(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Crazy For "Obama Phones"

In the video, an alleged Obama supporter screams about her “Obama phone” at a rally in Ohio. She tells a reporter, “Keep Obama in president, you know! He gave us a phone, he’s gonna do more.”...It was a great sound byte. But it’s deeply flawed. The “Obama phone” program she’s touting doesn’t give out free phones to minorities. And it wasn’t started by President Obama.

The problem is that it doesn't matter whether it's real or not. As long as people think they are going to get free stuff from Obama, they will support him, even if it's untrue. And further, you won't be able to convince them that it's untrue. And when they don't get these things, they'll start demanding them, because they were promised, even though they weren't. And it's going to keep getting worse as long as we have a government that keeps giving out more and more handouts.

Obama's Uphill Battle: Three Weeks Out Edition

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

It's probably been longer than I would have liked since I've done one of these - work responsibilities plus a broken foot equal not a lot of time (and you've probably noticed my lower-than-normal participation period since mid-August). Either way, I've been trying to keep up as best I can with what's been happening, and it helps that a lot of my time away coincided with the conventions, meaning all the polling was impacted and it was difficult to separate noise from data.

This is not to say that the convention timeframe was good for Romney or bad for Obama - it largely wasn't, and represents the highpoint for Obama at this stage and a lowpoint for Romney. That Romney's convention got stepped on by the DNC (a fairly common occurance) is not surprising. What is surprising is that the Obama bounce rebounded, perhaps due to the 47% kerfluffle. It's hard to say for sure, but at least one person didn't miss Romney's bad month.

The good news is that October brings increased polling, increased attention, and better data. Here's what we know.

* Romney's been underperforming: The fundamentals of the race really haven't changed. Unemployment is still high, Obama's approval still low, the favorability gap is basically closed, likely women voters in battleground states are tied, etc. The race is close, and probably shouldn't be, but it is what it is.

* Romney's debate performance helped him: Romney's improvement in the polls across the board has resulted in a dead heat in the RCP average independent of any other factors. This includes the Rasmussen tracker (showing Romney +1 at the time of writing) and the Gallup tracker (showing Romney +2 at the time of writing). This is a sustained increase we're seeing, and doesn't really seem to be a bounce, per se. My suspicions are that Romney's performance definitely showed a different Romney than we've seen via the Obama campaign attacks, and that it swung a lot of people to his side. We'll see how the debate tonight goes for both sides.

* The polling is weird: I preface this by saying that I'm not a proponent of the so-called "unskewed polls" movement. My assumption is that professional pollsters with a good track record - Quinnipiac, Gallup, PPP, Rasmussen - know what they're doing, and that their past accuracy will be representative of future success. This does not mean that the criticism of polls - such as yesterday's ABC/WaPo poll that sampled Democrats at two points higher nationally than exits showed in 2008 - are wrong. I firmly believe that polls should be weighting themselves properly, and if a poll is showing better Democratic numbers than what we saw in 2008, that it should be taken into account - not discarded completely. If a D+9 sample of likely voters shows Obama with a 2 point lead, it's probably safe to say that the race is tied, if not leaning toward Romney. As I've said repeatedly, though, you're stuck with the data you have. The data is weird, but it's showing a close race.

So what does this mean for the race overall?

* Tonight's debate matters: Frankly, Obama needs to show something, bare minimum. It's hard to think that his performance at the last debate could have gone worse, and one would think a town hall-style debate would benefit Obama's style and message. We'll see. The question for me is how Romney's performance will impact the polls as well. If Romney continues to look competent and remains friendly during the interaction with voters, it will be interesting to see if his gains erode at all.

* The next debate probably matters more: I say this only because, in an election focused more on the economy, the Benghazi situation is still a flashpoint. As a significant point of weakness for the Obama administration currently, and the final debate being about foreign policy, any gains Obama can make tonight could get erased pretty quickly. A week is a very long time right now (the third debate is in 6 days), but we could get a preview of it if Benghazi comes up from one of the voters.

* Even if the two debates are a wash, GOTV is key: This means enthusiasm, which Republicans hold a huge edge on. This means GOTV, which the Romney campaign reports is way, way ahead of 2008. This means money, which Obama still has a sizeable lead on, but nowhere near 2008's advantage. With how close the race is, it's going to come to those swingy independents, which one Battleground poll has as Romney +8, a 16 point swing away from Obama compared to 2008.

Essentially, we're hitting crunch time here. Debates matter, gaffes might matter. Or the debates won't matter anymore and it's just going to be brutally close. If I've made any error at this point, it's that the historical data has not been as prescriptive as we should expect. I'm interested in seeing where it will end up, but in a race that's essentially tied with the trends in place, things look good for Romney - just not as good as they may have two months ago.

SF Local Politics: The Black and Blue Letter‏

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The latest round in the Ross Mirkarimi drama is that the Board of Supervisors failed to uphold Mayor Ed Lee's suspension of the Sheriff elect on official misconduct charges. The City's Ethics Commission had conducted an extensive hearing into the suspension and the evidence against Mirkarimi this past summer. They found that that there was insufficient evidence that Mirkarimi had done anything officially wrong. The only thing that held up was the domestic violence charge to which Mirkarimi had pled guilty. That was enough for the Ethics Commission to recommend against reinstating Mirkarimi to his position. The Supervisors were divided by enough of a margin that Mirkarimi is back on the job.

The argument for keeping Mirkarimi out of the position is that the Sheriff's department deals with domestic offenders. There is concern on the part of some that Mirkarimi will not process such cases as the Sheriff's department has in the past. There is also concern that reinstating Mirkirimi gives the green light to domestic violence. Opponents of Mirkarimi's reinstatement were also rather dismayed at the positive feelings exhibited after the vote last Tuesday. Supervisor Carmen Chu expressed disapproval at the expressions of relief and satisfaction that were displayed.

( Black and blue letter under the cut. )

What is your gut reaction to this turn of events? Do you see this as a step back toward the dark ages of women living in fear of the heavy fist of a drunken spouse? Are the domestic violence advocates getting their knickers in a twist unnecessarily?

Links: SF Chronicle article on reaction to last week's vote by domestic violence advocates. SF Chronicle article on the Ethics Commission ruling in August.

Scotland, a step closer to independence

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

So far, South Sudan has been the last country to join the list of sovereign states, after the independence referendum from last year. But now Scotland looks more likely than ever to become the new kid on the block. It all started when the Scottish National Party won the majority in the local parliament in May. And their manifesto openly declares that Scottish independence is their number 1 priority. Scotland's "First Minister", Alex Salmond is a staunch nationalist, and now his efforts to call a referendum on the issue have reached success, because the central authorities in London have just announced they wouldn't mind having such a public vote.

^ An authentic rendition of the Scottish referendum...

( Blimey! Where'd all that Freeeedooom come from!? )

ø¤º° Welcome to the Debate !! °º¤ø

[telemann.livejournal.com]

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Ezra Klein , Washington Post.
Jeff Greenfield, PBS.
John Heilemann, New York Magazine.
Rachel Maddow , MSNBC.
Sean Hannity, Fox News
Bil Maher, HBO
Politifact, Tampa Bay Times.
Fact Check, Fact Check dot org.
Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC Chairwoman.
Reince Priebus, RNC Chairman.
David Axelrod, Former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama.
Eric Fehrnstrom, Senior Romney campaign adviser.