Way too soon to critique diversity in Obama second-term Cabinet

President Barack Obama finally got a strong bipartisan consensus on a move that he has made. The situation wasn’t easy, and maybe some people in each party can live with the decision that Obama has made, but the extremes in both parties are not happy with Obama’s decision.

That’s right, Obama has bipartisan consensus … against Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense.

Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, is disliked by the right because he wasn’t conservative enough. He’s from Nebraska; how “liberal” could he be?

The choice of Hagel is disliked on the left for his remarks about gays. Barney Frank, who want to be John Kerry’s interim replacement, initially went against Hagel but changed his mind. Oh, and this annoying trait of Democratic centrist presidents choosing Republicans to run defense.

For the centrist Obama, Hagel is the choice that makes the most sense to him, but is one of those decisions that Obama makes that alienates his base but doesn’t give him any credit from the other side.

Obama took the token symbolism of picking a squishy centrist person from the other party for the cabinet and cranked it up. Obama kept Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, added Ray LaHood for transportation, something Dems actually care about, and wanted (foolishly) to pick Judd Gregg for Commerce. How many points did Obama score with the GOP and the MSM? Zero.

Leon Panetta wasn’t a great defense secretary, but Panetta was the first Democratic defense secretary since 1997. Still waiting for the first Republican president to put a Democratic person in charge of defense.

Yes, Bill Clinton and Obama showed they could work with people on the other side of the glass. The moves haven’t been complimented by actions from the other side. Yes, critics could cite Norman Mineta, but if you don’t remember who Mineta is or what he did, then it wasn’t that memorable, was it?

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The pick of Hagel, along with a few preliminary Cabinet selections, has led the MSM to create a false scandal and some outlets to invoke the “binders of women” on Obama. WTF?

The basis of this “scandal” is that four white men are the nominees for State, Defense, CIA, and Treasury. However, the current people in those positions and three white men and Hillary Clinton. So where’s the scandal?

Susan Rice could have been the State nominee but her name was pulled before a nomination thanks to bullying by McCain-Graham-Ayotte (MGA?). Michèle Flournoy is a very good contender for Defense, and the immediate thought if the Hagel nomination doesn’t go through the Senate. No woman has ever served as the head of Defense.

Lisa Jackson is leaving EPA and Hilda Solis just resigned as the head of Labor. Solis was the first Latina female in a Cabinet post. But the Obama Administration hasn’t announced replacements.

In terms of representation and competence within that, Obama’s numbers are off the charts. This isn’t to say Obama handled the Susan Rice situation well. But Rice is still the UN Ambassador, a rather important position.

If the end result is a significant loss of diversity, then feel free to criticize the president. One position change doesn’t amount to a scandal.

2012 Election Recap: A step up for Dems in the Senate

Even if Florida doesn’t go for Barack Obama, he’ll have more electoral votes in both terms than George W. Bush and a larger percentage of the popular vote than anyone in 20 years. Yet the GOP and the media treated Obama as if he didn’t have a mandate in 2008 and are hinting the same treatment in 2012.

Obama has truly earned this. Treat him like any other president.

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Teabaggers have a much easier time winning a House seat. Small amount of people, especially if the GOP has drawn redistricting to your advantage. The number of governors races the GOP won in 2010 meant more GOP House seats in 2012.

Republicans understand this, Dems are trying to catch up.

As we saw in 2010 and 2012, teabaggers are bad at running for Senate seats. Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock found ways not to get elected to the U.S. Senate.

The GOP could still hang onto the House in 2014, but without a significant change in the dynamic, either the teabaggers stop running for the Senate or society starts embracing the teabaggers, the House is the only area the GOP can find happiness.

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The phrase that kept going in my head throughout Election Night was “step up.” Yes, the Dems picked up a few Senate seats, but they made some good trade-offs on seats that didn’t lose.

Chris Murphy over Joe Lieberman: step up. A potted plant over Joe Lieberman: step up. That was just Connecticut, a blue state. Tim Kaine over Jim Webb (Virginia): step up. Heidi Heitkamp over Kent Conrad (North Dakota): step up. Okay, Heitkamp isn’t so much a step up on Conrad, but she’ll have more enthusiasm to want to stay in the Senate.

Two other races involved moderate Republicans switching over to “Dems” in the middle. Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Richard Lugar (Indiana) will trade out for Angus King (I-ME) and Joe Donnelly (D-IN). They may not be pure votes on every topic, but will vote for the Dems on the big issues, such as Supreme Court nominees.

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2006 and 2008 brought a bunch of new Democratic senators, and so 2012 and now 2014 will be big years for new Dems to defend their seats. Every Dem on his/her first term got re-elected.

Some of those senators may have been helped by Obama coattails in 2012. The ones running in 2014 won’t have that luxury.

Traditionally, the party in power doesn’t do well in the second term midterm. The economy might make the difference; the GOP will likely still hold the economy hostage.

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Despite the screaming of the “fiscal cliff” — and the Canadian media seems even more worried about this than the U.S. media  — the temptation is to end all the Bush tax cuts, something Obama should have done in 2009, and let the automatic cuts kick in. Obama has tried not hard not to look angry, but he needs to look tough. As the late Bob Marley would have put it, “Get up, stand up. Stand up for your right.”

