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Political Tidbits - 06/05 https://mail.chicagofanatics.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=70596	Page 1 of 1

Author:	BD [ Tue Jun 05, 2012 7:11 am ]
Post subject:	Political Tidbits - 06/05
Campaign News Walker, Barrett Camps Focus On GOTV Efforts In Wisconsin Only NBC Nightly News, among the three network newscasts yesterday evening, covered today's gubernatorial recall vote in Wisconsin. However, the recall election continued to generate an enormous amount of online and print coverage, and was the dominant topic of discussion on both Fox News and MSNBC throughout the night last night. Much of the coverage this morning and last night tied the situation in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker (R) is widely expected to survive the recall campaign, to the presidential election. Politico reported that on Monday, Walker "pointed to President Barack Obama's absence on the campaign trail as a clear sign that the Wisconsin governor is poised for a win." In his Washington Post column, Marc Thiessen says, "Not only did Obama not show up, his campaign is desperately trying to distance him from the Wisconsin recall effort." Appearing on Fox News' Special Report, columnist Kirsten Powers, discussing the Wisconsin election, said, "The White House is panicking about this." Bill O'Reilly, in his opening monologue for Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, said that if Walker "does keep his job, President Obama, American labor and the hardcore left will all be disappointed. It's not so much about Walker himself; it's about the message that will be sent: big spending, big government versus tough measures when it comes to taxpayer dollars." In his New York Times column, David Brooks says, "Walker's method was obnoxious," but if he wins, "it will be a sign that voters do value deficit reduction and will vote for people who accomplish it, even in a state that has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1984." NBC Nightly News reported, "The political fight between Wisconsin's Republican governor and the state's public employees' unions is coming to a head." The New York Times reports that Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) "raced through a final, frenzied day of campaigning on Monday, stopping in seemingly every region of the state as Wisconsin braced for an Election Day unlike any it has seen before." The Washington Post reports, "The long-awaited vote is viewed here as a referendum on Walker's move to curtail public workers' collective-bargaining rights and a harbinger of whether Republicans have a shot at winning Wisconsin this fall for the first time since 1984. But the contest also will be an early test of a dynamic that both parties expect to play out in a dozen or so battleground states in November: the effectiveness of the Democrats' ground organization against the expected advantage Republicans will have in fundraising and on TV." Politico reported that "Democrats and labor unions scrambled Monday to rouse their base in a final push for a come-from-behind victory." According to Politico, "Volunteers knocked on the doors of more than 940,000 voters...between Saturday and Monday morning and called more than 880,000 voters, said Mike Tate, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin." Meanwhile, "the labor-backed coalition We Are Wisconsin is sending out its own volunteer troops in the final stretch, with the goal of hitting 1.4 million houses in the final 96 hours of the race." Walker Draws Attention To Obama's Failure To Campaign For Barrett Politico reported that on Monday, Walker "pointed to President Barack Obama's absence on the campaign trail as a clear sign that the Wisconsin governor is poised for a win. Noting that the president had traveled to Minnesota and Illinois last week without stopping in Wisconsin to show support for...Barrett, Walker suggested that the president must not be convinced that the Democrat is on the road to victory." Walker said, "Two years ago, the same person I'm running against now was my opponent back then and [Obama] came in and campaigned for the mayor at that point. I think it's a sign there's real concern." Ed Schultz, on MSNBC's The Ed Show, said. "The President of the United States just tweeted: 'It's Election Day in Wisconsin tomorrow and I'm standing by Tom Barrett. He'd make an outstanding governor.'" Schultz, who pleaded with the President to campaign with Barrett in Wisconsin last week, added, "I have to tell you that going around the state this weekend...I did not hear one person say anything about the President being here." White House Reportedly Opposed Walker Recall Effort From The Outset The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny, appearing on Fox News' Special Report, said some Democrats are asking, "Was it a wise idea to put $5 million off the bat into a Democrat who didn't even survive the primary, Kathleen Falk?" According to Zeleny, "The White House agrees with them; they didn't think the recall was such a good idea in the first place." At Obama Fundraiser, Clinton