Thursday Open Thread [10.18.12]

Filed in Open Thread by on October 18, 2012

Dave Nyczepir & Shane D’Aprile have a post on “A roadmap for the final 72: How your campaign can make the most of the run-up to Election Day” up at Campaigns & Elections. One tip: “Among the toughest decisions the campaign has to make is how to spend late cash. While it’s easy to get sucked in by the low cost and speed of robocalls, Democrat Marty Stone says there are much better ways to use phones…”Don’t just think about 30-second blasts of messages, but think about where the voters are,” Stone says. “Do push-button auto calls, getting their opinions back.”

What’s the matter with Tennessee? Put another way, why can’t Democrats get much traction in the Volunteer State? This, despite a long heritage of producing distinguished Democratic leaders like Andrew Jackson, Kefauver, the Gores and Fords, to name a few, and reaping tremendous benefits from Democratic leaders, like FDR? Today, incumbent Republican Scott DesJarlais, embroiled in a particularly ugly scandal, still leads his Democratic adversary Eric Stewart in their 4th district race. Greg Johnson addresses the race and TN Dems frustrations in general in his Knoxnews.com post, “Is Democratic brand irretrievably and permanently damaged in Tennessee?

The economy is starting to show a “full-on comeback in everything related to consumers and households.”

September housing starts were up, hitting a four-year high:

Groundbreaking on new homes surged in September to its fastest pace in more than four years, a sign the housing sector’s budding recovery is gaining traction and supporting the wider economic recovery. […]

The U.S. economy has shown signs of faster growth in recent months as the jobless rate has fallen and retail sales data has pointed to stronger consumer spending.

The data showed housing, which was battered by the 2007-09 recession, is increasingly one of the brighter spots in the economy and could add to growth this year for the first time since 2005.

Jared Bernstein believes that “things are slowly getting better and Romney’s claims to the contrary may be drowned out by this reality”:

I suspect there’s NCD—nontrivial cognitive dissonance–between Romney’s portrait of the economy and many people’s experience of it, especially around some of the more tangible aspects, like housing values and mortgage rates.

Steve Benen:

The unemployment rate is at its best point in four years; consumer confidence is at its best point in five years; the federal budget deficit is at its best point in four years. Just this week, reports on retail sales, industrial production, and new housing construction showed sharp and unexpected improvements.

This probably isn’t what Republicans wanted to hear.

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  1. puck says:

    The unemployment rate is at its best point in four years; consumer confidence is at its best point in five years; the federal budget deficit is at its best point in four years. Just this week, reports on retail sales, industrial production, and new housing construction showed sharp and unexpected improvements.

    What is driving this? It isn’t Federal policy. Broadly speaking, Federal policy was to throw in the stimulus, extend the job-killing Bush tax cuts, throw in some more tax cuts, and hope for time to heal the economy. Lots of time.

    And the economy does eventually heal, pretty much no matter what insult is thrown at it. But the problem is it is stabilizing with a smaller middle class and a lower standard of living. So basically, the American working class has capitulated to the Bush tax cuts by lowering their standard of living, instead of demanding an end to the cuts.

    See here: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-economic-growth-a-new-65-year-study-finds/262438/

    And the recovery is so fragile any unexpected event could set it back to square one. The longer recovery takes, the greater the likelihood of such an event.

  2. Jason330 says:

    If the Democratic brand is irretrievably and permanently damaged in TN, it is likely due to the mewling and pathetic Republican wannabees that have been posing as Democratic politicians.

    Most places where the Dem brand is tarnished, that is the leading cause.

  3. Another Mike says:

    “This probably isn’t what Republicans wanted to hear.”

    Doesn’t matter. They just insist it’s wrong or doesn’t exist anyway.

  4. John Young says:

    Dueling Al Smith Dinner vids:

    Mitt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSznL29JyhQ

    Barack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gy3a50vVSk

    My opinion: both were funny.

  5. Delaware Dem says:

    I caught Obama’s live. Very funny.

  6. John Young says:

    Mitt: “Big Bird never saw me coming” and “tonight’s dinner brought to you by the letter O and the number 16 trillion.”

    Barack: “I need to apologize to Chris Matthews, 4 years ago I gave him a thrill up his leg, this time around I gave him a stroke”

    good stuff.

  7. Paula says:

    BTW, BO is on John Stewart right now.