May Day Political Musings

The Donald got his head handed to him last night by President Obama and Seth Myers. The Donald sat glum-faced throughout the ribbing and was later photographed storming out immediately afterwards. To add insult to injury, the Donald was tricked into autographing President Obama's long form birth certificate. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. What did the Donald think after he has spent two weeks going after the President? There is this strange attitude by Republicans that they can heap abuse on the President and are shocked, stunned that the man in a light-hearted way puts them down.

President Obama's admirers always claims the man practices 3-D chess in politics. Personally, I could deal with a little less of this. But he has turned the birther issue around to work for him politically. While Karl Rove and Tom Tancredo cry "He made Republicans look bad.", that's just the point. Gearing up for the 2012 race,the birther issue is a useful reminder to people why they chose the outsider in the first place. The real birthers will never let it rest. Next, Barack Obama will have killed Vin Foster. It doesn't matter. The President is actually playing this to his advantage because he still has to run as an outsider this year, even though he's sitting in the White House. Some of us, me included,tend to forget that Barack Hussein Obama II has lived with this his whole life and tends to have acquired the necessary coping mechanisms to turn this improbability to his advantage.

President Obama again faces a daunting re-election challenge. (Until you factor in the other guys.) If Harry Reid does force the Senate Republicans to vote on the Ryan Budget,the table will be set for the debate in 2012 and the advantage tips to Obama and he knows this.

We have to remember that President Obama is the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to have won more than 50% of the popular vote in a presidential election. And with his approval ratings getting dinged,that is a significant challenge for 2012. Republicans assume and act as the Presidency is their entitlement program and its lost in 2008 engendered massive bitterness. If you are like me and believe the 2000 election was a one-off, let's think again because the machinery is being put in place to replicate it.

Remember last election President Obama and the Democrats had a hidden advantage--friendly state Attorney-Generals who were committed to broadening the electorate. Even Charlie Crist, then Republican Governor of Florida,felt that his state could not withstand the shame of another 2000. Those days are gone. Obama was lucky to have Attorney-General Brunner in Ohio, who was aggressive in stopping voter suppression. He also had friendly Attorney-Generals in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. There are all gone now.

Early polling of swing states show Obama is droopy in Nevada,Pennsylvania and North Carolina. And the enthusiasm gap, which we saw was devastating in 2010, has Republicans 10 points more "very enthused" than the Democrats.

President Obama has significant advantages going into 2012. The very states , where he no longer has friendly attorney-generals, are experiencing massive voters' remorse first toward the new Republican governors and second to the teabagger congresspeople. There is little likelihood that the governors' approval ratings will rebound anytime within their term of office. We would like to say that the Republicans like in 1995 over-reached but since this time it is so far over-reaching we may have a new phenomenon that we don't understand yet.

He also has built Organizing for America, which will be the most professional re-election organization in our history. While the enthusiasm might not be as strong, organizationally it will be bringing back the people from the Obama movement in a more coordinated way than before with a massive upgrade in technical prowess. Right now, no Republican contender has such an organization. Only Mitt Romney has one that is professionally proficient.

While Russ Feingold is appalled, the Democrats have created a parallel organization to counter Rove's Crossroads America and the other anonymous corporate donor fronts. In this day of Citizens United, I don't see any other way. Most observers saw the 2010 disaster as the triumph of money over organization and no Democrat is going to allow this to happen again.

Republicans are doing their best in reducing the Democrats' funding base by targeting unions and membership dues being taken out of paychecks. The hope is to weaken the major organizational donors to the Party, while the Republicans benefit from a wide, and deep bank of corporate donors, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the billionaire boys' clubs.

Also Republicans throughout the states are aggressively trying to pass laws to suppress what they perceive as the base voters for Democrats--minorities,the young and single women. It's ironic about the young since Ronald Reagan won the same % of the youth vote as Barack Obama. But now the young are the enemy. There is a basic reason for this. Your first vote will usually determine your future voting pattern. The GOP doesn't want the new generation to get started.

It seems absurd to concentrate on 2012 now. I happen to believe it will come down to what ever happens in the last 30 days on the campaign. The October Surprise element. But the mechanisms for determining the results are being put in place now and we should be vigilant as the states play their little games.

We can't expect another Ali-Frazier fight like we saw with Obama versus Clinton, but the Republican field makes the 1988 Democratic field look like giants. The difference is that the Republican voter responds to authoritarian commands while Democrats are like Will Rogers' maxim,"I'm not a part of an organized party,I'm a Democrat." So when the dust settles,the republicans will don the American Flag and snap to attention.

