Christie and Two Democratic Presidents

In a very indirect way, this tweet has a connection to Wednesday night's GOP presidential debate and illustrates a trait cutting across party lines.

He’s literally done the same exact thing to like 50 other people already.

Anyway, Jenna Ellis said all of this is well with her soul so…

It’s above her now. 🤷🏽‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/dd8UrmfZaq

— Renee (@PettyLupone) August 15, 2023

At 4:38 of the video below, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, slamming Vivek Ramaswamy, bellows

I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like Chat GPT and the last person at one of these debates, Bret, who stood in the middle of the stage and said "what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here" was Barack Obama and I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight. 

             .

That was a powerful line, especially directed at the Republican street, which has a score to settle with Barack Obama because he was elected twice and still- still!- that awful liberal media won't admit that racism is dead in the country. Nonetheless, Ramaswamy was up to the challenge, remarking "give me a hug, just like you did to Obama and you'll help elect me just as you did..." (the rest drowned out by the audience).

Ramaswamy was responding not to a hug but to the effusive praise given President Obama by Governor Christie when the latter two toured the New Jersey Shore following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy. It was a few days before the presidential election Obama would go on to win and a year before Christie's own successful re-election campaign, assisted by the lovefest, the following year. Christie was disloyal to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, for whom he had been a surrogate but undercut shortly before the election with the over-the-top applause for Romney's opponent.

   

Eight years later, the man who had served as Obama's vice-president would behave similarly. Obversely, it would not be a case of disloyalty but of loyalty to someone who had been insulting to him. In an early campaign debate, in June of 2019

California Sen. Kamala Harris called out Biden on the issue of race, saying the way he recently described his past working relationship with two segregationist lawmakers was “hurtful.”

Biden, at a campaign event earlier this month, had cited his ability to get things done even with segregationist senators as examples of the type of “civility” in Congress that has since disappeared. Numerous Democratic presidential candidates took Biden to task for the comments, though some, including civil rights icon John Lewis, defended the 2020 frontrunner’s remarks.

Harris also accused Biden of opposing busing, which Biden disputed.

“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me,” Harris said.

“I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.”

It turned out that the stunt was months in the making and within hours t-shirts reading "That little girl was me" were selling on her website for $29.

Harris, it was discovered, had held the almost identical view of busing has had the man she characterized as dangerously insensitive to blacks (my phrase).  "Dangerously insensitive to blacks" would appear euphemistic to some individuals, such as to Joe Biden's wife herself, who criticized Harris for allegedly accusing her husband of being racist.

That's "racist," as in  

I think that they were looking at the past. I mean, the one thing you cannot say about Joe is that he’s a racist. I mean, he got into politics because of his commitment to civil rights. And then to be elected with Barack Obama, and then someone is saying, you know, you’re a racist?

Twelve months after being justifiably condemned by the woman Joe Biden professes his love and admiration for, Harris was nominated by the77-year-old  presumptive Democratic nominee to be his running mate and with victory in November, a heartbeat from the presidency. 

There were many other individuals, including black women, qualified to be on the ticket, but only one had publicly berated Joe for being insensitive, bigoted, or racist. But- or maybe therefore- she was the one selected.

Donald J. Trump should be criticized for innumerable things, one of which is lack of loyalty, as Jenna Ellis apparently now realizes. However, lack of loyalty is not the worse of his sins, especially when considering that it's not an uncommon trait among very successful politicians. 

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Or She Can Change Her Initials from TG to BHO

US Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has announced that she will run for the Democratic nomination for President. Gabbard has her detractors for several reasons, including her opposition to regime change in Syria and partiality to Indian strongman Narenda Modi, a fellow Hindi. However, that is not the issue(s) likely to derail her campaign. Rather

In one instance in February 2004, Gabbard, at the time a 22-year-old state representative, was testifying against a bill aimed at legalizing same-sex civil unions.

“To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii,” she said. “As Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

Six months later, Gabbard spoke more candidly while replying to an email originally sent to her father, Mike Gabbard, who was a Republican city councilman in Honolulu running for Congress.

“I smell a skunk,” Gabbard told Honolulu Magazine. She was responding to an email that was originally addressed to her father asking about his ties to the leader of a Hare Krishna movement in Hawaii, according to the magazine.

“It’s clear to me that you’re acting as a conduit for The Honolulu Weekly and other homosexual extremist supporters of Ed Case [Mike Gabbard’s opponent],” she wrote.

It appears that Gabbard's views on gay rights shifted radically approximately a decade ago. CNN explains that in her successful run for the US House in 2012, she stated "I want to apologize for statements that I have made in the past that have been very divisive and even disrespectful to those within the LGBT community." Since being elected, she "has supported efforts to promote LGBT equality, including co-sponsoring pro-LGBT legislation like The Equality Act, a bill to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect LGBT individuals."

Nonetheless, she has been attacked on Twitter for those earlier views. Media Matters Editor-at-large Parker Molloy: "So, she’ll co-sponsor bills supporting LGBTQ rights, but still personally thinks we’re icky."  Former Vermont governor Howard Dean: "I was on the other side of this argument wearing a bulletproof vest while she was" condemning homosexuals."  Investigative reporter Andrew Kaczynski: "I realized Tulsi Gabbard was anti-gay but didn't quite realize how anti-gay she was in the 2000s."

Gabbard, despite acknowledgment of error, may not be able to survive this onslaught and what is likely to come.

But someone else survived and even prospered from his opposition- which continued until it was untenable in 2012- to same-sex marriage.  After Senator Obama opposed gay marriage in his (successful) 2008 presidential candidacy, wrote Washington Post reporter Hunter Schwarz in 2015

Obama publicly opposed same-sex marriage for years after that, in fact, until an interview with ABC News in 2012, which also just so happened to be the first year the support for gay marriage crested opposition, data from Pew shows, and the year Obama was campaigning for reelection.

Obama's support also followed closely support endorsement of same-sex marriage by his running mate, Vice President Biden, and thereby preempted a rift in the campaign. Schwarz added

In 1996, as an Illinois state Senate candidate, Obama indicated on a questionnaire that he supported same-sex marriage. In 2011, however, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said the questionnaire was filled out by someone else and that Obama "has never favored same-sex marriage." Obama also frequently said attitudes on the issue, including his, were "evolving" -- something many took as code for what was to come.