If Obama lets the Bush tax cuts go, then he can negotiate any “middle-class” tax cut.

Mitt Romney won’t release medical records or tax returns; American voters deserve full disclosure

If Mitt Romney is elected, he would be the fourth oldest person (Ronald Reagan, William Henry Harrison, James Buchanan) to be inaugurated. The issue of a 68-year-old becoming president was important in 2008 in part because of problems with cancer … and Sarah Palin.

Well, Romney is 65, and many find Paul Ryan more dangerous than Palin. Yes, Romney doesn’t drink, not even caffeine. In previous years, these concerns would be dealt with by releasing medical records. John McCain at 68 released his records somewhat and allowed only limited access. This was better than the standard for Palin, who got away with not releasing her medical records.

Medical records are magically not an issue in the 2012 race. No one seems to know why.

Heck, Romney didn’t want to release his tax returns beyond 2011 and 2012. His 2012 records had him underplaying his charitable contributions so his tax rate seemed somewhat more “normal” but still way under what average Americans pay. The fact that Romney hasn’t released any more (unlike other presidential nominees) does imply that he is hiding something.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to force Romney’s bluff. Reid could have looked extremely foolish, except for the fact that Romney never released those returns. The problem is that the MSM and most of the American public forgot that Romney never did release those records. The last media person I saw mention Romney’s tax returns was David Letterman, a late-night talk show host.

We had Donald Trump offer the sitting president of the United States, Barack Obama, to release his college records in exchange for a $5 million charitable contribution. We can’t get tax returns from the GOP nominee and Trump thinks something in college records, which no presidential candidate has had to release, is that valuable.

Trump said he’d be satisfied if Obama did this. No one believes this, not even Trump. While I couldn’t offer $5 million, we certainly could scrape up $10,000 — a typical Romney bet — to get Romney to release his tax returns.

George Romney released a dozen years of tax returns and he wasn’t even the party’s nominee. Like father, not like son.

The voters relied on a local journalist to uncover the DUI conviction of George W. Bush in 2000. Since the revelation came so late, the GOP felt like it was a last-minute trick. If the MSM had done their job, they would have found the DUI long before then.

You might think that DUI convictions, tax returns, medical files, and other personal information isn’t necessary to pick a presidential candidate. You might believe the information is important, but only if your opponent reveals that.

Unfortunately, there is no standard for what gets released and certainly no agreement on a penalty for not revealing information. The previous gentleman’s agreement philosophy has certainly been thrown out by the Republicans.

If Romney gets elected and we find out that he only paid 9% or 2% or really didn’t pay taxes in some or all of those years, we have ourselves to blame. If Paul Ryan has to take the oath of office because Romney had some medical condition and dies, well, we didn’t try hard enough to track this information down.

Past acts can’t guarantee what will happen in the future. But wanting to be president and vice president should lower your desire for privacy. In 2008, we had the candidate who was born in the United States release his long-form birth certificate. The guy who wasn’t born in the U.S. — he got a free pass.

If you want to be leader of the free world, you should let us know a few basic facts. The last thing we should want is a president or vice president who is more concerned about hiding something from the American people.

2012 debate III: Does Mitt Romney have a foreign policy?

Watching Mitt Romney during the foreign policy debate reminded me of George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential debate with the mysterious pack on his back. The likelihood was that Bush was getting answers piped in so he could seem smarter in the debate with John Kerry.

Romney could have used some help, and not just because he thought Syria shared a border with Iran.

You had the feeling that Dan Quayle would have been more prepared than Romney for the foreign policy debate. Even Gov. Bush had a foreign policy philosophy in 2000. Of course, Bush threw that out the window in 2001; thousands of Americans and Iraqis would still be alive today if Bush had followed through.

Romney should have been wearing a shirt that said, “Me too.” Watching Romney describe his thought process about Syria, the informed viewer would have been sitting there saying, “Uh, that is what Obama is doing.”

Romney or President Barack Obama will have to deal with the whole world, not just the Middle East. You wouldn’t have known this from Bob Schieffer’s obsession with that area of the world.

Nothing about Canada, the U.S. largest trading partner and the source of that “North American energy independent” mantra. Nothing about Mexico: trade, guns, drugs, gangs. And where was the European Union in a foreign policy debate.

Schieffer didn’t help things by letting Romney and then Obama slip back into domestic policy. I like Schieffer overall; Jim Lehrer, too. But Martha Raddatz and Candy Crowley kicked far more butt in their performances.

This format cries for newspaper reporters, bloggers, and other respected journalists to open up the field to cover a wider variety of issues. Watching the folks at the Fox “News” Channel whine about questions in different areas during the town hall event shows that the debates don’t help people figure out who would make the better president.

Romney is taking advantage of this idea that if it works, will be used as political strategy for the next generation of politics. The Romney you see in the debates is remnant of George W. Bush, 2000. “Hey. I’m a reasonable guy. I’ll change once I’m elected. And the MSM won’t dare call me a liar or a flip-flopper.”

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No matter who Indiana elects to the Senate, the missing piece on the GOP side will be the loss of Richard Lugar. By far on the Republican side of the aisle, Lugar showed the deepest knowledge of the world. Even if Lugar were still in the Senate, Romney likely wouldn’t heed his advice.

