Larry Sabato has unveiled his initial electoral map for 2012:
The broad outlines of the projection should surprise no one, and the specifics don’t really matter too much at this early date. For instance, just going by my gut instinct, I might call Florida, Indiana and perhaps North Carolina “Leans R” instead of “Tossup” — but who cares? It’s way too early to project any of the reasonably close states with any level of confidence or precision. As far as I’m concerned, the pink, yellow and sky-blue states might as well all be considered tossups at this point.
I do wonder whether states like Washington (Obama by 17 last time), Oregon (Obama by 16) and New Jersey (Obama by 15) should really be considered “Solid D” if Georgia (McCain by 5 in an Obama +7 national election) and Texas (McCain by 12) are only “Likely R.” (I was going to include California in this category too, but then I looked at the result last time: Obama by 24. Okay, yeah, that’s “Solid D.”) But let’s be honest: those states aren’t going to matter unless it’s a landslide. Demographic shifts be damned, Obama ain’t winning Texas without sweeping the tossup/lean states, and the same goes for any Republican winning a West Coast or Northeast state (other than NH or perhaps ME).
Really, what matters is that the pink, yellow and sky-blue states are (yet again) the playing field on which the 2012 election will be contested, which means we can rest assured that, with the Rust Belt and Heartland states once again owning a disproportionate share of electoral power, both parties will continue to make ridiculous promises about bringing back factory jobs that are never coming back, and also, farm subsidies will remain such a sacred cow that they make entitlement reform look easy by comparison.
Oh yeah, and I finally get to live in a swing state for a whole election cycle. WOOHOO!!! 🙂
P.S. Oh, and hey, Republicans? Mitch Daniels = 11 free electoral votes. Not true of any of the other major contenders!, Well, except maybe (Generic Republican.) JUST SAYING.
Run, Mitch, run!
Unsurprisingly, I think this map is far too generous for Obama’s chances. Wisconsin was a Tea Party landslide in 2010; no serious watcher can honestly consider the Cheeseheads anything more than a tossup for Team Obama.
I’ve held since Election Day that Obama winning Indiana and North Carolina were less because he was just that awesome, but rather that his ground game had a major advantage. Both states’ primaries were on the extraordinarily late date of May 6, and both then-Senator Obama and Hillary Clinton were still duking it out. That generated buzz that lasted through to the general. If he wins either state again in 2012, I’ll eat my leather boots. I’d paint those a very reddish shade of pink.
That leaves Obama with 322 banked EV. From there, the GOP need only flip Florida (2008: Obama +2.81%), Ohio (4.58%), Virginia (6.30%) and any other state, and that’s assuming they don’t win Wisconsin. Not hard, if current trends come even remotely close to continuing.
I think you’re way off base if you think beating Obama will be “not hard.” It will most certainly be hard! Well, probably. It all depends on the economy, of course. If the economy suddenly craters, it’ll be easy! But the bottom line — and I should have said this in the post — is that Obama will win the electoral vote in any scenario where he wins the popular vote by more than a point or two, and none of this red/blue stuff will matter, except as an academic exercise. So the first question we should ask is, “Given the likely state of the economy in November 2012, and (to a far lesser extent) the state of the GOP field and the likely identity of the nominee, will it be easy for the GOP to either beat Obama or play him to a virtual draw in the national popular vote?”
The answer, it seems to me, is clearly no, judging by reasonable projections of what things will look like in November 2012. Don’t look at 2010 midterm results and project them onto the 2012 map; that’s the classic ideologue’s error, thinking that every positive result is a permanent or semi-permanent mandate in favor of your position and against the others guy’s. Voters are fickle. The economy was barely showing signs of life in November 2010. People were pissed, and they showed it at the polls. The economy is likely to look far better by November 2012. Obama mostly needs to pray there isn’t another huge economic shock, and pray gas prices go back to reasonable levels (or at least to levels that FEEL reasonable after this summer’s possible sky-high levels). Really, only the economy (or voters’ perceptions of the economy) can beat him. And only if the economy is very borderline will the election be close, causing this state-by-state red/blue stuff to actually matter.
P.S. By the way, all the above is also largely why Obama won by 7 points in 2008. Not because he’s black, or because Palin’s a joke, or because McCain was a crazy old man who suspended his campaign, or because of his OMG AMAZING TURNOUT OPERATION, or anything else that we political junkies obsessed about. Obama won by 7 points because there was a huge, epic, worst-since-the-Great-Depression financial collapse in mid-September! You couldn’t dream up a worse scenario for the incumbent party. (Well, I suppose it’d be worse if the incumbent president himself was up for re-election — then maybe Obama would have won by 10 points. Or if the crash had happened in October.)
Absent the crash, I think Obama probably still wins, but it would have been close.
Obama’s race and the cult-like aspect of his campaign are half of what made his fundraising and ground game so powerful, and that would have been enough to win a close election absent any economic implosion. The economy simply made it a landslide. This time around, Obama should do fine with fundraising yet again, but he’ll struggle to turn out the minority and youth vote like in 2008, and if the economy continues to falter, the only hope he has of winning is a tragicomically bad Republican nominee. Unfortunately, the likelihood of the GOP nominating one of those is still a bit high for my tastes.
I disagree with Mike on Wisconsin. Remember, the Tea Party candidates aren’t polling well now because of the collective bargaining stuff. That state hasn’t settled politically yet, I wouldn’t feel confident making predictions there. We’ve got to watch the recall elections, should they happen, to get any sense of what will happen.
I still come back to looking at what was attempted to bring the US around after the Crash of 1929 – and the similarities to the decisions/policies of the current Administration are *way* too similar to give any comfort …
Even the most pro-Obama has to have difficulty seeing the current Administration policies on domestic energy production, and the resulting increasing price of gasoline, as being anything other than scary … with Obama-folk doing their level best to restrict domestic oil production (and to prevent increase in domestic oil drilling and production), the inevitable (absent a change of Administration) resultant higher transportation costs do not bode well for the health of the US economy over the next year …
I myself am completely perplexed that no one, I mean no one is talking about re-opening oil production to help deal with our budget problems out here in California.