"My Forty Years in Politics" by former campaign chairperson (and still Obama fan) David Axelrod was published at the time of Schwarz's article and

Indeed, as Axelrod writes, Obama told him at the time that he was "just not very good at bull*****ing." And he wasn't. Plenty of people believed at the time that he was actually pretty clearly in favor of gay marriage and just didn't feel comfortable saying it. Yet the White House apparently decided to keep up the charade for years afterward.

Except that Obama was truly adept at bull*****ing because it allowed him to cement his base in Chicago, especially in the black church. Axelrod noted

Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union.'

It worked like a charm. To his ecclesiastical base,  Obama publicly opposed same-sex marriage, substituting a nod and a wink to his supporters on the left. He added that he was "evolving," simultaneously signaling that he agreed with the left and taking a subtle dig at the creationists who dominate the Christian right. Additionally (and unlike Gabbard) he wisely still has not acknowledged error in opposing "marriage equality" nor apologized for pretending otherwise.

Jamelle Bouie recently argued "black candidates may have the strategic advantage in the Democratic primary.... because they won’t have to demonstrate the same social solidarity. Like Obama, they can stay somewhat silent on race, embodying the opposition to the president’s racism rather than vocalizing it."

Black candidates may have a strategic advantage on gay rights for the same reason, with liberal/progressive voters assuming they are on the correct side of the issue. That may, however, not prove to be the case. Rather, it may have only been the bi-racial, former community activist Barack Obama who, despite his protestation, always has been a very, very good bull*****er.

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The Making Of President Trump

On May 3, 2017 Rebecca Savransky of The Hill wrote

Democratic strategist David Axelrod says Hillary Clinton would be well served to move on from last year's presidential election and stop talking about it.

"It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump," Axelrod told CNN on Wednesday. "Let me tell you, he was the least popular presidential candidate to win in the history of polling."

No, Ms. Savransky- David Axelrod was not, and is not, a Democratic strategist; he is a Barack Obama strategist.

If Axelrod were not an Obama strategist, he wouldn't have been repeating this grotesquely misleading theme since November 8, 2016 because he would recognize the role of President Obama in Hillary Clinton's defeat.

I'm not speaking here of Obama's failure to inform the public that intelligence agencies had concluded that the Kremlin had interfered in the American electoral process in order to promote Donald Trump's general election candidacy. Nor am I referring to the "red line" the President drew on Syria until Damascus crossed it and he ignored it, an issue effectively exploited by Donald Trump in the campaign.





Neither am I referring to North Korea, which was allowed to continue its nuclear program without interference by the Obama Administration, with a concomitant inability to gain assistance by mainland China to downgrade the program- while the USA's trade imbalance with China only grew. The Administration's slap on the wrist of Wall Street offenders, which candidate Trump (dishonestly) helped use to run his disingenuous "drain the swamp" campaign, is an unrelated matter.

And I'm not speaking- not directly, anyway- of President Obama's decision to ignore the national party, which partly as a result was shellacked in state and congressional elections during his time as head of the Party.

President Obama facilitated the defeat of his party's presidential nominee of 2016 in a manner for which he cannot be held accountable, though must be held responsible.

The recent study "Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism"observed that the tendency of whites without a college education to vote Republican emerged in 2000, rose through 2012, and increased further in 2016. Researchers Brian Schaffner et al. controlled for both general populist and authoritarian values but as the Pacific Standard's Tom Jacobs summarized
"While the economic variables in our models were significantly associated with vote choice, those effects were dwarfed by the relationship between hostile sexism and denial of racism and voting for Trump," the researchers report. "Moving from one end of the sexism scale to the other was associated with more than a 30-point increase in support for Trump among the average likely voter. The relationship for the denial-of-racism scale was nearly identical. Moving from the highest levels of acknowledgement and empathy for racism to the lowest level was associated with about a 30-point increase in support for Trump."

Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton can be blamed, or commended, for being black or female.  However, significantly one represented a racial minority, the other a gender minority (in power and societal status). Unsurprisingly, therefore, University of Pennsylvania political science and communications professor Diana C. Mutz in a published article concluded "status threat,not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote." In a recent interview with Slate's Isaac Chotiner, Mutz explained

One indicator that people feel increasing threat is social dominance orientations: the extent to which you feel your group should be put above others. We don’t define the groups for people. It is whatever groups they think they are. That [feeling] went up between 2012 and 2016. In addition, though, we have measures that ask people to what extent they think men are discriminated against in American society, to the extent women are, and the same with whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Muslims, etc. And it’s those who are particularly likely to see the dominant groups—whites, Christians, men—as currently being discriminated against that are supporting Trump.

Mutz was given an opportunity to clarify and emphasize her interpretation of the election when asked by Chotiner "what is your response to people who say, 'A lot of these people voted for Obama in 2012. It can’t be race?'” She replied

It’s not racism of the traditional variety that we think of. This is status threat. It’s not thinking blacks are poor and uneducated. It’s the idea that they are actually doing better and may threaten the control of dominant whites in society, and have more control of our political process, and so forth. And this is something that having Obama as president actually highlighted. Here we have a very well-educated, very accomplished, and very powerful black man in the White House. That doesn’t suggest the usual negative stereotypes about minorities. It suggests instead that the status quo hierarchical nature of our national culture is changing in some ways. And it’s the same kind of thing with “Make America Great Again”—that we aren’t the superpower we once were, and we need to regain that superior, dominant status in the world.

Having all this publicity about the rise of majority-minority America at the same time as the news about the rise of China—all of these things make people feel like, “Gosh, we need to fight back.”

Republicans, who are targeting Hillary Clinton as their boogeyman, will not admit this. Democrats will not  admit this because, as Axelrod exemplifies, too many Democrats still look admiringly and almost lovingly upon the first black President of our country. Fortunately, there are researchers who- though not framing their conclusion in as many words- have inescapably concluded: without President Obama there would have been no President Trump.

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Still Waiting For The Transformation

Responding on the overtime segment of Real Time with Bill Maher to a question about President Obama's legacy, the former Missouri Secretary of State and failed Democratic nominee for US Senator stated

I would argue that President Obama's legacy is also wider than his policy achievements. You look at the way the millenial generation, my generation, generation Z is stepping up. I think you can trace that directly back to a transformative leader who told us, you know, we're the ones we've been waiting for.  And I think that ultimately our salvation will come not from- it will come from his legacy which made a lot of people, which includes my generation, believe you can do that.





