Dole Group

This to came up a lot in my debate this Saturday and i think it is an overall summary of the situation in Iran which needs to be dealt with. What are your views on Iran and how should we being dealing with them. Are they a legit threat?

I think the "Iran issue," or whatever you want to call it, is way overdramatized. We're not going to go to war with Iran. Our sanctions are destroying the value of their currency. There is nothing more we can do to "deal with" them. And no, I'd say they are not a legit threat. While it is debated, it seems to me like they aren't close to getting a nuclear bomb at all. They are closer to having the materials to construct one, but they don't have the technology or the actual warhead to put that material into.

I agree with John that Iran is a bizzarre threat. If Iran wanted to hit that drone they probably could have. Maybe they were trying to send a message, but I do not really think it came across. I also agree with Eli that this is way overdramatize. People are just always nervous about things that could happen, as soon as anyone hears nuke they freak out even if there is none.

This is a nice bit of Romney retrospect, investigating what I looked at as his greatest asset during the race: his past as a successful businessman. In an election where the economy is inarguably the most important issue to voters, I saw his business savvy as something that would resonate with a lot of people. These authors are suggesting reasons why business success does not always translate well to politics. A convincing one, brought up early on in the piece, is the idea that CEO's and "money men" are required to interact with people below them in their respective hierarchy in a fundamentally different way. Namely, businessmen are not as used to people telling them what they don't want to hear. Another Romney-specific point a commenter raises is that Romney is not a businessman in the same way as a manufacturing CEO or someone like that: he is a "deal-maker," less involved in leading a company than striking enormous deals with other men like himself. The idea that a country is a business, and should be run by a businessman, seems like an easy train of thought to arrive to when our economy still struggling from a recession. This article brings up some interesting contradictions to this part of the Romney campaign. While I looked at his experience (not counting his superwealth) as an asset to a man promising to fix the economy, the article pointed to ways that this can actually hurt him. An interesting one has to do with the basic dynamics of the election: where a businessman needs to sell a good product, a president has to address people and communities as the things that need to be "fixed." This is where elections become personal, and where I saw Romney struggling to connect. This kind of thinking led to the infamous 47% comment: in the eyes of a businessman, discounting a part of a company implies nothing personal. To the rest of America, he was talking about friends and neighbors. This is where I believe he failed: running a country is fundamen

This column by David Brooks about the changing nature of the American electorate and the Republican's inability to understand it seems to nail many of the issues Republicans have with minority voters. The old days of white male Protestant individualism is a mindset that is slipping away as our country is made up of more cultures who believe both in the commitment to hard work and to the idea that government programs can insight work and enhance opportunity. It's funny to hear the Republicans now talk only about immigration reform as they try to reach Latino and Asian voters. David Brooks shows that there is much more listening and understanding the Republicans still have to do.

I don't want to sound naive, but I feel like the "small government" argument is beginning to be an outdated argument. Obviously, there will always be conservatives, but I think they are going to need to start fitting the desire of the electorate. For example, in California, a state that votes very fiscally conservative on its propositions, we passed a bill that raises taxes to pay for education. I don't have any stats on this, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that if most people in America were asked the question, "would you raise taxes on wealthy people to help pay for education?" I believe people would say yes.

I think that the Republicans were able to go into the mind set of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" in the past few elections as this change started to happen. Now they clearly cannot have that mind set or they will not go far as a political party. If they can embrace this change and allow themselves to work to attract a broader demographic they will be able to make the 2016 election and interesting one. I do believe though that it is hard to let go of because it has been their "status quo" of sorts for awhile.

Here is an article just about some interesting facts about the election, Just some interesting things to think about when looking at the results of the election.

This is just a reminder that Obama is not the "champion of liberal values" that many liberals would want him to be. It will be interesting to see how this whole "fiscal cliff" problem ends up, but I doubt anyone will be happy about it.

I agree, I think it is tough for Obama because he will get a lot of criticism from his own party for not living up to those liberal values. It is going to be a hard for Obama to figure out a way to work with Republicans while still pleasing the Democrats. I do think though that he will be able to find a balance at some point.

Just a final thought before this blog thing ends. I think about how heated the election got and everything, but in the end we have a president and we all must support him in his troubles. Speaking of which, there are a LOT. Already a drone has been shot at, the head of the C.I.A has stepped down and a general has been implicated in the scandal. Overall, what do you guys think is the most pressing issue facing Obama in this new term?

