, the Weekly Standard found this video highlighting the similarities:
National security and State Department official in the Reagan and both Bush Administrations Elliot Abrams asks several important questions missing in EVERY media report:
Enough with the false pretenses this was an act of war:
! RT @halagorani US sources tell CNN say attackers who targeted consulate used protests against film as a diversion. Say attack was planned.
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) September 12, 2012
But our press sees Obama’s foreign policy decisions and inattention as unnewsworthy. Just Romney’s reaction to it
Amid the spineless mealy-mouthed hand-wringing by journalists over Romney’s strong and quick denunciation of the outrageous attacks on our Embassies “disgraceful” US apology, Major Garrett has the scoop on the thinking of Team Romney regarding their official comments yesterday and standing by them in today’s press Conference:
Senior Romney advisers, who declined to speak on the record, said on Wednesday the protests at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed along with three others, demanded a comment from the GOP nominee. The larger point of Romney’s statement, which faulted the administration for initially siding with protesters in Cairo, was that Obama is misreading the violent underbelly of the Arab Spring and jeopardizing U.S. interests in the region.
“This was a story that was building the entire day,” a senior Romney official said of the developments that took place late on Tuesday and into Wednesday morning. “With the killing of a U.S. diplomat it is the type of thing where the Republican nominee for president has to have a response. This was a big deal. And the statement was about the consistent failure of this administration to engage constructively with the aftermath of the Arab Spring.”
The Romney official said the campaign’s tough criticism of the White House was meant to set in motion a larger debate about U.S. interests in a region full of new and potentially hazardous political transformation.
“This is an opportunity and a chance for us to debate existing administration policy,” the senior official said. “It will be a part of a larger criticism about the president’s policy in the region.”
Asked if the Romney campaign had any doubts or second thoughts about the timing, substance or tone of its statement, the official said: “none.”
All the White House could see fit to condemn yesterday was Mitt Romney’s statement of outrage over the attacks. The first statement I blogged from Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech was the following:
[L]et me speak as clearly and plainly as I can about some specific issues that I believe we must finally confront together. The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms. In Ankara, I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.
Only 24 hours later do we get a statement from the White House on the attacks that mirror Romney’s words of outrage on the attack:
I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi.
The rest of the statement expresses appropriate sympathies for the families of loved ones lost during the attacks. Absent anywhere in that statement is any mention of redress for the attackers.
Mr. President, you are failing your first duty as you rightly outlined above.
In light of today’s events I blogged the 2009 Cairo speech below but this tweet wonderfully sums up the disastrous political day for Obama:
@iowahawkblog this presidency started with an apology in Cairo & looks like its ending with an apology in Cairo
— Richard Orzechowski (@R_Orzechowski) September 12, 2012
Hat tip: the Blogfather.
President Obama’s foreign policy of distancing America from allies like Israel while coddling extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood don’t seem to be working out too well today:
Angry protesters attacked U.S. diplomatic compounds in Libya and Egypt on Tuesday, citing in both instances an online film considered offensive to Islam.
In Cairo, several men scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy and tore down its American flag, according to CNN producer Mohammed Fahmy, who was on the scene. In Libya, witnesses say members of a radical Islamist group called Ansar al-Sharia protested near the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, where NATO jets established no-fly zones last year to blunt ground attacks from then Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. The group then clashed with security forces in the city, blocking roads leading to the consulate, witnesses said. The Libyan government notified the United States that an employee at the U.S. Consulate was killed, a State Department official told CNN.
In Egypt, police and army personnel formed defensive lines around the U.S. Embassy in an effort to prevent demonstrators from advancing, but not before the protesters affixed a black flag atop a ladder in the American compound. The black flag, which hangs in full view from inside the complex, is adorned with white characters that read, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger,” an emblem often used by Islamic radicals. A volley of warning shots were fired as a large crowd gathered around the compound, although it is not clear who fired the shots.
As you will recall, Obama and his surrogates spent inordinate amounts of time self-congratulating the President Obama for his landmark speech in Cairo immediately after he was sworn into office. Let’s highlights some key tenets of that speech and see if they ring true today:
[L]et me speak as clearly and plainly as I can about some specific issues that I believe we must finally confront together. The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms. In Ankara, I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.
So far one American dead, our sovereign soil desecrated and the Al Qaeda flag flown over our embassy in Cairo.
The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.
I’m not sure everyone is on the same page here but let’s move on.
Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: “I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”
Our embassy apologized for the radical filmmaker Muslims are protesting but failed to condemn the violence. I’m doubt highly anyone Muslim or otherwise believes our power has grown today.
So America will defend itself respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.
Last week, our nearly bankrupt government agreed to forgive $1 billion in debt to Egypt now being run by the Muslim Brotherhood who gained their power thanks in large part to the support of Islamic extremists. To reward the US, they have violated our sovereignty and killed on of our officials. I’m going to say this makes us less safe.
