CalvinBall wrote:remaining campaign stops:

President Obama

Thur: Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado
Fri: Ohio
Saturday: Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia
Sunday: New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Colorado
Monday: Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa

Mitt Romney:

Thur: Virginia
Fri: Wisconsin, Ohio
Saturday: New Hampshire, Colorado
Sunday: TBD
Monday: New Hampshire

Seems like Obama's campaign is legitimately concerned about Wisconsin.

mozartpc27 wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:remaining campaign stops:

President Obama

Thur: Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado
Fri: Ohio
Saturday: Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia
Sunday: New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Colorado
Monday: Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa

Mitt Romney:

Thur: Virginia
Fri: Wisconsin, Ohio
Saturday: New Hampshire, Colorado
Sunday: TBD
Monday: New Hampshire

Seems like Obama's campaign is legitimately concerned about Wisconsin.

Meh.

Werthless wrote: For example, if he were to list CO, NV, and VA all as 70% Obama, the states are probably going to break for Obama in the same 70% of scenarios.

Bucky wrote:True Story: I awoke one day last week and the very first thought I had was "Aha! So THAT's what 538 stands for!!". I really had no clue before that, or had never even wondered about it, or any clue how I figured it out. I remembered my dreams and they were nothing to do with it.

The brain, it's a strange organ

jerseyhoya wrote:Parties Wonder Which Side's Polls Reflect Reality

Mr Obama’s first term has been patchy. On the economy, the most powerful argument in his favour is simply that he stopped it all being a lot worse. America was in a downward economic spiral when he took over, with its banks and carmakers in deep trouble and unemployment rising at the rate of 800,000 a month. His responses—an aggressive stimulus, bailing out General Motors and Chrysler, putting the banks through a sensible stress test and forcing them to raise capital (so that they are now in much better shape than their European peers)—helped avert a Depression. That is a hard message to sell on the doorstep when growth is sluggish and jobs scarce; but it will win Mr Obama some plaudits from history, and it does from us too.

Two other things count, on balance, in his favour. One is foreign policy, where he was also left with a daunting inheritance. Mr Obama has refocused George Bush’s “war on terror” more squarely on terrorists, killing Osama bin Laden, stepping up drone strikes (perhaps too liberally, see article) and retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan (in both cases too quickly for our taste). After a shaky start with China, American diplomacy has made a necessary “pivot” towards Asia. By contrast, with both the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and his “reset” with Russia, he overreached and underdelivered. Iran has continued its worrying crawl towards nuclear weapons.
...
The other qualified achievement is health reform. Even to a newspaper with no love for big government, the fact that over 40m people had no health coverage in a country as rich as America was a scandal. “Obamacare” will correct that, but Mr Obama did very little to deal with the system’s other flaw—its huge and unaffordable costs. He surrendered too much control to left-wing Democrats in Congress. As with the gargantuan Dodd-Frank reform of Wall Street, Obamacare has generated a tangle of red tape—and left business to deal with it all.
...
Above all, Mr Obama has shown no readiness to tackle the main domestic issue confronting the next president: America cannot continue to tax like a small government but spend like a big one. Mr Obama came into office promising to end “our chronic avoidance of tough decisions” on reforming its finances—and then retreated fast, as he did on climate change and on immigration. Disgracefully, he ignored the suggestions of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that he himself set up. More tellingly, he has failed to lay out a credible plan for what he will do in the next four years. Virtually his entire campaign has been spent attacking Mr Romney, usually for his wealth and success in business.
...
Mr Obama’s shortcomings have left ample room for a pragmatic Republican, especially one who could balance the books and overhaul government. Such a candidate briefly flickered across television screens in the first presidential debate. This newspaper would vote for that Mitt Romney, just as it would for the Romney who ran Democratic Massachusetts in a bipartisan way (even pioneering the blueprint for Obamacare). The problem is that there are a lot of Romneys and they have committed themselves to a lot of dangerous things.
...
[E]ven if you accept that Romneynomics may be more numerate in practice than it is in theory, it is far harder to imagine that he will reverse course entirely. When politicians get elected they tend to do quite a lot of the things they promised during their campaigns. François Hollande, France’s famously pliable new president, was supposed to be too pragmatic to introduce a 75% top tax rate, yet he is steaming ahead with his plan. We weren’t fooled by the French left; we see no reason why the American right will be more flexible. Mr Romney, like Mr Hollande, will have his party at his back—and a long record of pandering to them.

Indeed, the extremism of his party is Mr Romney’s greatest handicap. The Democrats have their implacable fringe too: look at the teachers’ unions. But the Republicans have become a party of Torquemadas, forcing representatives to sign pledges never to raise taxes, to dump the chairman of the Federal Reserve and to embrace an ever more Southern-fried approach to social policy. Under President Romney, new conservative Supreme Court justices would try to overturn Roe v Wade, returning abortion policy to the states. The rights of immigrants (who have hardly had a good deal under Mr Obama) and gays (who have) would also come under threat. This newspaper yearns for the more tolerant conservatism of Ronald Reagan, where “small government” meant keeping the state out of people’s bedrooms as well as out of their businesses. Mr Romney shows no sign of wanting to revive it.

This new Spanish-language TV ad from Mitt Romney is pretty incredible, and not in an Ernest Shackleton kind of way but in a Hugo Chavez kind of way.

Romney effectively puts Obama in bed with Chavez and Mariela Castro by noting that the latter two have both endorsed (in the malevolent, mischievous way foreign figures do) the president. Of course, the implicit link is that Chavez and a (if not THE) Castro recognize a kindred spirit when they see one.

The AP reports that it's running in Miami, which has a large Cuban population and diverse Latin American community.

Considering that it's five days until the election, the ad isn't terribly surprising. But it is a terribly sensationalistic cheap shot.

laf837 wrote:Pretty surprised by the economist endorsement. Not surprised it was grumpy though.

Bucky wrote:True Story: I awoke one day last week and the very first thought I had was "Aha! So THAT's what 538 stands for!!". I really had no clue before that, or had never even wondered about it, or any clue how I figured it out. I remembered my dreams and they were nothing to do with it.

The brain, it's a strange organ

laf837 wrote:Pretty surprised by the economist endorsement. Not surprised it was grumpy though.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

laf837 wrote:Pretty surprised by the economist endorsement. Not surprised it was grumpy though.

You shouldn't be. Their editorial board hasn't hid their dislike for the current crop of Republicans. And they've always fully supported both the stimulus (in fact, they consistently argue that another stimulus is needed) and at least the idea of a health care overhaul. I'd be shocked if they didn't endorse Obama.

jerseyhoya wrote:

laf837 wrote:Pretty surprised by the economist endorsement. Not surprised it was grumpy though.

BOB DOLE and George W. in 2000 are the only Republicans endorsed by the Economist since 1980.