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NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Friday 21 September 2012
“With gas prices rising, corporate profits shrinking, most of Europe in recession, Japan still a basket case, and the Chinese economy slowing, the upcoming job reports are unlikely to be stellar.”
Four Reasons Why Romney Might Still Win
Can Romney possibly recover? A survey conducted between Sept. 12 and Sept. 16 by the Pew Research Center — before the “47 percent victim” video came to light – showed Obama ahead of Romney 51% to 43% among likely voters.
That’s the biggest margin in the September survey prior to a presidential election since Bill Clinton led Bob Dole, 50% to 38% in 1996.
And, remember, this recent poll was done before America watched Romney belittle almost half the nation.
For the last several days I’ve been deluged with calls from my inside-the-beltway friends telling me “Romney’s dead.”
Hold it. Rumors of Romney’s demise are premature for at least four reasons:
1. Between now and Election Day come two jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics – October 5 and November 2. If they’re as bad as the last report, showing only 96,000 jobs added in August (125,000 are needed just to keep up with population growth) and the lowest percentage of employed adults since 1981, Romney’s claim the economy is off track becomes more credible, and Obama’s that it’s on the mend harder to defend.
With gas prices rising, corporate profits shrinking, most of Europe in recession, Japan still a basket case, and the Chinese economy slowing, the upcoming job reports are unlikely to be stellar.
2. Also between now and Election Day are three presidential debates, starting October 3. It’s commonly thought Obama will win them handily but that expectation may be very wrong – and could work against him. Yes, Romney is an automaton — but when the dials are set properly he can give a good imitation of a human engaged in sharp debate. He did well in the Republican primary debates.
Obama, by contrast, can come off slow and ponderous. Recall how he stuttered and stumbled during the 2008 Democratic primary debates. And he hasn’t been in a real-live debate for four years; Romney recently emerged from almost a year of them.
3. During the next 7 final weeks of the campaign, the anti-Obama forces will be spending a gigantic amount of money. Not just the Romney campaign and Romney’s super PACs, but other super PACS aligned with Romney, billionaires spending their own fortunes, and non-profit “social welfare” organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove’s “Crossroads,” and various Koch-brothers political fronts – all will dump hundreds of millions on TV and radio spots, much of it spreading lies and distortions. Some of this money will be devoted to get-out-the-vote drives — to phone banks and door-to-door canvassing to identify favorable voters, and vans to bring them to the polling stations.
It’s an easy bet they’ll far outspend Obama and his allies. I’ve heard two-to-one. The race is still close enough that a comparative handful of voters in swing states can make the difference – which means gobs of money used to motivate voters to polling stations can be critical.
4. As they’ve displayed before, the Republican Party will do whatever it can to win — even if it means disenfranchising certain voters. To date, 11 states have enacted voter identification laws, all designed by Republican legislatures and governors to dampen Democratic turnout.
The GOP is also encouraging what can only be termed “voter vigilante” groups to “monitor polling stations to prevent fraud” – which means intimidating minorities who have every right to vote. We can’t know at this point how successful these efforts may be but it’s a dangerous wildcard. And what about those Diebold voting machines?
So don’t for a moment believe “Romney’s dead,” and don’t be complacent. The hard work lies ahead, in the next seven weeks.
And even if Obama is reelected, more hard work begins after Inauguration Day – when we must push him to be tougher on the Republicans than he was in his first term, and do what the nation needs.
This article was originally posted on Robert Reich's blog.
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ABOUT Robert Reich
ROBERT B. REICH, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future;” “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages; and his newest, an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
16 comments on "Four Reasons Why Romney Might Still Win"
September 21, 2012 2:07pm
If Romney actually wins it will be a Bushcoup. New word. You know what it means.
September 21, 2012 1:59pm
Ah, the siren song of anarchy: let it rip and hope it will get better. Of course Richard could just be trying for satire. I confess, I too have had these thoughts cross my mind, usually when I'm feeling impotent and hopeless. When this happens, I say the serenity prayer 3 times and try to remember that, in anarchy, it's the poor who get hurt the worst (those with their heads loped off don't suffer as long). Somehow a different example has to be shown in dealing with frustration and not having your own way.
September 21, 2012 1:04pm
The Class War of the Filthy Rich against the Peons was officially declared by Republican Mitt Romney in Florida.