The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world. America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable.
So long as that unbreakable bond doesn’t interfere with Obama’s appearance on the David Letterman Show.
But this much is clear: governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments – provided they govern with respect for all their people.
Peaceful and law-abiding voices of Jews, Christians and any non-Muslim are continually snuffed out by Egypt’s lawless police force under the Muslim Brotherhood. Good thing we forgave that $1 billion.
This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.
Speechless
The fifth issue that we must address together is religious freedom. Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.
Despite the familiarity of today’s images to all Americans alive when the Islamsists storm the American Embassy in Iran, I’m sure this is just an aberration…
People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, heart, and soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways. Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld – whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt. And fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq. Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it… it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.
I know there are many – Muslim and non-Muslim – who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn’t worth the effort – that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There is so much fear, so much mistrust. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward…We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written. The Holy Koran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.” The Talmud tells us: “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.” The Holy Bible tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you.
Maybe something got lost in translation?
Because it was under George Bush:
No matter how hard the media tries to “flood the zone” on any topic that will help Obama or hurt Romney, the relentlessly weak economy 4 years into the Obama Presidency continues to trump all. Two stories in major news papers today reflect this reality. First the New York Times writes on how quickly attention turns to the failing economy even after the media circus around national conventions:
Only hours after accepting his party’s nomination for a second term, President Obama found himself on the defensive over a jobs report that was weak in almost every way. The disappointing report leaves the president and his advisers with fading hopes that the economy will surge ahead before Election Day — much as it did late last year — and allow them to amplify his case that the country is on the road to recovery. And so on Friday Mr. Obama found himself making the complicated argument that the flagging recovery, while not good enough, is at least persistent enough to show that he has put the country on the right path. He has also found himself in the bleak position of having to prove to voters in the 59 days before they head to the polls that despite the sluggish economy and high unemployment, Americans would be even worse off with Mitt Romney at the helm.
For the past two years, Mr. Obama based his campaign on the argument that Democrats had reversed an economic free fall and helped put millions of people back to work. But that argument has proved harder to make with middling-or-worse jobs reports month after month. The August report shows that the unemployment rate fell only slightly, and even that drop was largely because hundreds of thousand of workers had given up looking for jobs. The bad economic news, with the August jobs report showing continued misery particularly for the less-educated and the long-term unemployed, electrified Republican pollsters and politicians eager to interpret it as yet more evidence of the failure of Mr. Obama’s economic policies. On Friday, Mr. Romney made a full-throated argument that Mr. Obama is failing as an economic steward, referring on Twitter to the Democratic National Convention as a party and the jobs report as the hangover. “There’s almost nothing the president has done in the past three and a half, four years that gives the American people confidence that he knows what he’s doing when it comes to jobs and the economy,” Mr. Romney said on his way to a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa.
And then the Wall Street Journal piles on with 2008 Obama supporter and now Romney supporter Mort Zuckerman pointing out the bad jobs results are even worse than the already bad headlines imply:
Don’t be fooled by the headline unemployment number of 8.1% announced on Friday. The reason the number dropped to 8.1% from 8.3% in July was not because more jobs were created, but because more people quit looking for work. The number for August reflects only people who have actively applied for a job in the past four weeks, either by interview or by filling an application form. But when the average period of unemployment is nearly 40 weeks, it is unrealistic to expect everyone who needs a job to keep seeking work consistently for months on end. You don’t have to be lazy to recoil from the heartbreaking futility of knocking, week after week, on closed doors.
The alarming numbers proliferate the deeper you look: 40.7% of the people counted as unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks or more—that’s 5.2 million “long-term” unemployed. Fewer Americans are at work today than in April 2000, even though the population since then has grown by 31 million. We are still almost five million payrolls shy of where we were at the end of 2007, when the recession began. Think about that when you hear the Obama administration’s talk of an economic recovery. The key indicator of our employment health, in all the statistics, is what the government calls U-6. This is the number who have applied for work in the past six months and includes people who are involuntary part-time workers—government-speak for those individuals whose jobs have been cut back to two or three days a week.
They are working part-time only because they’ve been unable to find full-time work. This involuntary army of what’s called “underutilized labor” has been hovering for months at about 15% of the workforce. Include the eight million who have simply given up looking, and the real unemployment rate is closer to 19%.
In short, the president’s ill-designed stimulus program was a failure. For all our other national concerns, and the red herrings that typically swim in electoral waters, American voters refuse to be distracted from the No. 1 issue: the economy. And even many of those who have jobs are hurting, because annual wage increases have dropped to an average of 1.6%, the lowest in the past 30 years. Adjusting for inflation, wages are contracting.