Alasdair, you mean Obama’s decision to defy his liberal base, break a campaign promise, and allow offshore drilling in Florida and along the Atlantic coast — a decision that infuriated the Left, and which was only reversed because of the massive Gulf oil spill a month later? Yeah, those “Obama-folk” are really “doing their level best to restrict domestic oil production (and to prevent increase in domestic oil drilling and production)” because of their blind liberal ideology, and not at all reacting to events on the ground. LOL. But anyway, yeah, Obama’s domestic policies are totally responsible for the hike in oil prices; it has nothing at all to do with massive, unprecedented turmoil in the Middle East. It’s all about the cap-and-trade bill that didn’t pass! And, uh, OBAMA’S OTHER EEEEVIL POLICIES, WHATEVER THEY ARE! Now let me go search the blog for all of your comments blaming Bush for oil price increases during his administration. Or, wait! Perhaps, instead, I’ll find comments where you make fun of liberals for doing precisely that! You’re priceless, Alasdair.
Brendan – actually, I mean the Administration that was held in contempt of court for refusing to grant permits in spite of a Court Order telling them that they had issued an illegal moratorium on drilling … from the NYTimes, that anti-Obama rabidly-pro-GOP rag, I offer this evidence , Counsellor …
I mean *this* Administration …
And, NO, Obama is not solely responsible for rising gasoline prices … he *could*, however, have influenced better economic times by actively and presidentially promoting increased US domestic production of both oil and natural gas … of course, to do that, he would have to act presidentially …
True, Obama sorta-acted-presidentially when he spoke to the nation proudly announcing his support for them drilling for oil … the only problem is that the nation to whom he spoke to proudly was Brazil, not the US …
How many rigs have left the US part of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Obama administration’s policies ??? I offer *this* as evidence, Counsellor …
I didn’t blame Bush for hikes in oil prices during his administration mostly cuz, while he had a cooperative Congress, I don’t actually remember such hikes … let’s see – Jan 2001 – $1.46 – Jan 2002 – $1.09 – Jan 2003 – $1.43 – Jan 2004 – $1.58 – Jan 2005 – $1.84 – Jan 2006 – $2.32 – Jan 2007 – $2.11 – Jan 2008 – $3.00 – Jan 2009 – $1.84 … and Obama – Jan 2010 – $2.71 – Jan 2011 – $3.07 … Bush’s lowest gas prices were a result of the effects of 9/11/2001 and the hit that gave to the economy … the lowest gas prices during Obama have been a result of the hit done to the economy by the hostile Dem Congress of 2007-2008 – and the high prices are largely caused by Obama administration desire for high gas prices combined with zero perceptible evidence of efforts by the supermajoritarian Dem Congress of 2009-2010 to fight Obama’s efforts – and they couldn’t even get a *budget* passed in 2010 …
So – according to you, I *shouldn’t* blame Obama (and the Dem Congress) for doing his level best to cause gas prices to rise, whether by discouraging/preventing US domestic production increases or trying for idiocies like “Cap-and-Trade” – but I *should* blame Bush (and the GOP Congress) which consistently had significantly lower gas prices than during Obama (and the Dem Congress with their supermajorities) … and I should blame Bush where gas prices went during the hostile Dem Congress …
gahrie #7 – a number of us *are* talking about it, and have been doing so for a long time, both in context of California *and* in context of the US …
When the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Recession hit, the Washington, DC, priorities should have been active close-to-singleminded support/efforts towards
1) Increased domestic production of energy,
2) Increased domestic production of resources, both hydrocarbon and otherwise, and
3) Increased domestic production of sellable goods and services, and
4) Removal of any financial incentives to turn food into fuel for transportation … (doing away with farm subsidies, generally, is a Good Thing – if that means dropping corporate subsidies, too, so be it) …
Any and all plans for expansion of government should have been put on a back-burner …
The reality, however, was otherwise, as we have seen, and with the results with which we now must live …
LOL again, Alasdair! Your reliance on January data is, how shall we say, very conveeeeenient. During the Bush Administration, gas prices spiked in the summer of 2005, and in the spring/summer of 2006, and in the spring of 2007, and in the spring/summer of 2008. But you’re right! Prices were generally low in January! This proves, uh, something, I’m sure! I bow before your superior cherry-picked evidence. Heh.
(I don’t have pre-2005 data on the chart I’m looking at.)
With each spike, the public reaction is predictable — blame the government, blame evil “speculators” (Obama’s demagoguery du jour), blame “price fixing,” etc. — and of course, no one in politics is above taking advantage. So liberals often falsely and ignorantly blamed Bush for those spring/summer spikes, just as conservatives are now falsely and ignorantly blaming Obama for this spike.
Taking a big-picture view of gas prices since 2005, the trend seems apparent. In ’05 and ’06, we had temporary spikes that caused public panic but promptly returned to normal by, well, January. In ’07, we had a spike that simply plateaued and never went down again, then soared to new heights in 2008…..only to fall off a cliff because of the recession causing demand to crater. Since that landing off the cliff, which coincided with Obama’s inauguration due to the timing of the financial crisis in 2008, gas prices have been steadily increasing, and are now spiking due in part to the Mideast crisis, such that we’re now almost back at 2008’s peak. Arguably, the Great Recession was just a temporary blip interrupting the Great Gas Price Increase of 2007-08 … or at least, you can make that case looking at the long-term trends. Personally, I will continue to assume that gas prices are just insanely variable, and not really subject to political forces whatsoever except perhaps at the margins, unless and until somebody shows me evidence to the contrary. All the nonsense from Right and Left about this issue is just that, nonsense and demagoguery.
The broader point, Alasdair, and the real subject of my gas-price haranguing, is this. You look at everything — literally everything — in the political sphere, and you see a problem caused by Democrats, in one form or another. You believe this 100% of the time. I am not exaggerating. I cannot think of a single occasion where you have ever had an explanation for a political problem, issue, or controversy that did not, at its core, blame Democrats. You never, ever think a problem was caused by Republicans. It’s always the Dems’ fault. So, either Democrats are truly stunning in their ability to get everything wrong, every single time, always — and the American people are pretty damn stupid for failing to notice this 100% track record of wrongness, and vote the Dems permanently out of power — or you are a blind partisan clown.
