PoliticsBuddy RoemerMichele BachmannFred Karger

The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup For January 6, 2012

The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup For January 6, 2012
By 

Eat The Press Editor, HuffPost

and

Growth Strategy Expert

|

The real reason that we put up with the idea of the Iowa Caucus, despite the quadrennial concerns that it allows a few people from a small state to have an outsized influence on electoral outcomes (concerns which are somewhat overstated, but not completely dismissable!) is the simple fact that it is a really pretty thing to look at. For a few days in our lives, we immerse ourselves in the wonderment of seeing middle Americans, who we imagine are not far removed from the hard labor of working the soil for their daily keep (Iowa's population is largely urban, but we don't send TV cameras to those caucus sites), take those first fitful and uncertain steps in a long political process. They gather in community centers and school gyms and sit in folding chairs, and they use a pen to write a name on a slip of paper, and all is right with the world. Really right with the world! By the time everything is over in November, we'll have been exposed to every last dose of venality and cynicism our political culture has to throw at us, so we need this tonic, right at the outset, to preserve our constitutions from the coming toxins.

In exchange for this balm, we accept that the Iowa Caucus has a story to tell. The Iowa Caucus, we tell ourselves, may not be that great at picking a president, but it has a purpose to serve in winnowing down the field and eliminating those candidates who can't perform the basic tasks of retail campaigning. How did we do this year? Well, it winnowed out Michele Bachmann. It probably should have freed us from the further ministrations of the "Rick Perry campaign," but Perry has decided to soldier on. As Bachmann had already essentially eliminated herself from competition at the end of September, this seems a woefully inefficient way of getting a candidate to quit the race.

Nevertheless, Iowa generated something that felt like excitement, even if that hectic feeling was created by nothing more than two counties being dreadfully slow at counting. At the end of the night, three candidates claimed a sort of victory. Third-place finisher Ron Paul probably would have preferred to have ended the night much nearer to the leading vote-getters -- he really needed a first-place finish to prevent the media from dialing back their coverage of his campaign -- but he ended the night on an optimistic note, riding out of Iowa on a substantial amount of money and enthusiastic support, armed with a long-game plan to navigate his way to a high delegate count.

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, as you well know, battled to a photo finish, with Romney eking out a thin, eight-vote victory. But Romney couldn't claim the night. Not with Santorum's shoe strings-and-chicken bones operation nearly matching the Super PAC-enabled Romney vote for vote. Santorum, sensing that he was poised to claim something that would seem more like victory than the actual win, had a chance to capitalize on the moment and, as Rachel Sklar pointed out in Mother Jones the next day, he utterly nailed it:

Last night, after enough of a delay that pundits took note, Santorum took the podium for his speech and sheepishly apologized for reading from his notes. He proceeded to positively kill it. He spoke earnestly and with real emotion about his wife and family, his grandfather who had worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines into his 70s, and the American working class. He spoke of his daughter, born disabled with a life expectancy of just a year, who, against those odds, was now three years old; he spoke of another child lost, and of his passionate belief in the dignity of human life. His tone was strong, though at times wavered with emotion. He fed off the audience, acknowledging a zinger about Romneycare with a grin. He shouted out the New York Times for recognizing his Chuck Truck. He was humble, impassioned, patriotic, and filled with conviction. If you didn't know anything about Santorum before last night, you'd be impressed.

How could Romney have followed that? Well, the answer was pretty much "any way other than the way he did." When Romney finally took the stage, his speech had the tone and tenor of a man who was either in the throes of amphetamine mania, or was told seconds before going on stage that if he didn't finish within a certain time, someone, somewhere was going to start killing hostages. Romney paused for audience responses that never came, raced through his remarks at a breakneck pace and went back to his stump speech for that awful recitation of "America The Beautiful" that included his "corn is an amber wave" joke that never ever worked, as Stephen Colbert's brilliant next-day montage demonstrated:

Nevertheless, what's so bad about a little inability to seem human when your organizational strength and war chest dwarfs that of your next opponent several times over? Those are the challenges that Santorum has to surmount -- along with Romney's big lead in the upcoming New Hampshire primary -- which, again, is part of the important election year tonic: Dixville Notch! Hart's Location! Snow! Maple syrup! Live free or die! A reporter saw a moose!

