New documentary confirms Mitt Romney lost 2008 election, never became president

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've never liked Mitt Romney. Well, he was okay back when he was a "moderate," back when he was Massachusetts governor, back before he decided he needed to give the far right a massive bear hug in his quest for the presidency, at least if you ignore the cruelty he inflicted while heading up Bain, but 2012 pretty much confirmed that he was, as I kept calling him, from as early as January, a privileged rich douchebag with a plutocratic sense of entitlement, the champion of the rich against the people -- and especially against the "47 percent."

But you know what? Through all that, and despite all that, he's always seemed like a fairly likeable guy. He's a plutocrat, to be sure, but all that right-wing nonsense on social and foreign policy made sense as a shameless appeal to the Republican Party's right-wing mainstream, to both the grassroots base and the movement conservatives whose support he would need to secure the nomination. No, I don't excuse him for embracing the far right, but it was always pretty clear that deep down he wasn't terribly comfortable contorting himself so shamelessly, whatever the political necessity of doing so.

In any event, he is what he is and he's largely gone from the political scene, and so it's both hard and pointless to keep up any level of vitriol against him. There's still a lot I don't like, and he's still -- and will always be -- a privileged rich douchebag, but... whatever. And yet... he is back, sort of. There's a new Netflix documentary, MITT, premiering on January 24, that looks at Romney's two White House runs, in 2008 and 2012 -- the filmmakers followed him on his campaigns for six years. Stunningly, it includes the very moment Romney realized he lost the 2008 election (among many other private and personal moments). Yes, he deserved to lose, and yes, he should have known it was coming, but one can't help but be touched by the intimate sadness of the moment. This was a man who had committed so much of his life to his quest for the presidency, and he had come so far, and so close (if not all that close, actually), and then it was over, just like that.

Anyway, it looks like an interesting film, an intimate portrait of a man who, whatever his privileges, almost made it to the very top but who, throughout, seemed to have traded in his soul, who stopped being human, in a do-whatever-it-takes effort to realize his ultimate political goal. Even if you don't like him, even if you object to everything he is and stands for -- and I object to a lot of it -- you have to admit that there's something tragic about that, and you can see it on his face when defeat finally hits him.

Here's the trailer:

You mean Chris Christie may not actually be the second coming?

By Richard K. Barry 

The new book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann chronicling the 2012 presidential campaign contains some interesting revelations about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the man so many in America seem ready to anoint an across-the-aisle-working, pragmatic saint who can save America.

In a review of Double Down: Game Change 2012, CNN's Peter Hamby writes this, referring to the Romney team's vice presidential vetting file:

According to the authors, Romney and his team were shaken by what they discovered about Christie during "Project Goldfish," as the hush-hush veep search process was known. [The] "disturbing" research file is littered with "garish controversies," the authors write: a Justice Department investigation into his free-spending ways as U.S. attorney, his habit of steering government contracts to friends and political allies, a defamation lawsuit that emerged during a 1994 run for local office, a politically problematic lobbying career that included work on behalf of a financial firm that employed Bernie Madoff. And that's not to mention the Romney team's anxiety about the governor's girth.

Hamby adds this:

For Christie, who is coasting to reelection on Tuesday and already laying behind-the-scenes groundwork for a 2016 presidential bid, the book's revelations are a Drudge-ready public relations nightmare that will send his advisers scrambling to explain awkward aspects of his record and his personal life just as he is stepping onto the national stage.

Never did like that Chris Christie.

DeMint wants a Mulligan

By Mustang Bobby

Former Sen. Jim DeMint, who left the Senate to make a pile of money scamming wingnuts through the Heritage Foundation, claims that the election of 2012 didn’t count because the Republicans never got their real message out and Mitt Romney sucked as a conservative.

DeMint thinks the election results don’t accurately reflect national sentiment and therefore can’t be used to argue against his desire to move the party to the right. True conservatism never got a hearing—particularly not in regard to Obamacare, which was, after all, modeled after a Massachusetts law signed by Romney. “Because of Romney and Romneycare, we did not litigate the Obamacare issue,” he says. Essentially, DeMint is declaring a mistrial. His side can still prevail, he says, but only by awakening the angry, alienated masses who were put off by Romney’s tepid impersonation of a conservative.

