Real Stakes

So Willard lost a donor, very publicly, over his embrace of "one man/one woman" marriage as the only one he'll accept:

"I feel that I no longer wish to support your presidential campaign and ask you that you please return the maximum contribution that I gave to you last year," Bill White wrote in a letter to Romney, according to a report by CNN. "You have chosen to be on the wrong side of history and I do not support your run for president any longer."

White, a registered independent who runs a New York-based consulting firm, had given $2,500 to the Romney campaign.

White made his decision following Obama's announcement last week that he supports same-sex marriage. While he clarified to CNN that he does not agree with the president on fiscal issues, White said that Romney's speech during Liberty University's commencement on Saturday led him to believe that Romney would press for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage -- a position that White simply cannot support.

"I feel like [Romney has] declared war on my marriage," White said. "And I could just sit back and not say anything. Or I could do something about it. And I've chosen to do something about it."

Meanwhile, in the African-American community, a leading heterosexual comes out in favor of Obama's stance:

“I’ve always thought it as something that was still holding the country back,” Jay-Z said, referencing the fact that same-sex marriage is not recognized nationwide. “What people do in their own homes is their business and you can choose to love whoever you love. That’s their business. It's no different than discriminating against blacks. It’s discrimination plain and simple.”

Though he was in Philadelphia to appear alongside Mayor Michael Nutter and announce a two-day music festival in early September, Jay-Z sat down with CNN's Poppy Harlow to chat about broader issues. When he was asked if he felt Obama's decision to come out in favor of the right of same-sex couples to marry would cost him votes (particularly with the African-American community), he shrugged. "It's really not about votes," he said. "It's about people."

Hopefully Jay-Z's influence will be felt far and wide on this issue.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign - NOT a surrogate PAC - released this ad straight out of Karl Rove's handbook, attacking his opponent's supposed strength:



Ju-jitsu, Mr. Rove. And nice branding for Mr. Romney.

Early Counter

Not only were Newt Gingrich and other GOP Presidential nomination rivals going after frontrunner Mitt Romney this morning, but the Dems are softening him up on the most important issue of all: trust. Per David Axelrod on ABC News “This Week with George Stephanopoulos":

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's clear you think that's going to be a vulnerability for Governor Romney. But coming out of Iowa, coming out of the debate last night, going into this primary here in New Hampshire, are you more convinced than ever that he's going to be the nominee?

AXELROD: Well, I don't know what the answer is to that. I mean, it's clear there are a majority of Republicans who are resistant to him. He only got a quarter of the vote in Iowa. This is essentially his home state. He has one of his homes here, and he was the governor of the neighboring state. So we'll see how this process goes.

But his fundamental problem is one of trust. I don't think conservatives trust him and I don't think moderates trust him. And you saw last night him shifting on a whole range of positions from abortion to China to taxes.

Interesting to hear Axelrod echoing Gingrich on the 25% for Romney as an Iowa Caucus "win.: There's a continued Democratic defining of expectations to Mitt as a way to show how little his own party supports him, as DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told Talking Points Memo:

“He’s coming off what at some point probably wont even be defined as a win in Iowa where fewer voters came out for him than came out in 2008.” She added that anything less than 50% in New Hampshire should be interpreted as a sign of weakness given his close ties to the state.

She also had a memorable line regarding his "job creator" claim that I'm sure the DNC hopes becomes a new meme for Romney:

“Mitt Romney, I think, is more of a job cremator than a job creator,” Schultz said. She added: “He was a corporate buyout specialist at Bain Capital. He dismantled companies. He cut jobs. He forced companies into bankruptcy and he outsourced jobs and sent jobs overseas. That’s not a record to write home about, that’s not a record to be proud of, and it’s something voters need to know.”

Axelrod essentially said the same thing, but in a way that chips away at Romney's trustworthiness:

STEPHANOPOULOS: He also started to take some fire last night on his tenure at Bain Capital. And something you, Democrats, the Democratic National Committee, have really been hitting hard all through this campaign so far. He's not backing down at all. You saw him last night, Governor Romney saying his team at Bain Capital is responsible for creating 100,000 jobs. Do you have any qualm with that number?

AXELROD: Absolutely. Not me, forget about me -- every independent fact checker who's looked at it, including the Associated Press last night, after the debate, said he can't back up that number, and his campaign has conceded --

STEPHANOPOULOS: He says that net-net--

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: I know he says it's a net-net number, and he said I'm a numbers guy. The problem is that neither he nor his campaign can furnish any evidence to support that.

But let's talk about Bain and let's talk about what it was and what he did. His partner said in The L.A. Times, our job was not to create jobs, our job was to create wealth for our partners. And here's what they did. They closed down more than 1,000 plant stores and offices. They outsourced tens of thousands of jobs, and they took 12 companies to bankruptcy. And on those bankruptcies, he and his partners made hundreds of millions of dollars. He says this is the real economy, this is the model for the country. I don't think those are the values that people want to animate our economy. He's not a job creator, he's a corporate raider. Those aren't the values that we want to lead our economy.