And I would argue that it takes two blacks (writing well before Jason Kander's remarks) to explain (indirectly) how utterly naive and ridiculous that is. Last October, Joy-Ann  Reid observed

As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out in his brilliant Atlantic essay, “The First White President,” for Trump’s supporters, his election was itself the point. Putting a human wrecking ball against political correctness, feminism, multiculturalism and even decency was the ballgame.

Kander should have noticed that Barack Obama's presidency was immediately succeeded by Donald Trump's presidency, and should realize that the latter never would have been anywhere near materializing without the first. Reid explains that once Henry Louis Gates had his famous confrontation with a white police officer outside of Boston

the pleasant fiction of a “post-racial America” exploded. Police groups and Republican lawmakers pounced. Obama’s approval rating with white Americans dropped 8 points immediately, according to a Pew Research Center poll, from 53 percent to 46 percent. (Though his overall approval held steady at 54 percent.) It never recovered. Not even after a hastily staged “beer summit,” at which Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s white working-class whisperer, played peacemaker.

Obama’s reaction to the incident dominated race-related discussions that summer, both in the mainstream media and, especially, right-wing talk radio. It joined health-care reform as a topic of intense racial polarization. And the decline in Obama’s popularity was particularly acute among working-class whites.

Lest you protest that he was reelected with the help of the whitish, heartland states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, recall that

Three year’s later, Obama was re-elected despite being crushed by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney among every white American demographic. As Ron Brownstein explained in an election analysis for The Atlantic the following September:

“In 2012, Obama won a smaller share of white Catholics than any Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1980; lost groups ranging from white seniors to white women to white married and blue-collar men by the widest margin of any Democrat since Ronald Reagan routed Walter Mondale in 1984; and even lost among Democratic-leaning college-educated women by the widest margin since Michael Dukakis in 1988.”

Obama's victory in 2012, Reid adds

demonstrated the power of a non-white constituency to do the once-impossible: deliver the White House, twice.

Embedded in Obama’s political resilience, however, was a growing racial polarization that would make the heady 2016 predictions of Democratic inevitability in the White House inoperable. With Obama’s double victories, the seeds of a backlash were sown.

The evidence of our divided racial self was all over the Obama presidency from the beginning: from the shouts of “you lie” from the well of Congress as he spoke to a joint session, to the unprecedented spectacle of American conservatives rooting against their own country being awarded the Olympic Games.

Nowhere was the acidity more evident than each time the black man in the White House talked about race — whether empathizing with a dead black teenager, Trayvon Martin, or elaborating on our often cruel racial history in his eulogies for nine slain slain Emanuel AME Church parishioners in South Carolina or five slain police officers in Dallas.

President Obama's first term had been reasonably successful and Chief Justice Roberts, joining the four liberals on the court, broke the back of the GOP's main argument in campaign 2012 by finding the Affordable Care Act constitutional.  The incumbent's victory masked the racial tension which, in Reid's telling, had re-emerged with the incident in Cambridge.

In 2016, another minority- this time a gender minority- stepped up to try to break her own glass ceiling and discovered that a huge swath of America believed the glass ceiling already had been broken and was not in the mood to cast aside its doubts in order to accomodate the yearning of the other America to "make history" again.

President Obama spent eight years as less the "transformative leader" Jason Kander imagines than as one who avoided making the country worse. Kim Jong-un did not invade South Korea nor launch any missiles toward the American mainland.  Israel is still an independent Jewish nation while hope of a Palestinian state remains.  There was not another financial crisis, though Wall Street scoundrels avoided the federal penitentiary they deserved.

It's questionable whether young people really believe "we are the ones we've been waiting for" when cynicism about the ability of government- or even society- to make necessary change appears to have risen, not declined. (It's even more questionable whether encouraging the narcissism inherent in the self-congratulatory "we are the ones we've been waiting for" would even be a positive development.)  And it looks increasingly unlikely that the idealism Kander believes Obama inspired in young people will result in effective gun safety legislation on the federal level.

Without a President Obama, there is no President Trump.  That is through no fault of Barack Obama, but is still an evident truth that the center and the left don't understand, and most glaringly the white segment of that electorate.

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The World Of Joe Biden

We're looking into it  very,very strongly. At a certain point in time I'll be revealing some interesting things.
- Donald J. Trump, April 21, 2011



It was going so well for Joe Biden on Wednesday before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He hit most of the right notes, including

How many of you now, whether you voted for him or not, are beginning to wonder if the roots, the invisible moral fabric that holds everything up, is eroding in a way that’s dangerous for democratic institutions? If we don’t stand up, the liberal world order we championed will quickly become an illiberal world order we suffer.

But then it happened.  Voters who deserted the Democratic Party for candidate Trump, Biden argued, "have real fears. It’s not based on race. They voted for a black man two times.”

This is not borderline ignorance. This is Trump-level ignorance.

Hillary Clinton, we are to believe, did not lose to the self-proclaimed "law-and-order candidate" who once pointed to "my African-American," condoned the beating of an African-American shouting "black lives matter,"  and has a history of racial bias.





Nor would Biden have us believe that she lost to the man who claimed that Barack Obama may not have been born in the United States of America, who on fourteen- 14!- occasions suggested the possibility the President was foreign-born.   The victor could not possibly have been the guy who maintained that the black president so accepted in white America "has been the most ignorant president in our history (who) has been a disaster as a president. He will go down as one of the worst presidents in our history."





A more sober assessment came from The Guardian's Gary Younge, who in January observed

There is a deeper connection, however, between Trump’s rise and what Obama did – or rather didn’t do – economically. He entered the White House at a moment of economic crisis, with Democratic majorities in both Houses and bankers on the back foot. Faced with the choice of preserving the financial industry as it was or embracing far-reaching reforms that would have served the interests of those who voted for him, he chose the former.

Just a couple of months into his first term he called a meeting of banking executives. “The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability,” one of them told Ron Suskind in his book Confidence Men. “At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t – he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob.” People lost their homes while bankers kept their bonuses and banks kept their profits.

In 2010 Damon Silvers of the independent congressional oversight panel told Treasury officials: “We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can’t do both.” They chose the latter. Not surprisingly, this was not popular. Three years into Obama’s first term 58% of the country – including an overwhelming majority of Democrats and independents – wanted the government to help stop foreclosures. His Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, did the opposite, setting up a programme that would “foam the runway” for the banks.

So when Hillary Clinton stood for Obama’s third term, the problem wasn’t just a lack of imagination: it was that the first two terms had not lived up to their promise.

