After a month where, even though he outspent Romney nearly 2-1 (nearly 4-1 if you’re just counting media) and didn’t move the needle, President Obama seems to have created the gaffe that might signal the end of his Presidency next January.
“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
The Obama camp is complaining about context, generally a sure sign you’re in trouble. But, does context even matter with this quip? Romney responds:
“The context is worse than the quote,” Romney told CNBC, in an interview that was tweeted out by the Republican National Committee.“The context, he says, you know, you think you’ve been successful because you’re smart, but he says a lot of people are smart. You think you’ve been successful because you work hard, a lot of people work hard. This is an ideology which says hey, we’re all the same here, we ought to take from all and give to one another and that achievement, individual initiative and risk-taking and success are not to be rewarded as they have in the past,” Romney said. “It’s a very strange and, in some respects, foreign to the American experience type of philosophy.”
Here are some samples:
From the brilliant Michael Ramirez:
Poll after poll suggest that Obama is underwater to Romney on the economy, and this quote certainly can’t be helping with most business-type folks.
My question is this – does this statement have the possibility of being the bumper-sticker slogan that no candidate wants to give the other side? If Romney wins, will the month of July be looked at as a turning point?
Or is it just a topic du jour that will be lost as the news cycle continues on?
Whether or not you agree with the President regarding what he said, does this particular statement have the possibility of becoming THE anti-Obama slogan this election cycle?
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Full story: “You didn’t build that.” – The quote/gaffe of the 2012 election?
most people can understand it. If not, they’re probably going Romney anyway.
that you are an Unaffiliated voter.
You hear the following phrase in an ad about 100 times a day for the next five months, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Now tell me the truth–does that sound like a soundbite that is going to help Obama get re-elected? Who the hell is going to run and pay for a 3 1/2 minute ad so you can hear the entire context?
This is politics, not 6th grade camp where people actually care about getting the whole picture and teaching fairness. This is about taking someone’s words and using them to your advantage. And Obama just handed Romney’s campaign a fucking gift that will keep on giving for the next 4 months.
I agree with everything Obama said. I’m a small business owner and I would NOT be where I am today without the myriad of advice and people that went out of their way to make sure I succeeded. God love him for telling the truth–I fear it may just cost him dearly.
If he’d said “You didn’t build that” earlier in the paragraph, when he was describing infrastructure and education, it wouldn’t have been an issue at all. His gaffe was in stopping whatever he was saying about business owners and going back…
If he’d said
which is what he obviously meant, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Or maybe we would. It doesn’t take much effort these days to digitally alter audio; the Romney campaign was so off-track in being forced to respond to the Bain attacks that he needed to come up with something. Based on this and his VFW speech yesterday, someone told him he’d better get back on the offensive and off of his heels.
That’s my point, PR. That’s why it’s called a gaffe, a bad sound bite, phrasing…call it whatever you like.
The point isn’t whether or not voters will agree with what he said when it’s taken in context–because it won’t be taken in context. If it were, I think a lot of folks would take it the way I did and agree with it 100%.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda…but he didn’t…and that’s why we are talking about it.
If you are a Republican, you probably aren’t going to agree with anything he says so what is relevant to me is what the Unaffiliateds are going to think about this. After all, they are the ones that will ultimately decide who the next POTUS will be.
That’s the point of this diary, I think–can a gaffe cost you an election?
Just ask John “the fundamentals of our economy are sound” McCain that question.
McCain lost the election for saying “the fundamentals of our economy are sound”? No, McCain lost the election because he was running against a very charismatic natural leader who was pretty effective at running as the head of a nationwide movement. Then in desperation, he picked a VP candidate to get some excitement back on his side of the board, but ended up ruining the bipartisan image that was the best thing he had going for him, and making himself ideologically unelectable.
So no, John McCain didn’t lose an election by nearly 200 votes in the electoral college because of a gaffe.
I DO think that was the final nail in his political presidential run.
It was the absolute proof that the guy didn’t have a fucking clue, starting with who he chose as a running mate and ending with that statement, a day before Wall Street crashed and we entered the second Great Depression.