Party support. Expectations. Trustworthiness. Values.

This serves the purpose of fighting back against Romney's constant attacks on Obama without dragging the President into the mud too early.

And if he really is the inevitable nominee, nice to soften him up early before his self-definition has taken root in the media -- or with the American people.

Live Free or Die Follies

Fun continues in New Hampshire is Willard Mitt Romney is confronted by Occupy questions at his rally:

“It seems that the U.S. is a great place to be a corporation,’’ the man said, “but increasingly a desperate place to live and work.’’

“Where do you think corporations’ profits go?’’ Romney asked.

“It goes to the 1 percent of Americans who own the 90 percent of stocks,’’ the man responded and continued to press him.

...and college students boo anti-gay marriage bigot Rick Santorum from his stage:

A midday event in front of a gathering of college students here turned into a testy exchange in which Mr. Santorum compared allowing gay couples to marry to polygamy, apparently equating the two as equally undesirable.

“If you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that O.K.?” he asked.

Meanwhile, Mitt's tax plan gets checked and turns out to raise taxes on lower middle class Americans while giving huge windfalls to the rich:

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers — part of a series of analyses the group has done of the GOP candidates’ tax proposals — and found that the plan constitutes a major tax cut for wealthy Americans. But compared to today’s rates, Romney proposes effective tax increases for people making less than $40,000.

Above that level, Romney’s plan cuts taxes at greater rates for wealthier people. The average millionaire would thus pay $145,568 less in taxes in 2015 than they do today. Taken altogether, that makes the plan a budget buster, meaning greater deficits or deep cuts to federal programs.

A new website called Romney the Liar is up, sure to be a fun one-stop fact check for journalists who care to start checking up on Wild Willard's wild claim.

Meanwhile, as the follies roll into N.H., the President is on the job helping young people get summer jobs themselves. Compare the President's record to Romney's role in job creation at Bain Capital, using Romney's own methodology of only counting companies that created jobs under Bain's management and not those he closed or outsourced:

No contest.

Now or next November.

Of Course We Do

The poll says:

Americans generally favor raising taxes on higher-income Americans and eliminating tax deductions for some corporations as ways of paying for President Obama's proposed jobs plan.

Two more interesting parts of the poll. When people are described the elements of the jobs plan, a plurity is for it:

By 45% to 32%, more Americans want their member of Congress to vote for rather than against a jobs bill similar to the one President Obama proposed last week, with the rest having no opinion.

Even more telling, those who are actually pay attention - heavily for it:

While fewer than half of all Americans favor passage of a jobs bill similar to Obama's, a solid majority of Americans who are following news of the bill very closely, 57%, want to see it passed.

If we can assume that includes the % of Americans who are being attentive to what's being said about the bill on Fox News, that's an even more impressive statistic.

Now it's all about the fight. No showdown yet on the horizon, but we're hankering for one.

Pass. This. Bill.

He said is something like 22 times either verbatim or in related, close form. He's proven he's committed to bipartisanship and hasn't given up, but he's taken it hard to the other side to let them know where he stands now, after all the do-nothing and debt ceiling shenanigans. He's working on being the sheriff again.

Here he is, pts 1 and 2. My favorite section in this starts 5:55 and goes through 7:20. Notice the GOP side of Congress doesn't stand up and applaud improving public education to keep us competitive against China and the rest of the globe, and save the Republic:

The GOP sheep finally stand, dutifully, at 10:20 when Obama talks about the veterans. Because they have to pretend to appreciate the working military as well.

In this one I love him at 11:20 -- "We shouldn't be in a race to the bottom, we should be in a race to the top...":

From 12:30 to the end he gives the full-throated case for the common good through good government supporting the building and advancement of America, and not just be shirking responsibilities and leaving it all up to the Libertarians. Then he calls on Congress and himself to not shirk their responsibilities.

Towards the ending -- the shaming of the GOP Congress:

Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past. Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight will be paid for. And every proposal is designed to meet the urgent needs of our people and our communities.

Now, I know there’s been a lot of skepticism about whether the politics of the moment will allow us to pass this jobs plan -- or any jobs plan. Already, we’re seeing the same old press releases and tweets flying back and forth. Already, the media has proclaimed that it’s impossible to bridge our differences. And maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box.

But know this: The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here -- the people who hired us to work for them -- they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. (Applause.) Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.

They need it now.

Pass it, bitches.

The $300 Billion Dollar Man

How fast before the GOP long knives come out against this expected plan to actually help unemployed Americans?

Iowa Crazy

Another GOP Presidential debate, on the eve of the non-binding Iowa Straw Poll (it's not even the Caucus) and the entry of Texas hard-right religious conservative Republican Rick Perry into the nomination race.