A lot was made four years ago that Obama didn’t know much about foreign policy. But even though Obama’s time in the U.S. Senate was quite brief, he learned to listen to people who knew what was going on.

Obama drilled this point home, contrasting his trips abroad as a candidate in 2008 vs. Romney’s impression of Chevy Chase in “National Lampoon’s European Vacation.”

Obama picked Joe Biden to be his vice president. Kerry might be the next Secretary of State if Obama is elected. Hillary Clinton has made most of the world forget Condoleezza Rice’s less-than-stellar efforts at the State Department.

The vast majority of those helping the governor on foreign policy are Bushies, masters of tragic foreign policy decisions. If Romney is elected, he will have a foreign policy. But we saw what happened the last time a presidential candidate tried to improv on foreign policy. Worst. Foreign policy. Ever.

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Romney had a much worse third debate than Obama had a first debate. That was ignored by the MSM as they continue to pound the message that Romney is plausible. In a battle of strong vs. plausible, strong should easily win. Either the MSM mentality is plausible in a Republican is better than strong in a Democratic, or plausible in a white president is better than strong in a black president. Either conclusion is abhorrent.

The consensus is that Obama didn’t have a good first debate because he wasn’t as attacking as Romney was. Well, Romney had fewer attacks in the foreign policy debate, had a near Gerald Ford moment, and copied off Obama’s paper in the foreign policy test. The deliberate blindness is why fewer people trust the media for rational, objective analysis.

2012 debate II: Mitt Romney can’t keep up with his multiple personalities

If you were following Twitter and Facebook during the debate, you saw the rise of “binders full of women.” In watching the second presidential debate live, the line sneaked past me. When I saw “binders full of women” on social media, I realized I had missed something that was there all along.

John McCain had drafted Sarah Palin in part to appeal to those women frustrated by Hillary Clinton’s loss in the primary. Whatever you might think about McCain, Palin, or the McCain campaign, they were trying to get women to vote for them.

Soccer moms, security moms: these were the focus of past elections. Often ignored in the focus on women were single women. Married with children? Politicians cared. Single women? Uh, never mind.

President Barack Obama’s campaign has focused on single women with its policies, but the campaign people must realize that they are capturing single women by default. Transvaginal probes. Backlash against Sandra Fluke. The Mitt Romney campaign and the GOP have been driving away single women for the last two years. So even if you might wonder why “binders full of women” became such a big deal, this wasn’t about one comment in a debate; this has been building.

We found out later that Romney fudged when he said that this was his idea. An organization approached the Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates with the idea of employing more women. Yes, it could get even worse.

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The second debate spotlighted Romney telling Americans that he doesn’t believe in something and that isn’t his position. Then again, the accusations against Romney are his positions. This would be the sign of a particularly bad candidate, but there may be something more.

Three Faces of Eve, Sybil, depending on your generational perspective: Mitt Romney has many signs of multiple personalities. And the second debate proved conclusively that he is having trouble keeping them straight.

Romney says positions such as employers should have the right to deny women contraception through the insurance program (Blunt Amendment). In fact, Romney went out of his way to confirm that stand earlier this year. In the debate, when confronted with the reality of this stance, his reply was that of course he wasn’t in favor of that.

After the debate, the Romney campaign ran an ad from a former Obama supporter saying that she researched this and found out that Romney is in favor of contraception. To be fair, you can find that online. And you can also find that he doesn’t. The “doesn’t” speaks louder than the “does.”

The woman in the ad points out that Romney supports abortion exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Paul Ryan does not, and Romney said he would sign into law a provision that doesn’t allow for exceptions. Yes, we are dealing with multiple personalities at work.

“Moderate” Romney has shown up during the debates, and can’t believe he would be accused of doing what “Conservative” Romney has been doing behind “Moderate” Romney’s back. As soon as the TV lights go out, he’s back to being “Conservative” Romney.

This isn’t funny, not just because Romney might be president, but because he comes across as sincere when denying his own stances. This is really sad.

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Speaking of women and debates, Candy Crowley and Martha Raddatz proved their gender strong in hosting debates. Crowley was the first women to host a presidential debate since Carole Simpson hosted the town hall debate in 1992.

You might remember that Katie Couric was supposed to host a Democratic primary debate in North Carolina in 2008. Hillary Clinton agreed to the debate, but Barack Obama said no to the April 27 date. To be fair, the objection from the Obama camp centered around doing a date before the Pennsylvania primary (April 22). The original April 19 date fell on the first night of Passover, so that idea was scrapped. And the original original date of December 2007 in Los Angeles fell through because no one wanted to cross the picket line when CBS journalists threatened to join the Hollywood writers strike.

Regular readers know of my strong dislike for Katie Couric’s attempts at real journalism. If Couric had done a debate, unfortunately for women, she would have set their gender back a decade.

The flaw with the current debate mode is that four people control what gets asked and what doesn’t in the presidential debate format: Jim Lehrer, Martha Raddatz, Candy Crowley, and Bob Schieffer. Having women in the mix offers some representation. You have an African-American man on stage as the incumbent president, and yet no journalists of color get to ask debate questions.