Mitt’t must come clean on taxes, when he left Bain, and his off shore tax havens. Those are NOT gaffes.
These are willful actions takes by Mitt to deceive the voters. This is Mitt giving a big middle finger to the media, to independents, to moderates, to anyone interested in knowing the truth. That will sink Mitt far quicker than this out-of-context edited sound bite.
Obama should have quoted her…..she said it with passion and conviction and it compelled her into the MA Senate race…….Obama did not give it the same sincerity….even tho, he and she were both absolutely right…
and as gaffer-in-training Obama cinches up his yellow belt and steps into the dojo with 8th dan black belt gaffer Romney, they square off:
“Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are”
“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”
“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”
“I should tell my story. I’m also unemployed.”
“[My wife] drives a couple of Cadillacs.”
Obama lays dazed on the canvas, wondering what the hell just happened…
Obama has been President for almost a full term now, plus coupled with the brutal first campaign, I am actually surprised he hasn’t had more gaffes than he has. Of course Romney is in his second national campaign, but the man can be relied on for pure gold once or twice a month, not just gaffes mind you, but outright, easily disproven lies.
In the gaffe arena, I am saying advantage Romney. There is plenty of material for Obama to work with to sway the unafilliated voter.
or have you crossed over to the dark side?
and I like social security, healthcare and the middle class, the co-prophet of the end times has instructed me to pull the lever for Romney. I must obey.
I knew it. What can I do to save you from yourself?
I have to say, on a more serious note, that I just finished reading the entire speech and if this is the political philosophy that you embrace (and obviously I do), I think the average reader will find his comments quite moving.
They are reminiscent of the same type of fireside chats FDR gave during the Great Depression–that we are here for each other, to support each other through good times and bad. Quite honestly, I really love this speech. If one good thing came out of his gaffe, it’s that it forced me to read the whole thing and it is well worth the time.
I think I got my metaphors all fucked up. I feel confused right now after rereading your comment. Maybe I just need coffee…
But only if you define “gaffe” to include a string of words put together by selectively and maliciously editing a candidate’s actual comments.
In this case, the President is absolutely correct that Romney is quoting him out of context. In fact, he is not only quoting out of context, but he is fabricating a quote by eliding the context.
And Romney’s tweet is just gibberish.
I say go ahead and let it become a bumper sticker slogan, because it will only highlight the mendacity of Romney. By the end of the campaign, Romney will be defined as a tax cheat who brings to the table lying, secretiveness, and a deeply racist constituency. I look forward to that dooming both his candidacy and the Republican Party.
that Obama has promoted for helping small businesses instead of endlessly obsessing over “gotcha” sound bites, it is clear that the president is working for the American people as opposed to the Republicans in Congress who filibuster and bluster and are working solely for their political party.
Republicans from January 20, 2009 have pinned their hopes for retaking the White House on obstructing and throttling the American economy and blaming it on the president. It might work but returning to the failed policies of the Bush era isn’t going to do anything except make the 1% richer.
Me thinks this is phony hyperbole like calling Obama foreign. Lies and slander are all Republicans do.
If Romney’s economic agenda is the Ryan Budget then we’re all screwed but then again the little liar never talks about anything he’s going to do in any specific terms.
In fact, Obama is putting out ads directly countering Romney’s claim, and the news media seems to be keeping it going, too.
But Romney has some problems in continuing to pursue this line of attack:
1) Romney said almost exactly the same thing about the 2002 Olympians – that they didn’t get there on their own. Lewis Black brought this up on The Daily Show last night: Running a business is something you do all by yourself. Running a 4-minute mile, that takes a village.
2) Obama’s statement was a gaffe only in that he didn’t deliver the paragraph well; his meaning was clear, and today the AP has a story out noting that Romney is taking Obama’s statement “wildly out of context”.
So yes, this could hurt Obama. But it might also hurt Romney exactly where he’s already vulnerable: in the trust and flip-flopping departments.
He was right.
When UPS built the interstate highway system.
And TWA built all those airports. Or was it FEDEX?
I remember when Thomas Edison built the electrical grid.