I think domestic policy will be much more important than foreign policy over the next couple of years. Republicans and Democrats are pretty much in consensus on foreign policy concerns. Domestic policy however is a much different story. This "fiscal cliff" problem is a huge issue that Republicans and Democrats will have to deal with. Probably nobody will happy with the out come. I think wealthy people's taxes will go up and entitlements will also be cut; is that compromise or is everyone losing? I guess that's more of a philosophical question, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently.

Here is another article about how Romney was not really prepared for the loss. The only thing that Romney really won was white men in America, which is the category he pretty much perfectly fits in. here is a good quote from the article about the disregard of a lot of Americans. "Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and moochers who did not belong in their "traditional" America. But the more they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male domination the boot." It amazes me that the republicans ran a race directed at "traditional" America when we are clearly in a time of great change. 

This article talks about the challenge Obama has in the next for years due to the divide between parties. Things could get messy if he can not somehow convince the Republicans to open up and start breaking down party barriers. It does not really make sense for this divide because everyone involved should really just want the country to run the best it can and it will not with the divide. It is a tough battle that Obama is going to face, but if there can be a good relationship between parties our country will be on a much better track than it is now.

Will our country be on a better track? I read an op-ed piece from Paul Krugman (link here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/opinion/krugman-lets-not-make-a-deal.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), my favorite economist, that said Obama shouldn't strike a deal at all. I found his piece really compelling and worth reading.

This article in The Economist does a good job of summing up where Obama had the edge over Romney. It was clear, as we've talked about, that his message resonated most with young women, minorities, the educated, and the young. He won female voters by eleven points, which was more than enough to beat Romney's seven point advantage among men, especially because women make up more of the population than men. I thought it was also interesting to learn that Obama enjoyed a lead of 13% among voters who had post-graduate degrees. The article does imply that Obama past legislation in order to reach certain groups. Their examples include the Lilly Ledbetter Act to reach women, the Dream Act for Latinos. They also acuse Obama's campaign for being unnecessarily negative about Romney's business background implying that he only cared about the rich. I didn't know that Obama's campaign opened three times as many field offices as Romney. Though it is disillusioning to consider all the things a good man like Obama must do to get elected, it's obvious his campaign was smart, and up to date. The graphs of who voted for each candidate are worth taking a look at. It's particularly interesting to me that Romney won the votes of people whose annual income in under $50,000 and Obama won with those making over $50,000.

This article is about the importance of Medicaid in this election. Under Romney 45 million people would be denied health insurance. These are non elderly poor people. I personally believe that a person should not go through life without a health care support system. Its clear that these people are part of the 47% that Romney does not care about. Why would the country want someone in office who has already given up on almost half the nation?

I agree with John about being in the dark about the relative costs of Medicaid. I thought that Medicaid was not as responsible about keeping costs down as private insurers. Again, this seems like an important point that should be highlighted by the Democrats as they implement the Affordable Care Act and work to improve Medicaid. It's too important that the people who receive healthcare through Medicaid continue to be covered.

From my understanding, Obamacare will make states cover people that make up to 133% of the poverty line. The idea that more people will be covered on a program that already offers shoddy coverage troubles me a bit. I know in California Medical doesn't even cover basic dental work. The only dental work a middle aged person on Medical can receive is tooth extraction meaning that the tooth will be pulled when it can harm that person. Hopefully, Medicaid can handle these new people on it, but I'm a little worried about the quality of the coverage they will be receiving.

This article looks deeply into what we talked about last week regarding Ohio being the key state to win for both candidates. The author examines the importance of the state even more closely by narrowing in on five specific counties that have historically helped decide which party Ohio swings to. In this sense, the article is also useful as a profile of important undecided voter demographics in the country. In Wood, Ottawa, and Sandusky counties, the population is small but they serve as an indication of which candidate the entire state will vote for. Full of both elderly whites and union members/auto workers, the counties have been notoriously difficult to predict but paint a larger picture of the state as a whole. Tuscarawas serves as a bridge between the industrial, union-heavy north and the more rural south, and has gone with the winner of every presidential election in the last twenty years. Finally, Hamilton is worth watching because it has a much larger black population than the rest of the state, which the article suggests will indicate if Obama has a large turn out of this demographic. I am interested to see the results from Ohio come in on Election Day, and after reading this article, I'm going to keep a particularly keen eye out for these counties. I normally look at the enormous emphasis given to certain states as a flaw in our campaigning process, but this article is a good reminder that these states themselves are very diverse and a pretty good representation of the country as a whole. That being said, I still feel like the issues put forward by the candidates in the coming weeks are going to favor swing states like Ohio. This article was also informative to me as a California voter because I don't normally think of there being a hierarchy within the swing states, and I particularly don't consider the counties within these states. The magnification that this article takes to Ohio makes me wonder how carefully the candidates themselves look: do they fo

