Some good news for the president in the polls below which show him still ahead in the swing states. A good debate showing next Tuesday will help cement his lead.
Ohio doesn't seem to be budging much at all and one has to wonder how very few people there are left there to swing the vote Romney's way. His comments about letting Detroit go bankrupt obviously outweigh the president's lackluster performance in the debate last week.
The president's approval ratings in both Gallup and Rasmussen are great news for him and awful news for Mitt Romney. Historically, presidents with approval ratings above 50 percent win reelection.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Tonight's VP Debate
I think I may be the only one in punditry land that doesn't think tonight's debate will matter all that much. The only way I see that it will is if Biden really does a poor job or says something stupid. I don't think anything Ryan does (good or bad) will matter.
At the end of the day, people care more about President Obama and Mitt Romney, not their second in command. The national polls have certainly tightened but they were going to do that anyway. Nothing much has changed in the swing states (more on that later today when I put up my daily poll numbers) and we are still basically down to 9 states.
Everyone's eyes are on next Tuesday as the President gets another chance to take on Mitt Romney.
At the end of the day, people care more about President Obama and Mitt Romney, not their second in command. The national polls have certainly tightened but they were going to do that anyway. Nothing much has changed in the swing states (more on that later today when I put up my daily poll numbers) and we are still basically down to 9 states.
Everyone's eyes are on next Tuesday as the President gets another chance to take on Mitt Romney.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Polls For Wednesday October 10th
Loads of polls today..
The Florida one is very interesting considering Romney's recent gains there.
I'm not sure why they are polling some of the eastern states...seems like a waste of time to me.
The last two polls (post debate) from Ohio have the president up +4 and +1 so I'm hoping this silences the shrieking from the left.
Killed by the Cure
Today the number of people who have died from fungal meningitis from a tainted steroid rose to 12, 137 have been infected and thousands have been exposed. The drug was made by the New England Compounding Center, which is basically just a pharmacy. Since it claims to be a pharmacy it escapes regulation by the FDA, and is instead regulated by a patchwork of state regulations. This despite the fact that this company makes huge batches of this stuff to sell to clinics nationwide, rather than for individual patients the way pharmacies are supposed to.
Now, the interesting thing about this compounding pharmacy is that it's owned by a guy named Gregory Conigliaro, who also owns an FDA-registered drug manufacturer called Ameridose, as well as real estate and recycling companies. It appears that Mr. Conigliaro is using New England Compounding to get around FDA regulations to make a killing on a drug that the big pharmaceutical firms have jacked the price up on. He seems to have decided to manufacture this drug in the back room of his pharmacy instead of in the FDA-monitored clean rooms of Ameridose.
The FDA has tried to control this kind of drug compounding for years, but conservatives in Congress stopped them and pharmacies in Texas and across the country sued to escape FDA regulation.
And this isn't the only recent instance of tainted substances being injected into hundreds of people. Last August there was a rash of infections from tattoo ink tainted with bacteria.
Conservatives have been on the warpath about deregulation, and unregulated compounding pharmacies are exactly the sort of thing they've been pushing. And this is exactly the kind of result we can expect when conservatives get their way.
They like to say that health care is just like any other kind of consumer business. Government should get out of the way and let businesses rise and fall on their own merits: if they screw up the marketplace will sort it out.
But when companies in the health care business take short cuts to boost profits people die. This tainted drug could have killed tens of thousands of people; we're just lucky that it's only a dozen. So far.
But this situation shows how fallacious the conservative argument against all regulation is. The people injected with this drug didn't get to choose its source. Tortured by agonizing pain, they went to their doctors for relief. They (and probably their doctors) had no idea that they were being injected with a drug made by a cut-rate compounding pharmacy run by some real estate wheeler-dealer. And now they're dead.
When medicine consisted of barbers amputating broken legs you could probably get along without regulating health care and drugs. But in this day and age, with tremendous advances in medical science and technology, and interstate and international transportation of drugs and medical devices, it's extremely difficult for consumers of health care to make any kind of informed decisions on what treatment is right for them, much less about the fitness of all the components of any procedures they undergo, which may involve hundreds of different medical instruments, drugs and devices that pass through half a dozen middlemen.
When you're suffering from agonizing back pain, the last thing you need to worry about is being poisoned or infected by the very drugs that are supposed to cure you. Someone with some muscle needs to keep on eye on the people who are making the stuff that gets injected under our skin and into our spines.