Remember: One Man, One Vote, NOT One Dollar, One Vote.
Support Sanity -- Vote Against Every Republican.
September 21, 2012 12:50pm
I'm not voting in this election, the options are a continuation of the economic policies by the Far Right Republicans that have savaged this economy for most Americans over the past 30 years, a continuation of the economic policies by the Neo-Liberal Democrats that have savaged this economy for most Americans over the past 30 years, and an Anglo American supported Green Party that want's us to abandon all technology and return to the caves to save Mother Earth. We'd be better advised to blow it all up and start over with a clean slate.
If I was going to vote, I'd vote for Romney because a Romney administration would bring this country to the point of becoming a Plutocracy with the complete elimination of any programs that would help average working Americans. Maybe we would finally wake up and demand the actions necessary to make substantial changes for all Americans, not just the top 1 %. This country has historically delayed any real action in the form of mandatory change until the Republic was on the brink of collapse. This situation has always existed due to the fact that we must live with decisions made by elected individuals who are elected to office and are driven by one all consuming personal objective every day there after, getting re-elected ! We can only hope that a potential imminent collapse of the entire system will force our elected officials to change course and take the appropriate actions to save the system that has allowed them to flourish. Four years of Romney and Ryan should do nicely to bring about the necessary conditions that will demand substantial change in 2016. If the current occupant of the White House, or a Romney administration, is allowed to proceed with our military’s unprovoked aggressive actions in the Middle East squashing various sovereign countries to justify installing puppet regimes that will Green Light any and all corporate resource grabs, all bets are off. The probable use of Nuclear weapons by any of the Nuclear armed countries in that region, or by Russia or China who are defending the right to exist for many of those countries, will probably make any discussion of positive changes in the future academic !
September 23, 2012 1:17am
Dear Richard,
I will resist the temptation of correcting your grammar (wants does not take an apostrophe, etc.) to say that I agree with much of what you say. However, you are investing in a fantasy. Meanwhile, we have to all live in the real world. Your decision not to vote is a cop out. We can't afford "protest votes" or non-votes in this day and age. Frankly, you need to choose the least of the evils and vote. I do, however, strongly disagree with your statement that the Democrats gave us 30 years of a bad economy. I remember the Johnson years, the Carter years, and the Clinton years. I lived very well for a middle class person.
September 21, 2012 9:35pm
A vote for anyone but Obama is a vote for Romney. Not voting is a vote for Romney.
September 21, 2012 7:43pm
RICHARD, with all due respect, not voting is something the Republicans rejoice to hear. They know that their base is going to vote, so if people with a conscience sit this one out, they're quite happy, since that means they'll win.
Do you realize how twisted your logic seems to be? You'd vote for Romney because if he gets in, somehow, according to you, Americans might finally wake up and do the right thing. What if your fellow citizens don't wake up, and we get stuck with the two plutocratic stooges instead? Don't forget that though Jr. Bush managed to steal the election in 2000, he WAS re-elected in 2004.
I'm not content to see Romney/Ryan win and start trying to undo the New Deal and the Fair Deal. Big bucks can buy a lot of airtime on TV, and lies repeated over and over have a way of becoming the truth in many voters' minds. Isn't that what happened to Kerry?
Well, it's your decision, of course, but there is no way I will sit this election out. I've voted in every election since my 21st birthday, and I don't intend to stop now, 2 years after the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to millions of dollars from anonymous billionaires to put their man in the White House.
I don't hope for the worst, I don't pray for a collapse, and I don't want the roof to fall in, just to say, "I told you so; you deserve what you get!" We have enough to worry about from the Climate Change without putting Change-deniers into the White House. Time is running out, for all of us, and that doesn't make me happy at all.
September 23, 2012 1:19am
RoninNM, I agree with everything you are saying. Too bad you are in NM and I am in France...what great dinner parties we would have!
September 21, 2012 12:05pm
You would lose respect around the world if you let that happen. The world is watching and I am sure most Americans are paying attention. The drama that took place resulting in your credit rating being downgraded, all the attempts to prevent the President to do his work have not been forgotten. Right now bills to help farmers and veterans have been blocked not because they don't want to help people but because they don't want the President to get credit. Just pure HATE. It is sad as well as ugly. God is watching and shaking His head.
