"President Barack Obama expressed gratitude last week to former President Jimmy Carter's grandson..."

"... who had a role in leaking secretly-recorded video of Mitt Romney's infamous '47%' comments, James Carter said Thursday on CNN."

"Now the South is becoming isolated again."

"Every demographic and political trend that helped to reëlect Barack Obama runs counter to the region’s self-definition.... The Solid South speaks less and less for America and more and more for itself alone."

Writes some guy from a region where they use umlauts.

Watching the President's news conference.

Beginning any minute. Watch here.

ADDED: "If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and besmirch her reputation is outrageous." I detected some inappropriate/bogus chivalry — the man saying come after me, not the woman. I consider that how-dare-you attitude a distraction, a push back. But he's right that the criticism should be aimed at him!

Obama is about to do his first full-scale news conference since last March.

Which was back when Rick Santorum seemed like he might get the GOP nomination and 2 months before Obama did his first campaign rally. He has been really press-shy... even though the press loves him and boosts him as much as they can. Or so it seems. But there's always a chance some reporter will break out a tough question.

Politico offers some "hard questions" that might conceivably be asked. But the questions, as phrased chez Politico, all sound softened to me. If they're soft on paper under a link-begging headline about hardness, how can we hope for any toughness face-to-face with the President who's been withholding press conferences for 8 months?

Here are the Petraeus-related questions:

Do you believe the FBI should have told you and Congress sooner about the investigation that led Gen. Petraeus to resign?

Do you worry about a culture in which trusted officials behave badly?

Does this administration consider anyone who’s having an extramarital affair, or has had one in the past, to be unfit for public office?

Easy: yes, yes, no. Add a few mushy words and you're done. Instapundit notes that Question 1 "lets Obama off the hook by pretending to believe that he didn’t know anything about Petraeus until after the election, which is quite implausible." It's like the old "When did you stop beating your wife?" question, assuming a fact not yet proved, but the assumed fact is helpful to the witness. The witness is in no danger of getting tripped up, letting the negative assumption go. He'll notice the positive assumption, silently celebrate, and proceed to answer the question asked.

"FBI agents investigating CIA Director David Petraeus's affair were shocked when told by bureau officials..."

"... that despite the national security implications, no action would be taken on their findings until after the presidential election: Only then would President Obama ask for Petraeus’ resignation."

“The decision was made to delay the resignation apparently to avoid potential embarrassment to the president before the election,” an FBI source told me. “To leave him in such a sensitive position where he was vulnerable to potential blackmail for months compromised our security and is inexcusable.”

"A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform."

Mary Matalin alliterates.

... destructive distortion, derision, and division....

Unfortunately and unfortuitously... human hurricanes... gratuitous gas-baggery... political pollution.

Mmmmm. Mmmmmary Mmmmmatalin.

Ronald Dworkin finds it "regrettable that the general public takes so little interest in the Supreme Court" and thinks that's why the Obama campaign "rarely mentions" it.

Here's his big essay in the NYRB.

I think the Obama campaign avoids that issue because its research says that people want judges that interpret the Constitution based on text and original meaning/intent. Obama's vulnerable on the Supreme Court question. He benefits from whatever lack of interest can be maintained.

"Obama Mural in Philadelphia Polling Place."

Yeah, but he looks so down and out of it in that depiction, so first debate, that it might not help at all. The word "Change!" seems to be yelling into one ear, and the word "hope..." drifting out of the other.

Obama campaign: "Ann -- This is cool: You can see exactly how many people named Ann have already voted."

"Take a look at that. Then share it with your friends so they can see how many people with their names have voted, too -- and look up their polling place. Bottom line: We need every Ann -- and everyone else, too -- to make it out to the polls to support President Obama."

Another email trying to leverage social media. This one provides a link to the Obama campaign website with the supposedly enticing teaser "How many people with your name have voted already?" To get the answer, you have to click on a button that takes you to a page where you're supposed to log into Facebook, and the fine print says:

THIS APP WILL RECEIVE:
Your basic info
Your email address (althouse@wisc.edu)
Your profile info: birthday, likes and location
Your photos
Friends' profile info: birthdays, likes and locations
Photos shared with you

And: "By proceeding, you agree to Obama 2012's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy ..."

So if you fell for the fun idea of seeing your damned name connected to a number and impulsively logged into Facebook, you just gave the campaign all that personal information and you agreed to... who knows what?

