Who will take on Obama in 2012?

Well, multi-quotes only work for multiple posts (so you don't have to open a new window for each one). To add new quotes within each post you just have to copy and paste the quote tags (or hit the quote button on the editor), which is what I do. I'll still ferret the bits out if I have to, of course, it'd just be nice to avoid sometimes.

You are, as always, free to merely speculate that this is what he would say. But there's a difference between getting rid of something and changing who controls it, or who's responsible for it.

But, of course, this is one of the many problems with entitlements: they become friggin' untouchable, even as economic reality engulfs them. Look at Greece.

The House voted for it as part of a larger budget, as an alternative to Obama's. It is indeed gospel among Republicans that Ryan's plan is better than that alternative, but it in no way follows that it is therefore untouchable. Boener's said otherwise. Pawlenty's own plan modifies it. Several candidates have qualified their support by saying they would sign it if it were the only alternative to, say, the status quo. I'll bet you'll see more of the same, too. The degree to which it might be a problem is going to be perfectly well-known to the candidates; you won't be privvy to any opinion poll that they are not. Quite the opposite, in fact. So if it's half as bad as you believe, there's nothing to stop Republicans from distancing themselves.

But, of course, your argument then is that they risk losing Tea Party support. But the mistake here is in assuming that Tea Partiers love the Ryan plan inherently, rather than for its budget impact. That changes the entire thing. See below...

Don't worry, you don't have to go poll-hunting. I've seen one or two other polls with somewhat similar numbers and I don't dispute the numbers. But they're all asking the wrong question.

Continuing on what I was saying above: the Ryan plan is an entire budget, not just a Medicare proposal. I happen to think it works just fine as a Medicare proposal alone, but part of it's appeal is supposed to be the budget savings. But polls like this don't present it that way. They present it as a) current Medicare versus b) this new Medicare. They leave out the whole reason b) is being suggested: the savings. That's like saying "do you want this brand new car, or this used car?" without mentioning the fact that the used car costs $5,000 less.

Guess what happens when you frame it as a budget question, pitting Obama's budget versus Ryan's? Well, very little super-recent polling has been done on it as far as I can tell with some light searching (which is annoying), but Gallup had the two neck and neck initially.

And if they want to ask an even more comprehensive question, they would ask whether they prefer saving money through changes to Medicare, or tax increases of some sort. Because that's the choice we face. You can't isolate public opinion on a policy change without considering its effects elsewhere. And you definitely can't when those effects are the reason it's being proposed in the first place.

These are the choices we actually face, not some hypothetical where we pit current, unsustainable Medicare against some isolated part of an entirely different budget. That makes no sense.

I didn't say blowouts weren't plausible, I said blowouts like the ones I mentioned--of the 23-24 point variety--weren't. If challenged I guess I'd switch plausible to just "very, very unlikely." Re: McGovern. Yes, he would have won in purely nominal terms, but as we both know campaigns turn on many other things. Superdelegates sometimes commit to one candidate or another very early on. They also make up 20% of the delegates necessary to win the nomination, so it would not be difficult for them to hamstring an upstart campaign if there were significant discomfort among them with a given candidate. It's not full-proof, I'm sure, but it can help blunt momentum. I don't think a Mike Huckabee, for example, makes the kind of run he did in 2008 if a bunch of Republican superdelegates (if we had such things, I mean) had publicly stated they would not support him. It matters a lot for those upstart candidates, and those are the ones most likely to get blown out in the end, I'd say.

Well, have you ever been employed by a poor person? That's pretty much the argument in a nutshell. People who want higher taxes on the rich and more jobs are asking for two incompatible things.

Re: taxes. It sounds like they're saying you just didn't pay your taxes. Is that true?

Well, Perry is another story. I said awhile back that if Perry gets in Pawlenty's chances of winning go way down.

Bachmann's rise is trouble, too. But at a certain point it becomes blunted. If she just plays awesomely in Iowa (which seems likely), then the expectations will be such that a strong second for Pawlenty would probably do the trick. He basically concedes New Hampshire (lots of successful candidates have), but then has to have a strong showing in South Carolina. That's the roadmap for a Pawlenty victory, basically. He can't afford to bomb in Iowa, but I don't think he needs to win it outright, particularly if the narrative becomes about how Bachmann is just destined to win there. Huckabee won Iowa pretty handily, too, after all.