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Having journalists correct obvious mistakes in a televised scenario would be an obviously good thing, especially when democracy is on the line. The situation is bad enough when obvious lies hit the transcript without so much as a bat of an eye. I remember covering politics with three GOP operatives hit the airwaves saying that George W. Bush wasn’t in charge on September 11, 2001, and none of them were corrected on the air.

We wish this nuance applied to minutia that comes down the pike, but when the lie is obvious, journalists have an obligation to speak up.

Candy Crowley did the right thing in the right moment. I wasn’t thrilled that she let Romney bully his way through the early part of the debate, and cut off President Obama in the middle of his answer. But at that moment, Crowley did what a journalist is supposed to do.

Not to take sides, but the GOP counts on journalists not doing their job more than Dems do. And Republicans freak out louder when journalists don’t act like a bullfighter as the charging lies — olé — pass by.

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After not running on his record as governor of Massachusetts, Romney has decided to suddenly run on his record, but again only during the debates. Since Romney had not mentioned his record and Obama’s team didn’t say much about that, we don’t know much about what Romney did as Massachusetts governor.

The man has been running for governor for 5-6 years and we don’t know much about his stint as governor. The alternative press has done some digging, but the MSM is slow on this point. If Romney gets elected, he may set a new precedent for burying part of a candidate’s record: just don’t talk about it and see what happens.

The MSM has to react to a bell in order to chase the cheese. Remember how little effort they put into searching for George W. Bush’s DUI in 2000.

2012 VP Debate: Joe Biden had to show when Paul Ryan was lyin’

Somewhere in Alaska, Sarah Palin is pissed.

The former vice presidential candidate is working on a diet and fitness book while Paul Ryan enjoys “credibility” with the establishment. Palin can understandably be confused by a world where she was considered incompetent and Ryan is treated as a candidate not just for vice president but possibly president in 2016.

This isn’t to say that Palin was competent; just that the different between her and Ryan was studying a little bit harder before accepting the VP nominee.

Ryan comes across as smart, but the smartest thing Ryan has done is be better at Sarah Palin on the conservative mantra and in lying.

Palin wasn’t asked terribly hard questions. Charles Gibson and Katie Couric aren’t very good journalists and they weren’t even at their best. The press pounced on her in part because her early answers were so clueless.

Ryan has been at the deception and lying game much longer than Palin and he is much better at it. After all, Ryan dodged any specifics on how the tax cuts will be “revenue neutral” on Fox News — on Fox NEWS.

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Since we don’t believe in coincidences, we did notice that the documentary “As Goes Janesville” made its debut on Independent Lens on PBS last week. Not that the documentary makers thought when they started the project that Paul Ryan would be the VP pick, but they sure benefited from his candidacy.

Independent Lens only showed ⅔ of the film. From what we saw, the powers that be in Janesville love putting their eggs in one basket. This was bad enough when the GM plant was the major jobs source. After the plant closed, they were trying the same strategy on a company that wasn’t even sure if they were going to build something. The other depressing point is that they get sucked up into Scott Walker’s union bashing tactics. The Koch brothers sponsored candidate wasn’t about job creation; just blaming the unions that didn’t vote for him. Remember that Walker spared those unions that supported him during the campaign. A politician of principle would have done the same thing to all public unions. Walker didn’t do that.

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Mitt Romney was hyperactive and acting like a bully to the moderator in his debate. The MSM gave him love and kisses for that behavior. Joe Biden stood his ground, debating, and the MSM jumps on him for acting like a bully in his debate. Huh?

The MSM always wants a close race and you could feel the pressure on them when Obama was doing well and Romney kept putting his foot in his mouth. The funny part is people talking about the momentum Romney got after the first debate. His momentum was nothing compared to the momentum from the MSM. They went gangbusters on the campaign.

The MSM has always rewarded style over substance. The 2012 campaign has sunk to a new low, which we didn’t think was possible. Whether President Obama likes it or not, he now has to respond to that narrative to keep the MSM at bay. Mitt Romney may not bury Obama, but the MSM will. And the media isn’t on the ballot.

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Big Bird did something on Weekend Update that Seth Meyers hasn’t been able to do: make me laugh.

Big Bird came up to defend, as it were, the coverage based on Mitt Romney’s call to defund Big Bird.

Big Bird came across as funny, charming, sincere, honest, and non-political. Though American voters secretly love the infighting that is a campaign, they say they would rather have behavior shown by Big Bird in their candidates. Don’t think Big Bird can run for president; some people are disappointed by that news.

The MSM admonished the Obama campaign for focusing too much on Big Bird. While these debates are filled with wonkish details of tax plans, small items such as Romney’s attack on Big Bird get more attention at the end of the debate. The Obama campaign pointed out an overlooked element in the Republican platform. They focus on deficits when the president is from the Democratic Party, and they are more concerned about ideology than reducing the deficit.

Spending a little money that turns into more money — investment — is something you want to keep in a budget. The small amount of money that goes to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting turns into much more money thanks to sponsors and pledges. And the cuts wouldn’t hurt Big Bird, but instead would shut down PBS stations in smaller markets, many of them in the red states.