Now, the interesting thing about this compounding pharmacy is that it's owned by a guy named Gregory Conigliaro, who also owns an FDA-registered drug manufacturer called Ameridose, as well as real estate and recycling companies. It appears that Mr. Conigliaro is using New England Compounding to get around FDA regulations to make a killing on a drug that the big pharmaceutical firms have jacked the price up on. He seems to have decided to manufacture this drug in the back room of his pharmacy instead of in the FDA-monitored clean rooms of Ameridose.
The FDA has tried to control this kind of drug compounding for years, but conservatives in Congress stopped them and pharmacies in Texas and across the country sued to escape FDA regulation.
And this isn't the only recent instance of tainted substances being injected into hundreds of people. Last August there was a rash of infections from tattoo ink tainted with bacteria.
Conservatives have been on the warpath about deregulation, and unregulated compounding pharmacies are exactly the sort of thing they've been pushing. And this is exactly the kind of result we can expect when conservatives get their way.
They like to say that health care is just like any other kind of consumer business. Government should get out of the way and let businesses rise and fall on their own merits: if they screw up the marketplace will sort it out.
But when companies in the health care business take short cuts to boost profits people die. This tainted drug could have killed tens of thousands of people; we're just lucky that it's only a dozen. So far.
But this situation shows how fallacious the conservative argument against all regulation is. The people injected with this drug didn't get to choose its source. Tortured by agonizing pain, they went to their doctors for relief. They (and probably their doctors) had no idea that they were being injected with a drug made by a cut-rate compounding pharmacy run by some real estate wheeler-dealer. And now they're dead.
When medicine consisted of barbers amputating broken legs you could probably get along without regulating health care and drugs. But in this day and age, with tremendous advances in medical science and technology, and interstate and international transportation of drugs and medical devices, it's extremely difficult for consumers of health care to make any kind of informed decisions on what treatment is right for them, much less about the fitness of all the components of any procedures they undergo, which may involve hundreds of different medical instruments, drugs and devices that pass through half a dozen middlemen.
When you're suffering from agonizing back pain, the last thing you need to worry about is being poisoned or infected by the very drugs that are supposed to cure you. Someone with some muscle needs to keep on eye on the people who are making the stuff that gets injected under our skin and into our spines.
More Moderate Mitt
There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda--- (Mitt Romney, October 9, 2012, Iowa)
OK, now this is just getting ridiculous...
OK, now this is just getting ridiculous...
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Polls For Tuesday, October 9th
At first glance, this all looks like bad news for the president. Gallup has him down 2 points with Rasmussen having the race exactly tied. He's also lost some ground in North Carolina and Colorado. Remember that Gallup has now switched from "Registered Voters" to "Likely Voters" so now we can see that enthusiasm gap very, very clearly, favoring the Republicans.
But these are nationwide polls and if we look at a very key swing state like Ohio things look just about the same for the president since before the debate. The new Ohio poll from CNN (taken 10/5-10/8) shows the president up 51-47 with the ARG poll showing Romney up 48-47. The CNN poll is likely voters so that is very good news for the president.
And the president's approval rating has actually increased an overall net of 4 points and now stands at 53 percent. His favorables are still in the plus column while Romney's are still in the minus column. These numbers are now well after the debate which means...what, exactly? I guess I don't know for sure but it does mean not as much doom and gloom for the president because the head to head numbers don't fully reflect the jobs data release as much as the approval/favorable numbers.
One other thing to note here is the Senate picture still looks good for the Democrats. The fact that North Dakota is competitive is truly amazing and an excellent testament to being able to win in a deep red state if you are a good candidate like Heidi Heitkamp.
28 Days
With the election exactly four weeks away, I thought it appropriate to sit back and see where things stand currently.
Now that Mitt Romney is just barely to the right of Barack Obama, the president and his re-election team have a real problem. The Etch-E-Sketch idea is actually working because many people didn't tune into the election until the debates. To them, Romney is a very reasonable man who looks and acts like a president. He's not the guy who said he was a "severe conservative," wants to cut taxes for the rich, and thinks that society is made up of makers and takers (copyright Ayn Rand). They weren't paying attention then. He is, in fact, a moderate.
The president's re-election is now more difficult because of this new (times four) Mitt Romney (who I happen to think is who he has been all along. Politico agrees). So, Barack Obama and his team need to do two things in the next four weeks and they need to do them well otherwise they might lose.
