“There is a sense of entitlement to Romney,” Axelrod says. “He believes ‘I’m supposed to criticize you, but you’re not supposed to criticize me.’ ”
Just wanted to bring your attention to an
interview with David Axelrod I just read over at Politico. I found myself smiling while reading through the three-page article. I think the main thing is that it was very reassuring about how President Obama's campaign is being handled and the attitude of the staff as well as President Obama. You really need to read the whole thing for yourselves. But here are few of my favorite quotes.
Remember last week when Romney was decrying that President Obama would do anything to hold on to power? Not so much.
“There is something Orwellian about Romney’s analysis of Obama; it’s like he is looking in a mirror and ascribing things in himself to Obama: Romney says that Obama will do anything to hold onto power,” Axelrod says.
(snip)
“The last thing Obama cares about is holding onto power for the sake of holding onto power,” Axelrod says. “But he knows that beyond him and Romney, this is an important election.”
I've noticed that about Republicans. Have you? They often attribute their own motives to their opponent. It's as if they arrogantly think to themselves, "This is the way I am, so this is how my opponent must be." It's as if they can't conceive of somebody having motives that are not selfish and self-serving. Oh wait, I know, they've been reading Ayn Rand again.
When discussing all those negative ads that Romney is spending a small fortune on, I can picture in my mind that video from the 2008 campaign of President Obama brushing off his shoulders.
If negative ads are being used in an attempt to push persuadable voters toward Romney, so what? The Obama campaign believes there are not that many persuadable voters out there who actually will believe Obama is a terrible guy.
“Never will so much be spent to influence so few,” Obama told Axelrod.
As I've seen it noted several times over the last few weeks, for all the money the Republicans are pouring into negative ads, they haven't made the polls move much at all.
I'm also impressed by the fact that the President's campaign team doesn't ride the roller-coaster with the press. Of course, the press has to keep that roller-coaster going in order to keep readers/viewers engaged. Nothing like a good gaffe to fill the 24/7 hunger for something to talk about.
The experienced staff, Axelrod insists, does not have the same roller-coaster view of the campaign that the press has. “Our data has been incredibly stable for the entire year,” he says. “Our polling shows that President Obama’s standing in battleground states has held up very well. How much can you influence people [against] someone they know very well?”
A senior campaign official said Obama currently has 247 electoral votes solid or leaning toward him and Romney has 191. A candidate needs 270 to win.
“If we win Florida [with 29 electoral votes], we win,” the Obama official said. “I don’t want to be sanguine in the least, but we certainly have more paths to 270 than they do. From an Electoral College standpoint, they have to pull an inside straight.”
Yesterday on
Meet the Press, Chuck Todd explained just one of the paths to a President Obama victory, and how difficult it is for Romney to win:
Well today, and we're going to look at it just through the prism of Florida, the most Medicare, I think, sensitive state. But let me just let you in on how to follow this. Here are the electoral numbers. What these numbers stand for, 237 electoral votes are in states we think are already leaning in the Obama column; 191 electoral votes lean in the Romney column. We have nine toss-up states. Four in the Atlantic Coast here. Three in the Midwest, and two out West. But I want to show you the power of Florida in this battle ground. If the President is able to ride Medicare to Florida, look at this, his 237 goes to 266. He's four short. You just give him New Hampshire where he was yesterday [Total EV=270]. Romney can win everything else, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and look at that. He's two short [Total EV=268]. This is the power of Medicare, and the power of the state of Florida, and this is why you take Florida out of the Romney column, and he needs to do a clean sweep of the rest of the battlegrounds, including every small state like New Hampshire.
Oh yes, that gift of Florida and Medicare, which brings us to that choice Romney made by selecting Paul Ryan as his running mate, and one of the best quotes in the entire article.
Axelrod believes Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate can only hurt the ticket. “Ryan is very much an ideologue,” Axelrod said. “His views are not mainstream views.”
Then Axelrod quoted Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia: “Mitt Romney is the only person in America who looked at the way this Congress is behaving and said, ‘I want the brains behind THAT operation.’ ”
What a wonderful, uplifting article, and such a great way to start out the week. No
Manic Mondays for the Obama campaign! I'm bookmarking it. The next time the press goes off on another crazy roller-coaster ride because the Romney campaign has taken out of context yet again something President Obama or Vice President Biden said, I'm just going to go back and read that article again and remember ...
They've Got This!
Need more to smile about? Still hoping to help this video of 92 year old Retired North Dakota District Court Trial Judge and World War II veteran, Ralph Maxwell reading a poem he wrote about Mitt Romney go viral. There are some great links and descriptions in my original diary about Judge Maxwell.
Here is the text link to take you to the video at YouTube: World War II Veteran Ralph Maxwell says 4 More Years!. Please be sure to LIKE it at YouTube so that it will start trending. Since Saturday we've been able to get it up to over 41,000 views. Also, please include hashtags to your favorite news agencies and reporters if you Tweet it. It's very disappointing not to have seen any stories about the video at places like Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, or Politico.
Here are the words to Judge Maxwell's poem:
WHEREFORE ART THOU, MITT ROMNEY?
By Ralph Maxwell
O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou, Mitt Romney?
You flip-flop here, you flip-flop there,
You flip-flop almost ev'rywhere.
You ballyhoo what you're gonna do
And then you pull a switcheroo;
You now malign what you found fine;
Seems like you've got a jellyfish spine.
Obamacare, by you begun,
Now you'd trash it on day one.
Gun control you did extol,
But now you're preaching decontrol.
O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou, Mitt Romney?
We've got no clue what you will do
Or what new view you'll pander to.
Time was you championed women's choice,
But you no longer heed their voice;
On gay rights, too, guess you withdrew
Support they once enjoyed from you.
Global warming, EPA,
Immigration, minimum pay,
Roe V. Wade, also fair trade,
All joined your flip-flop cavalcade.
O, Romney-O, Romney-O Wherefore art thou, Mitt Romney?
So many things that you were for
You've turned against and slammed the door.
Stimulus and cap and trade,
Education, foreign aid,
Campaign reform, tarp rescues, too,
All victims of your switcheroo.
You take your stand on shifting sand,
We never know where you will land;
You vacillate, and you fabricate,
A wishy-washy candidate.
O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou Mitt Romney?
As gov'nor you let taxes rise,
Now ev'ry tax you demonize.
You say regardless of the facts
You'd take an axe to the millionaire's tax;
You'd feed the greed of the richest few
The poor and middle class you'd screw.
Your tax returns you hide from view
What evil lurks there we've no clue;
If they're not bad why hesitate?
Is it that they incriminate?
O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou Mitt Romney?
At Bain you plundered with a flair
And walked away a zillionaire.
You shipped off-shore, good jobs galore
To China, India, Singapore;
A job creator you are not.
And to boast you are is tommyrot.
As a total fraud, Mitt's got no peer;
What we must do is crystal clear:
Let's give Obama four more years!
Yes, it's Obama – four more years!
FOUR MORE YEARS!
FOUR MORE YEARS!
FOUR MORE YEARS!