Joe Klein: The Imaginary Campaign

[babylonsister]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2125027-2,00.html

The Imaginary Campaign
By Joe Klein
Monday, Oct. 01, 2012


On Aug. 31, the night after the Clint Eastwood empty-chair colloquy at the Republican Convention, Jon Stewart identified the radioactive ingredient that would provide the fuel for Mitt Romney's September meltdown. The Republicans, he noted on The Daily Show, were suffering from "cognitive dissonance." Like Eastwood, they were campaigning against a Barack Obama who was a figment of their imagination. "There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see," he said. That Obama--the Muslim socialist foreigner--was "bent on our wholesale destruction." The mad fact is, Stewart was only scratching the surface. We now know that Romney has been running not only against an imaginary President but against an imaginary electorate as well. This is an electorate in which 47% are looking for handouts, don't pay income taxes and won't "take responsibility...for their lives."

How utterly insulting to the legions of hospital workers, restaurant (and country club) employees and security guards who work their butts off servicing the plutocrats Romney was addressing at his now infamous fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla. These workers barely get by, but they are helped a bit by benefits--like the earned-income and child tax credits invented by Republicans--that limit their exposure to income taxes (although they continue to kick in payroll taxes and pay a host of state and local levies). The great irony is that the vast majority of Romney's 47% would be shocked to learn that they're among the freeloaders, which is why this incident might not, in the end, have all that much impact on the presidential campaign. Romney was right about the larger picture in Boca: this election will be decided by a sliver of middle-class independents, the 6% who can't decide which of these candidates they disdain more.

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And while the Romney campaign was sleeping, the other 85% have seen their circumstances change. "Their household income hasn't improved," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's. "But their household balance sheets are very quickly moving in the right direction." The soaring stock market has restored their 401(k)s to their former plenitude; the values of their homes are creeping back above the waterline in some areas and booming in others; and, Zandi says, we are approaching "historic lows" in delinquency rates on consumer credit-card debt and auto and appliance loans. Our nation's feckless freeloaders have behaved responsibly since the 2008 crash. They've reduced their debts. They're feeling better about their circumstances. And suddenly, the percentage of people who think the country is on the right track is surging, especially in important swing states like Ohio, where the economic picture has improved dramatically.

It is the business of a presidential challenger to overstate the dire situation the incumbent has inflicted on a betrayed public. Bill Clinton certainly overstated the extent of the economic recession in 1992. But there are limits. There is reality. In this country, successful politicians have always avoided apocalyptic predictions. This year, however, Republicans have routinely embraced the dark side. If Obama is re-elected, "I don't know that our country really survives four more years of all the regulations," Senator Rand Paul told CNN's Wolf Blitzer during the Republican Convention. Blitzer called him on it, saying, "Wait a second. If President Obama is re-elected, you think the United States of America, in four years, will not be the United States of America?" Paul beat a hasty retreat.

Romney has lived the past six years in his party's overheated shark tank, spending more time pestering plutocrats for cash than meeting with and listening to the general public. I suspect Romney doesn't really believe that 47% of the electorate are moochers; he was just dialing for dollars. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how the man who mouthed those words, whether he believes them or not, can be elected President.