We report, you decide.
Brendan Re your #12
1) While you are willing to admit that Democrats have done things wrong, it is nearly always in the course of attacking Republicans for doing what ever it is. I can’t remember a post in which you attacked Democrats first.
2) You continue to feature Andrew Sullivan in several spots in your blog roll, and quote /link him fairly often, even though he is a Trig Truther. (You could even say THE Trig Truther) Would you do so if he was a birther? Or if he was making the same allegations against Chelsea Clinton or one of President Obama’s daughters?
Gahrie, I already conceded I more often blame Republicans than Democrats — I think they’re more often wrong! — but it’s simply not true that I “nearly always” blame Democrats only as a foil for blaming Republicans more. I’ve been extremely critical of Obama’s handling of the deficit, for instance, without offsetting caveats that “but the Republicans are worse so Obama’s still okay.” I do think both parties suck on that issue, certainly, but my criticisms of Obama have been harsh, and they stand alone, independent of other criticisms, not offered for some sort of No Labels street cred. There are plenty of other examples, including if you go back to the mid-2000s when I routinely sided with conservatives/Republicans against liberals/Democrats on matters of war, terrorism and security. In some cases (not all) I’ve come to believe that I was wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was sufficiently open to persuasion to take those positions in the first place. There are countless other examples.
As for Andrew Sullivan, I’m simply not going to go there, because there’s no reasoning with you about Andrew Sullivan. I disagree with your assessment, but it’s pointless to discuss why.
P.S. Why, just in the last 24 hours, admittedly on Facebook rather than here, I’ve been criticizing liberal activists for “bullying” a law firm to withdraw its representation of a conservative cause.
It is just manifestly not the case that my level of partisanship is anywhere near Alasdair’s. Sorry, just not true. I’m by no means perfect, and I could perhaps be compared to someone like Joe Mama or AMLTrojan, but the notion that I’m somehow a liberal Alasdair can’t stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever. He is by far the most blind partisan on this blog. Even you are far better. So is David, your liberal foil. Heck, Sandy Underpants is better! At least he criticizes the Dems from the Left at times! Only Alasdair has a track record of literally always agreeing with his side, and finding fault with the other side, about Every. Single. Thing.
LOL … Brendan won’t go there, but Pejman Yousefzadeh sure does. Andrew Sullivan almost makes it too easy…
P.S. Brendan, good on you for criticizing the Left for their obnoxious behavior towards King & Spalding. I’m not on facebook (it’ll never catch on) so I didn’t see your comments. And good on Paul Clement from resigning from K&S in protest. The Left is (more than) okay with attorneys representing politically unpopular clients/causes like terrorists, cop-killers, etc., but evidently DOMA is beyond the pale (maybe because it’s not actually all that politically unpopular?) … what intellectually dishonest jerks.
*sigh*
Okay, look, I’ll say it. The reality is that Sarah Palin’s official account of Trig’s birth — going into labor with a known premature & special-needs kid, then going to give a speech anyway, then jumping on a commercial flight and returning to her hometown hospital just because it’s in her hometown, don’t cha know, even though there were countless other hospitals nearby better equipped to deal with her high-risk birth, as all the while the clock is ticking and she could have the freakin’ kid at any moment — is completely f***ing nuts. Either she’s unbelievably irresponsible, putting herself and her special-needs baby at severe risk for absolutely no reason, all so she could do two things that absolutely don’t matter (give a speech, and give birth in Wasilla rather than someplace else), or some aspect of her story is a lie. Those are the only two alternatives. There is no conceivable alternative whereby Palin’s story is both: a) true, and b) sane.
Now… this raises two questions. 1) Does this mean Trig isn’t Sarah Palin’s kid? No! He probably is! Almost certainly, I’d say! Far more likely, Palin embellished aspects of the nonsensical (and at times self-contradictory) birth story, and doesn’t want to release the records because they’d reveal her lies. Doesn’t mean he’s not her kid! And Sullivan has been careful not to assert that he’s not her kid. He’s made clear that he believes what I’ve just outlined is a very real possibility, and that he just wants to know the truth; he’s not asserting, as some liberals have, that Trig clearly isn’t her kid. That’s never been his argument. 2) Does any of this matter? A little bit! It reflects on her honesty, her judgment, or both. But it doesn’t matter all that much. There are far better things, like eighty thousand of them, to criticize about Palin. And by focusing so much on this issue, Sullivan has made things easy for her and hard for him. So I wish he’d just leave it alone and stop… just. stop. But, at the same time, he’s not wrong that the official account is nuts! He’s not wrong at all! He’s completely right! And that’s why Sullivan’s “Trig Trutherism” — which has been, again, very careful to avoid actually asserting that Trig isn’t Sarah Palin’s kid, but instead merely to raise legitimate questions and seek evidence — is nothing like either Birtherism (where the official account is completely believable, and the documentation backs it up) or 9/11 Trutherism (same). A better analogy is to the John Edwards love-child situation, which was similarly irrelevant on its face but reflected overwhelmingly on Edwards’s poor judgment/character, and which the media also refused to dig into until the National Enquirer did its homework for it. So, can you point me to the comments where you linked to posts condemning journalists and bloggers for daring to even ask questions that would make them the “Inspector Javerts of Rielle Hunter’s baby’s patrilineal line”?
Bottom line, I wish Sullivan would lay off the Trig Palin thing, but I understand why he won’t, and while his posts on that topic are a bug rather than a feature for me, they don’t make me want to avoiding read his blog, still less to lose all respect for it. Meanwhile, I find the vitriolic and inaccurate criticisms of Sullivan’s work to be far more objectionable than 99% of the actual content of what he rights.