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Speaking of “Saturday Night Live,” when they were teasing the Thursday night updates, they played a clip of Jason Sudeikis doing an impression of Mitt Romney about the 47%. Yet the show never aired the actual comedy skit. Was censorship, self-imposed or otherwise, the reason why that never aired? After all, SNL has done an overbearing take on Obama, Biden, and the MSNBC team — all liberal targets. Ignoring Romney’s 47% is something even the SNL of 2008 would have failed to do. Airing the clip might be “too late, but in the spirit of fairness (and humor), NBC should still air it. At least, we deserve an explanation.

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The MSM spent some time debating the viability of Martha Raddatz as a moderator because President Barack Obama attended Raddatz’s first wedding … in 1991. I discovered this by watching Morning Joe the morning of the debate. The discussion centered around whether Raddatz could be unbiased based on this information.

During the conversation, Joe Scarborough pointed out that if this had happened on the other side that The New York Times would put this on the front page. That fact that he appeared to say this without irony means he conveniently forgot what happened to his network four years ago.

Tom Brokaw was thrust into the spotlight in 2008 after the death of Tim Russert. NBC debated about various inside personnel (Chuck Todd, David Gregory, Keith Olbermann) before letting Brokaw handle duties on an interim basis.

The McCain campaign threatened not to have NBC involved in a debate because of their criticism of the coverage, most notably on MSNBC. Brokaw met with the McCain campaign to convince them to let the network have a debate. Brokaw also later put pressure on NBC to remove Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as anchors of MSNBC election coverage. The network subsequently demoted Olbermann and Matthews.

Just before the debate that Brokaw moderated, he ended an episode of “Meet the Press” by falsely quoting poll numbers giving McCain an advantage he didn’t have.

Brokaw later was the moderator for the town hall debate in Nashville.

In reporting this story at the time, I remarked on how this would impact Brokaw’s reputation as a newsperson. Then again, his career wasn’t as remarkable as his reputation would lead otherwise.

“Brokaw was the milquetoast anchor of the Big Three in the 1980s and 1990s. Never the great reporter such as Dan Rather nor did he have the curiosity and worldliness of Peter Jennings, Brokaw was always the favorite son of the corporate media. He liked The Greatest Generation and wrote about them. He never stirred the pot, but never did anything great either.”

Steve Schmidt was on the set of “Morning Joe” as they were discussing the Raddatz story. Schmidt is a MSNBC contributor. Given Schmidt’s role in the McCain campaign, he either had some role in those Brokaw conversations or certainly has some idea what happened. Yet we heard nothing.

Scarborough is right in that The New York Times did run the story, though not on the front page. Very few MSM outlets picked up on the story.

Raddatz and Obama were at the same social event 21 years ago. And she was the bride, so she was presumably distracted that day by being the bridge. Brokaw and McCain’s people met about a month before the debate. Even Paul Ryan could figure out which incident shows bias.

In Mitt Romney’s 47%, Tea Party people lack personal responsibility

If you consider yourself a part of the 47%, you definitely are in the 99%. And who said Americans were afraid of math?

The punditry thinks of the American landscape in a 47-47-6 mentality going back to the 2000 race. That stale take should have disappeared after the 2008 race. Barack Obama’s convincing victory took care of that “divided” mentality.

The equally divided approach fit in well with the MSM philosophy of equating false comparisons.

After all, Mitt Romney said something really bad at a fundraiser. So did Barack Obama. Well, not really. But equal is equal, according to the MSM mentality.

Barack Obama got in trouble in 2008 for saying something that was awkwardly put, but absolutely true. As for what Obama said in 1998, well, every tax policy is redistribution. The election can come down to whether really rich people should get more money, or people making up to $250,000.

Forgetting the condescension of what Romney said, it also wasn’t true. The 47% percentage. The fact that they pay other taxes. The idea that they don’t care or take personal responsibility.

Have we forgotten the poor women who were pepper sprayed for no reason last fall? Have we already lost in our memory of the Occupy movement? This is proof that people cared and took personal responsibility.

Doing Occupy wasn’t easy. Being a teabagger was really easy. Still waiting for the first story of a teabagger to be pepper sprayed.

The Occupy people were standing up for the people who didn’t benefit from the bounce back of the economy. The people sitting in that Florida fundraiser: they bounced back really quickly from the recovery. The rest of the people — the 99% of the 47% — are still waiting.

Romney also missed the point that some of those 47% are teabaggers. Whatever we might think of them, rich is not what comes to mind when you describe teabaggers. The difference is that they don’t understand that Obama isn’t a socialist. The other difference is that the teabaggers voted in people to Congress — House and Senate — who are interested in helping teabaggers to get jobs.

Now Romney wants the teabaggers vote even though he doesn’t want to get them jobs. Sure there will be 12 million jobs because Romney says so, but there is still no plan for how that will happen. If the GOP keeps the House and Romney gets elected, they won’t work to get America more jobs. And they’ll still blame this on non-existent welfare cheats and whatever other racially coated statements they make.

The teabaggers don’t care and don’t take personal responsibility but can’t see themselves in Romney’s rant. Their latest escapade is to put pressure on swing states to rid voters rolls of supposedly dead people to get fewer potential Dems to vote in the election. The real Tea Party people of the late 1700s would never stoop to prevent people — well, white land owners — from participating in elections.