So much for the GOP re-examination, autopsy, and rebranding. (By the way, as upyernoz reminds us, Romneycare, which begat Obamacare, was invented by the Heritage Foundation.)

The good news is that if the Republicans actually listen to Mr. DeMint — and the point theBusiness Week article is that he’s the one really calling the shots on Capitol Hill — it’s going to be a very long time before there’s another Republican president.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

In GOP Land, America is 89% white

By Frank Moraes 

Benjy Sarlin has a great article about the New Southern Strategy that I've been writing about, "How the GOP Stopped Worrying About Latinos and Learned to Love the Base." It lays out the best statistical counter argument to Sean Trende that I've read. As you know, I don't think any of this really matters. The Republican Party has no intention of changing. For one thing, they have a long history of getting people to vote against their best interests by voting Republican. That's what the "Reagan Democrats" were: people who resented blacks more than they cared about their own well-being. So it only makes sense that they would continue to think that they can win elections while remaining unpopular. And the recent damage to the Voting Rights Act only makes that opinion all the more compelling to the Republican Party.

And that got me thinking: voter suppression. There is a very old theory about liberals and conservatives. It claims that liberals make policies based upon the way they want people to be, but conservatives base their policies on the way people actual are. I think there actually used to be something to this. A lot of socialist thought assumed that incentives didn't matter whereas conservatives were all about incentives. For the last few decades, though, liberals have been all about incentives. In as much as conservatives think about incentives, they now believe they are the only thing that matters, which is just as big a mistake as thinking that they don't matter at all.

But in a more fundamental way, the Republican Party believes things that are clearly untrue. We saw this most clearly last year where even Mitt Romney went into election day thinking he was going to win despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But more to the point, I have noticed that a lot of conservatives really do think that any time a Republican loses an election it is a sign of voter fraud. I believe this comes from the extremely insular nature of conservative politics. Just look at the Deer Lady: it is clear she never hears anything about politics that is not filtered through a right-wing extremist.

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Money matters

By Mustang Bobby 

The way the Republicans tell it, the economy is still collapsing, the deficit is ballooning, the tax hikes in January are killing business, and Barack Obama is a socialist bent on crushing small business under the heel of the federal government with regulations on top of regulations. Oh god oh god we're all gonna die.

Except none of that is true:

The Congressional Budget Office reported Tuesday that the federal budget deficit is declining this year compared to fiscal 2012.

For the first seven months of 2013, the deficit was $489 billion. That is $231 billion less than the budget shortfall for the comparable period last year.

The decrease is almost entirely due to revenue increases.

And we are seeing the strongest rate of job growth in eight years.

Meanwhile, the stock market is booming, the Dow having hit 15,000 earlier this week.

As for the growth of regulations from the federal government, it's a canard you always hear from the Republicans — the party of vaginal probes, by the way — but it's been debunked time and again, even when it was a campaign issue for Mitt Romney.

As I've said before, if Barack Obama is a socialist, he really sucks at it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Behind the Ad: The Benghazi attack ad that never aired

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Republican National Committee.

Where: Never aired.

What's going on: Jonathan Karl of ABC News got his hands on an ad created by the Republican National Committee to attack Obama over Benghazi, though it was never aired.

It was made last fall in the final weeks of the 2012 presidential campaign.

It begins with a replay of Hillary Clinton's famous "3 a.m. phone call" commercial from the 2008 campaign that she used to criticize Barack Obama's political experience and then moves to an image of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in flames:

Over the images of the attack – in which four Americans were killed – words appear on the screen:

"The Call Came … On September 12, 2012." As the screen goes black, the words continue: "Security Requests Denied. Four Americans Dead. And an Administration whose story is still changing. The Call Came."

Karl writes that a source familiar with the creation of the ad said it was approved by the RNC leadership but didn't run because Romney's campaign was afraid it would detract from their efforts to focus on the economy.

Whether or not that was the right call by Romney's people, something tells me we haven't heard the last of this approach, which I suspect will be used against Clinton should she run in 2016.

As with so much of the politicking the GOP does, it appeals to the already converted rather than helping to  expand their base. In other words, it's pure Fox News theatrics.



