wednesday wrap-up

North Carolina State University

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He’s lost the base, right? It’s true: well, he’s lost a masssive 14% of them, leaving a teeny 81% who approve of him. Doomed! (See here)

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He’s lost the youth? Sadly, yes – listen to the stony silence that greeted him at North Carolina State University today:

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He’s lost the African American community, right? Like this young man at North Carolina State University today?

They’ve turned against the President, now taking their leadership from inspirational figures like Cornel West and Tavis Smiley?

Well, yes, an enormous 5% of the African American community, according to the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, disapprove of the President, a tiny 92% approving of him (up 9% from July). Vindication for West and Smiley, then.

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But what about Hispanics, his figures are tanking there, right?

Well yeah, look at their outright hostility towards the Obamas at tonight’s Congressional Hispanic Caucus Gala:

See? An ugly, baying mob, just looking for the President’s blood.

But, back to that poll – it has him at 57%-38% with Hispanics, up from 45%-48% in July. Crikey, that’s rather friendly baying.

Honestly, it’s just so hard to imagine why Hispanics/Latinos aren’t more attracted to the GOP:

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He’s looking at you. Have you contacted members of Congress yet about the jobs bill?

The ever magnificent What is Working has all the contact details you’ll need

Do your bit.

Pass. The. Bill. 😉

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But Americans hate the Jobs Act!

Oh really?

Gallup

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There are no words for this:

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Need a dinner date?

Donate!

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Read Bob Cesca. Now!

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Enough of this positivity: the New York result was a disaster, right?

Well, it certainly wasn’t pretty, the fool that is Weprin (D) was trounced in Brooklyn (but actually won in Queens) but the notion that the district had ever been an Obama-loving hot-spot is kind of comical – as Nate Silver put it, “I doubt that there was any district in the country (in 2008), perhaps outside a few remnants of the “Solid South,” where so many enrolled Democrats voted against Mr. Obama”.

And as Steve Kornacki pointed out, “Obama performed one point worse there than John Kerry had in 2004 and 12 points worse than Al Gore had in 2000”.

So, New York’s Ninth Congressional District was never big on the President. I’ll leave you to speculate why.

Nate Silver: “Roughly 40 percent of voters in the Ninth District are Jewish, 20 times the rate in the country as a whole. Moreover, and perhaps more important, many of those voters are Orthodox Jews, who often have starkly different political viewpoints than Reform or secular Jews, and who are extremely rare in the United States outside a few spots in the New York region.”

So, no, Jews haven’t turned against the President, it’s just that Orthodox Jews oppose him – as they always have done.

And don’t forget, Anthony Weiner won the seat in the first place thanks to some real classy race-baiting – see here

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Open for Questions: Youth and the American Jobs Act

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Harry Reid’s (first!) Twitter Town Hall on Job Creation

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Vice President Biden Hosts a “Campaign to Cut Waste” Cabinet Meeting

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Dublin, Ireland, May 2011

But Europe hates him, right?

Ahem.

President Barack Obama remains highly popular in Europe, with 75 percent in 12 EU nations approving his handling of global affairs, a poll said Wednesday.

He is also much better liked than his predecessor George W. Bush, whose rating in Europe was just 20 percent in 2008, said the Transatlantic Trends poll by the German Marshall Fund.

Obama’s success in eliminating Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appeared to be a factor in his popularity in the EU, with 73 percent backing his efforts to fight international terrorism.

(There’s a PDF at the link with all the poll findings)

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Yep, he’s still looking at you.

If you love him and everything he has achieved and everything he stands for, fight for him – contact Congress now, and donate if you can.

the hispanic caucus gala

President Obama gestures as he speaks about his basketball injury, caused by Reynaldo Decerega of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, at the Institute’s awards gala in Washington, September 14

“my fellow american”

Thank you so much desertflower for the link to this video over at Extreme Liberal, it’s stunning.

beer garden

President Barack Obama enjoys a beer with Dakota Meyer on the patio outside of the Oval Office, Sept. 14. The President will present Meyer with the Medal of Honor tomorrow during a ceremony at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

‘the gop’s genius plan to beat obama in 2012’

Mother Jones: Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania are pushing a scheme that, if GOPers in other states follow their lead, could cause President Barack Obama to lose the 2012 election – not because of the vote count, but because of new rules. That’s not all: There’s no legal way for Democrats to stop them.

