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How weepy you make me. There was never any
reason to fight after the Fall of France in 1941.

I predicted long ago that this would be the dirtiest presidential campaign in our lifetimes. And so it has proved to be. I'm thinking Obama's vaunted "likeability" is taking a hit. Who knows how big a hit? This Sunday, even the MSM put the screws to the Obama surrogates about Harry Reid's unsupported tax charges. Stephanopoulos of ABC News and Candy Crowley of CNN were both withering and persistent on the question of how much credence could be placed in Reid's claims and the White House's insistence on pretending they are not pulling the strings. Newest poll on likeability. Newsflash on Obama-MSM relations: Obama hasn't answered a single question from the press in seven weeks. Any chance they're starting to feel like the loyal but neglected wife of a cad?

What all the commenters seem to be missing is that the VP choice is more opportunity for unforced error than any net gain. Rubio is this year's Palin. An incredibly attractive young candidate -- starpower plus -- who nevertheless is still too wet behind the ears -- inexperienced and more local than national in his political mien -- to withstand the mauling of an opposition determined to destroy the naive, innocent, or insuffiiciently innured to brass knuckle politics. Why the other Hail Mary candidates suck too -- Condoleeza Rice and David Petraeus. They're acquainted with politics, but they're not politicians.  Lots of deer-in-the-headlights moments to come; count on it. The sensible choice, maybe the only good choice, is Bobby Jindal, a successful governor who isn't a boring white man, has been elected and reelected by heavily black constituencies, and who is three times smarter than Obama before the scrawny Indian dude has had his first cup of coffee in the morning. I heard him take the entire Obama administration apart in five minutes on the Laura Ingraham Show without so much as a dropped comma. Laura still wants Paul Ryan. Why? Just because. Because she has a thing for midwestern men with Eddie Munster haircuts? Because she keeps forgetting that we absolutely MUST have Ryan as the chairman of the Ways & Means Committee? And she's obviously forgotten that nobody's ever filmed a commercial of Jindal bumping old ladies off cliffs. Just because women are smart doesn't make them wise. If I had to guess, I'm thinking Romney will choose the wrong candidate. But there's still a chance he won't.

It's only the alphabet television networks who think conventions don't matter. They have a vested interest in that position, not politics but business. Expensive to cover, largely ceremonial, and one more loss of opportunity to put on new episodes of their latest smutty sitcoms. Everybody's fired up about the swing state polls showing Obama holding consistent leads. Can we deconstruct that situation just a little before we run screaming into the Enchanted Wood? Conservatives generally are near-hysterical about the Romney likeability deficit. They don't like him because he's not conservative enough for their taste. How they transfer this to a general personality halitosis that can't be overcome is absurd. When would likely voters, even swing state likely voters, have learned very much about Romney? I've been following this campaign since the initial godawful outcome in 2008 and even I couldn't watch more than token portions and high(low))lights of the Republican debates, a dozen supplicants smeared across two dozen stages. Pro forma bullshit. Like all such sparring matches -- akin to heats in Olympic swimming and track and field -- the goal is not so much to win as to make sure you're in the field for the next round. Then come the attack ads by a desperate incumbent who can't afford to talk about his own record. Attacks launched by a candidate universally stipulated (without evidence) to be likeable. What do you do? Launch into pointlessly expensive and futile "did not," "did too," "did not," "did too" exchanges? Or hold instead? "H-o-o-o-o-ld!!!"

[I love it when commenters cite Scottish military defeats as signs of solidarity with my roots. Even Obama is smitten by their sado-masochistic game that isn't a game but an archetype of life itself. 104 rounds worth. You're not competing against the others; you're competing against the course.  While his mind may be in thrall to the authoritarian pretensions of Ramadan and African Liberation Theology, his heart belongs to the lowdown human truths of golf. Maybe the most promising thing we know about him. You play, lose more often than you win, and there's no cheat that makes you anything but less. Why Michelle always looks like she's sucking on a lemon. Would she kick a ball to a better lie? That's her philosophy entire.]

Where were we? The conventions. They matter. The Democrats will have to tell lies. About the state of the economy, turning the corner that's still up around the bend, saving jobs that no longer exist, preventing foreclosures that weren't prevented, etc. The importance of punishing the rich except for the huge Obama bundlers on Wall Street and in Hollywood. The Romneyites can simply show us a guy who looks anything but ruthless, mean, and indifferent. The inside the beltway Republicans scoff at the idea of the convention as a way of "introducing Mitt Romney." But that's what it will be. NBC's Olympic coverage went out of its way to make the London 2012 equestrian coverage about Ann Romney's horse. To the detriment of their purpose, I think. It was the English who won the gold medal in Team Dressage, high-hatting the Americans in their usual aristocratic fashion. In London, Ann Romney and her over-exposed horse were an underdog. Which is precisely the Ann Romney people will see when she finally takes the podium to back her husband, show off her large fine family of sons and grandchildren, and a humble path of courage and persistence against physical ills the First Family has had no experience of.

posted at   9:39 am  by  RL

The REAL Closer: Who's sexier? Helen Mirren by a landslide. No flirtation.
No aw shucks moments. She doesn't USE being a woman. She just IS one

posted at   4:07 pm  by  RL

In other words, Obama can lose the big Eastern four—Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida: all of ’em!—and still be reelected.

And barring some huge cataclysm, he’s not losing all four of those states. If he wins even one—say Virginia, the smallest of the four—then Romney has to win Colorado, Iowa, and New Hampshire; all possible, certainly, but all states where he has been behind, narrowly but consistently, for weeks or months.

The list of states where Obama holds that narrow but consistent lead is long: Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Michigan and Wisconsin are no longer really narrow. Florida is more or less a dead heat. The bottom line is that of the dozen or so key swing states, Romney leads only in one: North Carolina. And that lead developed only over the summer. We’ll see whether the Democrats’ decision to convene in Charlotte has any impact on Romney’s three-point margin.

posted at   5:36 pm  by  RL