And that's where this is all heading -- to the Granite State! There, Jon Huntsman lies in wait, hoping to remind people of his existence. Ron Paul rides a moneybomb wave, hoping to forge a deeper connection with New Hampshire's storied independents. Newt Gingrich -- barking mad at Romney for his vicious Super PAC attacks -- is threatening to rain down hellfire on the favorite. And there will be two debates in the 72 hours, including one at nine in the morning on Sunday, which is apparently sponsored by Satan. For everything you need to get caught up on the week that was, please feel free to enter the Speculatron for the week of January 6, 2012.

The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup, January 6
Rick Santorum(01 of06)
Open Image Modal
It's been an amazing two weeks for Rick Santorum, who came up surging on the outside rail to close strong in Iowa. Along the way, he went from "can he win?" to "could he win?" to "will he win" to "he almost won" to "maybe he did win," and is now, we assume, firmly back in the mode where he's savoring a victory.For George Will, who was in a glass case of anxiety over the prospect of the nominating contest coming down to a choice between Mitt and Newt, Santorum's emergence has him positively giddy, and now he's touting how "fun" a candidate Rick Santorum is. Really! Rick Santorum is "fun" in certain circles!
Rick Santorum has become central because Iowa Republicans ignored an axiom that is as familiar as it is false: Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Republicans, supposedly hierarchical, actually are -- let us say the worst -- human. They crave fun. Supporting Romney still seems to many like a duty, the responsible thing to do. Suddenly, supporting Santorum seems like a lark, partly because a week or so ago he could quit complaining about media neglect and start having fun, which is infectious.
Shorter George Will: "Taste the fun infection that is Santorum."Well, if Santorum has new life, it comes along with new challenges and new levels of scrutiny as well. Santorum, having won a close second place in Iowa on pure guts and the ability to make a little bit of money go a long way, now needs to take on the other 49 states, and in order to keep up with the Romneys and Pauls, he'll need some support. Fortunately for Romney, in the days since Iowa, his donations have increased significantly. Unfortunately, now the media is invested in covering him. That's why Santorum's back-catalog of cray-cray is getting another turn in the sunshine. And Mitt Romney, in a move that few might consider to be among the classiest, is making a special effort to bedevil Santorum for his famous "Google problem."Santorum is hitting back at his rivals. He didn't take kindly to Newt Gingrich calling him a "junior partner." And this week, he told radio host Mark Levin that a Romney nomination would "destroy this country." And Santorum's not shy about looking ahead to the general, either -- his continual denunciations of the Affordable Care Act (from Santorum's point of view, the fact that millions of Americans cannot afford health care is actually a virtue) are clear signs of the fact that he's itching to go at Obama.Jim Newell says that now, "the future will be an eternal loop of watching Rick Santorum whine about gays." Pretty much! And this week, he continued to make the kind of addled comparisons between same-sex marriage and other examples of deviance that earned him his Google problem in the first place. He went on to claim that he hasn't "been talking a lot about" gay issues, which suggests that he may have some short and long-term memory problems.If Santorum can't remember talking about gay issues, over and over again, maybe it's because it's all just a blur now, and maybe it's because he has more prominent memories of talking in paranoid terms about Muslims, prudish terms about contraception, Gingrichian terms about abolishing whatever circuit court fails to please him, or off-the-wall terms about Obama's "treasons."But while all of this is available for scrutiny -- along with his own 1 percent-favoring tax plan that will blow up the deficit -- the Santorum snafu that's getting the most attention is a pretty hilarious one, so we understand why none of these other matters have been addressed.See, at a stop in Sioux City, Santorum went on a bit of a race-based bender against welfare programs such as food-stamps, saying that he didn't want "to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money." Why he said this to a roomful of white Iowans is anyone's guess. When it comes to welfare recipients in that state, "only 9 percent of Iowans on food stamps are black -- and 84 percent are white" and nationally, blacks don't form the majority of people on this form of welfare: "39 percent of welfare recipients are white, 37 percent are black, and 17 percent are Hispanic."But, as they say, "it gets better." Thursday night, when John King confronted Santorum on this, Santorum denied ever using the word "black." So what did he say? Something that's a little hard to believe:
SANTORUM: I've looked at that quote, in fact I looked at the video. In fact, I'm pretty confident I didn't say black. I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of -- blah -- mumbled it and sort of changed my thought.
Hey! Some of our best friends are blah!
Ron Paul(02 of06)
Open Image Modal