The first thing they have to do is get people to vote. If everyone voted who supports the president, the only state that Romney wins that the president won in 2008 is Indiana. But voter enthusiasm is lower on the D side than the R side so that makes the race tighter. In short, they need to get out the vote. Spending the next four weeks getting people registered to vote would be time well spent. Spending time talking about Big Bird would not be time well spent.
The second thing the president has to do is vigorously defend his record in the next two debates, at rallies, and in the media. His team needs to stop talking about the last debate and focus on the next two. Personally, I don't think the Biden-Ryan debate is going to matter much because people want to hear from the president again, not a surrogate. In fact, the whole surrogate thing has to stop. No one can make his case for him anymore...the president has to nut up and do it himself.
He has a lot of great things to talk about so it should be easy. Our country is heading in the right direction on the economy with the unemployment number falling and jobs being added every month. His foreign policies have been specific (unlike Governor Romney) and largely successful. He needs to brag about them while illustrating that Mitt Romney's are a combination of dangerous naivete and a bizarre time warp to 20th century realism. And he really needs to pin Romney down on the economy with the details because Mitt doesn't have any.
As for folks like Andrew Sullivan, they need to leave the drama queen bit behind and start being helpful. The continued hand wringing over a debate now one week ago is getting very old. I realize that the art of performance is very important to media types like Sully but his posts are becoming so shrill it's hard for me to read them anymore. Personally, I think it's because his personal reputation is on the line after his Newsweek story about the president being the Democrat's Ronald Reagan and now he's worried that he might look foolish. Well, he's looking foolish now saying that the election is over with a full month left until people vote.
There are many folks in the political media that simply need to take a fucking chill pill. The new Pew Poll that shows Romney up 4 points nationally makes perfect sense when you consider that many people that took that poll identified as Republican. Unlike that whiners on the Right who foamed at the mouth about "skewed polls," people on the left (and everyone really) need to realize that this is simply how sampling works in some of these polls so that's why the numbers are weighed that way.
And, honestly, the national tracking polls are meaningless at this point as the 6-8 swing state polls hold more obvious insight.
Overall, I've noticed a somewhat muted response from the far right on the new, new, new, new Mitt Romney which I find to be fascinating. Are they being quiet because they don't want to jinx him? Are they afraid that he really is going to turn out to be a moderate? Or do they think he's just fooling everyone and the severe conservative will pop up if he wins?
Not that I want this to happen but I think it would be very interesting if Romney won the election and pretty much did the same things that President Obama is doing. After all, that's more or less what he said he would do in the first debate. Is this what the Right really wants?
Now that Mitt Romney is just barely to the right of Barack Obama, the president and his re-election team have a real problem. The Etch-E-Sketch idea is actually working because many people didn't tune into the election until the debates. To them, Romney is a very reasonable man who looks and acts like a president. He's not the guy who said he was a "severe conservative," wants to cut taxes for the rich, and thinks that society is made up of makers and takers (copyright Ayn Rand). They weren't paying attention then. He is, in fact, a moderate.
The president's re-election is now more difficult because of this new (times four) Mitt Romney (who I happen to think is who he has been all along. Politico agrees). So, Barack Obama and his team need to do two things in the next four weeks and they need to do them well otherwise they might lose.
The first thing they have to do is get people to vote. If everyone voted who supports the president, the only state that Romney wins that the president won in 2008 is Indiana. But voter enthusiasm is lower on the D side than the R side so that makes the race tighter. In short, they need to get out the vote. Spending the next four weeks getting people registered to vote would be time well spent. Spending time talking about Big Bird would not be time well spent.
The second thing the president has to do is vigorously defend his record in the next two debates, at rallies, and in the media. His team needs to stop talking about the last debate and focus on the next two. Personally, I don't think the Biden-Ryan debate is going to matter much because people want to hear from the president again, not a surrogate. In fact, the whole surrogate thing has to stop. No one can make his case for him anymore...the president has to nut up and do it himself.
He has a lot of great things to talk about so it should be easy. Our country is heading in the right direction on the economy with the unemployment number falling and jobs being added every month. His foreign policies have been specific (unlike Governor Romney) and largely successful. He needs to brag about them while illustrating that Mitt Romney's are a combination of dangerous naivete and a bizarre time warp to 20th century realism. And he really needs to pin Romney down on the economy with the details because Mitt doesn't have any.