And private industry put Neil Armstrong on the moon.
And I have strong personal experience of all the private investment and funding for our national security: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps.
I’m not talking about ginormous no-bid contracts to Blackwater or XI or whatever they are called now.
Oh, and I recall just a few years ago, after clamouring for and getting all the deregulation they wanted, the Savings & Loans bailed themselves out. (See FIRREA 1989) And the banks learning from that lesson bailing themselves out in 2008 (See TARP, TARP 2 and the FDIC)
Yeah – entrepreneurial talent has created huge wealth. And helped reinvent the US economy every once in awhile. But I also know how the railroads got built with public land grants. How the patent office suppresses a hundred innovations a day in order to protect intellectual property. And how unrestricted capitalism is what the greatest economist of them all, Adam Smith, demonstrated would lead to monopolies and corporate monarchy.
The only producers in America that have even a chance to claim they did it themselves would be a farmer. A farmer who never got crop insurance, loan guarantees, disaster assistance, upstream water user’s rights, etc etc. And even then- someone protects their property rights and someone had to acquire the land for them for the first non-native owner. (Not western ranchers- too much water subsidies in the form of giant eater projects.)
Oh – speaking of giant water projects- how about the federal subsidies to Las Vegas in the form of cheap electricity and water storage from he Hoover Dam. Ahh, I remember it well, all those casino owners paying for the Hoover Dam.
The quote hurts because
stupiduninformed people don’t want to acknowledge the public services and benefit.Just like the GOTP health care reform plan- eliminate Medicare, Tricare and Medicaid and then Don’t Get Sick, or Die Fast.
Just like the GOTP “jobs” bills that won’t create any jobs.
He’s an un-American lyin African who’s not like you. His education from his Kenyan Dad (who was a Brit) and Kenyan grandfather of the Mau Mau rebellion has caused to him hate England and our special relationship to the UK and so on.
Just because it’s a good political quote doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
People our stupid- for those who are informed our job is to rise above it. Not roll around in it.
Help me understand this: every poster here, and everyone else I’ve pressed on why they support Romney concludes because he’s not Obama, which isn’t really an answer. (I said the same thing to Bush sr supporters who somehow thought the guy had become someone other than the guy in the primary in ’80. The same thing to the Dukakis supporters. the same thing to the Gore and Kerry supporters. Some of which you could look up.)
Why do you support Romney?
for righteous ranting…
Very Righteous rant!
You say ‘outspent 2-1 (4-1 if you include media)’. Um, I don’t suppose you’ve noticed recently, but FOX News is pro-Romney, and most of the other networks are pretty neutral (MSNBC excluded, and even they attempt to present the other side…)
Heck, I was about ready to rip out my radio yesterday listening to NPR praising Romney’s VFW speech and his “patriotic” character without even doing the slightest fact-checking.
But note that Romney said almost exactly the same thing to Olympic athletes in Salt Lake City:
So where are the tax returns showing that what Mitt Romney didn’t build without some help from the incredible American system isn’t stored in offshore bank accounts that he’s used to evade taxes for the last ten years?
So how dare you say he needed help gutting those companies and stashing hundreds of millions of dollars into private shell companies and offshore accounts?
He takes 100% responsibility — oh wait.
The same could be said regarding the 4:1 spending imbalance between Restore Our Future vs. Priorities USA:
Restore Our Future supports Mitt Romney: $53,587,376
Priorities USA Action supports Barack Obama: $14,845,856
According to the latest WSJ/NBC poll, as you say, the numbers haven’t moved significantly (other than increasing the number of voters really ticked off with both candidates and/or the way the campaigns are being waged thanks to the unlimited spending by outside groups).
Allahpundit over at HotAir breaks it down:
That poll is not a good one for the President – even with an egregious Dem oversampling that makes 2008 look like a neck-and-neck affair, there are still some really negative results for Obama.
tens of millions, polls hardly budge.
I’m certainly not touting any particular poll, and what the results are in November are completely up in the air.
Just addressing your misleading point that somehow Obama has a tremendous spending edge.