(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Todd Akin sort of says he might possibly make a potential political comeback

By Richard K. Barry

In an interview with KDSK-TV in Missouri, former Senate candidate Todd Akin (R) said that a political comeback is possible. You'll recall Akin of the "legitimate rape" comment, which destroyed a campaign that might otherwise have easily defeated Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill. 

To refresh your memory, the comment was, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Within days of the comment, some in the Republican leadership lobbied to get him to drop out, but to no avail. McCaskill defeated Akin by 15.5 percent. 

Since then, Republican Karl Rove has started a new PAC to try to prevent candidates like Akin from running for the GOP. To that Akin replied, "Karl Rove has made himself and expert. I think I lost one race. He managed to lose about 12 of them in one night." He added that Rove spent an estimated $175 million with nothing to show for it. 

No love lost there. 

Akin cites a number of future activities that might keep him busy, including, academia, public speaking, and even politics.

"It's one of those things that depends on the circumstances really. I don't rule anything out," he said. " I consider it a bright new future and I'm interested to see what the possibilities are."

In truth, the interview was hardly an announcement that he expected to make a political comeback. It was more of a statement from a man badly beaten down that he would like to think he could make a comeback if he wanted to. 

That's a different question. 

You can see the full interview here.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Are Republicans killing women?

By Frank Moraes

The remarkable map below is from health researcher Bill Gardner via Sarah Kliff at Wonk Blog, This Map of America's Female Mortality Rates Is Pretty Terrifying. The reason that Kliff refers to the map as "pretty terrifying" is that 43% of U.S. counties are seeing rising levels of female mortality. In the red counties, the life expectancy of women is going down. In the light blue-green counties, it is increasing slowly. And in the blue counties, it is increasing substantially. The map is indeed striking:

But there is an elephant in this map that neither Gardner nor Kliff even mention. For that, we must turn to economist Dean Baker who wrote this morning, "I hate to be partisan here (seriously -- I criticize the Obama administration all the time), but this map showing declines (blue) in mortality rates for women and increases (red) looks a lot like voting patterns." And in fact, the correlation is shockingly clear:

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Republican rebranding 2.0

By Mustang Bobby

I guess all that talk about "rebranding" and "autopsy" at the RNC really didn't take hold. Even party chairman Reince Priebus is ditching all that introspection about reaching out to women and minorities when it comes to raising money from the gullible and the paranoid.

"The President, the Senate Majority Leader, the House Democratic Leader, and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (in whose home state this hearing occurred) made funding Planned Parenthood an issue in the 2012 campaign," Priebus wrote. "They should now all be held to account for that outspoken support. If the media won't, then voters must ask the pressing questions: Do these Democrats also believe a newborn has no rights? Do they also endorse infanticide?"

The case in question was testimony before a Florida legislative committee on really vague hypothetical questions about Planned Parenthood's position on what to do if a baby survives an abortion, or something like that. The implication is that PP and all the liberals would try to kill it. At least that's what it sounds like when he uses the word "infanticide." But then, he’s writing to an audience that he thinks doesn't know the difference between a newborn baby and a clump of cells floating around in a uterus.

This is the new GOP model: cynically exploit the ignorant because you think you can get away with it. Every politician tries it, but this brings it to a whole new level.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

A guide to the Republican civil war

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In a post yesterday on the ongoing Republican civil war, which is well worth reading, Mario Piperni included this helpful chart from Daily Kos's Markos Moulitsas of "all the various conservative factions" in the GOP:

But there's one thing missing: power.

Yes, there's something of a civil war going on in that wretched party, but Republicans have a long history of putting aside their bitter differences for the sake of electoral success, including last year when they all got in lockstep behind Romney after a rather brutal primary campaign that saw the party search desperately for an anybody-but-Romney candidate.

Don't discount this. Power, or rather the quest for power over all else, is what holds the party together in a way that just isn't the case with the Democrats. It's that old dynamic at work: Those on the right want to be in power, while those on the left want to be right. They put aside their differences and unite for an overriding common purpose, while we bicker amongst ourselves. We strive for truth, they strive for power, and all the things power brings. (We're getting better at the whole questing for power thing, but Republicans are ahead of us by a fairly wide margin.)