Active Collection: Personal information may be collected in a number of ways when you visit our Sites. We collect certain information you voluntarily provide to us, such as when you create an account or a profile, make a donation, make a purchase, send us an email or sign up to receive email or text message updates, fill out a form, connect through a social feed, sign up to be a volunteer or host an event, request information, apply for an internship, or use a voter registration form tool. Such information may include personal information, such as your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, geographic location, and credit card information. We may also collect demographic information you may voluntarily provide from time to time, such as in response to questionnaires and surveys, including gender, ethnicity, education, and interest information. If this information is tied to personally identifiable information, it will be treated as personal information. Personal and demographic information may also be collected if you provide such information in connection with creating a profile or group, leaving comments, posting blog comments or other content, sending an email or message to another user, or participating in any interactive forums or features on the Sites. In addition, from time to time we may collect demographic, contact or other personal information you provide in connection with your participation in surveys, contests, games, promotions, and other activities on the Sites. We may also obtain information from other sources and combine that with information we collect on our Sites.

Does that boldface say they are mining the text of email and messages sent on Facebook for personal information?

Ann — this is cool...

The future is cool. Big Brother loves you is cool.

The Obama campaign knows who your Facebook friends are and wants you to call them

A reader professes shock when at email her brother has forwarded her:

Both my brother and I have donated a small amount of money to Obama. My brother is in NYC. The Obama campaign found that we are connected on Facebook and today they sent an email to my brother telling him to call me to make sure that I vote.

How creepy is this?

Here's the campaign email, sent last Friday (I'm changing the names):

Joe --

For Judy, Election Day is right now!

Some of your friends in critical battleground states are already able to vote -- but early voting ends on Friday in Colorado, Nevada, and Wisconsin, and on Saturday in North Carolina and Florida.

Our volunteers haven't been able to reach many of these people on the phone, so you're the only one who can get them to the polls before it's too late.

Let the folks below know they can still vote early. We'll send you a free bumper sticker to say thanks for reaching out.

Names are provided.

Thanks for doing your part. This race is going to be close, and every vote counts.

We can't do it without you,

Yohannes

Yohannes Abraham
Deputy National Political Director
Obama for America

P.S. -- If any of these folks' numbers are saved in your phone, give them a call and tell them they should go to barackobama.com/lookup to get the info they need to vote early. President Obama needs their vote.
-----
Time is running out to do the work it'll take to win. Please donate to the Obama Victory Fund now.

Vote — for revenge... or love?

This clip neatly embodies a reason why I believe Romney will win. He feels like optimism, and Obama — who once owned the word "hope" — seems petulant, divisive, and ungrateful.

ADDED: On love and revenge, read Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech on Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize:

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

AND: Here, for comparison, is Barack Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, over which we will puzzle forever. What was it for? He didn't mention revenge, but he did mention King and he did mention love:

The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their fundamental faith in human progress – that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

You may be able to look out your downtown Madison window and see Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, but don't you dare.

"The counter terrorism teams have to be cognizant of movement in windows for obvious reasons... Please cooperate with their needs and stay away from those windows. We, too, would like to watch, but we need to avoid the urge."

Yeah, when Obama appeared right outside my office window — just a few weeks ago — I got email telling me that if I looked out my window I could expect a visit from the police. Then they just shut down the whole law school building for the entire day and closed all the blinds. They hung a giant building-sized curtain all down one side of a dorm that had a view of the central mall where the President appeared.

And now he's coming back to the City of Obama Love — Madison, Wisconsin — to create a final burst of glowing adoration on the morning before Election Day, and our town is thrown into disarray once again for photo-op purposes, because we are the fresh-faced folk who still gaze upon him with awe. There are the young people — whose professors will undoubtedly free them from classes once again — and the aging liberals — who will surely feel the pull of the lugubrious dronings of Mr. Springsteen.

City employees have also been warned. "Offices facing MLK Jr., Blvd. and Wilson Street will need to be locked and vacant with the blinds drawn," Mayor Paul Soglin wrote in an email Friday afternoon to staff and city alders. "Adherence to this directive is imperative as the health and safety of our employees may be negatively impacted if we fail to enforce this directive," he added.

Adherence to this directive is imperative as the health and safety of our employees may be negatively impacted if we fail to enforce this directive.... jeez, he's talking like a robot! What are they threatening to do to us if we look out a window? Negatively impact us....

We're told the city streets downtown will begin closing Sunday morning, a full day before the appearance. People are asked to amass at the top of State Street and form 2 lines which will proceed in opposite directions around the Capitol Square to the site of the rally (which is right in front of the City-County Building, the place you go to early-vote). Picture all 4 sides of the Capitol Square streaming with political people. A fabulous photo-op, which might remind us of the big Wisconsin protests of 2011 — you know, those anti-Scott Walker demonstrations which Barack Obama steered way clear of. He wasn't there for the demonstrations or to boost Walker's opponent in the recall election last spring. Obama wasn't there for the Madison lefty-liberals when they needed him, but they'll be there — presumably! — when he needs them.