Right now, due to Citizens United, it’s more of citizens getting turned off as the airwaves become so saturated that we’re all getting good at hitting the mute button (or fast forward) on our TV remotes.
Which is unfortunate because it makes reasonable discourse that much harder.
See, I’m doing my best not to make it personal
He did have an edge, but that’s the nature of the beast. He’s been raising money that he can spend now for a long time.
Until the convention is over, Romney is a little hamstrung on what his actual campaign can spend.
Folks on my side are thankful to have Citizens United as a balance to Union money. I’m sure we won’t agree about that, but that’s ok.
but CU is the very thing that’s destroying the political process. So I can’t.
I wonder what the net worth of all the unions are, and how that stacks up to the net worth of just the Fortune 500.
In this list
Restore Our Future
(supports Mitt Romney) $82,200,973
American Crossroads
$40,063,638
Winning Our Future
(supports Newt Gingrich) $23,907,955
Priorities USA Action
(supports Barack Obama) $19,973,489
Club for Growth Action
$10,237,333
Majority PAC
$9,218,279
House Majority PAC
$8,503,610
Red White and Blue Fund
(supports Rick Santorum) $8,388,547
American Bridge 21st Century PAC
$7,890,414
this one will not amount to much over time. Yes a problem for now but not a major one. Wouldn’t have been a problem at all if he had just added the words “all by yourself with no help” before coming to a convenient for the other side full stop in that particular sentence. Sorry, elbee. If this is the worst clunker on the Obama side, Romney’s on pace to remain way ahead on the clunker scale in both quantity and quality.
Agree with those who say it’s mainly being willfully misunderstood and misconstrued by those who are voting for Romney (or the Bircher candidate) anyway.
Surprised dwyer hasn’t weighed in to completely agree with you that this means Obama is 100% guaranteed doomed and any Dem who disagrees is an airhead. Even though a recent post gaffe poll shows a slightly bigger national lead for Obama, which is at least better than a slip.
Also, even people not crazy about the job Obama is doing like him better by a healthy margin. Not insignificant in our one national race that is more a popularity contest than any other political race at any level. So I think it’s not yet quite time for Dems to hang their heads and concede.
but, I fear it may be meaningful. I have been a small business owner for much of my life. I find most sall business owners to be woefully uninfored and copletely resentful of govt and any regulation. Just ask those you know to explain Gallagher.
Or, we could just ask the smartest guy in the room if he thinks it’s a significant gaffe and that would be the guy not on this blog. It’d be the same guy currently running the country who just took out millions of dollars worth of ad buys in 6 swing states to directly address his comment.
Golly, is it just possible his campaign staff knows something we brilliant bloggers don’t? Just in case that might actually be the case, I’ll go with Obama’s approach and reaction on this one. I’m pretty damn appreciative he has the sense to see the potential damage here and try and get out in front of it instead of living in denial over it.
He isn’t conceding by addressing a potentially damaging gaffe that could cost him countless votes. He’s just being his usual pragmatic, realistic self.
and that is who he has working for him. I’ll take them over Rove and ArapaDope any day
The question is movement in the ranks of the those who really are still up for grabs. And I’m not saying “no problem”. My vote was for the agree but problem option. My comment qualifies the extent of that problem as I see it. I don’t think it’s a nuclear problem.
Also agree that single gaffes aren’t fatal by themselves. I agree wit cdsmith, for instance, that McCain didn’t lost just because of his “the economy is sound gaffe” A single gaffe strong enough to sink a campaign all by itself is very rare and I don’t think this is anywhere near that level.
I also think the Obama message machine is moving fast and well on this. Remember it’s not about people who aren’t likely to vote for Obama anyway. And none of this is to say it’s going to be a slam dunk for Obama. Just that he’s certainly not doomed at this point.
I am not sure as many people in the middle embrace John Galt and the notion that government is always a bad thing, a burden, an impediment, at best a ‘necessary evil.’ I am not sure at all that many folks outside of the now dominant Grovernomic fringe of the GOP believe this, and these folk (Grovers ragtag baГ±eristas) are having a hard enough time supporting the RINO Romney let alone be a vulnerability in Obama’s column
For a man known for artful phrase, this wasn’t, but the body of evidence offered by Obama against Romney is compelling. Numerically, “business owners” are not capable of ousting him over this anyway, and a lot of them will actually get what he meant.