As for folks like Andrew Sullivan, they need to leave the drama queen bit behind and start being helpful. The continued hand wringing over a debate now one week ago is getting very old. I realize that the art of performance is very important to media types like Sully but his posts are becoming so shrill it's hard for me to read them anymore. Personally, I think it's because his personal reputation is on the line after his Newsweek story about the president being the Democrat's Ronald Reagan and now he's worried that he might look foolish. Well, he's looking foolish now saying that the election is over with a full month left until people vote.
There are many folks in the political media that simply need to take a fucking chill pill. The new Pew Poll that shows Romney up 4 points nationally makes perfect sense when you consider that many people that took that poll identified as Republican. Unlike that whiners on the Right who foamed at the mouth about "skewed polls," people on the left (and everyone really) need to realize that this is simply how sampling works in some of these polls so that's why the numbers are weighed that way.
And, honestly, the national tracking polls are meaningless at this point as the 6-8 swing state polls hold more obvious insight.
Overall, I've noticed a somewhat muted response from the far right on the new, new, new, new Mitt Romney which I find to be fascinating. Are they being quiet because they don't want to jinx him? Are they afraid that he really is going to turn out to be a moderate? Or do they think he's just fooling everyone and the severe conservative will pop up if he wins?
Not that I want this to happen but I think it would be very interesting if Romney won the election and pretty much did the same things that President Obama is doing. After all, that's more or less what he said he would do in the first debate. Is this what the Right really wants?
Monday, October 08, 2012
Polls For Monday, October 8th
A ton of new polls today and they make the election look even more muddy.
The two Gallup polls should be noted first as the one that is the tie is from the three days after the debate whole the one that shows the president 5 points ahead is a 7 day tracking poll.
I'm still stunned that both Rasmussen and Gallup have the president's approval rating above 50 percent. That makes no sense at considering the poor debate performance.
The battleground states look like they are still hanging in there for the president. Iowa, in particular, has been solid Obama for awhile now and with the latest being a Rasmussen poll, it's like more like +4 or +5 Obama because they don't figure in cel phone users.
The Pew Research Poll really shows the effects of the debate and the enthusiasm gap. The key to a decisive victory for the president is to get out the vote. He does that and he wins just be sheer demographics.
More Senate polls that show how it's nearly hopeless that the GOP is going to take back the Senate.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Polls For Sunday, October 7th
I Stand Corrected
I originally thought this was Mitt Romney getting a shoeshine but, thanks to Guard Duck, I was wrong. Romney is actually getting wanded by TSA, according to Snopes. I stand corrected, once again.
I'm still waiting, though, for admissions of fault on this one, however. I wonder how much longer I'm going to have to wait...
Saturday, October 06, 2012
Polls For Saturday Oct 6th
So, these are the first real post debate polls and they make no sense to me. After the president's poor performance on Wednesday night, I expected Gallup to be dead even and Rasmussen to have Romney up by 4 (recall that Rasmussen does not poll cel phone users so their numbers and they sample more GOP so their numbers skew Republican).
Moreover, the approval rating for both Gallup and Rasmussen is still at 50 percent. I don't get it after how much he sucked at the debate.
The Biggest Loophole of All
The Romney campaign seems to be completely baffled by people who keep asking them which loopholes they're going to close when they reduce taxes. The standard answer is, "We'll figure that out once we're elected. We'll consult closely with Congress and the American people."
Why do they dodge and weave on this particular issue, when they're quite specific about equally touchy issues? Like, say, health care and Obama's requirement that employers pay for contraception, two things that Romney and Ryan have pledged they will make go away on "day one." (Day one would be an awfully busy day for them.)
Now, nearly every Republican in Congress has taken the pledge to never raise taxes, and that pledge also includes removing loopholes that would result in tax increases. Romney gladly signed on to that.
So, I don't believe for an instant that any Republican would dare go against Grover Norquist on this issue, especially when he and his ilk have already forced many Republicans, like Dick Lugar (Dick Lugar!), into retirement when they were found insufficiently conservative.
But there's a very good reason why they won't answer the loophole question: they know it just doesn't matter. Romney's plan will eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends—the way wealthy people like Romney earn almost all their income. Under his own tax plan Romney's tax rate would be cut almost zero because nearly all of his $14 million income was in capital gains.