The problem for Obama, and the opportunity for Republicans, is the electoral college….

…. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan – which has been endorsed by top GOPers in both houses of the state Legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett – Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote…

This could cost Obama dearly……

Full post here

Jonathan Bernstein (Washington Post): ….The result of all this would be that presidential elections lose a great deal of their legitimacy.

It would be entirely possible for a Republican to win the 2012 presidential election despite losing the popular vote by a solid margin and losing states containing a solid majority of electoral votes…..

In short, it’s an absolutely outrageous plan, terrible for democracy and terrible for Pennsylvania. But extremely good for the short-term prospects of Republican presidential candidates.

Full post here

Thank you Chiaro11

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‘the liberal disaffection myth’

Domenico Montanaro (MSNBC): President Obama’s base has abandoned him – so goes the conventional Beltway wisdom.

The problem with this accepted narrative: There’s no data to back this up, according to the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll.

The survey included these numbers:

– By an 81%-14% margin, Democrats approved of his job performance, essentially unchanged from his 82%-14% score in July.

– Among liberals, it was 74%-21% – exactly the same numbers from July.

– 92% of black respondents said they approved of Obama’s job with 5% disapproving. That’s actually up from July, when his approval with the group stood at 83%-13%.

– And among Hispanics, his approval stands at 57%-38%, up from his 45%-48% score in July…..

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Thanks Dorothy 😉

he’s lost the youth, you know

President Obama greets supporters after speaking on his proposed American Job Act at North Carolina State University in Raleigh

get to work ;-)

Have you contacted Congress yet?

Contact details

Pass. The. Bill.

😉

Gallup

raleigh (video added)

Will post video of speech asap

More soon

help me out here….

See Extreme Liberal’s post on Halperin’s history – here

So, MSNBC suspended Mark Halperin after he revealed his inner Teabagger by calling the President a “dick”.

Could anyone – anyone?! – explain to me why they now have him back on, regularly, as a supposed impartial analyst on President Obama? (Today, for example, he shared his expert opinion that the President is DOOMED!)

Are they serious?

If you’d like to ask MSNBC why they are still using this creep, you’ll find their contact details at What is Working (here)

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Here’s what Steve Benen had to say at the time: …. If you can watch the video, note how Halperin, ostensibly one of the nation’s most influential pundits, was smiling, with a smug satisfaction. It wasn’t a word he just blurted out in the heat of a larger discussion – Halperin thought about it….

….There are a couple of angles to keep in mind here. The first is that Halperin’s credibility as an objective observer of political events has long been dubious, at best, but this morning’s little stunt should remove all doubt. In candor, I don’t much care that Halperin sides with the right over the left, and takes cheap shots at Democrats. I care that Halperin is presented to the public as a neutral, even-handed expert, when that’s plainly not the case. To this extent, the “dick” comment only helps bring an end to a thin pretense.

…  If the president stays cool, he’s an emotionless Mr. Spock. If the president shows some fire in the belly, he’s “a dick”.

What passes for mainstream political punditry in 2011 is too often a national embarrassment.

Full post here

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Remember?

Alex Pareene (June 2011): …. I don’t care what Halperin calls Barack Obama. But for the record, President Obama did not really act like a dick yesterday, which is unsurprising, because Mark Halperin is a horrible political analyst who is wrong about everything….

This is a great excuse for MSNBC to fire Halperin, though! I mean if they won’t fire him for being incompetent at understanding and explaining politics they now have an opportunity to fire him for being disrespectful and vulgar.

Being a professional observer of the “horse race” is bad enough, but Halperin doesn’t even understand the horse-race element of politics. He fails at being a hack. He’s too dumb to correctly parrot conventional wisdom. He is pretty sure Sarah Palin and Donald Trump are 2012 front-runners. He thought “suspending his campaign” to fix the economy and not knowing how many houses he has were both huge messaging victories for John McCain. He wrote a book about how to win in 2008 that predicted everything Hillary did, but in his world it all worked. He thought Bush’s political comeback would come any day now throughout the entirety of the years 2006-2008. He can’t interpret polls or see through the spin of GOP consultants who are much smarter than he….

So this indefinite suspension is a nice first step, but I bet it won’t be long before they allow him to come crawling back into Mika and Joe’s little parlor of inanity. (And will Joe get in trouble for egging him on? Does Joe get in trouble for anything?)