We proved America isn't racist, many conservatives insist, because we elected in a black president. Echoing that theme, the former vice president argues "It’s not based on race. They voted for a black man two times.”

Joe Biden evidently believes that racism sometime in the fairly recent past was banished from American society.  He lives in a world of puppy dogs and nursery rhymes where hostility toward blacks never enters the polling place. It is an adorable and fetching notion, made no less appealing because of its detachment from reality.





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Time Lag

While in New Hampshire a few days ago

Contrast that, Biden said, to the events he did for Clinton during the campaign with white union members in the Midwest, when he got them applauding for same sex marriage, stopping violence against women, and immigration.

“I was in what’s supposed to be those angry white guys, who are supposedly racists, who by the way a guy named Barack Obama won the last two times,” Biden said.

How is it possible, the former vice-president infers, that racism could have played a part in Clinton's defeat when "those angry white guys" voted for the first major party black presidential nominee but not for the former Secretary of State.  (Watch Biden in December flummoxed trying to explain away Obama's trade policy, below.)

Biden's premise is that the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections were decided by the Democratic candidate. The problem with his conclusion is that his premise is probably invalid.

The Nation's Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel analyzed data from the last two elections, with an emphasis upon individuals who voted for the GOP nominee in 2012 but not in 2016 as well as those who voted against the GOP nominee in 2012 but for him in 2016. In findings contrary to virtually all seat-of-the-pants opinion and that of Joe Biden (but I repeat myself)

opinions about how increasing racial diversity will affect American society had much more impact on support for Trump during the 2016 election compared to support for the Republican candidates in the two previous presidential elections. We also find that individuals with high levels of racial resentment were more likely to switch from Obama to Trump, but those with low racial resentment and more positive views about rising diversity voted for Romney but not Trump.

McElwee/McDaniel are not blaming anyone for "racism" or even racial hostility. Broader than that, they find "attitudes" about "racial diversity" had a stronger effect on vote switchers than any other variable, including racial resentment and attitudes towards immigration. Their

analysis indicates that Donald Trump successfully leveraged existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the presidential electorate, strongly attracting nativists towards Trump and pushing some more affluent and highly educated people with more cosmopolitan views to support Hillary Clinton. Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of American politics.

In a February 2016 effort to understand Trump's appeal to whites, Ph.D. candidate Benjamin Denison analyzed the views of political scientist Roger Petersen, who has studied ethnic violence in eastern Europe in the 20th century. Denison wrote

Roger Petersen found traditional theories focusing on fear of others and “ancient hatreds” between ethnic groups don’t adequately explain what causes individuals to support ethnic violence. Instead, resentment of the status of one’s ethnic group does.

Resentment arises when someone — or a group of someones — starts to feel that their ethnic group is no longer at the top of the country’s ethnic hierarchy, or never reached its proper spot in that hierarchy. In other words, ethnic violence is most imminent when formerly dominant groups lose political power — or think they will — as the nation is coming apart.

The USA has suffered not an increase, albeit not an explosion, in ethnic violence the past year or two. Therefore, this theory may go a long way toward explaining why racial animus toward the Democratic presidential candidate- or fear of racial diversity- increased during, and as a result of, the presidency of Barack Obama. Prior to his election, whites understood they were  clearly on top of the country's ethnic hierarchy, and had retained a greater degree of political power.

After eight years of a president who was not a white male, whites had a far different perception of their place in the hierarchy.  Nevertheless, they were being asked to vote for yet another candidate who wasn't a white male. And so a substantial number of lesser-educated white voters- who formed Hillary Clinton's base in her run eight years earlier against Barack Obama- turned against the Democratic candidate when her opponent made race and gender far more an issue than had the Republicans running against Obama.

"I was in what's supposed to be those angry white guys," says Biden, without explaining why he is angry.  Nor did he explain how Barack Obama twice won "angry white guys" (not merely white guys) when in both 2008 and 2012 he ran stronger among women than among men and lost the white vote by 12 percentage points in 2008 and 20 (20!) percentage points in 2012. Nor how Hillary Clinton could have lost while running for a third term of a President Biden idolizes.

"I find the obsession," tweets Chris Hayes, "with Clinton taking full responsibility for her loss from ostensibly 'objective' observers really weird."  Joe Biden's shot against Clinton may not have been weird, but it was cheap, and displayed thinking stunningly simplistic.











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Advice From Donald Trump

Two nights after the election, Bill O'Reilly commented

Is there a civil war brewing in the U.S.A.? That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo. As we mentioned last night, the voters rebelled and Donald Trump won the presidency because of that rebellion. Just a few hours after the election was called though, some anti-Trump protesters took to the streets. Nothing major but the spectacle got intense in Oakland.

After video was shown, O'Reilly continued

The main beef seems to be that left-wing protesters don't respect an honest election. By the way, that's a hallmark around the world. Every communist and socialist takeover from Cuba to Venezuela to Soviet Russia back in the early 20th century featured violence and assaults on freedom. Here in the U.S.A. We honor protests, but increasingly we are seeing people who want our system destroyed. 








Since the election, there have been marchers throughout the nation who could take comfort from tweets arguing "we should march on Washington and stop this travesty' because "the world is laughing at us" as the "electoral college (has) made a laughingstock out of our nation."  "We should have a revolution in this country" goes one tweet, noting the candidate "lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election."

There is a problem, however. The tweets (now deleted, but preserved) are from 2012, not 2016 and were all made by one individual, Donald J. Trump, when according to Digby "he thought Obama was going to win the electoral college and Mitt Romney was going to win the popular vote." At the time, he saw the possibility of an Electoral College defeat coupled with a popular vote victory, concluded "we are not a democracy," and advocated revolution because "our country is now in serious and  unprecedented trouble... like never before."

Perhaps Bill O'Reilly can ask Donald Trump whether he still believes revolution is the answer when a presidential candidate with the greatest number of votes is denied the presidency. It would make for great television we'll never get to see.







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Don't Confuse What I Think With What I Believe

Sometimes, Mr. President, it's best just to keep quiet.

In the book "Believer" written by former Obama adviser David Axelrod and released earlier this week

“I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” Axelrod reports Obama telling him after a 2008 campaign event in which the then-candidate discussed his opposition to same-sex marriage. At the time, Obama said he was in favor of civil unions.

“Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod explains in the book.