As Ron Paul's campaign approached the night of the Iowa caucuses, expectations were as high as the clamor around his campaign was outsized. At pre-caucus rallies, Paul was namedropping Kelly Clarkson and her surprise endorsement, which was surely a first for the septuagenarian candidate. Speaking of! You remember all those stories about how Paul's supporters went out and bought a whole mess of Kelly Clarkson CDs in response to her Twitter endorsement? Yeah...not so much.And the fur was still fying over his controversial, semi-ghostwritten, somehow-escaping-his-attention-allegedly newsletters: last week, Paul was fending off attacks from those who thought he was a bigot while simultaneously dealing with attacks from others who felt he wasn't bigoted enough.The prospects of Paul winning the whole kit and caboodle still had elites a-flutter. Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen was pretty much freaking out, which is understandable when you consider the fact that Paul had taken committed stances against all of the things that traditionally get Thiessen pitching a pup-tent in his knickers, like bombing Iran and torturing people. Iowa Rep. Steve King was warning everyone he could that a Paul presidency would guarantee "Iranian nuclear missiles in Cuba." Jon Huntsman produced an ad that compared Paul's views to something out of the Twilight Zone. And Rick Santorum took the harshest and briefest road to denigrating Paul, simply terming him "disgusting." (Santorum's nephew, John Garver, disagreed, and endorsed Paul in the Daily Caller, calling him the "only candidate trying to win the election for a reason other than simply winning the election."Come caucus night, Paul's campaign was feeling confident, buoyed by entrance polls that suggested he might prevail in a dead heat race with Mitt Romney. In fact, some in the Paul camp might have been feeling a wee bit overconfident -- early in the evening, someone using the campaign Twitter account quipped at Jon Huntsman, "We may have found your one Iowa voter, he's in Linn precinct 5 you might want to call him and say thanks." That tweet was briefly deleted, then brought back, and we don't know what eventually happened to it because when we caught ourselves expending effort on what happened to something someone said on Twitter, we took a brief break to restore our sense of perspective. (Anyway, as we know, a lot of what gets ascribed to Paul is ghostwritten, right?)Paul would go on to finish third, somewhat behind Romney and Santorum but well ahead of Gingrich and Perry. For Paul, it was enough to go on. For the media, it might be a different story that Paul didn't win the caucus outright. For his part, Paul is running a long game in these caucuses that is perhaps not getting as much attention as it warrants. As Business Insider noted:
Ron Paul may have officially come in third tonight, but if the campaign's caucus strategy went off as planned, then Paul may actually be the real winner of the first Republican voting contest.That's because Paul's massive organizational push in Iowa focused on both winning votes, and also on making sure that Paul supporters stuck around after the vote to make sure they were selected as county delegates -- the first step towards being elected as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.That's because Iowa's Republican caucuses are non-binding -- they are technically just a straw poll, so once selected, delegates are free to vote for whichever presidential candidate they choose."Part of what we've been training the Ron Paul people to do is not to leave after the vote," Dan Godzich, a senior campaign advisor, told BI. "Stay and get elected to the conventions and get us those delegates."
Remember how Paul's campaign was imposing some rigorous discipline and requiring its footsoldiers to be shaved, clean and well-dressed in public? This is a big reason why.But Paul, overall, has something of a plan and so far, he's calling plays from that playbook. He's aided greatly by the fact that he's still raking in money by the truckload and using it to make ad buys in contests down the road. Paul has perhaps attacked Newt Gingrich in a more showy manner since the curtains came down in Iowa -- he labeled Gingich a "chickenhawk" -- but John Heilemann believes that Paul could, in the end, hurt Romney:
But as Buchanan proved in 1996, the fact that a candidate is incapable of being the GOP standard-bearer doesn't mean he can't kick up a hell of a ruckus along the way -- and pose significant problems to the Establishment choice for the nomination. Buchanan, please recall, finished second in Iowa to Bob Dole with 23 percent of the vote that year, then went on to beat the front-runner in New Hampshire. It is true, to be sure, that Romney is a stronger Granite State candidate than the Bobster was, and if he wins in Iowa, the Paul threat will quickly recede. But if Romney were to slip to third behind Paul and Santorum, the situation in New Hampshire might fast become unstable -- and in South Carolina, even more so, as Romney would be forced to contend, in a state where he has never been strong, not just with Paul and Santorum but with Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich making what might be their last stands.And then there is another scenario: one in which Romney wins the nomination, but Paul refuses to disappear. The other day, one of the savviest political operatives I know e-mailed me out of the blue. The subject line of the message read "Romney's mistake" and its body said this: "He thinks that he is running against Paul for the nomination. What he needs to start focusing on is how to get Paul to not run as a 3rd party candidate in the fall" -- an eventuality that could cripple Romney's chances in the general election by robbing him of crucial conservative-libertarian votes. I e-mailed back: What would you suggest? "Stay away from him," came the reply. "Don't engage him and don't insult him. Maybe even find something to agree with. They are not competing for the same voters."