Says Romney Presidency Would Be "Calamitous" Former President Bill Clinton on Monday appeared with President Obama at three New York City fundraisers, which were expected to raise millions for the Obama campaign. Much of today's coverage focused on Clinton's claim that a Romney presidency would be "calamitous" for the nation and the world. The AP reports that Clinton "said Obama had earned a second term because of his steering of the economy through a 'miserable situation' and 'the alternative would be, in my opinion, calamitous for our country and the world.'" The AP adds, "With Obama standing thoughtfully to one side, Clinton slammed Romney by name, an apparent rebuttal to his own comments last week that were widely seen as flattering to Romney's background in business." The New York Times notes Clinton's "calamitous" remark on Romney then adds, "And with that blunt denunciation," the former President "sought to quash the chatter in the news media and from the Romney campaign that his earlier remarks amounted to an off-message endorsement of Mr. Romney's qualifications to take Mr. Obama's job." The New York Daily News reports that Clinton "said of Obama, who stood at his side, 'He's got the right economic policies and the right political approach.' He added that Romney and the GOP's 'economics are wrongheaded and their politics are worse.' With those strong words, Clinton...did an about-face from comments he made to CNN last week" when the former President "said Romney's 'sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold' for him to be considered a White House contender." Obama Campaign's Focus On Romney's Massachusetts Record Questioned Fox News' Special Report reported, "Shifting focus from Bain Capital, the Obama-Biden campaign took aim instead at Mitt Romney's tenure as an elected official, spending some $10 million to run [an] ad in nine swing states." Liz Marlantes, in the Christian Science Monitor , said, "Set to run in nine battleground states, the ad features footage of Romney during his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, claiming he knows how to create jobs. It then goes on to state that during Romney's tenure as governor, Massachusetts lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs and fell to 47th in the nation in job creation." Marlantes added, "Given the lousy economic climate, attacking Romney may be the only card the Obama team has to play right now," but "any time an incumbent president goes negative, it can wind up making him look smaller." CNBC 's Eamon Javers reported, "After focusing many of their earlier campaign attacks on Romney's tenure as head of Bain Capital, now the Obama administration and the Obama campaign are shifting tactics, focusing their criticism on Romney's tenure as governor of Massachusetts." Javers added that in response to the ad, the Romney camp "said that they would be happy to match Massachusetts' 4.7% unemployment rate under Gov. Romney against the nation's unemployment rate under President Obama today." The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman, on MSNBC's Hardball, said, "The Obama campaign will say, 'look, we have got to explain that Mitt Romney is not capable of getting us out of this situation.'" Fineman said while "that may be true...before voters get to that, they need to be reminded of what the President has done and what, in this dire situation...he [is] going to do." Fineman added that the Obama campaign "did it the other way; the Obama people deliberately said, 'we're going to start by trying to strangle the Romney campaign at birth,' and for a whole host of reasons, that really didn't work." Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News' Special Report, said, "Having tried the attack on Bain," the Obama campaign is "now going after [Romney] as governor." Krauthammer said the Romney campaign should, in response, "cite one number: 'when I left office, the unemployment rate in the state was 4.7%.'" Obama Campaign Intends To Keep Up Bain Attacks The Hill reported on its website, "Despite criticism from some within the Democratic Party, the Obama campaign said it was 'just beginning' to roll out attacks against Mitt Romney over his career as an executive at Bain Capital. 'This is a discussion that we're just beginning, that extends to his public sector tenure as well in terms of applying that economic philosophy,' said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt." Washington News Obama Urges The Senate To Pass The Paycheck Fairness Act McClatchy reports, "Gender politics takes center stage again this election year as the Senate on Tuesday is urged to consider a pay equality bill that the White House and congressional Democrats say is necessary but Republicans decry as a show vote designed to paint them as anti-women. Senators will vote whether to debate the Democratic-sponsored Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would require businesses to show that wage discrepancies between men and women are not based on gender," and "bans retaliation against workers who reveal their wages or try to get wage information from their employers." The bill is not "expected to reach the 60-vote threshold required for the Senate to proceed," but Democrats "waged a full-court press for it Monday with" President Obama "calling the bill urgent in order to aid women and help the nation's economy." The Hill reported on its website that Senate Republicans "are expected to block the measure, a move Democrats on Monday were preparing to use against the GOP. 