Given the hasty plans for the rally, Lindskoog [a downtown parking manager] is anticipating gridlock and scarce parking will greet anyone who ventures downtown after 6 a.m. Monday. The crowd, he says, is anticipated to hit 50,000.

"We're hoping people treat this like a snow day," he said with a laugh.

Ha ha. Like a snow day. Like some sort of natural disaster that shuts a city down. That's always so fun. And don't come downtown, anybody, because it will be a nightmare, but be sure to come downtown, everybody, because there's a fabulous festival unreeling in our town again, our town, the President's favorite town, where he loves the way you love him. Now, smile for the cameras, Madison people. You're the chosen scenery once again!

Did Chris Christie "sudden love-in" with Obama hurt Mitt Romney?

"Sudden love-in" is the Washington Post's terminology.

There is no professed motivation for Christie’s newfound feelings for the president, other than that the two men are now partners in a massive effort to rebuild his state. Asked about the election on “Fox & Friends,” Christie said, “I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” adding: “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.”

I want to say Chris Christie is saying and doing the right thing, not only morally and in his own political interest, but in the interest of Mitt Romney and the GOP. Saying it's not political and acting like politics are suspended, the best approach morally, happens also to be the best approach politically.

It's good politically because it's a vivid demonstration of devotion to public service and the capacity to rise about partisanship and do the things that need to be done.

Compare the Christie's interaction with Obama to the way Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco interacted with President Bush after Hurricane Katrina. Here's how Bush described some of it in his book "Decision Points" (at page 308-309):

The initial plan had been for me to land at the New Orleans airport, pick up Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, and survey the damage on an aerial tour. But on the Marine One flight from Mississippi, we received word that the governor, mayor, and a Louisiana congressional delegation were demanding a private meeting on Air Force One first.

The tone started out tense and got worse. The governor and mayor bickered. Everyone blasted the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to meet their needs. Congressman Bobby Jindal pointed out that FEMA had asked people to email their requests, despite the lack of electricity in the city. I shook my head. “We’ll fix it,” I said, looking at FEMA Director Mike Brown. Senator Mary Landrieu interrupted with unproductive emotional outbursts. “Would you please be quiet?” I had to say to her at one point.


I asked to speak to Governor Blanco privately. We walked out of the conference room, through a narrow passageway, and into the small cabin at the front tip of Air Force One. I told her it was clear the state and local response forces had been overwhelmed. “Governor,” I pressed, “you need to authorize the federal government to take charge of the response.”

She told me she needed twenty-four hours to think it over.

“We don’t have twenty-four hours,” I snapped. “We’ve waited too long already.”

The governor refused to give an answer.

Next I asked to meet privately with Mayor Nagin. He had spent four days since Katrina holed up in a downtown hotel. He hadn’t bathed or eaten a hot meal until he used my shower and ate breakfast on Air Force One. In a radio interview the previous evening, he had vented his frustrations with the federal government. “Get off your asses and do something,” he said, “and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.” Then he broke down in tears. When I met him on the plane, Ray whispered an apology for his outburst and explained that he was exhausted.

I asked the mayor what he thought about federalizing the response. He supported it. “Nobody’s in charge,” he said. “We need a clear chain of command.” But only the governor could request that the federal government assume control of the emergency.

Maybe it makes you Mitt Romney supporters nervous to see Chris Christie working smoothly with President Obama. You need to visualize the alternative. Governor Christie is doing exactly the right thing.

Mitt Romney likes to portray himself as a Republican who can work "across the aisle," and Chris Christie is modeling that very behavior. Message: That's what Republicans do. That's a good message, speaking to the very moderates who might drift over to Obama if the Republicans created friction and rancor in the wake of the hurricane.

Mickey Kaus is "assuming the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the October employment statistics on schedule."

"The paranoia that would accompany a delay (this close to the election) would be too destructive, even if the delay was justifiable. But if the Obama administration were really playing politics with the numbers in the way the paranoids fear, do you think it would merely delay the release of the numbers? Not cunning enough!"

The real reason Obama has campaigned on small things — like Big Bird and "Romnesia."

According to Stanley Kurtz, it's a plot to realign the electorate, "creating a long-term Democratic majority that would allow him and his successors to stop catering to the center and finally govern decisively from the left."

Somehow, within the lulling smallness, there's a scary bigness.

Obama’s frantic efforts to gin up the women’s vote and the youth vote aren’t only desperate attempts to secure his base. They flow from a deliberate decision not to fight for the center, but to build an independent majority on what is supposedly the “demographically ascendent” left.