I certainly hope the current divisions in the Republican Party, and within conservatism generally, do damage to it at the polls. Maybe immigration and marriage equality and warmongering really are divides that can't be overcome. Certainly the extremism, absolutism, and general craziness on the right are taking their toll.

But something tells me they pull it together. The civil war is real, and it's entertaining, but it likely won't ever amount to much more than a sideshow.

Rep. Paul Ryan flames out

By Richard K. Barry

Yeah. This goof.

What's up with Rep. Paul Ryan's popularity? A new Rasumussen poll finds that just 35% of all likely U.S. voters view Ryan favourably, which is down 15 points from his 50% favourability rating last August just after Mitt Romney picked him as his running mate.

Fifty-four percent (54%) have an unfavorable opinion of the Wisconsin congressman. These figures include 17% with a Very Favorable view of him and 23% with a Very Unfavorable one. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.

So, what happened?

Two things: The stench of defeat rarely helps anyone's popularity, and then there's this, as noted by The Week:

In his new budget outline unveiled last week, Ryan once again put forward the policies he championed in the 2012 election: Lower tax rates across the board and cuts to programs aimed at the poor. Those policies did not sit well with voters last year, and they're not getting any more popular. Even the Republican National Committee conceded that point, saying the GOP had to change its ways because voters considered the party's positions "scary" and "out of touch."

Democrats were supposed to be oh-so-scared of this very serious Republican thinker after he was chosen by Romney to share the ticket. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. Paul Ryan's ideas suck and the American people get that. 

That's what's happened. 

Just go, Mitt

By Richard K. Barry

Goodbye!

It is not always true that campaigns and candidates end up hating their opponents at the end of any given campaign. It might be hard to believe, but it is possible to run for office in an honourable way such that no one feels disgusted at the end of the endeavour.

I can't speak for President Obama or his team, but, for me, Mitt Romney proved himself to be such a despicable creature that I feel nothing for his disappointment or Ann's tears at having to face such national public rejection. They clearly expected the great unwashed masses to understand that their social betters should, after all, be in charge. It must seem incredible to the Romney's that "the people" disagreed. 

We now hear that Mitt says "his heart said he was going to win the presidency, but when early results came in on election night, he knew it was not to be." He added that the loss hit him hard, and that Ann cried.

Maybe it's his contempt for nearly half the electorate as "takers" that annoys me most. Maybe it's the ease with which he lied about so many things that rankles. Or, more likely, it is his sense of entitlement that those who have made themselves a lot of money should be allowed to lead those who have not. It's as close as we get to royal ascension in America. The rich think they should be able to pass on the mantle of power to their own and are bloody annoyed when it doesn't work that way.

Bobby Jindal says Republicans can still be anti-gay bigots and win

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As ThinkProgress reports, at least one leading Republican, a major contender for the 2016 nomination, is refusing to back down on the party's long-standing anti-gay bigotry: 

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) -- a possible Republican candidate for president in 2016 -- rejected former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's argument that conservatives must embrace marriage equality for gays and lesbians if they want to survive as a party and reiterated his support for "traditional marriage."

"Look, I believe in the traditional definition of marriage," Jindal said during an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, and went on to claim that Republicans don't have to make the case on social issues to attract young voters and win future elections and instead should continue focusing on economic issues. "We lost [the 2012 election] because we didn't present a vision showing how we believe the entire economy can grow, how people can join the middle class. We're in aspirational party and we need policies that are consistant with that aspirational private sector growth."

And of course he's hardly alone on this. While some Republicans are indeed moving to support same-sex marriage (including the handful of enlightened conservatives like Huntsman), if not out of principle then as a result of partisan political calculation, most of the party isn't budging.

The Republicans are on the wrong side of history on this issue, as on so much else, as well as increasingly on the wrong side of public opinion. And while Jindal may want the party to run on an "aspirational" platform based on failed right-wing economic policies (i.e., they aspire to plutocracy), rights and fairness issues like same-sex marriage and women's health really do matter because they say a lot about a party's, or a candidate's, priorities and intentions.