Of course, this is all playing out against a larger debate as to whether Ron Paul's overall crackpottedness makes him a good messenger for the values and positions that don't get enunciated by any of the other candidates, such as his stance against militarism. Plenty of progressives carry a candle for Paul over his opposition to wars and empire-building, and they praise his stances on civil liberties (while perhaps misunderstanding that Paul's support for civil liberties have less to with a belief in strong individual rights and more to do with the fact that he believes the power of government should be radically limited). But his good points come with baggage: stuff like his opposition to helping victims of natural disaters, his belief that workplace sexual harassment isn't worth being concerned about, and the fact that he gets asked all the time about being a 9-11 truther crank. Kevin Drum says no:
If you truly support civil liberties at home and noninterventionism abroad, you should run, not walk, as fast as you can to keep your distance from Ron Paul. He's not the first or only person opposed to preemptive wars, after all, and his occasional denouncements of interventionism are hardly making this a hot topic of conversation among the masses. In fact, to the extent that his foreign policy views aren't simply being ignored, I'd guess that the only thing he's accomplishing is to make noninterventionism even more of a fringe view in American politics than it already is. Crackpots don't make good messengers.
In the end, Paul doesn't particularly think like he has much of a chance of winning. It's pretty clear, however, that he's somewhat averse to the rest of the people in the field, and may eventually choose not to support the winner.
Rick Perry(03 of06)
Open Image Modal
Rick Perry's brief tenure as a member of the top-tier was all but over by the time autumn bled into winter. But with the accelerated cycle of rise and fall that all of the "not Romneys" were experiencing, there were plenty of people who thought that by having built his way back to the double digits, there might be enough juice left in Perry to score a surprise showing in Iowa. So Perry -- who was able to score a few weeks of not having to show up for a debate -- essentially made a big wager in Iowa: his infrastructural strength and presence in Iowa against the rest of the field, his well-funded war chest against the rising Rick Santorum's campaign-on-the-cheap.Perry did what he could to hold his followers together, alternately going after his rivals and attacking the White House -- a fight he imagined to be the historical equivalent of fighting the British during the Revolutionary War or the Nazis on Normandy Beach. Perry did what he could to seize the mantle of the Romney-alternative by slagging Romney, but he also went out of his way to try to tear down Rick Santorum -- the better to swipe some of Santorum's surge.The problem was that Perry's campaign staffers were telling tales out of school. Tales like this one:
Said one Perry adviser, on background: "There has never been a more ineptly orchestrated, just unbelievably subpar campaign for President of the United States than this one."
That led to a confrontation with Politico's Mike Allen, in which Perry endlessly repeated "You got a name?" to all of Allen's inquiries on the matter.By the way, let's just call this now: Rick Perry versus Mike Allen is essentially the "Frost/Nixon" that the 2012 race deserves. (Perry, surprisingly, is the "Frost.")At any rate, the Iowa Caucus results came in and Perry had only managed to best the hapless Michele Bachmann. Speculation began almost immediately that Perry would drop out of the race after his showing, and, indeed, Perry himself said that he would be returning to Texas to "reassess" his campaign. The period of reassessment did not take long -- by the next morning, Perry tweeted a picture of himself in jogging gear, telling his fans that he was taking his game to South Carolina.Nate Silver posits that Perry had two possible decision-making scenarios, which Perry likely combined into one large SuperScenario:
Hypothetical Scenario A: Although most of Mr. Perry's strategists were urging him to drop out of the race, he prayed on the decision, talked it over with his wife, and decided to ignore their advice. There was a strong emotional element to the decision: Mr. Perry felt embarrassed by his performance in Iowa and wanted the opportunity to redeem himself and go out on a better note.Hypothetical Scenario B: Mr. Perry was prepared to drop out of the race, but his advisers saw a credible path to victory and urged otherwise. Moreover, he received a string of phone calls, text messages and e-mails from major donors, Republican elected officials and conservative activists who expressed their support and told him that he should press on. These party elites were concerned that Mr. Romney was going to waltz to the nomination, and they were either poorly disposed toward Rick Santorum or convinced that Mr. Santorum lacked the resources to seriously challenge Mr. Romney.