This group - Romney, Bachmann, Pawlety, Gingrich, Paul, Santorum, Cain and (premiere debate appearance by) Huntsman - are so out in right field that the non-Fox cable news networks are all just outright calling them crazy. The only thing that holds that party together, all the different constituencies, is Grover Norquist, quite and accomplishment. No new taxes, less taxes, no taxes. One way ticket. To hell. Even when offered the hypothetical of 10:1 cuts:taxes increases, by a show of hands not a one of them, not even someone supposedly "moderate" like John Huntsman, would take the deal. Because the Republican Party completely is i-n-s-a-n-e:



Dangerous people. It's time to state as a fact that the Republican Party as it now stands is hellbent on destroying what's left of the social fabric of America through their very staunchness on social issues and, more importantly, taxes. They are fine with letting the wealthy get it all. And, historically, it is when the selfishness of elites hits critical mass that great states spiral into decline. It doesn't have to be that way...but it is.

This crew is so crazy that the Democrats sent out a mass email tonight telling everyone to watch the debate. It's that terrifying. Not a single one would raise a penny of taxes on or cut tax breaks for the rich. Even though America wants Congress to tax the rich.

In the sane world, Obama has pivoted to jobs, and is asking the nation to call their Congressional Representative to do so as well.

Remorseful Cheeseheads

It turns out that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is less popular than when he was elected just this past November - in fact, he'd be defeated today:

...if voters in the state could do it over today they'd support defeated Democratic nominee Tom Barrett over Scott Walker by a a 52-45 margin.

We try to warn voters about these crony capitalist Republicans, but sometimes Voldamort has to rise again before enough people take the threat seriously. Per the Center for American Progress:

The chart below compares the 10 safety-net programs slated for deep cuts with the cost of the tax breaks that should also be considered for reduction or elimination to bring the budget into balance. The column on the left is a list of safety-net programs that have already been targets of the House leadership’s budget ax. The column on the right is the cost to specified tax breaks:

Now get ready for the loss of another three-quarter of a million jobs...thanks to the GOP House of Representatives, from Talking Points Memo:

According to Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi -- who the Washington Post reports "has advised both political parties" -- Republican plans to slash government spending will impact the GDP in such a way that would eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs this year and the next.

From the report:

The House Republicans' proposal would reduce 2011 real GDP growth by 0.5% and 2012 growth by 0.2 percentage points This would mean some 400,000 fewer jobs created by the end of 2011 and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012.

Republicans were nonplussed by the findings.

Of course they were. They don't care, as long as that Koch Family cash keeps rolling in.

BTW, Americans support the right of public unions to collective bargaining by almost 2:1.

And Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) blocks journalists from following his tweets. Not quite at the level of a Middle East dictator blocking the Internet, just somewhere on the spectrum.

Who can't handle the truth?

Bingo

I guess Dick and Liz Cheney and all the other GOoPers who claim the Obama Administration is somehow dangerously misguided in their handling of captured terrorists are w-r-o-n-g:

The Afghan immigrant at the center of what the authorities described as one of the most serious threats to the United States since 9/11 pleaded guilty Monday to terrorism charges in what he said was a Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb in the New York subway.
...
Mr. Zazi, 25, pleaded guilty in United States District Court in Brooklyn to charges that included conspiracies to use weapons of mass destruction and to commit murder in a foreign country, and to provide material support for a terrorist organization. He faces a possible life term when he is sentenced on June 25.
...
...The 10-page plea agreement was sealed by Judge Raymond J. Dearie, but the arrangement suggested that prosecutors believe Mr. Zazi can be a valuable source of information.

Great -- getting a nice long sentence while providing additional intelligence. Would Dick and Liz consider it a shame and a failure that he wasn't waterboarded?

Oh, and the Dems passed a big jobs bill today, with the help of five Republicans including the newest Senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts. Smart move, Scott.

And is Florida Governor Charlie Crist thinking of switching from Republican to Democrat, since he can't win the Senate nomination he's going in the GOP?

Funny what a little teabagging can do.

Concern Trolls

It's always charming when the mainstream media shows concern that things are baaad for the Democratic Party. Like, everytime they can. On one hand, the press is always looking for a horserace, from the beginning of human reporting through to the deep future. On the other hand, those villagers in DC are a bit sheltered.

So two Democratic Senators are retiring. Any news about the six Republican Senators leaving the game? Maybe the state-by-state breakdown favors the GOP and maybe you've got Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) on life support. Maybe the so-called sixty vote filibuster-proof majority (as we saw in the healthcare vote, not 100% reliable) will be a memory at this time next year. But let's look at the problems for the Republicans:

"[Republicans] are having some really bloodletting primaries in virtually all of their states. Particularly in open-seats, they are having these huge primaries," Menendez said. "Whether it is the tea party people or the birthers or others, the reality is that the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, they keep pushing their candidates further and further to the right... So, the bottom line is, they are going to be out of sync of where the mainstream electorate is in the midterm election."

Compounding matters for the GOP, Menendez predicted, was that Democrats will have actual legislative achievements upon which to structure their candidacies.

And not just current achievements:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One final note: under Republican rule we had a decade with zero job growth.

Bag that.