It would seem that the big question being pushed going into the Democratic convention is the classic: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
For every incumbent this is an inherently fair question. Whether it is you or the country, it’s the most essential question on offer. It is also an inherently tricky one for President Obama since the economy remains anemic and job growth has yet to approach the levels necessary to really get the country fully back on its feet. Indeed, job growth fell back after briefly appearing to be in take-off mode in late 2011 and early 2012.
But there are some basic facts required to put this question in perspective. Read More
The most retweeted tweet of the Republican National Convention was a tweet by Barack Obama snarking on the Eastwood episode.
One of those classic Daily Show segments where you wonder, Do the targets get the joke?
“You might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV,” President Obama tells an Iowa crowd.
Jon Stewart has a field day with Clint Eastwood’s convention speech.
Kyle Leighton takes a look at what kind of fallout the Todd Akin debacle is having in other races:
From the Times …
Behind the scenes, Mr. Eastwood’s convention cameo was cleared by Mr. Romney’s top message mavens, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, who drew up talking points that Mr. Eastwood included, in his own way. They gave him a time limit and flashed a blinking red light that told him his time was up. He ignored both. The actor’s decision to use a chair as a prop was last-minute, and his own.
“The prop person probably thought he was going to sit in it,” a baffled senior aide said on Thursday night.
…
Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks.
Many readers have expressed their unhappiness over recent months with the fact that you currently need to have an account with this or that social network to comment at TPM — currently only with Facebook.
I wanted to let you know that we are planning to move to a new system that would allow you to register and login directly with TPM. I anticipate this will happen prior to the election.
I want to give a big shout-out to our TPM2012 convention coverage team. You can see them on location here (from left to right: Benjy Sarlin, Sara Libby and Evan McMorris-Santoro).
A great job this week in Tampa and I’m looking forward to week two next week in Charlotte. I hope you are too.
As I’ve mentioned many times before, the tech usage of our readership skews significantly from that of the population at large. Still, the trends are notable and in line with those broader movements.
Along those lines, August 2012 was the first month in TPM’s almost 12 year history when the percentage of visits coming from computers running on a Windows Operating System fell below 50%.
Relatedly, the percentages of users using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has fallen to just 16.8%.
To give some perspective, this time in the last presidential cycle (August 2008), the Operating System percentage was 72% and the browser number was 39%.