The Call

I remember when I was a child and heard John F. Kennedy say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

That stirred something deep in me. Part of what drives us as human beings is that we want to be part of something larger than ourselves. We want desperately to belong. There is a small quiet place in each of us just waiting for someone to ask us to make our own unique contribution to the greater good.

I feel like I've been waiting all my life for another President to ask of me what I heard JFK asking all those years ago. I finally heard it again from Barack Obama.

No Commentary Required 10/9/12

Polls, polls, and more polls. If you're freaking out about them, here's some interesting news from the latest ABC/WaPo edition.

Night-to-night data indicate a sizable boost for Romney, and drop for Obama, on Thursday night, a day after their first debate, which Romney widely is seen as having won. But both of those trends subsequently subsided in this poll, conducted Thursday through Sunday.

The net effect is slight at best. Romney is now seen favorably by 47 percent of registered voters overall, unfavorably by 51 percent; Obama’s rating is better, 55-44 percent.

*****

Joshua Holland has a little fun with the freak-out (hint: when you're freaking out, it helps to laugh).

As a good liberal, my first instinct upon learning that Mitt Romney is ahead by 4 points in the latest Pew poll was, obviously, to wring my hands.

Then I realized that a 4-point margin in November probably means the Republicans taking the Senate and extending their majority in the House. I don't want to live in Mitt Romney's neo-feudal society, so I got out an exacta-knife and went to slit my wrists.

But then -- just in the knick of time! -- I saw that Romney's post-debate bounce appeared to be receding in the Gallup poll, which once again has Obama up by 5. And just like that, the clouds parted, birds began to sing and I felt like a kid who just found an adorable little puppy under the family Christmas tree.

The moral of the story: It's important to invest a great deal of weight in each new poll because that's what makes elections fun! And it's an especially valuable exercise when the data is very noisy -- like in the days following a big debate.

That's also why focusing on the polling averages -- which are less responsive to short-term shifts driven by the news cycle -- is so boring. You could go an entire election season without a single freakout, and, really, what's the point of that?

*****

The Obama campaign captured one of the more craven aspects of Romney's foreign policy speech yesterday.

*****

During elections, we hear things about Joe Sixpack and Soccer Moms and Nascar voters. Perhaps we should have a new category for Pre-existing Condition voters (between 20-50% the electorate).

Jill Thacker was dying for a cup of coffee when she recently ran into a 7-Eleven convenience store. To her pleasant surprise, the coffee was free -- as long as she would commit to drinking it in either a red Mitt Romney cup or a blue Barack Obama cup.

"Which are you going to choose, Mom?" her son asked.

Which, indeed. A gun-owning, big-government-hating Republican, Thacker's every instinct told her to buy a Romney cup. But Thacker, 56, and her daughter have asthma -- a pre-existing condition -- and with Obama as president they'll be guaranteed the ability to buy insurance.

Thacker stood in the 7-Eleven and stared at the red and blue cups, stymied by the choice they represented...

She thought about her insurance, which covers her only if "I get hit by a bus." It's the only insurance she can afford given her preexisting condition.

She thought about how she's still paying off a $22,000 emergency room bill from last year.

She thought about her 25-year-old daughter, who's on her father's insurance only because of Obamacare.

But she also thought about how, in many fundamental ways, she just doesn't like Obama.

Then she reached for the blue cup with Obama's name on it.

"I really do feel conflicted," she said. "But for me, it's all about health care. It's my number one thing."

*****

And finally, one more picture from President Obama paying homage to Cesar Chavez yesterday. In the comments to my post about this last night, Bill brought up something important to notice. Yesterday was Columbus Day. Chavez was Indigenous. Ponder the significance of that one for a moment.

Paying Homage

For me, this first term of President Obama has been filled with many memorable moments. But today I think of two that stand out as special - if only because I suspect they will go unnoticed by many, but speak volumes to some about where this man's heart truly resides.