Romney's plan is one big lie: the biggest loophole of all is having a different tax rate on capital gains and dividends in the first place.
Why do they dodge and weave on this particular issue, when they're quite specific about equally touchy issues? Like, say, health care and Obama's requirement that employers pay for contraception, two things that Romney and Ryan have pledged they will make go away on "day one." (Day one would be an awfully busy day for them.)
Now, nearly every Republican in Congress has taken the pledge to never raise taxes, and that pledge also includes removing loopholes that would result in tax increases. Romney gladly signed on to that.
So, I don't believe for an instant that any Republican would dare go against Grover Norquist on this issue, especially when he and his ilk have already forced many Republicans, like Dick Lugar (Dick Lugar!), into retirement when they were found insufficiently conservative.
But there's a very good reason why they won't answer the loophole question: they know it just doesn't matter. Romney's plan will eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends—the way wealthy people like Romney earn almost all their income. Under his own tax plan Romney's tax rate would be cut almost zero because nearly all of his $14 million income was in capital gains.
Romney's plan is one big lie: the biggest loophole of all is having a different tax rate on capital gains and dividends in the first place.
The "October Surprise"
Many Republicans are absolutely certain that the jobs report released yesterday is politically motivated. It showed that the unemployment rate dipped to 7.8%, the first it's been below 8% for the first time since Obama took office.
But if you look at what the numbers are saying, it's completely in line with what's been happening for the last year or two, it's in line with the traditional seasonal uptick in September, and it's completely consistent with the large ups and downs that we've historically had from month to month.
For example, in October, 1992 the unemployment rate dipped to 7.3% from 7.6%. This was George H. W. Bush's "October Surprise" when he was running against Bill Clinton.
And this report is consistent with other evidence, notably in real estate, which had been depressed for a long time but has begun to pick up slowly in many areas around the country in recent months. Anecdotally, one realtor told me a year that housing sales were way up, especially in high-end homes. And I know another person who just started selling real estate and is already doing well.
Housing is a prime mover in the economy because it begins a long chain of other purchases that inevitably occur when people move into new homes. That's one reason why things tanked so badly when housing collapsed five years ago.
In addition, a lot of older workers are leaving the job market: the baby boom is starting to retire -- someone born in 1945 is now 67. That's going to drive unemployment numbers down more and more each year, though many baby-boomers won't be able to retire because they lost their nest eggs when the financial markets torpedoed the economy with their hare-brained schemes.
Finally, much of the increase in the recent report is in part-time jobs. Companies have long been moving away from hiring full-time employees and instead part-time employees and contractors to avoid having to pay benefits such as health insurance.
But instead of making these rational arguments, the kind of arguments Democrats make when a statistical blip doesn't square with what they like to see, we saw Jack Welch tweet: "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers."
Why resort to logic, historical trends and statistics when you can instead claim corruption and fraud?
But if you look at what the numbers are saying, it's completely in line with what's been happening for the last year or two, it's in line with the traditional seasonal uptick in September, and it's completely consistent with the large ups and downs that we've historically had from month to month.
For example, in October, 1992 the unemployment rate dipped to 7.3% from 7.6%. This was George H. W. Bush's "October Surprise" when he was running against Bill Clinton.
And this report is consistent with other evidence, notably in real estate, which had been depressed for a long time but has begun to pick up slowly in many areas around the country in recent months. Anecdotally, one realtor told me a year that housing sales were way up, especially in high-end homes. And I know another person who just started selling real estate and is already doing well.
Housing is a prime mover in the economy because it begins a long chain of other purchases that inevitably occur when people move into new homes. That's one reason why things tanked so badly when housing collapsed five years ago.
In addition, a lot of older workers are leaving the job market: the baby boom is starting to retire -- someone born in 1945 is now 67. That's going to drive unemployment numbers down more and more each year, though many baby-boomers won't be able to retire because they lost their nest eggs when the financial markets torpedoed the economy with their hare-brained schemes.
Finally, much of the increase in the recent report is in part-time jobs. Companies have long been moving away from hiring full-time employees and instead part-time employees and contractors to avoid having to pay benefits such as health insurance.
But instead of making these rational arguments, the kind of arguments Democrats make when a statistical blip doesn't square with what they like to see, we saw Jack Welch tweet: "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers."
Why resort to logic, historical trends and statistics when you can instead claim corruption and fraud?
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