Lessons Learned.
After it became clear that President Obama would win the Electoral College vote handily and garner a bare majority of the national popular vote, I started writing down notes on the lessons learned from campaign 2012.
Those notes then became this piece for Buzzfeed.
The Electoral College Vote
The presidential election boils down to three questions:
1. Can Romney win every southern state? I think the answer to that question is yes. The trickiest state for Romney is probably Virginia. North Carolina and Florida seem settled in his favor (at least to me).
2. Can Romney win Colorado and New Hampshire? I think Colorado is done. I think he wins New Hampshire by a point.
3. Can Romney poach two of the three Midwestern "firewall states" from Obama? Which is to say: Can Romney win Iowa and Wisconsin? I think he wins both by a slim (but no recount) margin.
Which means he wins the election.
We'll see. I think it's possible that Romney also wins Ohio and Pennsylvania, comes very close in Minnesota and Michigan and runs surprisingly well in Oregon, Illinois and New Mexico. But that presumes a more Republican-leaning electorate than most of the state polls are anticipating.
One thing I do know is that the early exit polls will skew Democratic and that viewers wiil be well-advised to disregard much of what they hear about "early exits." The number to watch is President Obama's percentage of the white vote nationally. If it's near 40%, then he probably wins the Electoral College and the popular vote. If it's in the 36-37% range, Romney will be our next president. In between, obviously, things get dicey.
Whatever happens, it is going to be a very late night.
Note: Because I am working off an I-Pad, I can't figure out how to post my map to Blogger. Ordinarily I would take a screen shot of the map and post it that way, but....failure. Anyway, you can access the map by going to @41jellis on Twitter.
Great Swami Predicts, Part One
So, there are two predictions one must make with regard to the presidential contest. Number One is the popular vote. Number Two is the Electoral College tally. Here's my math on the popular vote:
Mitt Romney will get 63% of the non-Latino white vote, which will comprise 75% of the total electorate. This will bring his total to 47.25%.
Mitt Romney will get 17% of the "other" (non-white) vote, which will add 4.25% to his column.
He will win the popular vote with 51.5% of the total.
Later this week: Electoral College tally! No toss-ups.
The Map
Here's my take on what the electoral college looks like now:
Closing Time
The race is close. After the last debate, closing arguments will be made. Here's my take on how the candidates might close.
Muni Blues.
The crisis in state and municipal finance edges ever closer. When Warren Buffet decided to get out while he still could, it was front-page news. He won't be the last to head for the exits.
My column on Berkshire Hathaway's "adios" to the state and muni market is here.
The Absence of Leadership.
It's a big issue at CNN, which is floundering badly here in the United States (it's doing very well, thank you, internationally). I wrote about this for Walter Mead's blog today.
The Wall of Shame.
My most recent post for Via Meadia calls for the building of a national Wall of Shame. Among those proposed for inclusion, James Johnson.
Posts!
Okay, one post.
My friend Walter Mead is on one of his periodic State Department "informational exchange" boondoggles missions, this time in India. In the interim, he's asked a few of his pals to provide content for his most excellent blog, Via Meadia.
This is my first contribution to the VM site. It looks at the future of the New York Times company.
Obama and the 43%.
Forty-three percent of all white voters cast their lot with Sen. Barack Obama in 2008. How many white voters vote for him this time will determine whether he wins re-election or not. My take is here at Real Clear Politics.
Cheeseheads Matter.
Here's my take on what's at stake in next Tuesday's gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin. Most expect that Governor Scott Walker will survive the challenge. The question is by how much.
Games of Chicken.
Ezra Klein has a smart piece today on the four policy makers whose decisions may well determine the outcome of the 2012 US presidential election. The basic premise of the piece is that the outcome of the Eurozone crisis will tip the balance between President Obama’s re-election or defeat.
Walter Mead has a smart piece today about the two simultaneous games of chicken being played out in the Eurozone as we speak. Game #1 is the mutual assured destruction stare-down between Germany (pay or die) and Greece (we die, everyone pays). Game #2 is the German-French face-off on the under-writing of Club Med (southern European) debt.
By now, the mere mention of the subject – Eurozone crisis -- has become one of the great room-emptiers of our time. We’ve been through the drill repeatedly: cans are kicked, differences are fudged, pretend and extend goes on. And a few weeks or months later, the Euros go right back to square one and do it all over again.
Yet it really is enormously important. And Klein is right, it probably will have a determinative impact on the 2012 US presidential election.
The solution to the Eurozone crisis is, of course, a massive bailout. Everyone knows this. Part two of the solution is a series of gigantic loans to jump start growth across the Continent. There’s considerable argument about how this should be done (to say the least), but without economic growth the aging demographics of the Eurozone point to an almost endless economic stagnation – at best. Growth has to be on the agenda.