Visiting the tomb of Bishop Oscar Romero


Visiting the grave of Cesar Chavez

Having the President of the United States pay homage to these men who dedicated their lives to healing wounds that were inflicted by this country means more to me than I can express.

Romney: all of the above

Prior to the debate we all know that Mitt Romney's strategy was to say anything he thought a particular audience wanted to hear.

Many pundits thought that during the debate, Romney etch-a-sketched himself away from his "severe conservative" self to the "moderate" version. That didn't sit quite right with me. And today I finally figured out why.

Who knew that he'd take this flip-flopping thing to a whole new level and perform feats unheard of in political history by taking multiple sides of most issues in one debate?

Don't believe its possible? Well...how about saying you aren't going to cut taxes for the wealthy one minute and then talk about cutting rates for everyone the next? There was the one where he talked about killing Obamacare and bragged about Romneycare - almost in one breath. And then there was the one about supporting alternative energy development and criticizing Obama for investing in same.

This all started coming clear to me when I read this paragraph from his foreign policy speech today.

In Afghanistan, I will pursue a real and successful transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014. President Obama would have you believe that anyone who disagrees with his decisions in Afghanistan is arguing for endless war. But the route to more war -- and to potential attacks here at home -- is a politically timed retreat that abandons the Afghan people to the same extremists who ravaged their country and used it to launch the attacks of 9/11.

So he's promising a transition to Afghan security forces by 2014 AND saying that politically timed retreats are the route to more war.

Romney's plan seems to be to criticize whatever Obama supports - and then to embrace Obama's goals as his own while proposing policies that would accomplish the opposite. I know that sounds ridiculous and impossible. That's because it is. And its why, if anyone is actually paying attention, Romney's campaign will go down as the most craven in our history.

The sad thing is that President Obama has to debate this guy. And his so-called "supporters" are suggesting that the best way to do that is to give this nonsense the credence of attacking it.

I have a hunch what he'll do with that shit next time around.



:-)

"Change as a joint project between leader and led"

The other day Xpostfactoid wrote an article that I'd recommend you take a look at titled: The credo of a community organizer. Here is his conclusion:

It didn't take a four-year crawl back from a financial industry meltdown to make Obama warn that change is slow and frustrating and unromantic. Understanding change as a joint project of leader and led is a concept that Obama has held, and expressed, since he was a 24 year-old neophyte organizer.

Amidst all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about what President Obama should/shouldn't have done in the debate, I appreciate this reminder more than I can say. Certainly the President has his job to do. But when that's ALL we can see or talk about, we forget something critical he's been trying to tell us for a very long time.

We can do this. It will not be easy. It will require struggle and sacrifice. There will setbacks and we will make mistakes. And that is why we need all the help we can get. So tonight I want to speak directly to all those Americans who have yet to join this movement but still hunger for change - we need you. We need you to stand with us, and work with us, and help us prove that together, ordinary people can still do extraordinary things.

I am blessed to be standing in the city where my own extraordinary journey began. A few miles from here, in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant, is where I learned what it takes to make change happen.

I was a young organizer then, intent on fighting joblessness and poverty on the South Side, and I still remember one of the very first meetings I put together. We had worked on it for days, but no one showed up. Our volunteers felt so defeated, they wanted to quit. And to be honest, so did I.

But at that moment, I looked outside and saw some young boys tossing stones at a boarded-up apartment building across the street. They were like boys in so many cities across the country - boys without prospects, without guidance, without hope. And I turned to the volunteers, and I asked them, "Before you quit, I want you to answer one question. What will happen to those boys?" And the volunteers looked out that window, and they decided that night to keep going - to keep organizing, keep fighting for better schools, and better jobs, and better health care. And so did I. And slowly, but surely, in the weeks and months to come, the community began to change.

You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.

We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have little; who've been told that they cannot have what they dream; that they cannot be what they imagine.

Yes they can.

