The Daily Debate
edited by Robert Tracinski
Brought to you by RealClearPolitics.
May 31, 2012
1. The Record War
2. Should Obama Panic?
3. All Politics Are Local
4. Around the RealClear Universe
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1. The Record War
Can we start talking about something other than Seamus the Dog? Yes, we can.
The silly season is officially over—at least, as much as it is ever over. (See Trump, Donald.) As the general election begins in earnest, the discussion is finally beginning to turn away from discussions of the candidates' biographical details, significant and otherwise, and to their actual records.
The Obama campaign is hitting Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts, while Mark Mellman argues that criticisms of Romney leadership of Bain Capital are fair game.
Former GE head Jack Welch defends private equity against its negative portrayal by Obama and especially by Joe Biden. On the other hand, Michael Grunwald defends Obama's stimulus spending against Romney's attacks.
But of course the actual performance of the economy might trump what politicians and pundits are saying about it. The Obama camp should worry about a new Washington Post analysis which says that "The proportion of Americans in their prime working years who have jobs is smaller than it has been at any time in the 23 years before the recession, according to federal statistics, reflecting the profound and lasting effects that the downturn has had on the nation’s economic prospects."
The Post points out that this may be more significant than the unemployment rate.
"The ratio of employment to population, which economists refer to as 'epop,' 'is a much better measure for what people are experiencing in the job market,' Shierholz said. 'The unemployment rate is screwy right now because the labor market is so weak that people have stopped trying.'" And: "As the presidential race heads into the summer, the health of the economy—and how voters view it—becomes critical, and for many people, the job market is their most significant contact with the economy."
But as Nate Silver points out, the Obama camp can take comfort, of a sorts, in the fact that Obama's re-election year economy is much better than Jimmy Carter's.
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2. Should Obama Panic?
Robert Shrum argues that the Obama campaign has the election well in hand and has a strong case against Mitt Romney. That would be more comforting if Shrum didn't have something of a history of writing articles assuring Democrats that all is well.
Michael Barone delivers the opposite message, arguing that the Obama campaign is fooling itself on several key issues. In particular, he warns that this election won't be the kind where the two sides are so evenly matched that a campaign can win just by rallying its base.
"The strategy of rallying currently unenthusiastic core Obama voters—Hispanics, young voters, unmarried women—risks alienating others who may be more moveable than their counterparts were in 2004. The Obama managers seem unaware of that risk. Could be a problem for them." Another problem sign? A high-profile Democratic defection as former Representative Artur Davis switches registration to the Republican Party to run for Congress again.
Ed Kilgore accuses Davis of selling out, trading a poor Alabama district for a more upscale district in Northern Virginia.
But the Weekly Standard points out that Davis was once cited, along with Cory Booker, as part of the same rising generation of young Black Democrats as Obama, and he is saying that he has left the party because it has turned too far left.
Barone also warned the Obama campaign that "In my own experience as a political consultant, I found it dangerous to assume your opponents will screw up. Sometimes they don't." I would add: and sometimes your candidate does.
David Frum works hard to get across just how big a gaffe it was when Obama referred to a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland as a "Polish death camp," a formulation the Poles have been fighting to get rid of. The New Republic's Alec McGillis downplays the incident, pointing out that the slight was obviously unintentional and telling us to move on. But Matthew Kaminski puts this in the perspective of other diplomatic friction with Poland and points out that needlessly alienating an ally with a simple and obvious gaffe punctures Obama's claims of "smart diplomacy."
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3. All Politics Is Local
I'm not sure whether it's really true that "all politics is local," but local races can certainly serve as stand-ins and bellwethers for national contests. An example is next Tuesday's recall vote in Wisconsin.
E.J. Dionne advocates Governor Walker's recall, arguing that in attacking unions, Walker "sought to undermine one of the Democratic Party's main sources of organization." In itself, that's an interesting admission. On the other side, Michael Walsh argues that a defeat of the recall would end the unions' "war on reform" of state government finances.
Behind this skirmish is a deeper trend. The under-appreciated story of the 2010 election is the big Republican sweep in the state-houses, which has given Republicans a large number of laboratories in which to try out their policies and show off the results. Democrats, for their part, will have to try to stop these reforms or disparage the results. Either way, national politics is about to get a lot more local.
Philip Klein sums up the potential significance of the Wisconsin vote, which is not so much about President Obama's fate in Wisconsin, where he still leads in the polls. Instead, "a Walker win would prove to politicians at the state and federal level that voters will not only tolerate but reward leaders who take a stand on 'third rail' issues."
Klein also earned the top spot on today's RCP morning update by pointing out that between the Walker recall and the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, June is going to be an interesting and pivotal month.
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4. Around the RealClear Universe
There's much more on the main page at RealClearPolitics, and here are some highlights and sidelights from around the RealClear universe.
Naturally enough, the "record war" between Obama and Romney continues at RealClearMarkets, with links to an article on the weakness of the Obama recovery, as well as the Washington Post fact-checker's skepticism about Romney's claims about Bain's investment record.
In the wake of the Bo Xilai scandal, RealClearWorld links to an article on the spectacular corruption of China's princelings, as well as Robert Kaplan's intriguing formulation that " China Is No Longer Predictable." On the one hand, that might be welcome—if it means reform. But it also raises concerns about what an "unpredictable" China would be like. Remember the old line about how the Chines symbol for "crisis" is a combination of the symbols for "danger" and "opportunity."
At RealClearReligion: in addition to being the first black president and being dubbed by Newsweek as the "first gay president," Barack Obama is now, um, the " first Jewish president"?
Speaking of religion, RealClearBooks links to a review of a book on the small but intense phenomenon of the Ron Paul movement.
RealClearPolicy links to an article proposing a "conservative approach to climate change," which has the virtue of offering a very different approach from what we're used to seeing in the usual debate.
RealClearTechnology links to a nostalgic guide to the Great Format War—Betamax vs. VHS and that short of thing—which points out that this era is passing. Our children "will grow up in a world where physical storage of information is as outdated as rotary-dial telephones and mimeograph machines are now." Which is really amazing for those of us who grew up when rotary phones and mimeographs were still around.
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—Robert Tracinski |