And that’s why Sullivan’s “Trig Trutherism” — which has been, again, very careful to avoid actually asserting that Trig isn’t Sarah Palin’s kid, but instead merely to raise legitimate questions and seek evidence — is nothing like either Birtherism (where the official account is completely believable, and the documentation backs it up) or 9/11 Trutherism (same).
I wish that were a true statement, but alas full documentation has not been released. There have been many on the left and the right who want nothing to do with Birthers but have asked for the relevant docs to be made public. My own guess, a la Rush Limbaugh, is that this is a head fake and that they’ll release the records once Birtherism reaches even higher blathering heights to make Obama’s 2012 opposition look stoopid. William Jacobson has a great summary of the bizarreness of the whole thing here, as well as many follow-on, more recent posts related to the Birther issue.
As for gas prices, how come we have such a hard time taking oil producers at their word that what’s driving the price hikes is dollar inflation? Commodities are spiking everywhere due to the Fed’s easy money policy, and the same was true 2005-2007. And yes, the market is also pricing in a premium for the Middle East instability just as it did from 2003-2007. Obama’s 180 on drilling (after previously reversing his anti-drilling stance) and hard crackdown on oil companies after the BP spill isn’t notable for its effect on gas prices; on a worldwide scale, with growing demand in Asia, increased domestic production would have virtually zero effect on global oil pricing. Rather, Obama’s policies are notable for the shackling of future American production, as his policies will make us more dependent on foreign oil, not less. And when oil producers increasingly are looking to do business in euos or yuan, that’s very bad news for the American economy.
I wish that were a true statement, but alas full documentation has not been released.
It is not an isolated instance either. Kerry never did release all of his military records, not even to the hand-picked journalists he eventually pretended to.
Not only has President Obama never released his birth certificate, he has not released his college transcripts or papers.
Can you imagine a Republican candidate not having to release his military records or college transcripts? The media would savage him.
“I wish that were a true statement, but alas full documentation has not been released. There have been many on the left and the right who want nothing to do with Birthers but have asked for the relevant docs to be made public.”
You’re kidding right? PLEASE tell me you aren’t that insane. Both his Certificate of Live Birth and contemporary birth announcements have been released. The CLB is more than enough to satisfy any requirement to prove citizenship (unless you are a birther) and the contemporary accounts just back it up. There is no evidence whatsoever to contend that these are fake.
See here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/04/25/birthers.obama.hawaii/index.html?hpt=C2
And here: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
There is far more reason to doubt that Trig is Sarah’s son because there is NO reason to doubt that Obama was born in the US (other than blatant racism/partisan bias). That said, who cares if he is or isn’t at this point? Maybe it becomes an issue if Palin actually runs again but at this point to me it doesn’t matter who Trig’s real mother is.
Given that I voted for Obama, given that I live in Virginia, and given that I’m not so hot on the idea of voting for him again, I think he might be in a little trouble. Saying that he isn’t would be disingenuous.
If the Republicans nominate Ron Paul, I’d probably vote for him. I don’t know that there is another Republican candidate I would be willing to vote for, but a major reason I voted for Obama was to see the authoritarian practices of the Bush administration substantively reversed, and instead we’ve continued further down that road. I simply will no continue to support that.
You’re kidding right? PLEASE tell me you aren’t that insane.
Way to make Jacobson’s point — merely expressing normal inquisitiveness results in shrieks of OMG!!! YOU’RE INSANE!!!” All AML said was that “full documentation has not been released” and that there are “many on the left and the right who want nothing to do with Birthers but have asked for the relevant docs to be made public.” Both of those statements are correct. The “short form” birth certificate has been released; the original “long form” certificate in use in 1961 has not (I’ve read conflicting reasons as to why — it’s been destroyed, Hawaiian officials won’t release it as a matter of course, etc). If it had, then Obama groupies like Chris Matthews wouldn’t be saying it should be released.
Stepping back on my original comment a bit, I will absolutely concede that the official account of Obama’s birth is totally believable and that is backed up by the available documentation. My point was simply that, like this Trig crap, there’s just enough lack of evidence for ideologues to come up with wild conspiracies. Case in point: Brendan thinks Sarah Palin is either insane, or lying. Yet by account of her doctor, she is clearly neither. Yet despite the fact that Palin’s doctor saw no serious “health risk factors other than her age… that would preclude delivery at her home community hospital” and that Trig was induced, Brendan feels the need defend Andrew Sullivan and assert otherwise. Also let’s ignore the statistical evidence that Down’s Syndrome is far more prevalent in babies born to women over the age of 35 than under age 20. Never mind Occam’s razor and all….
*Er, technically Sarah was induced, not Trig.
Brendan #11 – I’m glad you’re runnign away from your “Obama’s decision to defy his liberal base, break a campaign promise, and allow offshore drilling in Florida and along the Atlantic coast ” absurdity after checking out the cited articles …
I can understand why you would want to try to distract from the cited evidence by focusing on projection …
I used january data, because it does show that our current First Occupant has managed to do what prior actual Presidents could not do – and this is to have HIGH gas prices in January around Inaguration time of year …
I used this site as my source, and selected Area United States to look at …
The comparable numbers for middle of April give
2001- $1.54 – 2002 – $1.37 – 2003 – $1.53 – 2004 – $1.74 – 2005 – $2.20 – 2006 – $2.77 – 2007 – $2.83 – 2008 – $3.35 – 2009 – $2.06 – 2010 – $2.83 – 2011 – #3.79
How about highs and lows …
2001 – $1.04-1.67 – 2002 – $1.08-1.45 – 2003 – $1.41-1.70 – 2004 – $1.59-2.03 – 2005 – $1.74-3.04 – 2006 – $2.18-3.01 – 2007 – $2.10-3.22 – 2008 – $1.59-4.06 – 2009 – $1.67-2.66 – 2010 – $2.56-3.02 – 2011 – $3.03-3.82 (so far, at end of April, 2011) …
Hmmm … so The Eeeevil Boosh’s (with GOP Congress) 2005 high is basically the same as Teh One’s (with mixed Congress) 2011 low …
It is interesting how these numbers would seem to support AMLTrojan’s observation that the prices are also rising with dollar inflation …
I’m also entertained how assidusouly you have avoided going anywhere near my #10 comment … (grin) … again, I understand why … I wouldn’t want to try to support your side of things on any of that, either …
Also, back to oil for a sec, Will Collier lays out a pretty convincing case that Obama is indeed to blame for oil prices:
I mean, if we’re going to go by, you know, the evidence, Collier is pretty hard to beat here (follow the URL, he has plenty of links backing up his argument).