If you don't understand that, if you think you can still run proudly on your bigotry, and if you don't understand you lost in 2012 because of far more than failing to "present a vision" (as if it was just a communications problem), you're a fool, and worse.

Christie gets testy

By Richard K. Barry

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was once again employing that trademark charm of his when he called a former White House doctor a "hack" for suggesting he was at risk of dying in office because of his weight. He also told her to "shut up" unless she examined him, according to ABC News. 

Said Christie: "If she wants to get on a plane and come here to New Jersey and asks me if she wants to examine me and review my medical history, I'll have a conversation with her about that. Until that time she should shut up."

This was First Read's take:

We’ve seen a lot of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) this week, talking about -- and joking about -- his weight. We also saw him get serious in a back and forth with an Arizona doctor – and former White House doctor – who suggested Christie lose weight because she’s afraid he’d die in office. Christie took offense. It makes for good cable fodder, but let’s not miss the bigger picture. Why did this topic come up? Christie decided to bring it up. This is about Christie trying to confront, ON HIS TERMS, what would be one of his biggest obstacles if he launches a presidential bid in 2016. He knows this is a hurdle; he knows it’s not an insignificant one. The biggest thing is he has changed his tone on this, becoming much more open about it, even hinting that he’s on a program and that people would notice if it’s working relatively soon. As late as last year, Christie’s standard response was essentially: my weight is my business, period. Not anymore. If you needed a hint that Christie is trying to get it together to run for president, this is it. There’s every chance Christie can use his battle with weight issues to connect to average Americans. It’s something everyone can relate to. But Christie has to look like he DOES care about this issue. And this week, he’s done a 180 and indicated he cares.

The first thing to note is that a president's medical records, or those who might aspire to the office, are a matter of great public interest, and you don't have to be a fan of The West Wing to know that. Second, I didn't go to medical school but I don't think that's required to understand that someone of Gov. Christie's size is in serious danger of living a much shorter life than those who are not his size.

Maybe Christie can use the issue to connect with average Americans, especially those who don't like to hear friendly advice only meant to help. Christie may have changed his tone on his weight problem, but it's still not a good tone. 

The "Oh, crap" moments of the 2012 campaign

By Richard K. Barry

Just to prove politics can be fun, First Read asked some campaign insiders from the Romney and Obama sides about their "Oh, crap" moments of the 2012 campaign:

Eric Fehrnstrom of the Romney campaign answered Gingrich winning South Carolina; Beth Myers of the Romney camp said it was Romney's three-state loss to Santorum (on Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri); Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said it was the close primary race in Michigan; Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said it was their worry that Romney might wrap up the nomination after the New Hampshire primary.

I might have thought Eric Ferhnstrom would have said his "Oh, crap" moment was when he realized he actually used the Etch-A-Sketch imagery to describe how Romney would supposedly pivot away from radical conservatism after he got the nomination.  And I can't believe no one from the Romney campaign cited the first time they saw the 47 percent video. 

As for Obama's crew, I think maybe their moment was really when they realized their candidate forgot to show up for the first debate. That was mine.

In more general terms, Republicans across the country must have had their collective moment when they surveyed the stage at any one of the GOP nomination debates seeing Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann, Santorum, Cain, Perry, and Romney, and thinking, "this is the best we can do? -- oh, crap."

Polishing a turd

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: For more on the Republican "fix" for itself, see Frank's post from yesterday, "Occasionally principled thoughtless assholes." See also our post on immigration and how moving to the left slightly is part of the fix, "Don't get excited about immigration reform." -- MJWS)

The GOP doesn't see anything wrong with their party that a quick buff and shine won't fix:

"It's not the platform of the party that's the issue," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday after being easily reelected to a second, two-year term. "In many cases, it's how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said."

A slide presented during a closed-press strategy session said that Mitt Romney might be president if he had won fewer than 400,000 more votes in key swing states.

"We don't need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes," said West Virginia national committeewoman Melody Potter.

So as far as they're concerned, it's not what you say but how you say it. So they can still be anti-women, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-pollution, pro-mythology and anti-science; they just need to market it better.