The question is: where does this bailout/loan money come from? The answer from all the Europeans (except the Germans, of course) is Germany. The answer from the Germans is: we know that eventually we will have to underwrite some of the bailout, but we will do it on our terms and we will not do it alone.
This is the third game of chicken that is being played out as we speak. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing off against President Obama in an advanced game of mutual assured destruction.
Basically, her message to the US president is this: “I will not lose a single vote if I force Greece out of the Eurozone. If the Grexit is messy and leads to contagion, which it almost certainly will, then the crisis will escalate to a much more menacing level. At that point, the US will have to demand that the IMF under-write a massive Eurozone bailout or we’re looking at 1930s Europe on steroids.”
“So, Barry, step up now if you hope to have any chance of re-election. We’ll help finance the bailout, but only if the IMF under-writes it. We can talk about percentage splits when you’re ready. But get ready and fast. Events may soon be in the saddle.”
“And one last thing: don’t send little Timmy Geithner over here to lecture us anymore, okay? Deals like this get done at the presidential level, Barry. So man up, get off the golf course and come to the table.”
Chancellor Merkel has no intention of letting President Obama off the hook on this. This puts the president in a difficult spot. Proposing a bailout of Club Med countries with US taxpayer dollars (washed through the IMF) is a one-way ticket to a 40-state loss in the electoral college. Not doing it risks the riptide of European economic and political implosion.
Sometimes the choices a president has to make are between the really bad and the truly dreadful. President Obama, courtesy of Chancellor Merkel, now confronts just such a choice.
Ellisblog! Electoral Map.
Democratic Pros Fret About Obama Campaign Ineptitude.
On a balmy night in early June of 1986, a successful business executive and two-term Congressman named Ed Zschau won the GOP nomination for US Senate in California. Seen by professionals as the rising star of California Republican politics, Zschau defeated a divided primary field of more conservative candidates. It was widely expected in political circles that he would go on to defeat incumbent Sen. Alan Cranston in the general election.
The very next night, the Cranston campaign unleashed a sustained, weeks-long negative campaign advertising attack on Mr. Zschau. The idea being that if Zschau was given time to regroup for the general election, he would be unstoppable.
Sen. Cranston did not have a record that demanded his re-election. The issue had to be the challenger, not the incumbent. It was the first time in modern campaign history that a statewide incumbent had ever gone flat-out negative so early in the general election cycle.
It worked. Zchau's campaign wasn't ready for the assault. The damage done in June proved too much to overcome in November. Sen. Cranston was narrowly re-elected.
This year's presidential campaign sets up much like Senator Cranston's re-election campaign of 1986. President Obama cannot risk an election that becomes a referendum on his record. Fairly or not, that's a framework for defeat. So the task of his handlers is to make the election a referendum on his opponent.
Since even my dogs know that Mr. Romney is going to frame the election as a referendum on President Obama's stewardship of the economy, the Obama handlers must do everything they can to make people imagine that President Romney's stewardship of the economy would be worse; an assault on the interests and values of "average" Americans. Thus today's 2-minute ad on Bain Capital's unsuccessful turn-around of GST Steel in Kansas City. The ad's thrust is that Romney was (and is) an economic "vampire."
What's remarkable about the ad is not its content (mis-leading though it may be). Anti-Bain ads have been used against Romney in 1994 (by Ted Kennedy's handlers), 2002 (by Shannon O'Brien's campaign) and 2012 (by New Gingrich).
What's remarkable about the ad is that it raised at least as many questions about the Obama campaign as it did about Mr. Romney.
On the very day that the ad was released, President Obama attended a fund-raiser in New York City hosted by a senior executive at the Blackstone Group, a leading private equity firm and frequent co-investor with Bain Capital on turn-around projects.
And, it further turns out that a 2008 and 2012 campaign finance bundler for President Obama, one Jonathan Lavine, was a managing director at Bain Capital during the time that GST Steel was being “run into the ground” by the evil Bainiacs.
And, just to put some icing on the cake, it turns out that Mr. Romney was off fixing the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics during the time that Romney and Bain were allegedly “vampiring” GST Steel.
It makes you wonder. Did Team Obama think that no one would notice? Did they assume that only right-wing bloggers would care?
Had this been an isolated event, Democrat campaign professionals might not be all that concerned. Mistakes, after all, are made. But this was hardly a "one off." There are, in the view of many Democratic pros, far too many other examples of the Obama campaign making a hash of fairly straightforward political matters.
Most recently, for instance, Vice President Biden previewed the president's "evolution" on the issue of same sex marriage on NBC's "Meet The Press." The press, predictably, made it the next day story.
Two days later, the voters of North Carolina, in large numbers and by a wide (61-39%) margin, voted against same-sex marriage. As messages go, it was hard to misread.