What intrigued me about this article was the need to examine four small counties in the state of Ohio in an effort to predict the outcome of a national election. More and more, as we've talked about, candidates are micro-targeting specific groups to hone their message to that groups specific concerns. Its become the way to win an election, but more and more it seems that it's just about convincing someone to vote for you and not about convincing them that important policies will help the country.

I get so worked up when super-wealthy people act like they are somehow being persecuted when the Democrats asked them to "pay their fair share." I think this op-ed piece does a great job of explaining the frustration with the current socioeconomic divide. The author writes that "It is no accident that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the Gilded Age." Although we can sit around and pretend that people "need to learn" from the rich. In reality, a of government policies are making it much harder to go from poor to rich, or even middle class. As the author describes the holes in the current American system, "Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household." This article doesn't blame Romney or Obama, it just explains why people are starting to have problems with the idea of the "1%." I personally don't think the outcry is against the actual members of the 1%, but rather agains the policies that it make socioeconomic inequality greater.

I think that what Mr. Potepan said in the talk really applies here. The idea is that when money is mobile, the economy is flourishing, but once the money gets locked up in the super-rich's bank accounts it doesn't help anyone because it's not being invested. It's always interesting to see historical examples of theories like these, and the thing about Venice seems like it illustrates Mr. Potepan's point well.

I agree with Cody that the point of the article is that successful states are those that give everyone access to economic opportunity and that inclusiveness as opposed to exclusiveness makes for a more prosperous country. The "book of gold" is a powerful image for the special access and privilege the elite had in Venice that continues today in access to better education tax breaks, etc. That access is something people don't want to give up. The African-American president at Brown who didn't want to give up legacy at admissions, since she had a granddaughter shows how once you have privilege, you don't want to let it go.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/us/politics/gary-johnson-the-libertarian-partys-presidential-nominee-worries-republicans.html?pagewanted=all I read these two articles in tandem and was really interested by the intersections and the role that finances play in American politics and the two-party system. Gary Johnson is a really interesting politician and I sometimes consider him a liberal libertarian. I can't see myself ever voting for him, but I think he offers a unique perspective. The idea that he could be a Ralph Nader "to Mr. Romney's Gore" is interesting, though unlikely considering Johnson's radical views. Furthermore, the idea that Democrats are supporting Johnson is pretty unfounded. The paragraphs about Johnson's limited finances and management of his campaign are especially telling after reading this op-ed piece, which details the way virtually every politician (both now and in early American history) comes from a white-collar background and how that creates these blocks in terms of understanding their constituents and making learned decisions. Two lines that I especially enjoy comparing are: "Would you like to be represented by a millionaire lawyer or a millionaire businessmen?" and "Mr. Johnson said he had no problem being labeled a potential spoiler in an election that he views as "a debate between Coke and Pepsi." (He said he viewed himself as Perrier.)" Trying to understand why there are not more blue-collar politicians around is certainly difficult ("Scholars haven't yet confirmed exactly what that is. (Campaign money? Free time? Party gatekeepers?)"), but as this article notes, determining why we are in the current situation is vastly important. The ending analogy, about the rise of female politicians since the '40s is helpful in demonstrat

Gary Johnson definitely seems like an interesting guy, and I'm all for the unravelling of the two-party system. I don't think I agree with a lot of his ideas, especially his economic policies, but I think any article written about a non-Romney/Obama candidate is a good thing. The Romney/Obama choice is a limited one, and people should obviously be able to pick a candidate who represents their beliefs, not just one who is affiliated with their party or who comes closest.

Articles like these always trouble me. How will this ever change? It is unlikely that it ever will. When we are adults, we will still probably have a two party system with most political candidates being wealthy. I think one of the issues we have in America is the small spectrum on the political scale that the two parties represent. While Democrats and Republicans have their differences, they are still philosophically the same when it comes to what the government should basically do. In other countries, they have more radical thought like liberterians and socialists.