Obama shifted his public stance only after Vice President Biden came out in support of same-sex marriage in a May 2012 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“If Obama’s views were ‘evolving’ publicly, they were fully evolved behind closed doors,” Axelrod writes.

For people on the left or on the right, none of this comes as a surprise. During the 2008 campaign and in the early part (before Biden boxed him into a corner) of the 2012 campaign, practically no one outside of the mainstream media took Barack Obama seriously when he said he was opposed to same-sex marriage.  Now, the practice is legal in 37 states and soon to be approved nationwide by the judiciary, assuming Chief Justice Roberts doesn't find some bizarre way to split the baby.

Gay marriage supporter Mark Joseph Stern of Slate observes

For most of his first term, Obama simply lied about whether he thought gay people deserve equal rights, and told the truth only once he felt he could withstand any political blowback. It seems the president’s evolution on the topic had less to do with his private views on gay marriage and more to do with his readings of public opinion polls.

Clearly, and when a lie is revealed, further discussion are unlikely to help the fabricator. Nevertheless, in an interview conducted by Ben Smith on Tuesday

Obama told BuzzFeed News that his own reversals on same-sex marriage — he supported it in a questionnaire he filled out in 1996, opposed it in the U.S. Senate and as president, and then “evolved” toward supporting it again — had taught him a lesson about politics.

“These are the kinds of things you learn as you move forward in public life: that sometimes you can’t split the difference,” Obama said. “That sometimes you just have to be very clear that this is what’s right.”

That's rather odd. While largely defending Obama's shifting positions on same sex-marriage, gay rights activist Dan Savage told MSNBC's Chris Hayes Tuesday evening

Nobody I think in the LGBT civil rights movement believed him when he went from being pro marriage equality in 1996 to oppose to for it again. That's not the way that people evolve on this issue. People evolve in one direction. People move from opposition to support. I never heard of a case, except for the president, where we are supposed to buy somebody evolving on it then devolving on it then revolving on it as the president did.

Obama, writes Smith,

disputed, however, the contention of his former top political adviser, David Axelrod, that he had misled voters in 2008 when he opposed marriage equality. Axelrod wrote in his new memoir that Obama “modified” his position because his aides worried about alienating black Christian leaders, and then complained that he didn’t like “bullshitting” voters about it.

“I think David is mixing up my personal feelings with my position on the issue,” Obama said. “I always felt that same-sex couples should be able to enjoy the same rights, legally, as anybody else, and so it was frustrating to me not to, I think, be able to square that with what were a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there.”

We now learn that Obama believes personal feelings have nothing to do with his stated positions, given that "David is mixing up my personal feelings with my position on the issue."  The man who once asserted it was only "the pundits (who) like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states" became concerned because of "a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there."

The President's phraseology is reminiscent of the days when people referred to minorities as "them."  There were no longer Americans with a different view, but "a whole bunch out there" opposing same-sex marriage only because of "religious sensitivities."  Not religious faith or religious belief- but religious "sensitivities."  Buck up, you un-evolved Cro-Magnons!

We all know now what most of us knew then: Barack Obama merely was trying to curb the impact of a wedge issue so that his opponents wouldn't exploit in a campaign (cartoon by Watson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch).  It's a tactic politicians routinely employ, though few try to rationalize it in such a patronizing fashion.

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Only Ricardo Montalban Missing On This Fantasy Island

There are numerous reasons Repubs are finding it difficult to win a national election. Chief among them, as conventional wisdom would have it, is the expansion of the electorate such that it bears a rough approximation to the nation as a whole. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, too few of whom vote in off-year elections, go to the polls in presidential election years and the awful ideas of the GOP do not escape their attention.

There are other reasons Mitt Romney went down to defeat in 2012. Fortunately, however, few if any Repubs have been able to figure out why.

Among the apparently delusional is the former mayor of New York City (video below TYT Network), for

"He’s going to have to convince them that he’s going to run a different kind of campaign this time," Giuliani said on "Fox and Friends."

The former mayor said Romney needs to show that "he’s not going to back away from topics like Benghazi."

"Even if he didn’t win, if he had made Benghazi a bigger issue, I think we would have had a better chance," Giuliani said about Romney's 2012 run.







Giuliani evidently didn't clarify what he meant by "topics like Benghazi;" perhaps he was referring to ginned-up scandals ripe for exploitation.  He may not have noticed that a GOP-dominated congressional panel cleared the Administration of the most serious charges in the matter. Or maybe he did notice.

Benghazi wouldn't have saved Romney, nor would have a repackaging of the candidate, notwithstanding the perspective of Rupert Murdoch, who likes John Ellis Bush "very much" but

Murdoch was less kind toward Mitt Romney, who is considering a third bid for the Republican nomination after failed attempts in 2008 and 2012.

"I rather agree with the [Wall Street] Journal this morning, which sort of lacerated Romney," Murdoch said in reference to an editorial in the paper, which he owns. "He had his chance, he mishandled it, you know? I thought Romney was a terrible candidate."

Murdoch also hit Romney for winning the nomination "by destroying every other Republican with his own money" and for failing to deflect criticism that he was "super rich."

Even if the former Massachusetts governor had not been taped making his "47%" remarks- which were merely an overt statement of GOP philosophy- he couldn't have convinced anyone he wasn't a billionaire.  As of the fall of 2012, the guy reportedly was worth approximately a quarter of a billion dollars- and he carries himself like a man of considerable means.  It's his persona, and nothing was going to change that.

But that is not why he lost.   There are three reasons including, obviously (except to a many Repubs), it's tough to beat an incumbent. However, Romney was also hoisted on the petard on one of his kind,someone also of the northeastern governors' club.  Here is the photographic evidence:

The words- themselves quite favorable- Chris Christie spoke while hanging out with Barack Obama at the Jersey shore during campaign 2012 didn't matter as much. It was primarily the pictures, which are worth a thousand words (and more) in their political impact. At a time that many independent-minded voters were convinced by the mainstream media that they just wanted both sides to get together, to have leaders of both parties shaking hands, hugging, and making nice, Christie provided just the right image for candidate Obama. The photographs were in Christie's self-interest, given that the governor of a Democratic state was gearing up to win big in his re-election bid and wanted to send a message to the GOP donor class of his electability for national office.

Still, there was an even bigger reason Romney failed.  At a debate in Tampa in January, 2012, the ex-governor merely had been reflecting the view of the donor and the popular bases of the GOP, as well as of his fellow presidential candidates, when he stated

I do not support a federal mandate. I do not support a federal one- size-fits-all plan. I believe in the Constitution. That`s why the attorney general here is saying absolutely not.