Yet by account of her doctor, she is clearly neither.
Sarah Palin’s doctor works at Euro Bistro in Herndon, VA?!? OH MY GOD, THE CONSPIRACY RUNS DEEPER THAN I KNEW!!!! 😉
In all seriousness, I’m not claiming that the bizarre circumstances of Trig’s birth somehow caused his Down’s Syndrome (if that’s what your Occam’s Razor argument is targeted at), nor am I claiming that it was inherently unsafe to deliver the baby at Palin’s home hospital. Rather, I’m claiming that it was completely absurd & insane to fly across the country AFTER going into labor, with a known special-needs baby (I believe the Down’s was discovered in utero, hence the whole notion of Palin being a pro-life heroine for having the kid anyway – a choice that is, BTW, truly admirable, as both Andrew Sullivan and I will readily concede), just to get to her home hospital, when there were far better alternatives, far closer, at far less risk. If she’d gone into labor in Wasilla, by all means, drive to the local hospital. But according to her own account, her water broke in Texas, and she flew home to Wasilla just to have the baby there. THAT. IS. INSANE. You don’t spend 10+ hours dithering — giving a speech, driving to the airport, going through security, boarding a commercial airplane, flying from Texas to Alaska, driving/flying (I forget which) from the main airport to Wasilla — just because, aw shucks, you wanna have the kid at home, doncha know! Nobody would do that, except reckless crazy people! And certainly nobody, except a nutter, would do it with a known special-needs, high-risk pregnancy!
It’s not just about giving birth in Wasilla, which her doctor said was fine on its face. It’s about the real possibility of giving birth in mid-flight, or in the TSA security line, or wherever else the baby might decide to come out during her 10+ hour, post-water-breaking, cross-country odyssey. (To say nothing of the risk of infection, which is quite high after your water breaks.) And it’s about taking the risk of that happening solely because of the emotional desire to give birth at her home hospital, which — although medically acceptable — certainly has substandard care when compared to the various other hospitals she could have more easily gone to!! Again, it either indicates a shocking recklessness on Palin’s part, or it indicates that she’s lying (about something – not necessarily Trig’s parentage). Or a mixture of both.
As it happens, however, we already know that Palin is both a reckless buffoon and a habitual liar, which is part of the reason I don’t think this story matters as much as Sullivan believes it does. It’s like engaging in a 2+ year crusade to uncover hidden evidence that Joe Biden committed a verbal gaffe one time, and there’s been a huge effort to cover it up, and demonize those who ask questions about it. Sure, the cover-up and demonization are newsworthy in their own right, and sure, the American People Have A Right To Know (TM) about the Mystery Biden Gaffe of 2008 that’s being covered up… but still, at the end of the day, who cares?? We already know Biden is a gaffe-tastic clown, and we already know Palin is a reckless liar. Trig Trutherism amounts to an effort to prove what would be a particularly egregious example of something that’s already been proven many times over, often in far more substantively significant ways. So that’s why I don’t really care that much. But the core fact of the insanity of Palin’s absurd Trig birth tale remains unrebutted.
Brendan #15 – “Only Alasdair has a track record of literally always agreeing with his side, and finding fault with the other side, about Every. Single. Thing.
“ …
Is the GOP side following the steps in comment #10, such as they can with only 1 House under their control ? If so, yup, I agree with them … if not, then I disagree …
Most of the time, on this blog’s posts, I have no need to highlight GOP idiocies, cuz the posts tend to focus on those anyway (when they are not about Basketball or Rankings) … there *is* a need to bring up Dem idiocies, cuz the posts tend to ignore ’em or gloss over ’em or occasionally outright support ’em …
It is good to see you less than happy with the King&Spalding debacle … on your Facebook thingie, Joe La Rue expresses my own feelings well – “If you believe it is acceptable to stop lawyers from representing Prop 8 supporters, then you better pray to God that you’re never one espousing an unpopular position and needing legal help.” …
Why is it so unthinkable to blame President Obama for the rise in the price of gasoline?….He told us over and over again that he was going to raise the price of energy.
AMLTrojan #27 – correct me if I’m wrong on this, but, generally speaking, when speculators are speculating upon a growing/increasing scarcity (demand outpacing supply) isn’t it one of the best ways to counter such speculation simply to work visibly towards a relative increase in supply, thus leading to a wiping-out of the potential premium for scarcity upon which the speculators are relying ?
Hahaha the URL must not have copied properly and my previous cut-and-paste was still in the cache. 🙂
Anyway, you’re way off the rails again. Sarah Palin was induced. She was not in labor in Texas before she flew back to Anchorage:
Your whole story is based on bunk. Palin was in constant communication with her doctor, and given her previous experience with pregnancies, Palin was obviously well in control and knew what was going on with her body. I have to say, your incredibly paternalistic attitude here is very surprising to me, and like I said earlier, in defending Andrew Sullivan, you’re as bad as the birthers. The only insanity and lies about Trig are on your side of the aisle, my friend.
As it happens, however, we already know that Palin is both a reckless buffoon and a habitual liar, which is part of the reason I don’t think this story matters as much as Sullivan believes it does.
And if there were any doubts about how your prejudices alter your view of the facts, here is all we need to see. Of course, we’ve gone ’round and ’round on why the Left is so seriously deranged by Palin, so there’s no use revisiting that psychological diagnosis, but here is another perfectly cutting example of just how much baseless spite against Palin has seeped into an otherwise reasonable libby like Brendan.
