Surely if you've been following the news of late, you've heard the conventional wisdom about the supposed "nastiness" of the campaign -- driven mostly by Mitt Romney's inflated rhetoric about "campaign of division and anger and hate" and references to Chicago, which last I checked, has voters in it.
What this is actually about is Democrats stating Republicans' actual record and policy proposals, and Republicans calling that "hateful." It's about the real examination of the presidential tickets, not empty assumptions and proclamations about being Serious Policy Wonks™, proof to the contrary be damned. It's about the President asking Republicans in Congress to actually allow government to function, rather than get caught up in the race to the nearest microphone to utter the latest condemnation of President Obama's policies. Or something Vice President Joe Biden said.
We're going to have a negative campaign. That's something that may annoy Americans, but it's something we all accept. But there's a difference between running a negative campaign, and one that insults our intelligence.
Yesterday in his weekly address, the President called upon Congress to stop playing politics, and save a bunch of teachers from being laid off:
In his weekly address, Mr. Obama noted that education employment has fallen by 300,000 jobs since 2009. He pushed for Congress to help stem the job losses and called the Republican approach to education financing “backwards” and “wrong.”
“The economic plan that almost every Republican in Congress voted for would make the situation even worse,” Mr. Obama said, referring to a budget put forward by Representative. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mitt Romney’s running mate.
In today's show, Melissa will lend historical perspective and, then ask some young people about, the negative (and low-minded) campaign we're experiencing right now, and also talk about education -- specifically, the proposals both sides are offering in the presidential race. We also lead discussions on the debt, hear Melissa's primer on Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand, and add a Footnote on this week's applications filed by undocumented immigrants who seek to defer deportation. We'll also delve into the issue of sexual assault in the military via a new YouTube series starring our guest, actor Jennifer Beals.
Other guests will include:
- Natasha Adams, student at the City College of New York and youth leader in the group Girls for Gender Equity.
- Derrell Bradford, executive director of Better Education for Kids.
- Anthea Butler, professor of Religious Studies and Graduate Chair of Religion at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Dan Dicker, CNBC contributor, principal partner at MercBloc, and author of "Oil's Endless Bid: Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy."
- Michael Gellman, graduate of Bronx Science High School and in 2013, an incoming freshman at Harvard University.
- Peter Goodman, executive business editor of The Huffington Post and author of "Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy."
- Ileana Jimenez, high-school English teacher and founder of FeministTeacher.com.
- Lila Leff, founder of the UMOJA Student Development Corporation.
- Jamal Simmons, Democratic consultant at the Raben Group.
As always, folks -- be sure to interact with us during the show here in the comments of this post, on Facebook, and on Twitter, using the hashtag #nerdland. We look forward to having you join us at 10am ET on msnbc!
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Let’s go true negative for Republican Constituents. The Republican leaders are failing teachers, some who may be Republican, by insisting to keep the Bush tax cuts for people and business owners who make over 250K which whose taxes could help pay for their salaries, instead of laying them off. (The Obama Administration has proposed giving small business owners a tax break for ‘using’ profit and income to hire people while a Republican Administrations wants to give business owners a tax break whether they use their money to hire or not or to invest in other businesses or not.) In the meanwhile, the GOP wants to hold the unemployment rate of Republican run States against the Obama Administration, like a squirrel with a nut in its mouth.
Let’s go true negative for Republican Constituents of all income levels. The Republican House refused to compromise on their upper-income constituent’s behalf by asking for the Bush tax cuts to remain on what income that they ‘do’ invest which was the first said agenda of the Bush tax cuts. (That is how Republican House leaders could approach President Obama’s proposal to rollback the Bush tax cuts over people’s first earned 250K of income ‘for’ their constituents. Instead, the GOP fails their constituents by not representing their financial interests at all during this past election period.)
The GOP puts ‘all’ their constituents financial interests on whether or not the GOP wins the next election or not, like it is the only way ‘they’ think, they could possibly win.
If a Republican Constituent makes, earns or collects less than 250K a year, they might as well vote for the Obama Administration because the Obama Administration is going to give ‘everybody’ the Bush tax cut on their first earned 250K. The fact is that the Republican House’s refusal to compromise on ‘anything’ has left the Obama Administration open to take advantage by doing the compromising for them.
I was over at Huffington Post ranting about Republicans rigging elections in states they've gained control of, to PERMANENTLY keep control of those states, and how dangerous it is to allow THUGS to trample over Constitutional RIGHTS, if you let one side do it, there is the risk of RETRIBUTION when your side doesn't control a state.I feel like Republican white racists see they are at the END of being able to win an election, and because women voters and Latino voters are the biggest opposition groups it's THEIR Rights they single out to destroy.
I'm watching today's show on TIVO and was struck by the difference in the impact of the Democratic and Republican negative ads in the first part of the program. I'd seen them both before but hadn't noticed, until they were shown together in this way, how much more effective the Republican ad is. Though I prefer the nerdy approach to things, the simplicity of the Republicans' misrepresentation of the facts was powerful.
The Dems quoted AARP and "experts" and used qualified words like "as much as", but the Republicans said in a straightforward way that Obama has simply taken our money. That makes it sound like they're confident of their facts, whereas the Dems, knowing they were oversimplifying, communicated a noticeable degree of uncertainty as to what the facts really are, plus a reliance on others' opinions.
Chalk one up to Liars Advantage.