There are a dozen gaffes from Romney and his crew to stack up to this one.
Obama is correct to not back down. Partly because backing down always looks weak and ultimately hurts, but partly because he needs to draw distinctions with Romney. Emphasizing this as a fundamental philosophical difference makes that easy, and avoids talking about policy (which both makes people’s eyes glaze over and, based on what they actually did in office, is pretty hard to distinguish).
For some reason Romney continues to run for the Republican nomination, believing apparently that McCain’s problem was that he didn’t energize the base. So his campaign is based on getting surrogates to say things like Ari Fleischer: the real problem is that the superrich pay too much in taxes. His campaign is based on the idea that the key to reinvigorating the economy is to encourage the rich to withdraw money from their Swiss bank accounts to buy yachts built in China, and that will trickle down to Americans.
As David might say, this can work if only because after Obama failed to single-handedly fix the recession, struggling people might be willing to try anything. It is difficult for Obama to campaign on “We built the stimulus and though it didn’t fix everything, the economy would have been even worse without it,” and it’s difficult for him to campaign on “We guaranteed health insurance for everyone after 50 years of trying but it’s not perfect and it hasn’t taken effect yet so it’s hard to love it unconditionally.”
Instead he has to run on ideas, on a philosophy. Reagan did the same in 1984; can those of you who were alive then remember a single substantive issue in that campaign? It felt pretty “hopey-changey” as the kids say, having lived through it in its basest aspect (as the only Democrat in my rural Pennsylvania elementary school).
Obama can’t win unless he gets people to believe in the idea that we’re all in this together. That in this country you can start a business and fail and it doesn’t mean your kids starve to death. That in this country bribes to inspectors are not a standard business expense. That in this country a contract means something and the government will help you enforce it. That in this country we pay our fair share and get a fair chance.
If instead you believe you’d be better off in a remote location in Idaho with no roads or mail, Obama is not going to convince you, and this quote will piss you off. But if Obama can’t rely on voters’ basic decency and responsibility, he can’t win reelection anyway.
Gordon Crovitz writes:
http://online.wsj.com/article/…
Frankly, I had read years ago that the government was involved, but Crovitz presents an interesting, alternate history.
Facts wrong, perhaps, on Obama’s part. But–my gut instinct says–I don’t think it’s going to alter the race as much as Romney hopes.
http://www.latimes.com/busines…
Crovitz is wrong on so many levels it’s ridiculous.
He says that Ethernet was the forefather of the Internet. Ethernet is a LAN hardware and link-layer protocol suite – it has no Internet capabilities.
He says PARC was the inventor of the Internet, but the author of the book he quotes has replied saying that Crovitz is essentially wrong on that level, too. The author notes that ARPA contributed massively to the underlying principles of the Internet, and it was from ARPANet that the Internet sprung.
Interestingly, Bob Taylor, who is credited with being an Internet Pioneer and who worked at PARC when the first internetwork connection was made, had worked with ARPANet (v1.0) before moving to PARC, and that first connection was made to the old ARPANet. Within a year of that connection and simultaneous with its development, Stanford, BBN, and others, working for DARPA, created the first version of TCP/IP and the beginnings of what would be the current Internet.
Many modern Internet protocols came from that early government-funded work, and a number that came later were also government-funded, including the Web.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…
Gordon Crovitz is reinterpreting history [incorrectly]:
As with all successful technologies, it evolved and got much better:
TCP/IP was designed to be highly redundant/fault resilient, thus one side effect being the realization that it could allow distributed computers to “survive” a nuclear war.
But from the seeds planted by ARPA, with the brilliance of university researchers and partners in private industry, the Internet and World Wide Web (early 90′s) have become what it is today — indespensible
He described how someday you will be able to access libraries anywhere in the world electronically and upon your query provide you with the information that you want, which would be different than someone’s else’s needs.