It’s my strong impression that Palin has subsequently made contradictory statements that undermine some of the key details you cite in her defense from that ADN article. However, I’m admittedly not going to go take the time right now to cite chapter & verse, so I’ll say this. If the reality is really as simple as what’s presented in that article, and she hasn’t stated anything that contradicts the story and makes it more nutty, then I’ve been misled by other accounts, and her account isn’t totally unbelievable or batshit crazy on its face. I’d still say it’s a bit reckless to make the decision to fly such a long distance, without seeking a “medical OK” to do so, while “leaking amniotic fluid,” simply because she had “a speech I was determined to give” and then wanted to get home — and the fact that the governor’s doctor subsequently tells the media everything was a-okay doesn’t necessarily eliminate those concerns. But they’re lower-level concerns that what I would have based on the factual account as I understood it to be.
I’ll provisionally retract my earlier comments on this thread re: Palin & Trig, pending further analysis and reconsideration. As I’ve said, this particular issue is not my hobby-horse by any means – I think it largely doesn’t matter – so I don’t remember everything I’ve read about it offhand.
I’ll provisionally retract my earlier comments on this thread re: Palin & Trig, pending further analysis and reconsideration.
Which makes you a better man than Andrew Sullivan ever will be…….
If Becky was, for example, visiting family friends in Buffalo and something similar occurred 8 months in, would you consider her “reckless” if she was determined to finish her trip and fly home to have her baby with her husband and her doctor (who she’s been with through previous pregnancies and deliveries) by her side? If Bea decided she wanted to do a VBAC the next time around, that is inherently more risky, but I wouldn’t dare judge her as being “reckless”. Simply put, far be it for me to make judgments about a pregnant woman’s choices about how to care for, and deliver, her unborn child, so long as she isn’t directly contravening a doctor’s explicit instructions.
Aside from that nit, I echo gahrie and applaud you standing down on this Palin / Trig nonsense. I can tell you that, from my personal vantage point, even if the birthers were eventually counted true and Obama’s long-form birth certificate proved that he was flown in from Indonesia at a few days old, I’d rather not be counted among their numbers. I have no desire to engage in debate about the president’s “legitimacy”; to me, he was elected by overwhelming margins, and he stands or falls based on his record in office. I’d only hope similar logic would permeate your attitude towards Andrew Sullivan and his ilk.
“merely expressing normal inquisitiveness results in shrieks of OMG!!! YOU’RE INSANE!!!”
It’s not normal inquisitiveness to continue to perpetuate a known lie, particular one whose existence stems from closet racism and partisan hatred. There is no merit to continuing to question whether or not Obama was born in the U.S. Continuing to keep the question alive, despite it being proven conclusively to be false is either insane or disingenous.
The “birther issue” is now dead. I wish they would’ve done this two years ago, but in any case, thank effing God.
I have whip lash… What is this thread about again?
To a large extent I think I have to agree with Andrew on the point of recklessness and giving birth. If for no other reason that if it were a biological necessity for our species to give birth in a hospital in the presence of a person with 30 years of education, 15 of which are highly specialized we wouldn’t be here. “Modern” birthing techniques may actually add to some complications. So assuming it’s not an endangered or complicated pregnancy (a matter between the woman her doctor and any 3rd parties she chooses to include in that), I don’t particularly see the issue. Obviously it’s probably not ideal to be giving birth at 30,000 feet, but but it’s no less ideal than the back of a squad car or taxi cab or the dinning room table for that matter. And tribes throughout Africa, Australia, South America, etc. get by every day far less when it comes to giving birth. Get over it, don’t be so paranoid, now let your kid go outside to play in the sun and the dirt. Preferably without sunscreen at least some of the time (seriously, people are using so much sunscreen rickets is making a comeback.) And yes I am a cranky old man, what’s your point?
AML, the birther’s won’t be happy until fox news goes into the hall of records in Hawaii with a video camera to show live footage of the real birth certificate. That, after all, is just a certified photo copy of a page in a book… Who knows where it could have come from.
Now the question is, will everyone that went around espousing the idiocy get fired like Dan Rather for the fake memos? My guess, no… Though it is the same degree of crap reporting.
So how hard was that? One letter from a lawyer, and the issue gets settled.
And Trump is taking all the credit…
Now the question is, will everyone that went around espousing the idiocy get fired like Dan Rather for the fake memos? My guess, no… Though it is the same degree of crap reporting.
Indeed, all the excuses from the media for why Obama couldn’t get the original document was crap reporting.
It does appear that the government of Hawaii took all of 3 days to make an exception. On principal though, an exception should not be necessary, and the standard form, the form that might not be good enough for the state department anymore if they get their way on a giant crock of shit, but currently is, should be the necessary and sufficient proof. After all the only thing Trump has provided is a vanity birth certificate. Obama did provide the certified government paperwork. The government of Hawaii chose to make an exception primarily because a quarter of the pollution of the US is stupid. Which is rather appalling. Though not nearly as appalling as this: http://www.consumertraveler.com/today/state-dept-wants-to-make-it-harder-to-get-a-passport/
Someone has the Constitutional right to travel if they are a citizen. If they can prove citizenship the State Department has no Constitutional authority to demand more information.
The government of Hawaii chose to make an exception primarily because a quarter of the pollution [sic] of the US is stupid.
Or because that quarter of the population has had to show their own birth certificates at some point in their lives and was wondering what the big effing deal is.
Joe: Obama HAD shown his birth certificate before! The previous document is what every person from Hawaii shows for passports, drivers licenses, and so forth. The big deal was that Hawaii doesn’t typically release that version of the birth certificate.
Obama showed his birth certificate as issued by the state of Hawaii. The same thing everyone in Hawaii shows. Joe, you are being daft on this.
Spare me. There are two different forms of birth certificates in Hawaii — a “short form” and a “long form” — at least for persons who were born back when the long form was used. It’s my understanding that the long form was created at the time of Obama’s birth or shortly thereafter, whereas the short form contains less information than the long form and was created at some later date based on the long form, which is no longer in use. Hence, the long form is clearly the best available* evidence to prove Obama’s citizenship. Obama released the short form but not the long form. There was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the short form, but if it’s not the best available evidence, then why not get the long form? That’s all us non-birthers, including many liberals, have said all along.
