David Corn just said on TV that the now infamous Romney fundraiser was held in Boca Raton, Florida at the estate of hedge fund manager Marc Leder.
According to the New York Post, Leder throws a pretty mean party.
His “wild end-of-summer bash was the talk of the Hamptons this year,” the Post reported last December. “At the Bridgehampton home that Leder rented for a whopping $500,000 a month, guests cavorted nude in a pool and performed sex acts, while scantily clad Russian women danced on platforms. Dancers at the party also twirled flaming torches to booming beats.”
This is a Holiday for my folks. So I’ve only been half in touch with the news today. And I’m just getting up to speed on this purported tape of Mitt Romney saying he thinks the 47% of Americans who support Barack Obama are moochers who believe the government has to take care of them. It’s rare when the impact of some gaffe or embarrassment or revelation isn’t overstated on first blush. But this may just be that rare exception. This tape strikes me as absolutely devastating. Read More
It’s a snarky title but it captures the Romney campaign’s current predicament pretty well. Romney campaign announces new era of policy detail, won’t offer specifics.
Linda Lingle seems not to have learned from an embarrassing RNC episode earlier this month.
Several of the “Democrats for Lingle” enlisted to tout the Republican Senate candidate’s bipartisan bona fides in a new ad posted on Lingle’s website are actually Republicans.
The news this morning is filled with stories about in-fighting in the Romney campaign or new promises of either a more culture war based campaign or one where Romney finally gets specific on his key policy proposals. It’s all standard for when the media and a campaign itself believe it is losing.
But don’t be distracted by the various plot lines. Romney’s core problem is this: the campaign’s strategy has always been that the economy itself will defeat Obama. So the economy defeats Barack Obama. And Mitt Romney is the can-do business man who the country turns to. In other words, Romney takes the presidency by default. This is hardly a crazy strategy with unemployment stuck above 8% and an economy that has actually decelerated over the course of the year. But it does not appear to be working. That’s the key. Read More
Elizabeth Warren moves back into the lead in Massachusetts. In this contest where both candidates are actually quite well liked by the state electorate, it’s a smallish advantage. But the trend is also clear from a half-dozen polls taken just before and after the national conventions. Chart after the jump … Read More
Okay, not quite that bad. But not a good moment.
On Meet the Press this morning David Gregory referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as “Leaders of the Jews” and in his role as ‘leader of the Jewish People” asked for his verdict on President Obama. “You are the leader of the Jewish people,” Gregory told Netanyahu.
Helping matters somewhat, Gregory went on Twitter a short time ago and clarified that it would have been “better to say he’s leader of jewish state.” To which I would say, yes, much better. In fact, probably best to say, he’s leader or Prime Minister of Israel.
I’ve been watching elections professionally for going on two decades.
From a fair amount of experience I’ll say one thing: if your theory is based on some sort of systematic error on the part of most pollsters, you’re almost certainly in for a really long election night.