You can`t impose Obamacare on the states. What I will do if I`m president, I will repeal Obamacare and return to the states the authority and the rights the states have to craft their own programs to care for their own poor.

Romney wasn't referring to Medicaid expansion, but to the Affordable Care Act in general and the individual mandate in particular.  That line of reasoning- that the ACA was unconstitutional- suffered a severe blow five months later at the hands of the John Roberts and the United States Supreme Court.  When the 5-4 ruling that the core- the individual mandate- of health care reform was a tax and hence constitutional, a lot of the air was taken out of the Romney campaign. No longer was it easy to get gullible voters to believe the Jeremiah Wright-loving, czar-appointing dictator was abusing his authority.

Chief Justice Roberts had his own reason for a ruling which misconstrued a penalty as a tax, leading to the proper conclusion about the Act (aside from Medicaid).  Governor Christie had presumably different motives, enhancing his (upcoming) re-election margin and ruining Mitt Romney's bid, for a New Jersey governor hardly would have been able in 2016 to challenge the re-election of an incumbent Republican.  (Mitt since has spoken very well of Chris; make of that what you wish.)

With any luck, major Republicans will continue to live in a fantasy world, unwilling or unable to face up to reality.




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Kick Me In The Rear, Again!

You know Republicans have gotten a bit ridiculous (analogous to slightly pregnant?) when, as Think Progress reported a little over a week ago,

Hours before Congress broke for the August recess, House Republicans claimed that the President could use executive action to fix the border situation with unaccompanied children fleeing violence in the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. In a press statement released Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other House Republican leaders indicated that President Obama could address the crisis “without the need for congressional action,” a statement tinged with some irony given that just the day before, House Republicans had slammed the President with a lawsuit claiming executive overreach.

It is, additionally, a lawsuit claiming the President exceeded his authority by delaying the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act, a provision bitterly opposed by the Party which bitterly opposed the legislation itself. But there is a way to gain Republican cooperation, even turning them into metaphorical cute little puppy dogs.  CNN reveals

The former Republican presidential nominee will team up with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for a fundraiser benefiting the New Jersey Republican Party next month, sources familiar with the plans told CNN.

The event is billed as a birthday celebration for Christie, who turns 52 next month.

The September 10 fundraiser — co-hosted by Christie allies Bill Palatucci, New Jersey GOP Chairman Sam Raia, state Sen. Tom Kean and Assemblyman Jon Bramnick — will take place in East Brunswick.

Romney is listed as a "special guest."

It’s the latest high-profile political move for Romney, who is asserting himself on the 2014 campaign trail as a surrogate in key Senate and House races, and burnishing his reputation among Republicans in the process.

Romney’s appearance alongside the New Jersey governor, who is laying groundwork for a 2016 presidential bid, could also signal to Romney’s network of financial supporters that Christie remains a viable choice for the Republican nomination in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal that engulfed his administration earlier this year and continues to bubble beneath the surface. It's not the first time the two men have shared a stage together this year - Christie was invited to address a Romney-hosted donor retreat in Park City in June.

While the Republican donor class hasn't fled from Christie en masse, the scandal tarnished his his early frontrunner status and wounded Christie's golden boy status among establishment money-men.

The birthday fundraiser might also heal some bad blood left over from 2012. Christie and Romney — and their respective loyalists — had a sometimes fraught relationship at times during the presidential race. Christie publicly mulled running against Romney for the GOP nomination, and later infuriated some Republicans just days before the election by teaming up with President Obama for a tour of New Jersey storm damage after Hurricane Sandy, giving the president some important bipartisan luster in full view of the national media.

This is great reporting. We all witnessed at the convention set to nominate Mitt Romney for president a keynote speech by Chris Christie extolling the virtues of Chris Christie.  Too seldom is noted the photo tour of Hurricane Sandy damage conducted by a then-wildly popular Republican governor and the man facing off against Romney in the presidential election.  The image of seeming bipartisanship was a boon both for Christie, seen collaborating with a President popular in New Jersey, and for the incumbent President, whose bipatisanship credentials were greatly enhanced by his appearance with the GOP governor.  It was a win-win for guys whose personal ambitions greatly exceed their interest in the fortunes of their party.

In plain English:  Chris Christie sabotaged Mitt Romney.  And now Romney is doing whatever he can to help the Governor, himself lusting for the presidency.

A similar dynamic is taking place in Michigan. There, Republican Representative Justin Amash scored a victory in Tuesday's primary, after which

Amash targeted Michigan’s former Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra, a longtime Chamber-backed candidate himself, now a Chamber-funded political lobbyist and supporter of Amash’s Republican opponent Brian Ellis. “I want to say to lobbyist Pete Hoekstra,” Amash told the crowd, underscoring the L-word to much applause, “you are a disgrace. And I’m glad we could hand you one more loss before you fade into total obscurity and irrelevance.”

Ouch. As “The Fix” notes, “Hoekstra lost the state’s 2012 Senate race — and in the 2010 gubernatorial primary.”

And then Amash zeroed in on his direct opponent, businessman Ellis: “You owe my family and this community an apology for your disgusting, despicable smear campaign. You had the audacity to try and call me today after running a campaign that was called the nastiest in the country. I ran for office to stop people like you. To stop people who were more interested in themselves than in doing what’s best for their district.”

A disgrace who will fade into total obscurity and irrelevance- how would a proud man respond?  We found out when during a Newsmax panel (video, below) Hoekstra declared

I congratulate Justin, he won a good victory on Tuesday. As Republicans, most of us are united, there's a lot of opportunities in Michigan. We've got a good opportunity to re-elect the successful Governor. We have an opportunity to pick up a Senate seat. We have to win 3 new Congressional seats where the existing Republicans are either retiring or one incumbent was defeated in a primary. So, we've got a lot of work to do, that's kind of what I am focused on.

The Congressman can deal with his victory, and that’s something he has to deal with. I can’t have any control over that. My response to the primary on Tuesday is let's get together and let's focus on what we need to accomplish in November.

When the surprised conservative host asked Hoekstra to elaborate, the latter responded

Yeah, I mean, you know, the Congressman is entitled to his own opinions. So we disagree on who the best candidate was for the third district of Michigan. I supported his opponent, and I feel very comfortable and confident that the decision that I made in supporting Brian Ellis. Brian Ellis is a very talented individual, he's a successful businessman. I thought he would have been a very successful and a very constructive governing Congressman if he had had the opportunity to serve in Washington.