Middle class small businesses owners employ people.


Rich = Miliionaires.


Your argument is flawed as can be.

If the factory jobs hadn't been systematically outsourced by the Corportations, then maybe you'd have a case.

If you make more than 300k a year, i totally understand why you would vote and think along Republican lines.

Self-interest.

If you don't though, I just can't wrap my head around it. and probably never will.

Nope. Think past first effects, and the problem with this thinking becomes obvious:

Very few small businesses get started with their own capital. They almost all need loans or investment, and the two primary sources of both are the wealthy. Either through direct investment, groups of venture capitalists, or from banks themselves, who can loan more as the result of having rich people's money in their vault.

Or what about the allegedly extravagant things they buy? Say they buy the most cliche rich person item you can think of: a yacht. Are the engineers who build it millionaires? How about the mechanics that have to service it? How about the salesman for the yacht company, or his secretary?

This is how economic fallacies thrive: because people simply do not bother to think beyond the first effects of a given policy. They think about the immediate effects and just stop.

Oh, and just for good measure: small businesses only employ about half of the people in the private sector and they pay out less than half of the total salary, so this is wrong a dozen different ways. And a lot of smaller businesses do business with bigger ones, anyway, so you can't draw some arbitrary line. The economy doesn't work like that.

Outsourcing lowers prices and frees up both capital and commodities to be used in other industries. Outsourcing never occurs unless someone is doing something more efficiently than we are, which means that preventing it prevents us from finding something else more efficient to do.

Honestly, this is economics 101. I can barely even explain why this stuff is wrong without first going over basic principles.

That is real dated. The way it is currently going there is going to be a deadlock, no deal, and Obama will raise the debt on his own because of vague language in the 14th ammendment. I see it different from you. The Dems have been more flexible that the repubs and when negotiations probaly fail, they will look like the bad guys, because their priority is to force huge medicare cuts and the democrats won't do it.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

"Look like" but not really be so.

I mean really, the Prez is comparing his kids homework to coming up with a plan. WTH class are they taking? Maybe we should wait until a plan is passed so we can read it. Lovely Idea.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Except that the Democrats want $400 billion in tax increases as part of the deal. That doesn't exactly look rosy, particularly when they're simultaneously talking about how important it is to "create" jobs. See my post above for why they're flat-out contradicting themselves in wanting both.

By the way: have you ever thought something wouldn't go badly for Republicans, or backfire on them, or come back to bite them, etc? Because almost all of the analysis you offer seems to come to this conclusion.

Why bother? Whatever happens the Republicans will look bad.

Yeah, Obama's behavior during all this has been erratic, to put it nicely. He spent most of his press conference scolding Republicans for not being in Washington often enough to work on this, then refused to meet with them the other day.

Democrats have successfully lashed Republicans for wanting to cut Puppy Subsidies and the like for a long time now, but I think they might be just starting to realize that that doesn't work quite as well when you're throwing up 13-figure deficits. Peoples' tolerance for cuts is elastic, and when all they've been hearing for two years solid is how much debt we have and how much we're spending, and when they see countries like Greece devolving into chaos because they flat-out refused to deal with their entitlements, it changes what the electorate finds acceptable at some point.

Weird. It worked for Clinton.

Remind me again how many jobs were created as a result of the Bush Tax Cuts, and then Obamas extension of them?

This is a basic logical fallacy: you're confusing correlation with causality. The idea that taxing increases hurt job production does not mean it's impossible to have job growth, it means you'll have less. The baseline of growth will depend on other factors. You might as well say population growth overall means no one is dying.

Uh, millions. Bush's so-called "tax cuts for the rich" were signed into law on May 28th, 2003 (didn't even have to look it up, I was working on this at the time); the unemployment rate was 5.9% and fell all the way to 4.4% as late as four years later.