* “Available” as in it is wasn’t destroyed and could be easily obtained, despite what Hawaiian officials “typically” do for driver’s licenses and the like, and contrary to much of the MSM reporting.
Joe, if the much of MSM has given a misimpression on this issue, you’re giving one in the opposite direction. Whether it “could be easily obtained” depends on your perspective. It isn’t just a matter of “what Hawaiian officials ‘typically’ do for driver’s licenses and the like.” It’s a matter of what their internal procedures allow them to do as a matter of course, absent a waiver/exception from the head of the department. As the correspondence between the department and Obama’s personal lawyer shows, Obama had to specifically request a waiver from usual procedures to get this. It wasn’t enough that he specify, “please send me a long-form birth certificate.” He had to say, basically, “please make an exception to your usual policy of not providing long-form birth certificates, even when the person in question specifically asks for it, and provide a copy to me, because I’m Barack Obama, and we both want these crazy birthers to shut the hell up.”
Could he have requested that waiver/exception two years ago? Sure. But it’s not at all clear to me why he should be considered to have been obligated, in any fashion whatsoever — legally, ethically, morally or politically — to do so. If it was just a matter of saying “please send X, even though Y is also adequate,” then okay sure. But when the release of “X” is actually forbidden by departmental policy, and getting it requires a special waiver (albeit one that, sure, he was always probably going to be able to obtain if he asked nicely), it seems rather kooky to suggest that he was somehow obligated to request such a waiver in the first place. He got the one and only document that can be obtained under the law without a special exception. And that document was enough to prove everything he needed to prove. So what were we talking about again?
It’s not that Obama should have settled this issue two years ago. It’s that this issue was settled two years ago.
Per Andrew Sullivan, apparently I’m wrong. (Again!) If so — if Obama was always entitled, without a waiver or exception, to obtain this document, as would any other citizen be — then fine, you can protest that he “should” have requested it months or years ago. I’d still say that step was unnecessary, and that he was perfectly within his rights not to take it, but I won’t deride your alternative view as totally kooky. If anything, at worst, Obama quite understandably took advantage of a golden political opportunity, handed to him on a silver platter, to make his opposition look like fools with a little game of rope-a-dope. Karl Rove would approve.
Here’s more of Andrew Sullivan agreeing with Joe Mama. (PANIC?)
Heh.
Re “rope-a-dope,” I’ll just say that I disagree. The conspiracy theorists can’t look any more foolish, and the what’s-the-big-deal-just-release-it crowd (which the Left purposely conflated with birthers to shut down the conversation) doesn’t lose any credibility, especially given how easy it was to produce the long form. My guess is that by effectively losing a test of wills about his birth certificate with a reality TV star, Obama actually comes out looking smaller.
There is actually someone arguing that the released document has been altered…….
http://market-ticker.org/post=185094
Joe spare you? spare you from what? You can’t possibly be serious with that. If you are you’ll force me to post a comment that is rather against my goal of engaging in debate in a more decorous fashion.
Well, downloading the document into illustrator you can indeed do the things the person says you can do.
This doesn’t mean this is altered on it’s own. This could well be an artifact of scanning or many other things, PDF’s can do some odd things sometimes. Opening up the info on the document it appears the PDF was produced in Preview on Mac OS 10.6.7 made today at 8:09:24 AM Eastern. On it’s own that software doesn’t have the ability to do the things charged. Though print to PDF from any software on the machine would yield this creator information.
Be that as it may, I would bet dollars to doughnuts Illustrator was not involved in this, so what you are getting from that doesn’t really tell you as much as the conclusions being read in. Photoshop can directly export a PDF, so I would guess that’s not it either. I would instead surmise that some generic scanner driver was used that did some interesting things and the result was printed to a PDF.
On it’s own a random PDF on the internet cannot actually confirm or deny anything and examining said PDF won’t tell you weather the document it is of is real or fake.
We are actually dependent on reporters at the White House looking at the actual physical copies from Hawaii to know if there was any alteration made since it left the records office, that after all is the point of the security paper. Alterations before leaving the records office would be impossible to arrive at without looking at the actual book this came from.
Quite serious. Do your worst.
By the way, can someone explain to me why Shepard Smith is working for Fox instead of MSNBC?
Shall we then spare you from what? Your own obstinate stupidity? I’m sorry but I’m sick of this. Sick of the right wing deciding that whenever anyone is elected to anything whom they don’t like the by any means necessary approach to destroying their ability to govern makes me want to puke. It certainly doesn’t make me take any of these lunatics seriously.
Obama produced the document as provided by the State of Hawaii. A bunch of morons get a stick up their ass that the title of the document isn’t the same as the title of the document in their state and so go running around like their fucking pants are on fire and this is supposed to be his problem? Give it a rest. This was stupid before it’s even stupider now. Stupid to the point where the State of Hawaii had to process a special legal filing to shut morons up. Morons, apparently like you and I’ve really rather come to expect more of you than this lunacy. Al and G sure, but you and Andrew at least tend to be sane. Honestly it seems more like the Birthers are a bunch of whack jobs that don’t want Obama to be President because they didn’t vote for him. Or other more nefarious reasons that I won’t speculate on here. And your certainly don’t want to throw your lot in with that I should hope.
Suffice to say are you really throwing your lot in with the dumbest of the dumb, the most reactionary of the reactionary? Do you really expect to be taken seriously after throwing your lot in with them?
In which case, spare me the nonsense and shut up about it. Are conservatives really this useless? And yes, the birthers in the news media should be fired for the same reason Dan Rather was fired, anything less would be hypocrisy. But I forget, blatant and bald faced hypocrisy are the only thing Republicans and the clowns at Faux News are good at.
Thanks dcl, I hadn’t had my dose of bullshit today. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time…
It’s good to know you’ve thrown your lot in with the moron gang. AML, you are on your own for conservatives with actual brain cells commenting on this blog.