Yeah, that's the ticket. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Don't get excited about immigration reform

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Frank Moraes

MJWS:

Like Frank, I'm interested to see how this will go. And, obviously, there's still a long way to go to get anything meaningful done. But there's a political calculation at work for Republicans here that may very well lead to meaningful bipartisan reform.

As Jon Chait notes, the Republican strategy coming out of the election is to move left on immigration and right on everything else -- or to solidify their extremist right-wing positions. (It's a faulty strategy based on a faulty reading of the election -- that the problem was the Hispanic vote, and all Republicans need to do now is agree to moderate immigration reform and change some of their rhetoric generally, with no changes whatsoever to their positions on other issues (e.g., remain anti-tax absolutists) -- but it's got broad support across the party establishment, including 2016 frontrunners Ryan and Rubio.

And so both House and Senate Republicans are working on bipartisan reform. Chait again: "It's pretty amazing how fast this has happened. Republican leaders recognized an electoral weakness, figured it was on an issue they didn't want to fight on anyway, and are cauterizing the wound as fast as they can."

Again, it's still very early. There's a framework but nothing else, and we'll have to see if Republicans hold together on this one and if they're actually willing to make concessions to get a deal done that, in the end, would be seen as a major victory for the president. But it's promising that we're at this point, and it's all because Republicans, however delusional still, have been scared shitless by the demographic changes that, over time, will continue to isolate them out of power.

It's a fortuitous combination of political opportunism and the urgent need for reform, and Democrats should do everything they can to take advantage of the situation.

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Gerry-rigging

By Mustang Bobby 

(Ed. note: See also "Republican Electoral College Plan Would Undermine Democracy" by Alan I. Abramowitz at Sabato's Crystal Ball. -- MJWS)

After their vote earlier this week to re-draw the districts of the state, the Virginia legislature is on the verge of voting to change the way their Electoral College votes to favor Republicans:

Legislation that would apportion Virginia's electoral votes by the winner of each congressional district, instead of the current winner-take-all system, emerged from a Senate subcommittee today without a recommendation.

[...]

Critics of the legislation, this time around mostly Democrats, have labeled the bill and others like it "sore losers bills" considering the victory of President Barack Obama in the commonwealth in 2012.

The new same old GOP mantra: If you can't win honestly, then cheat. 

Rachel Maddow has been all over this story.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

GOP plan: If you can't win, cheat

By Mustang Bobby 

The last two presidential elections showed the Republicans that their ideas and candidates are having a tough time winning a majority of the American electorate. The simple solution would be to come up with better ideas and more palatable candidates. So far, though, their solution has make it harder for people to vote with phony scare tactics about voter fraud and gerrymandering districts, sometimes house by house, so that even if the Democrats win the majority of the votes in the state, the GOP still wins the Congressional district.

Now they're working on a way to fix it so that even the presidential election is rigged in their favor: 

The RNC chair is encouraging Republican governors and legislators -- who, thanks to the "Republican wave" election of 2010, still control many battleground states that backed Obama and the Democrats in 2012 -- to game the system.

"I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue [Democratic in presidential politics] that are fully controlled red [Republican in the statehouse] ought to be considering," [Reince] Priebus says with regard to the schemes for distributing electoral votes by district rather than the traditional awarding of the votes of each state (except Nebraska and Maine, which have historically used narrowly defined district plans) to the winner.

Pennsylvania -- the state that has already been to court over its voter ID law that was supposed to "guarantee the election for Mitt Romney" -- is thinking about it, as are several other states like Ohio and Virginia, both of which were won by Barack Obama in the last two elections. (It goes without saying that something will be in the works here in Florida. They've got nothing better to do.)

Democracy: it was fun while it lasted. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Obama first since 1956 to win 51% twice

By Richard K. Barry

It's good to win and it's even better to win convincingly. As Bloomberg reported yesterday:

Eight weeks after the Nov. 6 presidential election, a revised vote count in New York shows that Barack Obama is the first president in more than five decades to win at least 51 percent of the vote twice.

State election officials submitted a final tally Dec. 31 that added about 400,000 votes, most of them from provisional ballots in the Democratic-stronghold of New York City that were counted late in part because of complications caused by superstorm Sandy.

And to put that in historical perspective:

Obama is the first president to achieve that level of support in two elections since Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 and the first Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.

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