This article is pretty long and gets technical in parts, but I really like it because it gets at the heart of an issue I have with both debates. Each candidate, VP included, throws around "studies" with impunity. Each one has multiple testimonies to back up his point. The main point from the article that stuck with me is that any blogger or op-ed author can call his analyses a "study," and the candidate can cite these less-than-credible sources without much distinction. The author reaches the conclusion that Romney's plan does not simply need to reach a net zero, but instead needs to generate a massive surplus to work. If the numbers are possibly these for the first scenario, the author argues, they definitely are not for the second. In the second half, the piece basically tears apart the six studies citied by the Romney campaign to support the tax plan as not affecting the middle class. I like this piece because, with Romney and Obama often referencing the "arithmetic" behind the truth and urging each other to "do the math," I see this article as actually following through. The author does just that: he uses pretty objective figures to poke holes in the Romney tax plan, suggesting that the "alternatives" Romney would be to tax the middle class or grow the federal deficit. I honestly didn't understand the tax jargon entirely, but the points the author brings up about the six cited studies are compelling to me. The holes he pokes in them highlight two main ideas for me. One, with all the desire for facts that I feel during debates and speeches, it's important to remember that these statistics and values are often conflicting, loaded, or contested. The way he tears down studies is fascinating to me not because they are blatant lies, but because they are often misrepresenting totally true information. The second point I took away from it, which will color my view of the next debate, is the incredibly difficult position the candidates are in with regard to the studies.

The is an article pre vice presidential debate about medicare. It talks about Paul Ryan's medicare a lot in comparison to the current system and Obamacare. I understand each side and there plans for this system. but I think that the problem is the unwillingness to make compromises between parties which is really holding the government back right now. Just wondering thoughts on medicare and the opposing plans.

Yeah, Romney's plan and Obama's plan are still in the phase of theory, because neither has been enacted. I've read economic analysis that supports both; it really comes down to the economist being a liberal or a conservative. I think we can do as much speculation as we want, but the key difference is that Obamacare worked in Massachusetts, while Romney's current plan has never really worked anywhere.

I agree with Eli. Although this article gives some specific information about why the market based approach to medicare could be more effective in lowering costs than the political. They're both theoretical. Obama's board of experts have had much of their power taken away by Congress, so it will be very difficult to see how effective it could really be if it were given the right kind of power. The vouchers lowering the cost of medicare drug benefits is encouraging, though hard to imagine how something like that would work with a much more complex medical system.

I was most interested by the first and last paragraphs in this New Yorker article about the first Presidential debate. The beginning paragraph talks about how expectations made by the "expectorate" largely came true and how political interpretations and actual situations can be so utterly dominated by the media and other politicians' assumptions. It seems so simple that this sometimes anonymous group of "journalists, columnists, bloggers, television commentators, politicians, and 'strategists'" can have such a great impact on not only the perception of a political event but also the actual happenings because a candidate can just work to fulfill their expectations. People expected Romney to do well and he prepared and he won. (Though this article also makes the interesting distinction that not only did Romney win, Obama lost). The last paragraph frames Romney's flip-flopping tendencies in a different and more positive light. By constantly changing his viewpoints, both in his political career and as of late, Romney cannot be pinned down and sold as a specific type of bad person to the electorate. When Romney alters where he stands on the political spectrum and often successfully pulls himself into the center, the Obama campaign can again and again maintain that "all the evidence indicates that Romney has no 'core beliefs,'" but it makes their negative campaign much more difficult.

I personally find post-debate coverage helpful to determine who "won" the debate. As a decided voter, it's really hard for me to determine who "won" a debate, because I support what Obama/Biden say. That said, I'm not sure if it is helpful to the overall process. Post-debate coverage and polls are here to stay though, so we should get used to them and try to understand them better.

It is hard to look at who one and who lost a debate because it formed by the media. Yes we can all say that Romney came out harder and ready to play, while Obama was in the back seat watching the show. But no debate is going to change the mind of a decided and educated voter. With three debates prior to the election I think we have to wait until all three are finished to really form an idea of who won or lost the debates because then the majority of topics will be put on the table. Bottom line is you can be a great debater, but a not so great leader.