'Let's face it: Congress is not going to act because I said it's important,' the president said on a Monday conference call." Reuters quotes Obama as saying, "This is more than just about fairness," because "women are the breadwinners for a lot of families and if they're making less than men do for the same work, families are going to have to get by for less money." The Christian Science Monitor reported, "Even with the outcome looking certain, the bill provides Democrats with the opportunity to further push the narrative of what they call the Republicans' 'war on women.'" The Washington Post reports that the Paycheck Fairness Act "will fail, as intended, because at its core it is not as much a legislative vehicle as a political one intended to embarrass Republicans." Romney Chooses McMorris Rodgers As His House Liaison The Washington Post reported that Mitt Romney chose Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) "to serve as his liaison to the chamber's GOP conference...handing the congresswoman from Washington state key responsibility for keeping the often fractious caucus on the same page as the campaign." The Post says "the new post gives...McMorris Rodgers, already a rising figure on the Hill, new national prominence and close access to the party's presidential nominee." White House, Obama Campaign Blame The GOP For Poor Jobs Numbers ABC World News reported, "The jobs report [is] throwing a curveball into the race for the White House...and Romney seems to have momentum." ABC added, "Reeling from the economic body blow of Friday's jobs report, President Obama went back to Chicago over the weekend, spending time with close friends," but, according to Tapper, "the President's supporters are nervous. ... Earlier this year the President was able to make his case that things were getting better quicker," but "now the numbers suggest the economic recovery is not speeding up; it's slowing down." According to Fox News' Special Report, the Obama campaign is "trying to find any way to deflect attention from the most recent job numbers." Fox News added, "After a dismal jobs report on Friday, President Obama charged Republicans have a 'fever' to defeat him," and White House press secretary Jay Carney "doubled down, claiming Republicans want the economy to unravel." Carney: "It's not okay to simply root for failure and hope it pays off politically." In his Wall Street Journal column, Gerald Seib says the Obama campaign intends to focus more of its attacks on Republicans in Congress, as opposed to Mitt Romney himself, because the Republicans' approval ratings are far worse than Romney's. Seib says the President will continue to make the case that the Republican House is blocking job creation, and notes David Axelrod said, "Congress has sat on its hands. It's pretty remarkable to see the architects of obstruction lamenting the lack of progress." Factory Orders Declined For Second Straight Month In April Bloomberg News reports that Commerce Department figures released Monday show that orders to US factories declined 0.6 percent in April, after a 2.1 percent decline in March, marking the "first back-to-back declines in more than three years." Bloomberg News notes that the figures point "to a deceleration in manufacturing as the global economy cools." The CBS Evening News reported, "A new report out today shows that demand for what" American "factories make is down" following "Friday's report of a sharp slowdown in job creation and a rise in the unemployment rate to 8.2%." A significant portion of the issue "is the continuing fear that Europe's financial problems will spread here." Bloomberg News reports that it appears that while the US economy will slow in 2012, it will avoid a recession for a third straight year. Harvard economist Robert Barro, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal , says US GDP need to average more than 3% for years to come in order to make up for the lost growth in the wake of the 2008 credit crisis. Barro notes that in the post-recessionary period from 1982 to 1989, GDP growth averaged 4.3% annually. European Crisis Is Impacting US Companies' Sales A front-page story in the New York Times notes that as Europe's financial crisis continues, a growing number of US companies "are warning investors that sales in the region are slowing and could get much worse." The Times adds that the decline in European revenue "is part of the reason that analysts have recently ratcheted down their expectations for profit growth in the second quarter. In the case of technology companies, analysts say they believe that about a third of all revenue comes from Europe."

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