The teabaggers have the legitimacy that the Occupy people desire; the Occupy people have the care and personal responsibility that the teabaggers will seemingly never have. If only the teabaggers would use their power for true representative democracy.

The best way to get the ball rolling is to convince the teabaggers that Romney thinks of them as being in the 47%. But as long as racially coded messages work on the teabaggers, they won’t get the true message.

DNC 2012: Barack Obama trying to get supporters to love him again

If the teabaggers had actually listened to the words in Barack Obama’s DNC convention speech, they would have heard a man who wants to work with the other side of the aisle, no matter what mean or nasty things they have said about the president. Then again, Obama had been that same person all along, even with liberals thought he was the second coming.

There is virtually no chance that the teabaggers actually paid attention to anything Obama says, rather they only want to hear what they think he is saying behind his actual words. For a group that has much in common with evangelicals, who wear their “literal translation” of the Bible on their sleeves, they certainly don’t believe in literal translation of Barack Obama.

The teabaggers, who threw their support completely behind the Republicans (despite their independent stance), have been rewarded with 0 job bills passed by the GOP-led House. While the unemployment numbers aren’t good, you can assume they are much worse for teabaggers.

Obama was criticized because of the lack of hope and change in his speech. Maybe absorbing hope and change is easier in a football stadium than a basketball arena. If you were looking for a symbol of Obama 2008 and Obama 2012, look no further than the difference between 80,000 and 15,000.

Of course, the House members voted in by the teabaggers have no interest in helping teabaggers and other people with those desperately needed jobs. The jobs numbers that came out after the convention speech weren’t great, but once again, the MSM gave all the blame to Obama and no blame to the GOP-led House that won’t pass even a bad jobs bill.

When Obama went through his “you did that” part of his speech, you almost wanted him to say, “When we as Dems worked hard to pass jobs bill and get things done in Washington, you kicked them out and put it do-nothings who were more concerned about getting rid of women’s reproductive rights than a jobs bill, you did that. When we needed momentum in 2010 to keep the House in the Dems’ hand and you weren’t as ‘excited’ as you were in 2008 and you stayed home, you did that. And now, when the Republicans are trying to take back the White House, you aren’t sure if you are as excited as you were in 2008 and you might stay home on Election Day, you did that.”

Most of the new young voters, those that have turned 18 since November 2008, weren’t born when Bill Clinton first took office. Their memories have little to do with “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” and more about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Jay Leno telling really old Monica jokes, signing the end of the Glass-Stegall Act, and his exuberance in defending his wife in the 2008 election.

For those of us who remember the early 1990s, Clinton’s speech was a reminder of why he was a president that was cool. The first unofficial black president was “cool on the outside and burns for America on the inside.” For him to say that about Obama was a long way to healing the wounds of the 2008 campaign.

Clinton was the one who stepped up and pointed out the difference between Republican presidents (24 million jobs) and Democratic presidents (42 million jobs) since 1961.

“What works in the real world is cooperation,” said Clinton. Cooperation back in the 1990s was Clinton bending to the Republicans, including the horrible “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the welfare reform now being falsely attacked by the Mitt Romney people.

Obama, like Clinton, also has bowed down to the Republicans but without the little success Clinton enjoyed. Unlike in the 1990s, Republicans are paying big prices for even a little cooperation with Obama. Clinton pointed out that the Tea Party threw out 2 sitting GOP senators and a GOP House member for working with the Dems.

If Obama gets re-elected, expect something as bad or worse than the impeachment from the Republicans. As politically opportune as the impeachment was in the late 1990s, the GOP got what it wanted: a worn-down Democratic president who couldn’t get much done. It’s no coincidence that the GOP got the end of Glass-Stegall after the impeachment.

Michelle Obama stepped up in her own way to help out her husband. At one of the few slight digs to the other side, Mrs. Obama noted that “For Barack, success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” She showcased how her and Barack’s values were in sync based on how they were raised and how that has translated in the presidency.

“He believes that when you work hard and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. No, you reach back and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.”

You really felt like if Barack Obama was white and a Republican, the GOP would love his story.

The part about “he believes that women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our health care” is not something Republicans like.

Bill Clinton, Julian Castro, Michelle Obama, Sandra Fluke, Elizabeth Warren, even Jennifer Granholm did a better job at telling Americans what the Obama Administration has done and will do than Barack Obama. Some anti-Obama people were worried we would get a bunch of speeches instead of policy. Well, we got policy in the first two years and not a whole lot of speeches in almost four years.

The Republicans needed 3 days of cheerleading to remind people to hate Barack Obama. The Dems needed 3 days of cheerleading to remind people why they should love/like/deal with Barack Obama.

Obama told us that this was “time to do some nation building right here at home.” Interestingly, Obama left out of the speech and talks in general of all the rebuilding that had been going on. Infrastructure was a way to unite red states and blue states (see 2004 keynote speech). Unlike the busy work of the 1930s, the United States has real infrastructure issues and we should have spent more on those problems. Obama can be upset that we don’t appreciate what was done, but Americans need reminding every Monday night in the fall that they might be ready for some football.