Congressman Amash's response to those who disagree with him, you know, that's his perspective. I really can't respond his feelings or his attitudes.










The ex-Repub congressman could have denounced Amash for his intemperate remarks, even suggesting that they revealed why he would prove to be a weaker general election candidate than Ellis.  If that were excessively bold, he might at least have withheld, however temporarily, offering his support for Amash's re-election.  Instead, it was "we have an opportunity to pick up a Senate seat" so "let's get together and focus on what we need to accomplish in November. "

Evidently, anyone who condemns Peter Hoekstra will pay as severe a price as someone metaphorically sticking a knife in the back of Mitt Romney.  Or perhaps less a price than a reward, something akin to winning the lottery.

It's the way they roll, witnessed after GOP Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled "you lie" at President Obama during the latter's 2010 State of the Union message, a horrifying infraction against the imperial presidency which has gradually taken hold in the nation the past few decades.  ("Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names..." oh, never mind).  House Democrats threatened to censure Wilson; a few Republicans threatened retaliation. The Democrats censured Wilson; Republicans did.... nothing.

It's a lesson President Obama only recently has begun to learn. But, in all fairness, it's a lesson Democrats have failed to understand for decades.





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Missed Opportunity

Last week, following their tiff about foreign policy, Rand Paul and Chris Christie exchanged words over federal disaster aid.  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (transcript, here) was overcome by the Governor's manliness:

Yes, Rand, good luck with trying to kiss Chris Christie. I happen to have right here, Chris Christie`s reaction to your kissing proposal. Said this tonight on a New Jersey radio station.I`m running for re-election in New Jersey I don`t really have time for that at the moment.So Rand, you will be lucky if you get a hand shake. And if you do get to shake his hand on Republican presidential debate stages it will be before and after he beats the living heck out of you in those debates.

And we have a winner in the Rand Paul versus Chris Christie fight. Last night, the judges called it unanimously for Chris Christie.

Yes, this is a prime-time host on what is often assumed to be the "liberal" or "Democratic" network.   The guy who cut taxes on millionaires, personally and publicly ridiculed individual teachers, pursued the destruction of the teachers' union, slashed retirees' pensions he had promised to preserve, rejected federal financing of women's preventive health programs, sabotaged the public schools in favor of charter schools, rejected public financing of a critically needed transportation project, vetoed significant gun control initiatives, fought access to medical marijuana, and nixed same-sex marriage legislation will "beat the living heck out of" his opponent, the liberal host breathlessly maintained.

Governor Christie won  the argument because, according to O'Donnell's logic, Rand Paul offered to meet with the Governor personally and iron out their differences.   Apparently, that to O'Donnell is an unacceptable sign of weakness.

On the merits, Christie did win the argument- or, rather, the Kentucky senator lost it.   The latter contended

It is really -- I think kind of sad and cheap that he would use the cloak of 9/11 victims and say, I`m the only one who cares about these victims. Hog wash, if he cared about protecting this country, maybe he wouldn`t be on this give me, give me, give me all the money you have in Washington or don`t have, and he would be a little more fiscally responsible, and note that the way we defend our country, the way that we have enough money for national defense is by being frugal and not by saying give me, give me, give me all the time.

But the Governor's sin is not in saying "give me" the $550 million in federal public assistance grants for New Jersey residents after Hurricane Sandy.  It's in use of a portion of the money to advance the political career, inside and outside of the state, of one Christopher J. Christie.  NJ.com, the online edition of  the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. observed the Governor "siphoned off money that was intended for victims of Sandy to promote himself in a series of TV ads" as

the Christie administration turned away a qualified low-bidder seeking to produce the series of TV commercials promoting tourism at the Shore, titled “Stronger Than the Storm.”

Instead, Christie’s appointed cronies chose to spend $2 million more for a campaign produced by MWW, a public relations firm based in East Rutherford that’s known for its abundant political connections in both parties.

Why? The governor’s office dances and shuffles around this point, and the woman in charge of this selection process, Michele Brown, wouldn’t comment.

But know this: MWW proposed a series of ads featuring the governor and his family, a move that would be illegal in New York state and should be here. The firm with the lower bid, the Sigma Group, did not.

So maybe Sigma’s plan was flawed in other ways? No, not even according to the committee of insiders that reviewed it. According to records obtained by the Asbury Park Press, Sigma’s bid “addressed the tasks and deliverables specified in the RFQ (request for quotations) ... (and) could effectively meet the requirements of the RFQ.”

Brown, for the record, worked in Christie’s inner circle at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and is now head of the Economic Development Authority. In 2007, while working for Christie, she borrowed $47,000 from him for personal reasons.

Are we supposed to believe this was a detached and unbiased review? That a Christie loyalist happened to pick the ad campaign that featured the governor and his family, and is set to broadcast in other states where he will need votes to win a presidential primary?

Caught in an ideological straitjacket, Paul was offended the Governor captured taxpayer funds to spend somewhere other than on bombs and missiles, money he believes instead should be spent on "national defense."  So he fails to identify the self-serving and vaguely corrupt nature of the relationship, one he could have labeled (playing a little loose with the phrasing) "money laundering for Chris Christie's presidential bid."

And caught in an ideological bind, the Kentucky Senator would not, could not, attack the underlying assumption of "Stronger than the Shore"- that the Jersey shore was saved by New Jerseyans and New Jerseyans alone.

That premise inherent in the marketing strategy is belied by the value of over a half billion dollars in funding from taxpayers of the United States of America.  It is Republican gospel that "I" or in this case, our own state, did it alone.  In the era of Barack Obama, New Jersey's own Cory Booker, and others whose identification as Democrats begin and end with the (D) after their name, the words of an actual Democrat and progressive, Elizabeth Warren, bear repeating:

You built a factory out there? Good for you.  But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Governor Christie took a huge chunk of money from taxpayers all across the nation and converted a part of it for his own political benefit.  Rand Paul, expected to vie for the GOP presidential nomination, might have connected this to Christie's telegenic appearance, aimed at sinking Mitt Romney, with Barack Obama a few days before the 2012 presidential election, combined with a more recent appearance with the president Republican voters love to hate.

Sensing criticism of Barack Obama, and a (valid) bid to attribute the President's re-election in small part to his crass political move, O'Donnell wouldn't have approved.    That alone might have redounded to the political benefit of Rand Paul and turned an inconsequential tactical defeat into a rousing victory.