Now, remind me again what you said seven posts ago when I explained why your last post about rich business owners didn't hold water. So far I've got crickets.

If you want to talk about economics, you have to be prepared to actually, you know, talk about economics.

Here is the reality. The democrats will cave on the jobs stuff and the huge tax increase in the final stages and the republicans will still say no because the dems will insist on at least a token tax increase as part of the deal and Republicans will hold firm on none whatsoever. The Republicans have been walking out because they refuse to consider any tax increase, not because of the size.

you dont want to talk about economics though. You want 97% of the population to take it up the hoop so the 3% can live like kings.

And as i don't believe you are among that 3%, the reasoning for this continues to baffle.

You keep bringing up Greece. Greece is Greece, a poor country by European standards, which has been poorly run. The claim you're making Democrats flatly refuse to deal with entitlements, specifically Medicare, is false. They refuse to accept a plan which Republicans embrace that guts it. But the Ryan Plan makes reform difficult before the election because the Republicans toxic approach makes the public more resistant to any changes in the program. Linking it with debt has been a massive failure, as Republicans have done repeatedly, has been a complete failure with voters. After the election talk about how medicare is going broke, not by linking it to debt, will bring some painful cuts in the program and the public reluctantly agreeing to it, as is the approach of the Lieberman proposal, but the Ryan scorched earth approach will always be politically radioactive.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says it's "insulting" that Fox News host Chris Wallace asked her if she's a "flake" when she appeared on his program on Sunday morning.
Wallace apologized for the question in a web video after he interviewed the presidential hopeful.
“A lot of you were more than perturbed, you were upset and felt that I had been rude to her," says Wallace in the clip posted online. "And since in the end it’s really all about the answers, and not about the questions, I messed up, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Asked if she accepts the apology by ABC News' Jon Karl, Bachmann said, "I think that it's insulting to insinuate that a candidate for president is less than serious. I'm a very serious individual." When pressed on the matter further she said, "Those are the small issues. I'm focused on the big ones




This is old news, but I wanted to say what a load of crap Chris Wallace is. The question was legitimate and he never would have apologized if he said that to a Democrat.

Er, yes, I do want to talk about economics. Specifically, I'm talking about economics to explain why that second sentence is wrong.

And you will remain baffled as long as you refuse to make any attempt to learn about economics. Your bafflement is a choice.

You made a statement earlier. I gave you maybe half a dozen reasons why it didn't make sense. What went through your mind when you read it? Did you just decide to ignore it? Did you not read it at all? Did you read it and just decide it can't be true, even though you can't explain why it isn't true? I'm genuinely curious as to the thought process here.

I sure hope this analysis is correct. Though I assume that last part is more speculation. The Democrats often say that Republicans will nix any increase whatsoever, but the only one on the table, that I've heard of, is $400 billion, so nobody's testing the hypothesis.

...and they offer no alternative to fix it, and resist both reform and simple cuts to it. And they don't just resist it, they strongly resist it, conjuring images of seniors eating cat food every time it's tried. It's an absolute festival of demagoguery every time someone tries to actually fix the problem.

They absolutely flayed Republicans for SS reform in '05, and they're doing it now again with Medicare (both as part of a budget AND for any proporsed cuts). We have one party making multiple attempts to deal with entitlements, and the other refusing at every turn and, as far as I can tell, not offering serious alternatives and, in one case, even suggesting there was no problem at all!

Yet you say Democrats are not refusing to deal with entitlements. Please explain. How are they dealing with them?

Unless it's successfully shown for what it is, which is part of a total budget designed to reform entitlements and save money. When it's shown that way, as I showed with the Gallup poll, it polls significantly better.

Whether or not Republicans can or will paint it in this light is another matter. But of course, then we venture off into PunditWorld, where we stop talking about whether or not an idea is good or bad, and just dismiss it because we don't think it's politically popular. I'm a lot more interested in the former, personally.

Oh, and the Bachmann stuff is goofy. I tend to think Wallace would apologize if anyone made enough of a fuss. But I don't think he was insulting her at all. I think it was kind of a clumsy question, but the question was beneficial, because it allows her to answer however she wants.