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from Tales from the Trail:
Union leader sees opportunity in Romney’s dismissal of the “47 percent”
Democrats have reacted gleefully to the release of Mitt Romney's secretly videotaped dismissal of 47 percent of American voters - whom he identified as supporters of President Barack Obama - as victims who do not pay their share or "care for their lives."
But few have reacted with as much glee as union leaders who have spent the past two years waging big fights over labor rules with Republican-controlled state governments - and the past week facing fallout from a bitter Chicago teachers' strike.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka blasted Romney's comments as the latest sign that the wealthy former businessman is out of touch with ordinary Americans.
"What Mitt Romney said about half the country is really an insult to everyday people who know what it means to work incredibly hard and still sometimes fail to get by," Trumka told reporters at the labor federation's headquarters on Tuesday, the day after the left-wing magazine Mother Jones began posting the video on its website.
from The Great Debate:
It’s time for the candidates to offer a strong education strategy
In the late 1960s, a Stanford University psychologist began conducting his now famous “marshmallow test” to understand “delayed gratification” – the ability to wait.
He would place a 4-year-old alone in a room with a single delicious marshmallow, promising to give him two marshmallows after a short wait. Some children succumbed to temptation, while others held out for the bigger reward. The children who could control their impulses went on to become better, higher-achieving students.
from David Cay Johnston:
A tale of two healthcare plans
No issue affecting taxes so clearly divides the two parties in the U.S. election as healthcare. The two parties, in their platforms, describe very different approaches to healthcare economics. Both use political plastic surgery to cover up ugly truths.
The stakes are huge. Americans spend $2.64 per person for healthcare for each purchasing power equivalent dollar spent by the 33 other countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD data shows the U.S. spends $8,233 per capita compared with an average of $3,118 in the other 33 countries.
from Breakingviews:
U.S. political jamborees alienate Mr. Market
By Daniel Indiviglio and Jeffrey Goldfarb
The authors are Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The opinions expressed are their own.
Mr. Market would have felt unwelcome in Charlotte and Tampa over the last couple of weeks. The political jamborees hosted in the two southeastern U.S. cities offered stark differences in tone that mirror the different options Americans face in November’s elections. Eat the fiscal spinach served up by Mitt Romney and the Republicans, or gorge on the pro-worker red meat dangled by Barack Obama and the Democrats. Voters may be tempted by one or the other, but investors will probably turn their noses up at both.
from Tales from the Trail:
Not expecting a call from the president? Try the second line
A warning to those who are sometimes slow to pick up the phone: you may miss a call from the president.
President Barack Obama stopped by a local campaign office in Port St. Lucie, Florida, on Sunday to visit with supporters, and he placed a call to Barney Roberts, a volunteer in Jacksonville.
from Breakingviews:
Obama job adds match Bush, Clinton but not Reagan
By Martin Hutchinson
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Thirty months after the U.S. jobs nadir, employment has risen by 3.1 percent, according to Friday’s report for August. That’s roughly in line with the post-recession record of the last 2-1/2 presidents - but far short of Ronald Reagan’s 9.8 percent jobs increase. The picture for August alone was also mixed: President Barack Obama, his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney, and the Federal Reserve can all take something from it.
from David Rohde:
Parsing Romney’s and Obama’s middle-class pablum
Throughout the last two weeks of political conventions, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and a vast array of surrogates accused their opponents of gutting the American middle class.
Paul Ryan and Bill Clinton did it blatantly. Michelle Obama and Ann Romney did it subtly. And all speakers tried to portray themselves as in touch with the middle class, from the Romneys eating “lots of pasta and tuna fish” to Barack Obama’s proudest possession being “a coffee table he’d found in a dumpster.”
from Chrystia Freeland:
Obama makes his case amidst Reagan’s shadow
If there had been an empty chair at the Democratic convention this week, its ghostly occupant would have been Ronald Reagan.
Barack Obama admiringly referred to Reagan’s transformational presidency during the 2008 election campaign. That enraged the Clintonites, but then-Senator Obama’s take on the historical shifts in American politics was absolutely right. If you doubt that, just think back one week to the Republican convention, which was above all a coming-out party for Reagan’s 21st-century heirs.
from The Great Debate:
The ‘Yes We Can’ orphans: Obama’s missing constituency
By all accounts, the 2012 presidential election will be a squeaker – probably no more than a point or two in the popular vote will separate the candidates. Such close elections put a special premium on getting one’s base out to vote and targeting the small, yet important, group of "undecided voters".
We already see both sides doing just this. On the one hand, the undecided voter – about 10 percent of the electorate – is most concerned about “jobs and the economy.” Both Romney and Obama have scrambled over the last month to try to establish credibility on this issue and, in turn, to undermine the credibility of their opponent.
from Tales from the Trail:
Obama and Romney wrangle over welfare policy
The Obama administration’s July change to a 1996 bipartisan welfare-to-work law has devolved into a mudslinging contest on the campaign trail.
In a 30-second television advertisement released on Monday, Mitt Romney’s campaign asserted that President Obama “has a long history of opposing work for welfare.” Romney initially launched the welfare attack in Obama’s home state of Illinois last week in a coordinated stump speech and television ad accusing the president of loosening work requirements built into the law, which proponents say moved millions off of welfare.