Works for me.
I’m no techie, so it was good to have others look the column (which had been passed along to me) over and provide a better insight.
Conservapedia will now proceed to replace all mention of DARPA in the founding of the Internet with private enterprise, proving, of course, that “they did build that” on their own.
Doesn’t matter the truth of it to them.
You’ve got that right!
Criovitz (and Rush, and the rest of the right wing talkers) are way off.
If private industry (Ie ATT) had developed and commercialized the internet, it would like really really different. User fees everywhere and never voice service for example.
And though DARPA did the internet, Tim Berners Lee did the world wide web. Working at CERN at the time – alos publicly funded.
By getting into the computer business in the ’80′s, thus igniting the Open Software OS wars among the existing computer companies.
Fortunately, a lowly university student took open systems to heart, and building on the free exchange of ideas philosophy from academia, wrote Linux, and crowd-sourced it’s growth.
Quayle mis-spelled potatoe and that stuck because people already thought he was stupid. But if Obama or Romeny mis-spelled it that would not resonate because both are clearly smart.
This one could hurt. Independents who are suspicious of Obama’s belief in free enterprise will listen to this. It won’t decide their vote, but it will influence it.
This week’s responses to Romney’s statement – he made it on Thursday just before the shooting, and the Obama campaign pretty much halted for the weekend – were a good start to getting in front of Romney on the issue.
Obama can turn this into an attack on Romney’s credibility, and I think he intends to at least make a go at that, too. It helps that the AP has a story out whacking away at Romney’s claims.
Romney is in full attack mode now. His speech at the VFW was full of crap, but there were lots of strong (and at best misleading) anti-Obama statements in that pile. I expect Romney to try to get back on top of the offensive; the Obama campaign is going to have a hell of a time fending off the lies coming from the right side of the fence…
This counts as a gaffe, yes?
pretend, not voter suppression reasons.
Poll after poll suggests that Ellbee is underwater, a sure sign that he’s in trouble.
Note that everything stated above came from your article. I could go on, but why waste time indulging a complete moron and his moronic diary.
Romney’s blatant lying about the President’s words is taken right out of David Letterman’s comedic playbook. It’s funny when a comedian does it. Not so much from the GOP clown show.
This would not be front page material but for the promotion of Ellbee to an FPE. Talk about buyer’s remorse.
one’s own diary — merely bad form or the gaffe that makes ellbee a one-term FPE.
Gad, ellbee, why not include Romney’s proclamation to the Salt Lake Olympians that there success was not singular but the success of friends, and family, and coaches and community as at least a slight counterpoint in this debate.
This is a speaking off the cuff kerfuffle. I’m sure that Romney’s tax returns and business records for the past twelve years were slightly more calculated (and revealing about the actual character of the candidate).
Got any recent birther discoveries?
Isn’t Romney saying about Olympians subject to the same criticism he levied against Obama? that Ronmney espoused, in Romney’s words,
goes with the FPE privilege. Just wait until I get going. Ellbee may be wrong on substance, but not style.
Join Ralphie on the hate-PCG bandwagon for it if you like, but it’s someone who doesn’t diary often addressing a significant subject of national political conversation. The blog is at least as detailed as many posts by ColoradoPols, and no less balanced than the one-sided stuff more left-wing posters tend to produce here. If this post had been written by a very frequent diarist (Jason, say) and was below his usual standard, I might think twice and decide not to promote, but I think it’s more important to have many, diverse voices on the front page than to attempt to force a bunch of biased people to publish unbiased posts.
bandwagons. (Unless, of course, they can knock out some kick-ass Grateful Dead, Bob Seger, and Black Crows . . . Don’t question why, I’m just complicated like that.) Ralphie can pound those drums without my help.
Nope. My question was as tongue-in-cheek and non-sequitur as the question/position taken by this diarist. A meaningless kerfuffle that’s only going to be taken seriously by folks without much analytical ability who have way too much time on their hands. (Jeez, was that another one?) It’s fodder through another week at best, then it become’s nothing other than a stale ka-ching line for a few of those hard news guys — the Limbaughs, Becks (if he’s still alive, not sure), and Hannity’s.