They forget that the same people who put them in congress can get them out and into the unemployment lines.
Racism will never be eradicated from your society but things are better now than they used to be. Whoever thought that America would elect a black President. It was a happy occasion and applauded around the world but that acceptance is now in danger. People are hanging empty chairs on trees, thanks to Clint Eastwood although I don't think this ugliness is what he had in mind.
When Romney speaks about Obama dividing the country, what exactly does he mean and why is it nobody asks him to elaborate?
In case you missed the point, he was referring to blacks especially when he described 47% of people the way he did. His contempt was quite unmistakable. Even if all blacks are blocked from voting I like to think that most whites would not cast their votes to elect this robot just because he is white and not all black people would vote for Obama because he is black. People have more sense than that.
My prayer is that the people protecting the president are vigilant and doing the best they can to keep him safe.
September 21, 2012 11:55am
I'm always willing to read, listen to Prof Reich’s ideas. One of the few truth to power guys out there. Only thing I'm not so blind or taken with this myth of our democracy as most folks. Or that he professes.
I expect the GOP to openly & with total disregard to our awareness to steal this election, just like they did in 2000. However, this time out not just with one state whose Governor is the candidate’s brother, but in multiple states. So the ‘electoral college’ can administer the Coup d'état. All these voter restrictions laws, etc are not unrelated.
The question is not who will win but what are we, the people going to do after this election. Sit in our living rooms accepting their urinating on us? Protecting our misperception of what real democracy requires? A passive population that like sheep follow the bells on their Judas goats to their ends no matter the facts in front of our eyes?
But, can we be a very dangerous citizenry that only understand bloody violence when our collective decisions are ignored by the powerful, wealthy few. They control only money not our souls, unless you relinquish to them. This is also about if Obama wins, we sat on our collective ‘asses’ last time out & allowed the GOP to rat out America, yeah we ‘complained’, there is OWS, we sign petitions, et al. Whoop dee do boy! that really got things going.
We cheered as their profit soared, their power solidified & 25,000,000 Americans, men, women, & children, were pushed into poverty, lost their dignity, all of us with eyes wide open are now going to give these same masters our money for the privilege to be sick & infirmed by the foods & products they insure we can only purchase, at the stores they only control, learn at the schools they decide what we learn, & how much it’s worth for them, or we’ll be sent to the prisons they own for us to be used for their purposes.
Ever question why all this fracking is overtly destroying our major water aquifers, they sell us water in the contaminating plastic bottles they make & we gulp it down & give it to our babies because they said it’s safer than the public water? Which they insured is underfunded & contaminated by their refuse.
Of the people by the people, for the people that is the question & when those in power, be it Washington DC, or Wall Street, or whatever quite rooms are out there see that is what we will make real this time out & just what we're will do & are capable of doing for that ends, will we set this nation on the course we seem to expect it to actually be transversing in these times of flux. Not in the vacant proclamations of political flim-flam men.
We make our Presidents great, when we make them dance to our collective tune, they don’t by themselves. It is about from the outside!
The GOP & the DNC, both sold out to the 2%ers, are failing us because we all got lazy& greedy, they PC’d us into wimps, but they still expect us to kill & die for their profit. Against our national enemies, against each other, the ones they tell us, that is. I say the only enemy is the 2%ers not some Muslim far away, the 2%ers live in houses, drive on roads, eat in restaurants, fly in planes.
No man is an island, untouchable, this makes them & their children vulnerable to us the people. We are everywhere, like the air we all breathe which they will be charging us for, just watch.
They enslave & destroy our children with no concern. If you think I’m being esoteric, check out the drug money both illegal & legal, where it goes, who controls the markets, Afghanistan produces 90% of the heroin, by the ‘war lords’ our Government put in place, that cash ends up in whose banks for whose ends?
And not just the major players, they have no concern, as Romney showed in his 47% tape sharing his free flow thoughts to his peers, no PC’ing in that quite room was there?
An American saying, ‘What goes around, comes around.’ And don’t ever forget that. The balance sheet of history awaits us all. Make our numbers count or tear up the ledgers & we’ll start over. We’ve done it before, we can do it again, and yeah the tree of our liberty ever hungers.
This election is not a conclusion merely a beginning, no more hippy dippy shit, let get real to many of us the people are hungry, suffering, beaten down, disparaged, etc, and it doesn’t have to be this way or stay this way does it? We, the people can decide what we are to be & how we do it.