Regardless of how he came to the decision, the South Carolina primary now looms as the place of Perry's last stand (he'll go to New Hampshire to debate but has not campaigned there with any vigor). As Silver points out: "Mr. Perry's polling in South Carolina has not been good recently. But if you need only 20 percent of the vote to lead the field there, or if the number of undecideds or weakly committed voters remains high, you would not need all that much momentum to contend." Well, he doesn't have much momentum, that's for sure.
Gary Johnson(04 of06)
Open Image Modal
Since we last left Johnson, the former New Mexico Governor has become so disaffected with the Republican Party's process -- which in large part only help to facilitate Johnson's exclusion from the process itself -- that he finally decided to quit the GOP race and announce a run under the banner of the Libertarian Party. And he earned a plaudit this week that went a long way to solidifying his bona fides with the LP set, earning the ACLU's top spot on its "Constitutional Report Card."
Former New Mexico Governor and presidential candidate Gary Johnson ranks highest of all major presidential candidates in a "Liberty Watch" report card just released by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU report ranked candidates according to their positions on issues of civil liberties and adherence to the Constitution.Johnson ranked higher than both President Obama and Texas Congressman Ron Paul in the ACLU Liberty Watch ratings. The report card included candidates' positions on issues ranging from immigration to gay rights to a woman's right to choose.On the ACLU Liberty Watch website, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said, "Republican-turned-Libertarian Gary Johnson scored even better than Paul, Huntsman and Obama, earning four and three torches on most major issues. They stand in stark contrast to the other major GOP candidates, three of whom -- Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum -- didn't earn a single torch in any of the seven major categories."
For Johnson, that's a decent feather in the cap and nice way of ingratiating himself with his new constituency, who might otherwise long for Ron Paul to quit the Republican field and come over to their side.Unfortunately, Johnson's thunder was stolen somewhat when a caucus night rumor began to circulate that he was dropping out of the race entirely. (He wasn't.) As Chris Ariens reported:
During Iowa Caucus coverage last night, just after 9pmET, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow who was leading the network's coverage reported that one-time GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson who dropped out of the race to run as a Libertarian candidate, "has dropped his bid for the Libertarian nomination and instead will be endorsing Ron Paul.""That's fascinating," chimed in Chris Matthews. And it would be. If it were true.Five minutes later, Maddow corrected her report, calling it "a hoax. Sorry. That'll happen."
This matter eventually became a big media story, with Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik coming out as highly critical of MSNBC for allowing the rumor out of the box in the first place. We think that by and large, the Washington Post's Erik Wemple has refereed the whole matter in the most convincing fashion, dinging MSNBC for a workflow problem but noting that they were the first to debunk the rumor alongside being the first to disseminate it. Perhaps the most telling line of Wemple's piece is the last: "Perhaps the Fox News folks played it the smartest. According to a source with the network, they didn't scramble to confirm or run anything on air."Right. The best way to avoid spreading Gary Johnson-related hoaxes is to not care two tugs of a dead dog's tail about Gary Johnson's candidacy in the first place.
Fred Karger(05 of06)
Open Image Modal
Fred Karger continues his aggressive courtship of voters in New Hampshire, the state where his thin hopes rest almost completely on a decent showing. On the plus side, those voters are starting to become familiar enough with the candidate to be helpful:
"We will find the voters wherever they hide," he said with a grin.Earlier in the day, Karger made a handful of stops in Portsmouth where he visited the Golden Egg restaurant, the Friendly Toast restaurant and stopped at Federal Cigar to shake hands.After a long night waiting for the results of the Iowa Caucus, he said he was unfortunately delayed, putting him about an hour late into his schedule."I was putting up some lawn signs this morning when a lady drove by and asked if I was Fred Karger," he said. "She told me I was supposed to be at the Golden Egg."
"My major battle," Karger added, "is [in New Hampshire]." To that end, he has released a new ad in which he touts the many ways he's divorced himself from the current GOP orthodoxy by supporting reproductive rights, gay marriage and an end to the war in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, this is not the sort of news Karger wants to hear:
The latest Suffolk University/7 News poll shows Texas Gov. Rick Perry tied for dead last in New Hampshire with, of all people, openly gay candidate Fred Karger.
I mean...at least he's tied with Perry, right?
Barack Obama(06 of06)
Open Image Modal
President Obama has been spending the majority of his post-payroll tax cut battle days on vacation with family in Hawaii. There's he's been joining Instagram (for some reason!) and batting down reports that he was part of some mystery space trip to Mars. But with the Iowa Caucus looming, vacation ended and Obama was rallying Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa at their mostly ceremonial Democratic Caucus. (Obama won, by the way, with 98 percent of the vote, but somehow that errant two percent will get spun into a story about how Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold should still "primary" him). As Daily Intel's Brett Smiley put it, "campaign mode begins."And what better way to signal that than making a bunch of recess appointments, perfectly placed to capture the sentiment of the economically-distressed and labor organizers? This week, the big news was that Obama used a recess appointment to get Richard Cordray in as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray, who's generally seen as the next-best thing you can get when you can't get (or don't try to get!) Elizabeth Warren, is poised to swing into action. And the White House is poised to have what I imagine they hope will be a lengthy fight with the Congressional GOP, who immediately turned their hyperbole machines up to eleven to decry the perfectly banal task of staffing an agency as some sort of Soviet power-grab.Obama also made appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, which were also decried by the GOP, who do not believe that "relations" with "labor" are appropriate anymore. A common criticism of these moves was to suggest that Obama does this sort of thing all the time, but in reality, Obama's never been a big fan of recess appointments and has made very few. Which is weird, considering that the GOP just refuses to have straight up-or-down votes on any appointments, generically speaking.New York magazine's Jonathan Chait sees the Cordray appointment as a central part of Obama's re-election strategy. It seamlessly folds up "four important battles the Obama administration is waging," he wrote, including a battle against "nullifcation," the need to make the "we can't wait" slogan mean something, and creating an entrée for "Wall Street hatred" to flow against the president at the precise moment he needs populist sentiment to shift to his side. The fourth battle? Well, it anticipates drawing Mitt Romney as a general election opponent. Per Chait:
Obama's primary charge against Mitt Romney is likely to be that he wants to return to the Bush era. The accusation will have several points to bolster it -- lock in Bush-era tax levels for the rich, let insurance companies discriminate against families with a pre-existing conditions -- but the most powerful is Romney's strong support for repealing Dodd-Frank. The accusation has resonance because Romney comes from the world of finance, has drawn extremely strong support from finance, and he simply looks like a stereotypical Wall Street shark.If I were Obama, I would want to set up financial reform as the number one contrast issue of the presidential election. Appointing Cordray to the post is a good step to establishing the contrast. And Romney, perhaps still concerned about a conservative primary threat, seems to be walking right into the trap.
Beyond that, the recess appointments go a long way to knit back up a liberal coalition that fractured during the same time period when Obama signed the most recent National Defense Authorization Act into law, at which time the President offered a signing statement expressing concerns over the law's continued expansion of executive powers that Obama has always claimed to abhor without actually taking meaningful actions to express this abhorrence. This has been an issue that has divided progressives who have specific and principled complaints about these matters drawn from their past Bush administration criticism, and other Democrats who place a higher virtue in their team winning elections than they do in actually having principles.If one matter moves the needle more than the other, however, in terms of winning the election, then you should always pick the one that relates to the economy. Fortunately for Obama, there was other good news on that front today, as the unemployment rate dropped to a three-year low of 8.5 percent.Beyond picking the right fight and lucking in to favorable economic numbers at the right time (though we still have many months where things can worsen, by the way!), what else can Obama do to help his re-election chances? Abe Sauer says: why not put a baby in that wife of his? Americans love babies. Especially babies named "Aiden" for some reason. Can you imagine the "Aiden is Aidin' Obama" headlines?

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Support HuffPost

At HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.

Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.

Would you join us to help keep our stories free for all? Your will go a long way.

Support HuffPost
Suggest a correction
|
Submit a tip