Seriously, there’s no gaffe that’s gonna be remembered after 2012 longer than that surrounding the issues associated with:
[read my hilarious 2nd sig line now, duh!]
especially one like this, which is so obviously and blatantly out of context. Ironically, the guy in a Romney ad who says he had no help building his company turns out to have had an 800,000 government subsidized loan!
This will go back and forth but won’t move any dials. Meanwhile, MSNBC reports that Obama’s Bain Capital offensive is starting to bite and that Obama now has an eight point lead in the swing states.
The Bain ads, and his “missteps” in discussing his involvement at Bain, are starting to hurt.
And finally it looks like news organizations other than the Globe are starting to really look at the claim that he retroactively left in 1999, and are finding it false. Today’s addition is the AP, which will hurt as so many newspapers use their articles in their A section.
I’d say this is a very successful diary.
I’d be interested in hearing from elbee whether or not he really thinks this is such a dramatic gaffe that it will decisively influence the election. Not quite so interested in whether this or that poll over samples as I set greater store by poll averages.
poll averages that tend to even out individual poll sampling styles have told a pretty consistent story lately of a close race with an over all very small but stubborn advantage to Obama nationally and a small to strong advantage in enough of the most important swing states to make an Obama victory at least no less than even money both before and since the gaffe in question. What say you, elbee?
That didn’t make him/it “successful”.
We’ll learn to ignore Ellbee, too.
I may well have given ellbee more grief over his posts than anyone on Pols, but it’s usually because I recognize an intelligent person who dumbs it down for the sake of scoring points. However, he has always been able to carry on intelligently and, maybe the months preceding his election as FPE, always done enough of that kind of engagement to make his contributions worthwhile. I think this diary counts – certainly as much as some of the things Pols’ real editors have ever published.
Ellbee, I did say I would eat my words. Pass the hot sauce, please.
Unlike Libertad, where the traffic is mostly insults, with a few attempts to correct erroneous info, ellbee’s diary has resulted in mostly good information and research and will provide readers with a wealth of resources to draw upon in case they are drawn into a similar face to face discussion.
Ari is right — ellbee is quite intelligent and knowledgeable, and knows precisely what he’s after. If we can’t counter his talking points without resorting to vitriolic personal attacks, we shouldn’t waste our time posting here.
While you’ll notice ellbee likes to push buttons (i.e. challenge his audience’s assumptions), he’s pretty diligent about not making it personal.
And there is nothing wrong with an FPE promoting his own diary — that’s basically one of the perks of the job, along with the free booze, irresponsible sex and the two free season tickets for the Broncos.
crazy what getting the FPE will do!
Cause I definitely spent last Friday night playing Pinochle with my parents, y’all. Who’s been keeping this from me for three terms?
the irresponsible sex is a consequence of the free booze, not an independent feature. Or so I hear.
Does free coffee help?
Wait, wait a minute. What’s the opposite of ‘help’? It’s that thing instead.
I’m so sad about it that I need a drink! …Wait.
……..is one of the few good guys over on the right here. He never gets personal, has intelligence, cares about people deeply. (I had backchannel conversations with him a few years ago.) He is definitely NOT your ideologue conservative, as I like to think of myself as a not ideologue, often out of step, liberal.
I have this image of we libs around the campfire, full bellies, cold beer. Ellbee is circling in the dark, eyeing the rock no one is sitting on.
I’m the wolf, and I’m circling, and I’m going to eat all of you damn teenagers when you go to sleep.
Good hearing from you, PR. Thanks.
Can’t get violent when sharing the leaf.
I wasn’t familiar with the brand before you introduced me. Now I often buy one or two when I buy locally. I’ve never been disappointed.
once in a while…if you poke him enough.
It’s certainly not a worthy-enough line to change Obama’s fortunes, but it might end up being something looked back on as notating a turning point.
The line has definitely put the President’s team on the defensive – I don’t think it’s terribly honest to imply otherwise. It’s going to make a lot of hay in the next months. I’m sure he wishes he had said it differently.