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Too Informed For Words


For what seems roughly the last year and a half, Rush Limbaugh has had an obsession with what he terms "low-information voters."    In late March, he remarked

I have never said that low-information voters are stupid.  I just said they don't know what they think they know.  They are prisoners to the media, which has dumbed them down.  Low-information voters can be doctors.  Low-information voters can be scientists.  They can be among all walks of life.  It has nothing to do with IQ.  It has to do with what they don't know because of their media sources.  Low-information voters are clearly people that don't have all the information available to make a voting choice.  That's all they are.  And they're all over the place.  And most of them do vote Democrat. 

Most of them did vote for Obama. It's not a comment on their intelligence. It's not that they're stupid or don't understand the issues. They just haven't had it all explained to them. 

On Tuesday, "low-information voters" morphed into "stupid idiots" as Limbaugh commented

Look, you and I, the people that did not vote for Obama, we're pessimistic because we are asking ourselves why is the rest of the country such a bunch of idiots.  Can I be honest?That's what we're depressed about. How in the hell did this happen?  How is this country populated with so many stupid idiots? 

I wouldn't call a majority of the nation's voters- or even Limbaugh listeners- "a bunch of idiots" or "stupid idiots."   (Who are those smart idiots- and did they also vote for Obama?)  Still, the survey taken by Public Policy Polling  in the first week of December, 2012 gives a glimpse of the Repub popular base.   The outfit noted

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

Now, that's one powerful organization, emerging from the grave briefly to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for Barack Obama.



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Lose Hispanics, Lose Elections- Maybe

Days after the last presidential election, Republican strategist, CNN contributor, and national Hispanic co-chairperson of John McCain's presidential campaign Ana Navarro stated "if we don't do better with Hispanics, we'll be out of the White House forever."    In March, USA Today reported

At the Conservative Political Action Conference that wrapped up Saturday outside Washington, speakers including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush urged Republicans to embrace "inclusion and acceptance" in order to regain power. During a panel on immigration, all the speakers favored some form of legalized status for illegal immigrants.

"The evolution of the conservative movement on the issue of immigration is nothing less than astonishing,'' CPAC organizer Al Cardenas said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union.

The meme that the Hispanic vote is crucial- not important, not vitally important, but crucial-  in presidential elections is popular not only among Repubs but among others throughout the political spectrum.  In what was originally an off-the-record interview last October with the Des Moines Register, President Obama stated

And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community.

Barack Obama won the election (perhaps you noticed) as he gained 71% of the Hispanic vote to 27% garnered by Mitt Romney.   Not surprisingly, then, speaking before a group of students in Mexico City Friday, the President maintained "In fact without the support of Latinos including so many Mexican Americans, I would not be standing here today as president of the United States. That's the truth."

Er, uh.... no, it's not.   Longtime conservative journalist Byron York reviews Nate Silvers' post "How Immigration Reform and Demographics Could Change Presidential Math" and argues

Start with the 2012 exit polls. The New York Times' Nate Silver has created an interactive tool in which one can look at the presidential election results and calculate what would have happened if the racial and ethnic mix of voters had been different. The tool also allows one to project future results based on any number of scenarios in which the country's demographic profile and voting patterns change.

What if Romney had won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, the high-water mark for Republicans achieved by George W. Bush in 2004? As it turns out, if Romney had hit that Bush mark, he still would have lost, with 240 electoral votes to 298 for Obama.

But what if Romney had been able to make history and attract 50 percent of Hispanic voters? What then? He still would have been beaten, 283 electoral votes to 255.

What if Romney had been able to do something absolutely astonishing for a Republican and win 60 percent of the Hispanic vote? He would have lost by the same margin, 283 electoral votes to 255.

But what if Romney had been able to reach a mind-blowing 70 percent of the Hispanic vote? Surely that would have meant victory, right? No, it wouldn't. Romney still would have lost, although by the narrowest of electoral margins, 270 to 268. (Under that scenario, Romney would have won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College; he could have racked up huge numbers of Hispanic votes in California, New York and Texas, for example, and not changed the results in those states.)

According to the Times' calculator, Romney would have had to win 73 percent of the Hispanic vote to prevail in 2012. Which suggests that Romney, and Republicans, had bigger problems than Hispanic voters.

York concludes

Romney lost because he did not appeal to the millions of Americans who have seen their standard of living decline over the past decades. They're nervous about the future. When Romney did not address their concerns, they either voted for Obama or didn't vote at all. If the next Republican candidate can address their concerns effectively, he will win. And, amazingly enough, he'll win a lot more Hispanic votes in the process. A lot from other groups, too.

It would do more than any immigration bill or outreach program ever could.

Silver foregoes the opportunity to blow his own horn, slap his own back, or , for that matter, to use any awful cliche.   But before  he accurately predicted the winner of the presidential vote in each state, he wrote on June 1, 2012

On the whole, if you take a weighted average of the Hispanic turnout in each state based on its tipping point index, it comes out to about 6 percent, less than the 9 percent Hispanic turnout throughout the country as a whole. That means a Hispanic voter is somewhat less likely to swing the Electoral College outcome than if they were evenly distributed (as a share of the population) throughout all 50 states.

Silver's was the only voice even hinting at the possibility that Hispanic voters might not decide the presidential election.  Since the election, Republicans, Democrats, the mainstream media, the alternative media and anyone who is anyone has conflated correlation with correlation, assuming that because Barack Obama won re-election with an overwhelming majority of the Hispanic vote, he won because of that.

Nonetheless, Silver's recent work suggests the GOP would do well to heed York's message that it address the concerns voters of all ethnic groups have for their economic future.  It will not, of course, preferring to represent the interests of its donor class while feigning interest in Latinos.  There is a myriad of ways it might do so, including (but not limited to) putting up more (conservative) candidates of Spanish-speaking background, investing in Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, switching to the more current "Latinos" from "Hispanics," or digging in deeper with their opposition to reproductive rights, citing an alleged conservative tilt of the group on cultural issues

Or perhaps the Party will try to find a way to satisfy simultaneously the interests both of Hispanics and of the powerful interest groups which bankroll their party.  It could combine advocacy of comprehensive immigration reform with opposition to a clear path to citizenship, an outcome which would be disastrous for the nation... which, of course, suggests that is the course the Grand Old Party will take.

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