The very next day, President Obama told the North Carolina knuckleheads to take their referendum and shove it; he endorsed same sex marriage, although he didn't make a federal case out of it. He left it for the states to work out the legislative details (conveniently enough).
The mishandling of the President’s endorsement of same sex marriage sent the president's re-election prospects into a tailspin; electoral college handicappers busily moved North Carolina from “toss-up” to “likely Republican.” And it necessitated today’s "let's-get-the-media-talking-about-something-else” news event (the Bain attack ad).
Because we have been told for so long that Team Obama is the very model of the modern campaign operation, we have come to sort of believe it. In reality, they’ve been surprisingly inept since they set up shop last year. They've been through three slogans and four over-arching re-election "themes." They've made a big deal out of Romney's dog. They've introduced us to "Julia," which seemed like a right-wing parody of the perfect constituent of the nanny state. One could on (and on).
So far, the president's re-election campaign measures up poorly, in terms of its execution, against the Alan Cranston re-election effort of 1986. Imagine that.
Fracking Obama.
The technological revolution in energy is creating a locomotive of economic growth. Mitt Romney needs to get on the train. My latest column for Buzzfeed.
The Collapse of Big Blue
The defining issue in American politics today is the collapse of the Blue Social Model and what replaces it. President Obama is running on a platform of defending Big Blue, because he doesn't know how else to get re-elected. That's an opportunity for Mitt Romney, if he dares take it. He almost certainly won't.
My column for Buzzfeed on this subject is here.
Ellisblog! I-Team Special Report!
A while back, our crack investigative unit came across a company called Dollar Shave Club. The company's premise (and promise) was to provide a great shaving experience at a fraction of the cost of the (say) Gillette experience. After lengthy due diligence and in-depth analysis, we are now able to provide you with a full report.
Here's the deal:
1. The Dollar Shave Club basic dual razor blade isn't as good as, say, a Gillette Sensor razor blade.
2. The Dollar Shave Club basic razor shaving experience is similar to the shaving experience one has when using a plastic, throw-away blue Gillette razor.
3. Dollar Shave Club razors really are very inexpensive.
4. Dollar Shave Club razors are good enough to get the job done, without discomfort.
5. Or as Jim Cramer might put it: BUY BUY BUY.**
**Editors Note: We do not have any stake of any kind in Dollar Shave Club. We think we wish we did, but we're not sure. Years ago, the same Jim Cramer wrote a post which made the case that Shick should stop directly competing with Gillette and re-position itself as an econo-razor. Just as good, but one-third less. I always thought that was very good advice, but it never happened, for whatever reason. The question here is whether Dollar Shave Club can become North America's "econo-razor." I'm not sure the answer is "yes." But I hope it does, if only to create downward price pressure on Gillette.
Saving Goldman Sachs
Memo
To: Richard Siewert, Global Commmunications Director, Goldman Sachs
Fr: Nightmare Communications
Date: Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Re: The Situation.
Let's look on the bright side, shall we? Things could hardly be worse. This Greg Smith letter is a disaster, but --happily enough -- it's not your disaster. It's everyone else's disaster. You are literally the only person at the firm whose reputation is not in some way damaged by it.
So that's good. You begin untarnished. And there's literally nothing you can do about what has happened. So there's hardly any point in rehashing it or litigating the past. What's done is done. The only question is: what are you going to do now?
Here are four recommendations:
1. Fire your advertising agency and put a review in place for hiring a new one. The current campaign is a complete waste of money. The issue was never: underwriting housing projects in New Orleans. The issue was always (and is today) the integrity of the firm. Address the issue.
2. Fire your PR firm(s). There are, every day, amazing stories going on at Goldman Sachs. People at every level of the firm are helping build extraordinary businesses around the world.
The other day I lost my I-Phone on the train. I called Asurion, the Goldman Sachs-financed insurance company that insures my phone. I go to their website, I fill in the information, it takes like eight minutes all in, two days later an I-Phone 4S arrives via UPS. Fantastic! I had no idea Goldman was involved until a friend told me so. I'm willing to bet that there are literally hundreds of Asurions out there, whose GS pedigree is unknown.
Find a PR firm or PR firms that can help you tell those stories.
3. Coordinate all of the firm's philanthropic and charitable work into a coherent message. Goldman Sachs (the company) and its partners (individually) are huge contributors to philanthropic and charitable enterprises. No one knows that and if they do know it, they don't know the stories behind those involvements. Let them know it.
4. Be a channel. Build your own news site. Build your own TV studio. Do weekly briefings on the economy, on industry verticals, on policy questions, etc. Publish a news summary (every day). Publish analysis and commentary. Cut out the middleman. Be GSnews.com.
Here's the best news of all. At this very moment, not even Lloyd Blankfein would dare reject a communications budget request. Whatever you need will be the general idea amongst the senior management. So load up the wish list, lad. Circumstances will never ever be so budget-be-damned favorable again.
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