What puzzles me is that with all the organizational and financial requirements for running for President,all the Republicans seem very late out of the gate. The nomination will be won in roughly a year from now and only the freaky, fringe Republicans have entered the fray. It's like all the major contenders are playing a Guiliani--waiting to run until the race gets to Florida. We are beginning to see the little cattle calls but we have heard nothing from Huckabee and Palin. And I think Newt blew it with his big run-up to announce he's thinking about it. By the time he announces it will be an afterthought. Frankly, the problem is that the other candidates have not figured out to successfully attack President Obama.

Take Mike Huckabee's speech to the NRA. It was lackluster and his only barb at the President was that the only reason he got an F from the Brady Group on gun control he wasn't moving fast enough. In fact, Obama has allowed guns into the national parks and on Amtrak. He's terrible on the subject but the NRA has to maintain the fiction that Eric Holder is going to go house-to-house to get America's guns. But Huckabee clearly didn't have it in him and I am beginning to suspect he lacks the "fire in the belly".

Fox News and Rasmussen polls, which should only be trusted on Republican matters, have Romney and Huckabee clearly leading the pack by about 10pts over other candidates. Yet both are incredibly weak, only being the preference of 17 to 19%. The front-runner status is because like traditional Republican races they have run before. But from a broader point of view, it's clear anyone can win this thing.

It's too bad President Obama destroyed Donald Trump last night. Now Fox News calls him a Democrat. Donald looked like either he was going to take out a hit against the President with his mobster business partners or run out of spite. Please run out of spite.

By the fall, Sarah Palin's name will be mud. There are several books coming out exposing her madness, including Joe McGinness' in September. The RNC has enough dirt on her to make sure she crashes. While I have argued that she is the embodiment of the Republican base, any campaign of hers would be a train wreck. She is incapable of being disciplined or being organized. Right now her Iowa team is an elderly lawyer and a retired pizza salesman. That's why you're seeing Michelle Bachmann emerge as the teabagger favorite. She's the substitute for Sister Sarah.

People treat Tim Pawlenty as a serious candidate. God knows why. I guess he presents an alternative if you are tired of charisma. But observers point out that he has been the only candidate so far to seek out interviews with real journalists. They say he arranged an interview with Nevada's John Ralston, a very skilled political reporter. This is in marked contrast to the RNC's advice to candidates to avoid the "left-leaning media". I guess we won't be seeing the candidates on Rachel Maddow or the Ed Show. Other than that, please tell me what left-leaning media exists.

I've already written about the flaws in Mitt Romney. I was thinking of him and his gaffe the other day. Barack Obama has made us forget the disasters that befall Legacy Candidates, those who thought they were entitled to the Presidency. Mitt Romney may be the last of them. Al Gore was filthy rich and brought up to be President and had the lack of personality that showed. John Kerry had married the Heinz fortune and could be charactured as the haughty candidate. George W himself in 2000, the son of a politiical family, the beneficiary of several dubious busines deals and a sometime Governor of Texas. Even John McCain only got into the Naval Academy because of his Admiral father and John divorced and then married enormous wealth.

Now Mitt, with homes across the country, the son of a Republican icon, and a missionary in Paris during the Vietnam War, enters the fray. Mitt is one of the entitlement candidates, someone who believes he should be President. Unfortunately, like the others, his personality and fungible political positions will bring him down.

NPR is now raving about Jon Huntsman, Obama's former ambassador to China. I always thought he would be a formidable force in the future of the Republican Party. But his appeal is as the Republican "Obama". This would have worked if the GOP had spent some time in self-reflection and not denial. If you have people like Sarah Palin claiming Obama stole the last election, you aren't going to get people to back your party's equivalent. And Palin's position is the majority view of the teabaggers. ACORN did it!

With the new primary rules in the GOP,you could actually have a race that comes down to the Convention and be decided behind closed doors. Even if one candidate starts winning pluralities, he or she does not win the majority delegates as in the past. So the RNC reform this past year actually opened the party at a time when it needs to be at its authoritarian best to win.

The real 2012 nightmare would be a repeat 2000 with Obama edging out the competitor in the popular vote but having the GOP governors steal it in the electoral college or by the Koch-friendly Supreme Court. Then it's time to shut off the lights.