We are the hope of the father who goes to work before dawn and lies awake with doubts that tell him he cannot give his children the same opportunities that someone gave him.

Yes he can.

We are the hope of the woman who hears that her city will not be rebuilt; that she cannot reclaim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm.

Yes she can.

We are the hope of the future; the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided; that we cannot come together; that we cannot remake this world as it should be.

The pundits don't understand this and likely never will. They want to put all the focus on the leader and pretend like his performance is all that matters.

President Obama has been saying all along that that's NOT how change happens. Its actually how we strip ourselves of our own power and give it away.

So perhaps next time you're feeling down about something going on in this election and become tempted by the demon of cynicism, its time to take a look at that face in the mirror.



If not now...when?

"I'm his number one fan"

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this picture of Janiya Penny being overcome at meeting President Obama.

And now, we learn the story behind the photo.

Penny has sickle cell anemia, a life-threatening disease that often leaves her in excruciating pain. She was approached by Make-A-Wish almost three years ago. When they found out that she wanted to meet the President, they tried to get her to change her wish -- they just weren't sure they could make it happen.

Penny, however, was resolute, says her mother, Breale Gray.

"I'm his number one fan," Penny told HuffPost.

It all began in 2008, Gray told HuffPost, when Penny and her mother closely followed the election of the first African-American president. Although Penny was only 4 at the time, her mother says that she already had a sense of the significance of the historical moment.

They stayed up late to watch President Obama give his inaugural speech. Penny proclaimed that it was due to her wearing her Obama T-shirt on election day that the President was able to win.

Almost four years later, on August 8, 2012, Penny finally got to meet her hero.

OK, off to grab the kleenex...bless you Janiya.

I sure hope you have that lucky t-shirt ready for a repeat performance on November 6th!

State of the Race: Romney gains with Republicans

Everyone is looking deeply into the tea leaves of recent polling to see if Romney got a bounce in them following the debate...me included. One way to describe what I'm seeing is to suggest that the Republicans are coming home.

As you know by now, I don't tend to pay much attention to the national numbers. But there are some signs in a few state polls that indicate the race has tightened there. For the most part though, I take them with a grain of salt.

First of all, most of the swing state polls we've seen come out since the debate are from Rasmussen and We Ask America - both firms with a pretty heavy Republican bias. Unlike conservatives, I don't think its wise to discount these results. But its also important to avoid crafting a narrative about what's going on in the election simply based on them.

The other thing to take into account is something Nate Silver warns us about.

Polling trends can sometimes be odd in reaction to news events. One factor is that supporters of a particular candidate may be more enthusiastic, and more inclined to respond to surveys, after he gets a favorable development in the news cycle...

There is another type of polling bias, however, which is potentially more relevant when there is polling after a major development in the news cycle. Namely, polls are very probably biased toward high-information voters who take more interest in the news and are more likely to respond to political surveys.

So what we may be seeing from these immediate polls is an increased response by enthusiastic high-information Republicans who were excited about the debate. Nate Cohn points out that Obama got a similarly elevated response when polling immediately after the convention showed a 7-8 point bounce in his direction. Later that leveled off to 3-4 points.

There is one poll that just came out yesterday that is worth looking at a little more closely. Public Policy Polling suggests that the race has tightened in Wisconsin since the debate. But the specific shift they describe is important to keep in mind.

The main shift compared to 2 weeks ago in Wisconsin is an increase in Republican enthusiasm about Romney and the election in general. He's gone from leading Obama by 79 points with Republicans (89-10) to an 85 point advantage (92-7). One thing that might be reassuring for Democrats is that Obama's held steady with independents in the state, continuing to hold a 9 point lead.

That's completely consistent with what we saw in the national Ipsos/Reuters poll released just after the debate.

So if you take all that together - its clearly NOT time to light our hair on fire about the state of this race. Romney may have assured Republicans with his about-face lies. But he can't win this thing with only Republican support. Independents aren't buying what he's trying to sell and Democrats clearly have his number.