Every four years, we are reminded that women usually decide the election. The fact that Obama used “her” in the speech instead of “him/her” is a subtle reminder that Obama understands women far better than Romney. Having your wife, mother-in-law and two daughters in the front row on television helped drive that point home. The president is likely to get re-elected but while that is up to us, Obama and his team need to do better on reminding us what he has done. And if he is elected, he needs to do that much more often.

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One compelling footnote to Michelle Obama’s life story. Her father suffered from MS just like Ann Romney. The GOP has mentioned very little about that chapter of Ann’s story, but it would seem that the two spouses might get along better than their husbands.

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San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro handled the keynote speech rather nicely. Though Castro certainly took his shots at the opposition, his pleasant personality was a distinct contrast with the rude approach of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Castro played on the theme of “invest in opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow.” He noted that you “can’t be pro-business unless you’re pro-education.”

Most people who start businesses, a theme from the Romney camp, need to have a strong education and benefiting from investment. When Romney was asked about what to do in staring a business, the presidential candidate said to ask your parents for money to start the small business. “Why didn’t I think of that?” asked Castro. Romney/Ryan seem concerned about business, but have little concern for education.

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Though people were panicking, turns out moving Sandra Fluke’s speech into the key 10 pm Eastern hour was a shrewd move for the Dems. With short attention spans, many average Americans had forgotten about what Rush Limbaugh and his fellow Republicans did to Fluke just for speaking up for women and birth control when women weren’t allowed to speak before the GOP-led Congressional committee.

Fluke reminded us that Obama “thinks of his daughters, not his delegates or donors.” The Dems really want voters to think of Sandra Fluke when they go the polls in November.

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Elizabeth Warren needed the national spotlight in her uphill fight against Scott Brown for what was Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Why Warren is behind is a bit befuddling, and if the Dems can’t win in 2012, this seat may be in GOP hands for some years to come, and this is a heavily blue state.

Warren is not a professional politician and she has proven that so far. Not that she needs to be very polished as we get closer to November, but for her own sake, she needs to be a bit smoother.

Referring to “bankers who strut around Congress asking for favors” definitely helps. Talking about a world where “no one can steal your pursue on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street” also helps out the cause.

If the national Dems have to spend money to win this seat, other races will suffer as a result.

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One outside name some are talking about for the Dems in 2016 and beyond is Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. The governor deserves praise for his honesty in going on “Face the Nation” and saying “no” to the overhyped “are you better off than where you were 4 years ago” question.

O’Malley said this wasn’t the question, and he was right. True, he got blasted for not sticking to the script, and he later changed his tune. His honesty was nice while it lasted. Maybe voters can’t handle the truth, but when a politicians tries it occasionally, we do enjoy the show.

Will political conventions have to survive on only 3 days?

Now that political conventions are merely a PR pep rally, will they permanently shrink to 3 days instead of 4?

The Republicans started this trend in 2008, shortening the coronation of John McCain and Sarah Palin to 3 days to honor those who suffered under Hurricane Gustav. The Democratic Party chose in 2012 to not work on Labor Day, a day the Republicans were going to work in 2008 until the adjustment for the hurricane. Now the Republicans aren’t going to work on Monday thanks to Hurricane Isaac.

Of course, the GOP also took Monday off because the major networks weren’t going to cover the RNC since they wanted to give equal time to both conventions. The Republicans wanted the broadcast networks to carry Ann Romney’s speech. So now the wife of the presidential nominee will speak on Tuesday.

This trend wouldn’t have started except the major parties wanted to run their conventions as late as possible. They want the momentum to run as late as possible as people finally pay attention to the presidential race.

One night for the presidential nominee, one night for the vice presidential nominee, one night for the keynote speaker and the rest.

The networks don’t really want to cover the conventions: 3-4 hours is all they want to do. The FCC licenses for public service be damned.

NBC won’t cover the second night of the Democratic convention for the kickoff to the NFL season. The NFL moved its debut game early for the Republicans in 2008 so as not to interrupt John McCain’s speech. The Dems moved Joe Biden’s speech to earlier on Thursday. NBC won’t show Bill Clinton’s speech at the convention. This would be a good time to remind TV stations of the ability to show more than one feed through the digital spectrum, but stations are under using that technology.

Another good reason for the parties to start thinking about earlier starts. If not for the hurricanes, think about the difficulty of competing against the NFL.

As we said during the Olympics, let the games begin!

Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin: same as it ever was

The parallels between 2008 and 2012 ring true.

On the first day of my vacation in 2008, the GOP nominee chose his running mate. The nominee was a former moderate who moved to the right and had been denied the nomination in a previous attempt for the GOP nomination. The GOP nominee picked a relatively unknown, much younger politician who appealed more to the base than the independents needed for victory.

The only thing that really changed in 2012 was the location of my vacation (Buffalo — 2008, Lake Louise, AB, Canada — 2012).

Okay, Paul Ryan is visibly smarter than Sarah Palin, and he won’t use the word “lipstick” in his speech on Wednesday. In terms of the race, Ryan and Palin serve the same purpose.