As a nation long ago right or wrong we decided to be a nation shore to shining shore & look how we did it. Savagely, brutally, but we did it with gusto. For many of us the 2%ers are the only obstacles, look what we did to the Indians, make the 2%ers know what we’ll do to them, all of them & their prodigy.
Dangerous talk, yup, but democracy must always teeter on these very real dangerous human tendencies in order to insure ‘domestic tranquility & the common good’. I read that somewhere, have you? I believe in it, do you?
Yes! This is an important election, fight for the vote, vote. Then fight to make those we put in office do ‘our’ bidding for all the people, for America, yesterday’s, today’s & tomorrow’s. This is our river to cross.
God don't bless America! WE, the people ... DO!
September 21, 2012 1:52pm
Amen to that and thank you.
I regret being among those convinced we're on a Repub-Dem-Oligarch superhighway to hell, and that there will be no exit until the numbers burned and facing flames are sufficient to give rise to class war, ie for some a desperate attempt to escape and for others to retaliate. Ultimately I do not think the threat of it, in conjunction with peaceful resistance and pro-active efforts, will produce the course-reversal needed.
September 21, 2012 1:40pm
For too long voters have voted for people who "share" their values and will vote "like I would vote". These people are the ones killing our country. It was never supposed to be this way. Representatives were supposed to have real day jobs that were not inside the beltway. Representatives were supposed to be every day people who LISTENED to those back home and voted how the MAJORITY of their neighbours wanted them to vote. But no, We the Masses have grown lazy and wish to outsource our required participation in OUR government. We the Masses hired a ruling class to do the things we are too lazy to do. Now everyone is angry that we are staring at the flesh eating teeth of a starving monster (the 1%) who views us (99%) as a snack.
My fellow Americans, we have been searching for the enemy for 30 years; we've found them and the enemy is us. We keep voting for those in the ruling class and now the ruling class has turned our right to vote into a sick joke.
September 21, 2012 10:53am
Four reasons: too many voters are (1) wealthy (2) stupid (3) racist (4) all of the above.
September 21, 2012 10:29am
well, Abe Lincoln said: you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time. perhaps it's not necessary to fool all the time. the majority of the people will do. But a plutocrat and a fool in the White House - not to think of paul ryan at a heart beat... No, it's just not possible. I think he will lose by a big margin. But, by all means, go out and vote! make this election a landslide for Common Sense...
September 21, 2012 9:29am
I want to believe even with the voter suppression laws in 14 states targeting those that for the most part will vote Democratic that Mitt Romney has alienated too many working and retired Republican voters that it could possibly put a balance to their ploy. Those that hate Obama and wouldn't vote for him also don't want to vote Romney in knowing what his administration has in mind for the country and choose not to vote at all.
September 21, 2012 9:43am
I'm glad Reich has reminded voters that Romney, despite his gaffes, is still very much in the running, if only because of the big money that's behind him. I've been saying this very thing repeatedly. There's been too much talk lately about "Romney is losing," or "Romney must fail," and so on. I've seen too many election cycles that were eventually decided by the biggest smear campaigns financed by the biggest donors.
MONEY DOES TALK, unfortunately, because our broadcast industry is so deregulated and public airtime can be bought only at inflated prices. If lies and innuendos and distortions are repeated on our TV screens with annoying regularity, then rational reasons for voting fly out the window, and people vote from their gut feelings, which were manipulated by the well-oiled propaganda machines of the Right.
Never underestimate the power of money in our corrupted political system that we fondly call, "American democracy." If opponents of the Master Plutocrat get complacent and feel their votes aren't needed, then Willard and Paul will squeak in, and that's all they need in our winner-takes-all electoral system.
Or, we may have a repeat of the 2000 theft of the election, and do we need to wonder how this conservative-dominated Supreme Court will decide?
Vote. That's the only "weapon" we have, when matched against the big bucks of the plutocrats. Every vote does count, and you can be sure that all the passionate Obama-haters will be rushing to cast their ballots, even if the party they support will be the worst possible enemy of their own economic interests.
The plutocrats have contempt for American voters, because they know how their cash sways the elections. Support the candidates of your choice with donations and your vote. It's your last resort.