We are experiencing, in effect, a modern-day depression. Consider two indicators: First, food stamps: More than 45 million Americans are in the program! An almost incredible record. It’s 15% of the population compared with the 7.9% participation from 1970-2000. Food-stamp enrollment has been rising at a rate of 400,000 per month over the past four years. Second, Social Security disability—another record. More than 11 million Americans are collecting federal disability checks. Half of these beneficiaries have signed on since President Obama took office more than three years ago.
Obama surrogates in the media will never hold his campaign to account for the sleaziness and nasty nature of attacks this campaign season. When they do discuss it on TV they will always talk about the campaigns on equal footing in terms of dirty campaign tactics or ads. Well, you know Mitt Romney is winning because even full arteries of the Democrat National Committee are writing more fair pieces against Obama and by default in favor of Romney. Politico yesterday published a study on negative campaigning and found Team Obama to have the nastiest and lowest attacks of this cycle:
A crabby, negative campaign that has been more about misleading and marginal controversies than the major challenges facing the country? Barack Obama and Mitt Romney can both claim parenthood of this ugly child.
But there is a particular category of the 2012 race to the low road in which the two sides are not competing on equal terms: Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.
With a few exceptions, Romney has maintained that Obama is a bad president who has turned to desperate tactics to try to save himself. But Romney has not made the case that Obama is a bad person, nor made a sustained critique of his morality a central feature of his campaign.
It is not that the Obama-led attacks on Romney’s character have been especially vicious by historical standards. But they have been both relentless and remorseless, designed to portray Romney as too flawed personally to be a viable political alternative :
— Obama senior adviser David Axelrod early in the campaign called Romney “a charlatan.” Senior White House adviser David Plouffe made the same hollow-man argument during the GOP primaries: “You get the sense with Mitt Romney that if he thought it was good to say the sky was green and the grass was blue to win an election, he’d say it.”
— Obama’s campaign has suggested Romney is deceitful or corrupt. Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, highlighting inconsistencies in Romney’s explanation of his departure from Bain Capital, suggested that Romney is “misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony.” The alternative, she said, is Romney was lying to the American people. Last weekend, Cutter said that Romney and Paul Ryan think “lying is a virtue,” judging from the factual misrepresentations of the GOP convention.
— Obama’s campaign and surrogates say Romney’s business decisions and his personal finances call his patriotism into question.
All the fancy word in the world won’t change the fact that the employment situation in the United States is horrible. Last night Barack Obama gave an impassioned speech filled with soaring rhetoric that failed to mention even in passing a plan to get America back to work. Pet projects and crony capitalism that have been the hallmark of his Administration were the closest thing he came to when discussing jobs but the occasion job here and there won’t resurrect a nation of 300+ million people. Today’s anemic jobs picture is a stark reminder that 4 years into the Obama Presidency on the #1 issue to most Americans all his soaring rhetoric does is mask the truth he has no plan to turn this economy around:
U.S. job growth slowed in August, signaling a stalling economy that could mute any post-convention momentum for President Barack Obama and spur the Federal Reserve to take further steps to stimulate the economy. Nonfarm employment was up by a seasonally adjusted 96,000 and figures for the previous two months were revised down, the Labor Department said Friday. The report portrayed a sluggish economy that continues to move sideways, leaving few opportunities for the nation’s 12.5 million unemployed.
The unemployment rate—which is politically salient and comes from a separate survey than the jobs data—fell to 8.1% from 8.3%. That was because an estimated 368,000 people gave up looking for work. Throughout this year, the unemployment rate has bounced between 8.1% and 8.3%. Meantime, the labor force participation rate, which is the share of the population that is working or looking for work, fell to its lowest level since 1981.
Searching for good news in the guts of the report, economists found little. The average workweek was flat and July’s figures were revised downward. Average earnings slipped slightly. The weak payroll numbers, taken with other reports that indicate a manufacturing slowdown, suggest growth isn’t picking up and remove a final hurdle standing in the way of the Fed proceeding with new action.
While the U.S. economy has been adding jobs every month since October 2010, the economy—and in particular the labor market—has continuously struggled to hit the kind of velocity needed to bring down the unemployment rate. This is largely because the economy’s legs have never quite moved in unison.
For instance, the factory sector was strong for much of the recovery but the housing market remained weak. Today the housing market is perking up just as the factories shift downward. Manufacturers shed 15,000 jobs in August. This has left the country prone to outside shocks, such as supply disruptions brought on by the Japanese tsunami disaster last year and the current pressures over the European debt crisis.
The Labor Department on Friday said private companies accounted for all of the growth in August payrolls, adding 103,000 jobs during the month. Governments, meanwhile, shed 7,000 positions as state and local governments cut payrolls. In the private sector, employment rose at restaurants and bars, in the professional- and technical-services sector, in health care and in the utilities sector. In another sign of a weak labor market, average earnings ticked down by one cent to $23.52 an hour, while the average workweek was unchanged at 34.4 hours.
A broader measure of unemployment—which includes job seekers as well as those in part-time jobs—fell to 14.7% in August from 15.0% the previous month.