Over at The Nation, Richard Kim gets it. Writing about the Lena Dunham “first time” ad controversy, he speaks of it as part of an effort “to realign the electorate towards the Democratic Party for a generation.” But the best place to read about Obama’s larger strategy is “Hope: The Sequel,” the New York magazine piece by John Heilemann that got attention last May.... describ[ing] an Obama campaign willing to risk turning off socially conservative Democrats and independent voters by hyping leftist social issues....

That reminds me of the way Republicans turn off the socially liberal folks (like me) who would be receptive to the rest of what they have to offer. The 2 parties have corresponding strategies, including trying to scare people about how extreme the other party really intends to be. I don't trust any of them.

How will Sandy affect the election?

Bob Wright and I talk about that (recorded yesterday):



I explain my coastal cities theory.

Will rising sea levels affect the election?

Sandy's coming, and the waters may flow up into the low-lying East Coast cities. If coastal cities flood and the people there — who are disproportionately Democratic — get distracted by their personal difficulties or find it hard to get to the polls, then the upstate folks — who may be more Republican — will have greater power to tip the state's electoral votes to Romney.

I'm thinking in particular of Pennsylvania, a swing state with 20 electoral votes, where Obama's been polling ahead. Sandy may hit Philadelphia hard. Look at the county-by-county results from the 2008 election. You can see that upstate, Republicans had the majority. Sandy's waters could suppress the coastal vote and leverage upstate power.

It was 4 years ago that Obama gave that grandiose "this was the moment" speech where he said "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow...." What irony if the rise of the oceans thwarts his reelection!

***

Going with the flow, Venice-style.

The NYT illustrates its endorsement of Obama with a photo of Abe Lincoln.

There's something so tragically lame about this:



To be fair, it clicks through to a gallery of past endorsements that makes it glaringly clear that the Times always endorses the Democratic candidate. You have to scroll back over a half century to get a different result.

But keep scrolling. Once you get down past mid-20th century, there are plenty of Republicans mixed in, and if you'll scroll down to the bottom, you'll get to that famous face they selected to illustrate today's editorial, Abraham Lincoln. A Republican.

The Times endorsed Lincoln in 1860 and again, when he ran for reelection, in 1864. The photo used in today's Obama endorsement is the 1864 Lincoln. How much the man aged in 4 years! Here is the 1860 Lincoln:



The 1860 endorsement — PDF — is a fascinating read:

It will not be easy... for Mr. Lincoln to do much mischief, even if he should be disposed. We have great confidence in his pacific and conciliatory disposition. He seems to us much more like to be too good-natured and tolerant towards his opponents, than not enough so. Rail-splitting is not an exciting occupation. It does not tend to cultivate the angry passions of the heart...

The rail-splitting metaphor is then worked into the opinion that Lincoln will govern as a moderate pragmatist.

The 2 photos of Barack Obama, 2008 and 2012, differ much less from each other than the 2 pics of Lincoln. And the old 2008 endorsement doesn't contain any vivid writing telling us what sort of mind is produced by the the work of community organizing and how Obama will govern in the manner of a community organizer.

The AP reports an increase in racial prejudice since 2008 (based on research that is at least somewhat scientific).

"Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly."

The explicit racism measures asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about black and Hispanic people. In addition, the surveys asked how well respondents thought certain words, such as "friendly," ''hardworking," ''violent" and "lazy," described blacks, whites and Hispanics. 

The same respondents were also administered a survey designed to measure implicit racism, in which a photo of a black, Hispanic or white male flashed on the screen before a neutral image of a Chinese character. The respondents were then asked to rate their feelings toward the Chinese character. Previous research has shown that people transfer their feelings about the photo onto the character, allowing researchers to measure racist feelings even if a respondent does not acknowledge them. 

I'm guessing that AP thinks this material is helpful to Obama, perhaps guilt-tripping Americans into voting for Obama as a way to say I'm not racist. But it can cut the other way, because Obama came into office at least in part because people believed in his seeming promise to take us to a higher ground racially, as if he had a special gift to cure racial ills.

Obama didn't give us that gift. We didn't get what we wanted for Christmas. But we're not children. Let's say we were deluded/misled into thinking this nice young man could solve old problems in some miraculous new way. It turned out that he was a normal politician, operating in a political mode, playing us on the issues he found playable. Fine! Okay. We're smarter now. We have more information. We don't want to be racist, but what's the non-racist response?

Judge him up or down on his actual performance. He is only a man, only a politician. Treat him accordingly. 

MORE: Detail on how the research was done here and here (PDF).

"Big Bird. Binders. Bayonets."

The GOP goes after Obama, using Obama's own line, from 2008: "If you don't have a record to run on, you make a big election about small things."



(Via Instapundit, who says "ouch.")