The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Aye, The Economy. Also: The Tempo

Posted on | August 14, 2012 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

We have 84 days to go. Mataconis, emphasis mine:

As I noted on Sunday, it strikes me that Romney’s campaign will be making a serious error if they allow this election to be about anything other than the economy. If it’s about Medicare, for example, then the campaign runs about against the fact hat the public is not in favor of entitlement cuts in general, and that a majority of Americans have said that they oppose the Ryan Plan, and that they believed it would make them worse off. More importantly, there’s little evidence that the voters want the kind of “Big Picture” election that the talking heads now seem to be salivating over.

The five highlighted words are the key. Content is less important than control. For a glance at the trends, Romney has about as much grip on the tempo as ever. But InTrade, FWIW, doesn’t look so bad for BHO.

Addressing the last sentence, Mataconis hints at the chicken-egg problem of “Big Picture” elections: how do you get voters to consider a Big Picture question without first setting a Big Picture in front of them?  Consider my Congresstool Jim Moran celebrating the birth of Social Security. The comments are a mixed bag. People trapped in a Ponzi scheme know it, like the smoker who wakes up hacking: dependency does not bring joy.

The Romney campaign is showing a steady competence. Capitalizing on the Obama campaign’s disarray over the Soptic ad by announcing Ryan for VP turned into a hefty payday, if $7.4 million means anything.

84 days is a good chunk of time, and the GOP loves to spike the ball on the 4 yard line. So this post is cautious in its general optimism. We have many more creepshow ads and non-economic distractions, domestic and international, to unfold before election day.

However, the disarray of the Obama campaign seems to be increasing, while Romney moves forward, at a medium pace. I, for one, like what I see.

Category: Election 2012

Comments

7 Responses to “Aye, The Economy. Also: The Tempo”

  1. richard mcenroe
    August 14th, 2012 @ 8:47 pm

    Romney just announced he would return the $700+ millions Obama cut from Medicare to the program.

  2. smitty
    August 14th, 2012 @ 9:03 pm

    I’m all for an orderly sunset to these entitlements.

  3. Mike G.
    August 14th, 2012 @ 9:25 pm

     Me too, even though I’m right on the cusp of the age delineation Ryan was talking about. And with my disease and no prognosis yet on whether or not the treatment will be effective and what my ability to work afterward will be is kind of…what’s the word I’m looking for, oh yeah…”sucky.”

    I might have to take advantage of the state lottery education fund and go back to school, but then again, I probably wouldn’t qualify, being a WASP and all.

  4. smitty
    August 14th, 2012 @ 9:28 pm

    Oh, I’m there. I’m also unafraid to say: “Yeah, got scammed” and walk away.

  5. Adjoran
    August 14th, 2012 @ 11:38 pm

    Obama didn’t actually “cut” anything, he transferred the money FROM the Medicare Trust to pay for ObamaCare.  He was accelerating the collapse of Medicare in order to make his own scheme appear less expensive.  Republicans raised Cain over it during the whole health care debate.

    As anyone familiar with markets understands, the ability to read anything from them is based primarily on the volume.  For instance, the “Obama bull market” has been based on very low volume trading.  InTrade and IEM were based on this very theory, and they never pretended otherwise.

    So if you go to the site and click on “see all unmatched contracts” you will see how few people are in this market now.  Any predictive value would be based upon thousands or tens of thousands of contracts a each price increment.  Look at what is there now, and sniff derisively when anyone suggests it means anything.

  6. Adjoran
    August 14th, 2012 @ 11:51 pm

    Also, if we don’t discuss Medicare now, how do we put in the reforms.  And you aren’t going to fix the fiscal mess and restore the economy to growth without it.  It’s put up or shut up time for America:  we either bite the bullet with a real mandate for entitlement reform, or we are Greece in four years.

  7. CPAguy
    August 15th, 2012 @ 12:05 am

    The important thing is that there was never a “Trust” to begin with.

    We must push for our government to no longer report its financial condition under governmental accounting standards which allows them hide massive liabilities under the guise of the unlimited ability to tax.