Then again, the GOP has a long tradition of using the VP role to strengthen the base. Dick Cheney leaps to mind as does Dan Quayle, Spiro Agnew, and Richard Nixon. The GOP’s tradition is so strong that the last time any party forced out a sitting vice president was the Republicans in 1976 when they told Gerald Ford that Nelson Rockefeller was too liberal for them to support.

So does it matter that Paul Ryan is the VP nominee for the GOP in 2012?

In the initial days of the Palin pick, she was seen as a game changer, a Hail Mary selection that shook up the establishment. We found out later, yeah, not so much.

In the initial days of the Ryan pick, he was seen as a game changer, a Hail Mary selection that shook up the establishment. Other than rallying a few more Republicans to come out and vote, seeing Ryan’s advantage in the race is like viewing San Francisco when the fog rolls into the bay.

Todd Akin took his lumps for his “legitimate rape” comments but his views are shared by quite a few Republicans and Ryan’s views on abortion for rape and incest victims falls into Akin’s line and the GOP platform — no exceptions.

Under bills that Ryan co-sponsored in the House (H.B. 3), if you are a victim of rape or incest and you get pregnant, no abortion for you.

The unraveling of Sarah Palin was a fluke on numerous levels so a repeat of that is not likely. The questions Palin received from less than stellar journalists such as Charles Gibson and Katie Couric weren’t that hard. Only because the answers were so out there did we get that unraveling.

Though Paul Ryan is more known to the political pundits than Palin was in 2008, the general public still knows very little about the person who would become the next vice president of the United States.

One thing we do know about Paul Ryan is that he is a current House member, and House members don’t often get to be at the top of the ticket. James Garfield is one of three House members to run for the presidency and the only one to win. Henry Clay (1824) and John Anderson (1980) finish off the list; Clay was one of four major candidates while Anderson ended up being an independent after losing out in Republican primaries.

The last House member to make the VP slot in a major party ticket was Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. Ferraro’s pick was seen as bold, but ultimately made little impact.

Ryan and Palin have a similar generational age gap with their presidential nominee. John McCain was 71 while Palin was 44 in 2008; Mitt Romney is 65 while Ryan is 42. While Palin was the center of questions about her viability given McCain’s age, those same questions should be asked about Ryan given Romney’s age.

America can handle a relatively younger president. After all, Bill Clinton was 46 when elected in 1992 and Barack Obama was 47 when elected in 2008. Though, they did run at the top of the ticket and both were Democratic.

There is a certain appeal to having a Gen X candidate on a top ticket, though the president in the other party is also in Gen X. But Republicans haven’t learned that just because your candidate is young doesn’t mean young people will vote for you. This is about what you stand for, not your demographic info. Besides, that would be like picking Sarah Palin thinking women will vote for your ticket because you have a woman on the ticket. Oops.

Partisans will point out the relative inexperience of Obama in comparison to Ryan, and the fact that Romney is apparently in great shape for being 65. True, though Obama went with experience in his vice president in Joe Biden and Romney being healthy for his age isn’t as relevant because you never know what can happen. The vice president needs to be ready; Biden is ready, but is Ryan?

Picking someone younger and relatively inexperienced (Ryan has had only two sponsored bills passed in 12 years of Congress and one of those was to rename a post office) isn’t a bad thing if you feel like you’ve picked someone who is well-qualified for the role.

Paul Ryan wasn’t selected for that reason; neither was Sarah Palin. They weren’t picked because they could take over. Bill Clinton, himself 46, picked Al Gore, 44, as his running mate. Gore’s experience and background dwarfs Ryan’s record.

A presidential candidate’s first major decision is to select a running mate. The pick points to a leader’s character and credibility. What kind of leader will the candidate be? Picking a running mate speaks volumes to what they think of the role of the vice president. Bill Clinton wasn’t afraid to pick someone who could have overshadowed his record.

John McCain and Mitt Romney picked running mates to satisfy the base, thinking very little about their subsequent roles as a vice president and possible president. They saw George H.W. Bush get away with such a pick in Dan Quayle in 1988. Quayle’s experience was more balanced than Ryan, but when Quayle compared his length of service to John F. Kennedy, that is when Lloyd Bentsen said, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

At the RNC Convention in 2008, Sarah Palin gave a better speech than John McCain, a very bad sign for a campaign even if it sounds good inside a convention hall. Paul Ryan will likely give a better speech than Mitt Romney, based on his response to the State of the Union address in 2011. As good a speaker as Joe Biden is (when he stays on script), Barack Obama will outdo Biden in Charlotte.

Ryan is a one-trick pony, a mouthpiece to sell the austerity and emphasis on defense spending at the expense of domestic spending. How Ryan would handle elements outside the budget will hopefully be addressed. Waiting until the Biden-Ryan debate will likely be too late.

Ryan will be the first VP nominee to run for two posts since Joe Lieberman in 2000. The senator from Connecticut ran for his Senate position as well as vice president. Rob Zerban is Ryan’s House opponent from the Democratic Party. Lieberman seemed to be more interested in his Senate post than in being vice president. If Paul Ryan becomes more distracted toward VP, Zerban has a shot at an upset.

Republicans like VP candidates with little experience; Democratic folk like VP candidates with experience. Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin fit that role for the GOP, but the question is whether that will translate into votes in November.