You either haven’t read or haven’t understood my comments or you would know that I’ve done nothing that you describe.
You seem to be supporting the fallacious notion Obama needed to provide the document he did to day to prove he was bourn in the USA…
UPDATE: I was right, Sullivan was wrong, Joe Mama is super-extra-wrong.
*sigh*
dcl, then you need to read more carefully. For example, here:
And here:
I’m not saying Obama “needed” to do anything. I’m saying that he should’ve just produced the long form as soon as the
Clinton campaign“birthers” made this an issue.Brendan, admittedly it was my understanding – because I had read it somewhere – that the long form was provided upon request to persons who “have a tangible interest in the vital record” or something like that (e.g., the “birthee”). If that’s not the case, then I retract what I said about the long form being so “easily obtained.” That said, you and I may indeed have very different perspectives on what “easily obtained” means, and I stand by my comments about using the best available evidence.
P.S. Following Brendan’s link @ 64 leads to this from someone named Mark Thompson:
Sheesh. No one was insisting that Obama ask to be considered “above the law.” Getting a waiver from arbitrary bureaucratic guidelines and red tape, as was apparently easily done in this instance, is perfectly legal.
P.P.S. Sullivan agrees.
*PANIC!*
I think the Obama crew intended to keep this in their back pocket for rope-a-dope purposes, but with so much else not going right for them (Libya, Egypt, Syria, et al; the economy still sucks, and now gas is climbing; the GOP totally wiped the floor with the Dems last fall; and so on), the rope went limp before Obama could pull the dope.
dcl:
After the way you on the left have treated Sarah Palin and pretty much every single republican candidate as far back as at least Nixon, this quote is either the height of hypocrisy or the height of projection:
Sick of the right wing deciding that whenever anyone is elected to anything whom they don’t like the by any means necessary approach to destroying their ability to govern makes me want to puke. It certainly doesn’t make me take any of these lunatics seriously.
Gahrie three words: Impeaching Bill Clinton (small addendum by Newt for an affair while Newt was having an affair). Nobody kept Sarah from governing she quit because she didn’t want to do the job and right now she isn’t governing shit, that’s a far cry from trying to get the President removed from office because you think there is a conspiracy around his perfectly valid and legal birth certificate. Now go shut the fuck up sit in the god damn corner and think about what you’ve done.
Forget Palin. When I read dcl’s silly quote I thought to myself he couldn’t be any more descriptive of the Democrats in Wisconsin, who decided that because they didn’t like Gov. Walker and the agenda he campaigned on they would destroy his ability to govern by fleeing the frickin’ state. There is your “by any means necessary approach.”
Speaking of which, Massachusetts just passed the same collective bargaining reform as Wisconsin. Guess we’ll see if Left in Massachusetts are as pathetic as their counterparts in the mid-West. Note to Dems, when Massachusetts is curtailing collective bargaining, you’ve lost the argument.
P.S. Wow, 111 Hitlers. The protesters are gonna need a lot more Magic Markers to draw all those mustaches. Ha ha, just kidding. Can’t you read? The lawmakers are Democrats.
Note to unions/the Left (not Dems, they pushed the legislation in Mass) …
Joe, at least in Wisconsin it was a substantive policy battle. The Republicans just choose some made up pice of bullshit controversy to try and distract from actual policy. Probably because their policy is total shit. The analogous action in Wisconsin would be suing to get the Governor removed because he jaywalked when he was in his 20s.
LOL … brilliant rationalization!
Um, going back to the Sarah Palin thing for a minute. If your water breaks and you’re leaking amniotic fluid, you may not be in active labor with contractions, but you should be on your way to the hospital because at that point, either you need to be induced or labor is imminent. Palin had never given birth to a special needs child (jokes about Bristol aside) and she had no idea what to anticipate from that labor. Every labor is different. I’m perfectly content to judge Palin. I would NEVER get on a plane leaking amniotic fluid. EVER. That’s insane and irresponsible. It needlessly put her life and the life of her unborn child at risk because no one–not Sarah, not her doctor–could have known when her contractions would start or how long it would be before the baby was born once the amniotic sac had ruptured.
In terms of VBACs, there’s a great deal of evidence that the risks are slim and more often than not, practitioners recommend repeat sections to avoid malpractice lawsuits. So the risk of choosing to have a VBAC is not comparable to the risks of having a non-medicalized birth of a premature special needs child at 30,000 ft.
And dcl, women in Africa do have babies in the bush. They also have record rates of maternal death, fetal death and fistula formation from stalled labor. Clearly, that’s not the “standard” of health we’re going for here.
I say all of this as someone who thinks ladies who have intentional home births are f*cking insane.
One of my colleagues through work had her second child as a home birth, and like I said, far be it for me to judge that type of thing. She went into it fully prepared and educated and eyes wide open.
As for Palin, I trust her doctor’s judgment on what is “insane and irresponsible”. Obviously her doctor — closer to the situation, time, and facts, — had a different judgment than you. If by the vehemence of your screed I am forced to choose which one of you is, well, right, I’m going with Palin’s doctor here. But anyway, thanks for playing!
Becky #76 – Trig was Down Syndrome, not radically premature … this wasn’t Palin’s first kid, so she had some experience with what’s involved … given that she discussed things with her doctor, and had apparently had been communication with her Ob regularly, then *I* trust the combined Ob+Palin decision-making … after all, it’s Ms Palin’s body, is it not ? If she had chosen to have an abortion, would other than a very few on the left side have raised *any* fuss ?
I don’t think that those who choose home births are necessarily “insane” – but I also would not recommend it for first pregnancies … once one knows what to expect, it can be a viable choice …
(Disclaimer: Our #3 was almost a home birth … a nurse with a catcher’s mitt caught her at the hospital within minutes of our arrival there – and we hadn’t hurried to the hospital … the only reason that there was a Doctor present for #3’s birth is cuz said Doctor was flat on her back with her feet up in stirrups while the nurse with the catcher’s mitt caught #3 on the way out … (I was still gowning up, myself) …)