Comin' Out Swinging: Thoughts on Joe Biden's Approach vs. Paul Ryan

Much like the man in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” who protests that he is, in fact, not dead yet, reports of Mitt Romney’s demise were “greatly exaggerated” before last week’s first Presidential Debate with incumbent Barack Obama. He ended up winning in the eyes of many in the debate, and the poll numbers since then have shown that result has really turned the race around. According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com blog, Obama’s chances of winning the election have dropped from 87.1% on October 4^th to 66.1% as of Thursday. Granted, this still gives him a two-thirds majority to win, but with polls showing Florida and Colorado starting to swing toward Romney, that percentage could decline further.

Obama vs. Romney: The Good, The Bad, and the Debate Over Victory

If you’ve been following news coverage over the past few weeks of the Presidential election, there are a couple of things that you certainly would have noticed. The first of those is that President Barack Obama is pulling ahead in the polls in several key swing states, including Ohio and Florida. In fact, Nate Silver’s blog has given him about an 85% chance of winning the election according to a summation of all the polling data available, so things were starting to look bleak for the president’s Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Just as emphasized as the widening gap between the two candidates was the narrative spun by both sides in attempting to paint themselves as the underdogs in the Presidential Debates, which began on Wednesday night in Colorado. The Romney campaign released a memo asserting that the president would focus on undermining his challenger rather than presenting a clear set of objectives for his second term in office, while Obama and crew said that he didn’t consider himself the front runner and that he expected Romney to win. This posturing definitely resembled that of any major sporting event, where both teams are trying to grab the underdog mantel and run with it so that they have that motivating factor behind them as they attempt to get psyched up for a game.

An Essay on Platforms and the Hypocrisy of Barack Obama

Last week in Tampa, Florida, the Republican Party held its Convention (you may have heard some reports about talking to chairs, or something), and they adopted a platform that was, frankly, viewed with disdain by liberals and some independents.

We (Kind of) Built That: Five Thoughts from Day One of the RNC

Every night of both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, I am going to do some type of recap of the events that transpired both on the convention floor, as well as in the media surrounding the event. I’m going to try to call out both party’s on any shenanigans that they pull, as well as praise them if they deserve it, but from the word “go”, understand I’m a liberal, so some bias might kick in.

Did You Really “Build That”, GOP?

The theme of the opening night of the Republican National Convention was the term “We built that”, a reference to a speech made by President Barack Obama in Virginia earlier this year. The GOP has seized upon this quote and made it into a rallying cry about how the President believes that the only road to success is paved with government succor (and yes, I deliberately used this metaphor to emphasize the stupidity of the whole thing), and there are a couple of moments tonight that really hammered home the absurdity of the whole spectacle.

Thoughts on Coarsening of Discourse, and What I Plan to Do About It

If there is one narrative that is dominating the 2012 Presidential Race in the United States, it is that of the deterioration of our public discourse. Yes, there has been plenty of talk about women’s rights issues, a surprising lack of talk about the economy, and a fair amount of discussion about the social safety net, but the main overarching theme that has united all Americans in a state of pained anger is the one concerning the thought of “do these guys have a fucking clue as to who they’re supposed to be representing?”

A Personal Post on Struggling With Writer's Block

For those of you who are familiar with my work, there are several things that I hope you have noticed. Whenever I have an opinion, I try not only to make every effort to express it in thought-provoking ways, but also to make reference to the opinions that run contrary to mind. This fair-minded approach especially comes in handy when it comes to my political polemics, and even if I feel passionately about something, I take great care to emphasize that my opinion is mine, and not necessarily the “correct” one.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: A Match Made for All the Wrong Reasons

“They got the ticket in the right order.”

Those words were uttered by Vice President Joe Biden on numerous occasions, but for the purposes of this blog post I will cite them to Jonathan Alter’s excellent book “The Promise: Year One”, his account of the first year and change of the administration of President Barack Obama.