I apologize for my username. As a lifelong independent voter who votes solely on economic issues I felt Obama should have used his supermajority to push through a re-invention of the economy such as higher taxes for the wealthy and a mass tax loophole closure, a Robin Hood tax on derivatives, college subsidies for education degrees and focusing the stimulus solely on expanding college sizes instead of what we were given. Then he would have had his Obamacare without dissent.
That, to me, would have held back the Tea Party tide that plagued America and the world economy with two years of spiteful intransigence.
However, the Republicans have made it extremely clear that they are no party of mine. So here I am. I, like you, want to see more and better Democrats elected.
But apologies for the tangent. We have an election to win.
So, Joe, your first national debate ever without needing kid gloves for a vapid ditz. You've earned it.
Obama may have lost the debate on style. No dancing round it. Romney sold his bullshit with a fluency that a year of relentless debating can give a man. But in doing so, he gave you so many gifts, whether the president meant to rope-a-dope him or not. Romney shifted hard to the centre. He excoriated the very idea of tax cuts for the wealthy.
He touted Romneycare as a legislative triumph instead of an article of shame only forgivable by converting to retroactive severe conservatism. He accused the president of gutting Medicare instead of you. He looked at every person who voted for him in the primary straight in the eye and he slapped them in the face. Ryan cannot and won't. Would he disown the Tea Party or the centre? Depress turnout or lose the independents?
Your job, Joe, is to make him disown one.
The president may have not had his coffee before the debate. In doing so, he let Romney dig his own grave. Whether Romney or Ryan gets pushed into it doesn't matter. Here are your objectives for this Friday:
1. Clarify who stands for what on Medicare. The president redirected that $718 billion into incentivising better care from hospitals, closing the donut hole and streamlining the administrative and premium costs of Obamacare. No senior will lose quantity or quality of healthcare because of what the president did. You, Paul Ryan, would take that $718 billion and throw it at interest payments to China. I think Florida deserves to know the truth by now.
2. Demand specifics on exactly how personal income tax cuts create jobs. Why would the CEO of a large corporation feel the need to create more jobs with their own money? Surely he or she understands the free market to employ people with their company's own business profits? On that note, why did you oppose the President's corporate tax cut?
3. Ask Mr. Ryan if he endorses Mitten's new epiphany of no tax cuts and the not-quite-repeal-and-replace of Obamacare. Does he reject his own budget plan which the old Mitt called 'marvelous' or does he stay with the Tea Party who see him as the last, best hope of a fuck-you-I've-got-mine free market.
4. What's your foreign policy? Take your time.
Now, to zingers.
Let's face it, Fernstrohm has a point. They're the moments that end up on YouTube and make the average American sit up, take notice, and remember in the polling booth.
'Yes, government picks winners and losers. If you make profits by seizing companies and firing Americans, you're going to be a loser under this president.'
'You're the candidate of the Tea Party. Give them a reason to vote for what your running mate said last debate.'
'Look at America straight in the eye and tell us why tax cuts for you and Mitt Romney are more important than American children having health insurance.'
'You've sounded tonight like a person Mitt Romney likes to fire.'
'Your deficit math doesn't add up. Your America would owe more to other countries, and Americans would owe you nothing.'
'Those giant cuts you want to make to education? Now that's literally class warfare.'
You have a license for aggression that the president will never have.
Say it's so, Joe.
