DOWNLOADS: (313)

PLAYS: (3889)

Embed

From this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes, Chris' Story of the Week and the Republicans who have been living in their own alternative universe these days as they refuse to accept the reality that the poll numbers in the presidential race really are not looking good for Mitt Romney.

The Republican bubble trap:

If you follow politics, you probably noticed that polling of the presidential election has swung quite decidedly in the president's favor over the last few weeks. The Real Clear Politics polling average now has Obama up 4.1 points over Mitt Romney in national polls and Nate Silver's prediction model at his FiveThirtyEight blog put Barack Obama's odds of winning the election above 80% for the first time ever. Swing state polling out just this week seems to confirm the trend.

A new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS poll of swing states of Ohio and Florida, show surprisingly strong leads for Obama. And the Gallup tracking poll, which has showed a near dead heat for almost the entirety of the campaign now shows Obama up 6 points. It's pretty hard to survey the polling data and not come to the conclusion that Barack Obama is beating Mitt Romney, that if the election were held today Barack Obama would win, and that Romney has a relatively steep, though certainly not insurmountable, uphill climb to victory. That is, of course, unless you operate in the alternate epistemic universe of right-wing media.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (150)

PLAYS: (1222)

Embed

Good for Harry Reid for making sure Scott Brown didn't weasel out of his debate with his opponent Elizabeth Warren this Thursday evening -- Harry Reid Calls Off Votes To Prevent Scott Brown From Ditching Debate With Elizabeth Warren:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid interrupted proceedings on the Senate floor to announce there would be no more votes Thursday afternoon, delaying action on pressing issues like funding the government.

Why? Because he thinks Republicans were fixing the schedule to allow Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) to use evening votes as an excuse to get out of a debate with Elizabeth Warren.

“Madam president, I’m so sorry. We have no more votes today,” Reid said. “No more votes today. It’s obvious to me what’s going on. I’ve been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious there is a big stall taking place. One of the senators who doesn’t want to debate tonight won’t be in a debate. While he can’t use the Senate as an excuse, there will be no more votes today.”

As Rachel Maddow noted, Brown did show up for the debate this evening and proceeded to try to run as far away from being a member of the Republican Party and any association with Mitt Romney as humanly possible. And who can blame him with the latest numbers from who is likely to retain control of the Senate. Here's more from Nate Silver's post which Rachel mentioned in the segment above -- Senate Forecast: What Has Gone Wrong for G.O.P. Candidates?.

DOWNLOADS: (148)

PLAYS: (655)

Embed

They just can't stop themselves from trotting out the ghost of St. Ronnie Raygun at every opportunity and the legend that exists of him in every Republican's mind and this Monday night on Greta Van Susteren's show on Fox was no exception. When asked what Mittens needs to do to make some headway with the voters who really just don't like the man, former Gov. Haley Barbour told Van Susteren that Romney needed to "pull a Ronald Reagan" at this year's convention.

I've been hearing from one talking head after the other in the media that these campaign speeches are going to "introduce Mitt Romney to the public" and that voters "just don't know enough about him yet." The man's been running for president for how many years now? And between radio, cable television and the Internet, is there really anyone out there who doesn't already have a pretty good idea of who Mitt Romney is? Sorry, but I'm not buying the idea that one speech by Romney or his wife is going to make a lick of difference once the dust settles in what voters think of him.

But that won't stop the likes of Barbour pretending it's 1980 all over again.

Transcript via:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (292)

PLAYS: (640)

Embed

Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews apparently have a little bit of a problem reading poll numbers. On this Thursday's edition of Hardball, both of them claimed that President Obama had better not be talking too much about the issue of "class warfare" and ever repeating his statement, heaven forbid, that he "was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth" because heaven forbid that might not poll well with some of the voters out there.

I took a look at the survey linked to Chuck Todd's First Read and either I missed it, or Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews completely misrepresented what the polling data there said.

I would love for someone to explain for me how these numbers and the question asked about the "ultra-rich" are harmful to President Obama and why anyone who is not an idiot on the Democratic side of the aisle should be telling him to shut up about it.

Here's the question from the survey that I believe Todd was talking about:

Now, I’m going to read you some statements you could hear about government and the economy from candidates running for president. After I read each statement, please tell me if you would be more or less likely to vote for that candidate, or if it would make no difference in whether you would vote for that candidate.

Says what drags down our entire economy is an everwidening gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else.

Here are the responses:

Total More likely 45 -- includes *

Much more likely 23*

Somewhat more likely 22*

Less likely 29

No difference 24

Not sure 2

Someone please explain to me how that equals bad polling numbers for Obama on that question. Either Todd is citing a completely different poll that his blog didn't choose to link today that has the name NBC attached to it, or he's lying to the Hardball audience here and assuming they'll never actually read the poll.

If Todd is going to carry water for the Romey campaign and try to pretend that the Occupy Wall Street argument about income disparity, and class warfare being waged on the poor and middle class is not a valid one that might resonate with voters, maybe he ought to try to find a poll that doesn't prove just the opposite of the points he was trying to make.

UPDATE: For clarification, the "more likely" number of 45 percent is a combination of the following two numbers labeled "much more likely" which was 23 percent and "somewhat more likely" which was 22 percent. I missed the word "total" when I copied the stats out of the poll. The correction has been made above. And as I said, I do not see how these are bad numbers for Obama or something to be running from which is the way Todd was characterizing them in the Hardball segment.

Transcript of the Hardball segment below the fold.

Continue reading »