I have good friends that are liberals, and they get something totally different than I do out of his statement, even when reading the entire piece. But neither of us are in the crosshairs in terms of trying to win our votes – they’ve already been won.
IMO, at this point, the election’s a dice roll. I think Obama’s in for a rough ride with the economic numbers that will likely come out between now and the election, and I really think the Bain thing isn’t a factor for most people who haven’t already made up their minds.
Thank you, BTW for such a civil post. Thanks to a bunch of you, actually.
I think I’m supposed to promote my and others’ diaries to the front page kind of as part of the job of being an FPE. You’re correct that without a non-liberal as an FPE these diaries wouldn’t get promoted, but I thought that was kind of the point.
If that weren’t the intention, I don’t think they would have SoapBlox set to put our diaries on the front page by default, so we have to change a setting to NOT FP them.
It could even be the same as the Kerry “I was for it before I was against it” line. If Lee Atwater could be raised from the Lake of Fire he currently swims in, we could call the election now.
But I can’t believe the collection of stammering dumbasses the RomneyBots have employed doing their spots. When ever they get handed a line like this, they absolutely blow it.
Case in point – the “on his own” guy they put on the ads to highlight the mistake:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201…
I KNOW the Obama folks (official and otherwise) are going to run with this as proof of how out-of-touch Romney is, as well as further proof he lacks the executive skills to run a campaign.
Serious, no one on the campaign staff bothered to vet the guy in the spot?
I’d like to share your optimism, but there’s a reason why “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” is a Democratic stereotype. They never hit “Joe the plumber,” let alone someone who may actually be a real small businessman.
So discounting my obvious bias, I just don’t see Obama’s gaffe as ranking in the same class as the ones coming out of Romney. He’s a champ in the gaffe-capades!
But, I have a libertarian friend who, while preferring anyone but Romney during the primaries, is now likely to hold his nose and vote for Romney. Unless, Romney is successfully characterized as the withholding, devious, prevaricating tax dodger, whom you can’t trust to tell you the truth candidate.
There are over 3 months left in the race, so my bet is Romney won’t wear very well with the (few) remaining undecideds. A tight race, but with a little help from the Fed and Democrats in Congress standing up to the GOP, definitely winnable by Obama.
Like a good punch in a fight, Romney attacking on this quote has given him the opportunity to follow up with more attacks. For the past few weeks he hasn’t really been in a position to launch a good offensive – he’s been too preoccupied with defending against his Bain problems. Now he can unleash with more attacks and look stronger doing it.
But I think it’s a short-term thing. It’s given Obama an opportunity to respond with a strong ad that lays out a positive vision, and although I was afraid that Romney’s VFW remarks were going to have resonance, they haven’t. Romney may be losing this advantage a whole lot faster than he had hoped.
PS – thanks for the diary, I thought it was well presented.
That’s false. This was a well-written and provocative diary, and I think any of our front-pagers would have promoted it even if you weren’t one.
Why always the persecution complex?
I think you’re forgetting how quickly the news cycles turn things over. Think back to the gaffes and headlines of two or three months ago. How may are still “making hay”?
Also think we’re seeing a little more offense than the usual Dem defense these days, including in reaction to this. I’m not hearing the usual please don’t think we’re anti-business socialists because we’re really almost as pro-business as Rs stuff this time. Dems even winning the occasional game of chicken. The Senate actually passed legislation to end the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent, for instance. So let’s see how all this goes and where it leads.
But I’m very happy to see such a cordial, reasonable reply from you, elbee. It’s why it drives me so nuts to see you nodding in agreement with the likes of ArapG, Nock and ‘tad. They really truly are such morons.
I think he needs an exorcism or something.
I remember listening to Mike Rosen from time to time ca. 2000. He is an intelligent man, I’d walk right alongside him as he laid out his case. But then suddenly he arrives at a conclusion very much the opposite of my own.
The difference, I think, betweeen Ellbee, American Patriot, The Barron, is that they hear their own honest drummers. The Usual Suspects just hear those voices in their heads from the Overlord. Nothing original.
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