It seems to me that Mitt Romney is the failed presidential candidate who will never go away. Really: he’s not in office, why is there still so much news about him? I really don’t know. Just the same, I still find him fascinating because he is sort of the perfect Republican. And in a recent interview story by Mark Leibovich, Romney came up with a new excuse for his “47 percent” comment. It’s interesting that the comment was about how the poor wouldn’t take responsibility for themselves. But every couple of months, Romney comes up with a new reason why he isn’t responsible for what he said.

Romney said that he had just be asked a long and rambling question. He continued, “My mistake was that I was speaking in a way that reflected back to the man. If I had been able to see the camera, I would have remembered that I was talking to the whole world, not just the man.” Okay. So his mistake was not knowing that there was a hidden camera? If he knew he was being recorded, he would have be more truthful? The mind boggles.

Brian Beutler hit back on this at New Republic today, Mitt Romney Blames His “47 Percent” Comment on a Donor. Paul Ryan Blames… Mitt Romney. That title refers to the fact that Paul Ryan now says the comment was wrong, but he still (along with the whole of the Republican Party) sees the world that way. That’s the fundamental problem. The video wasn’t a big deal because everyone was surprised that Romney would say such a thing. The video was a big deal because no one was surprised. They already knew this was exactly what Romney thought and the video was just a handy example of it.

Beutler noted that the question Romney got was neither long nor rambling. The guy just asks how Romney can convince people that they have to take care of themselves. And after losing the election, Romney claimed that it was because Obama was giving poor people free stuff. This clearly shows that Romney really did think that half the nation were a bunch of moochers. What I’ve always found funny but also shockingly offensive is that Romney pandered far more than Obama.

One of the biggest attacks Romney made against Obama was that he took $716 billion away from Medicare. And what was Romney going to do? Give it back! And what was the biggest thing in Romney’s budget? His $5 trillion in tax cuts going mostly to the very wealthy. But in Republican-think, giving money to your constituencies is not giving them “free stuff.” Giving “free stuff” only applies when it is given to “those” people. Romney’s tax cuts were worth more than total Medicaid spending. But those poor parents who got free checkups for their kids were being bought off. Billionaires were not.

The final word about the “47 Percent” comment comes from Romney, himself. I’m sure over time, he will change his explanation as it becomes clear to him that he said far more than he meant to in this interview. Romney really thinks that there are a whole bunch of loafers out there in America. And he thinks that the only distinctly progressive tax in the United States is the one that defines such people. Note that he didn’t talk about sales taxes or state income taxes or payroll taxes — all of which the poor pay in abundance. No, he picked the one tax that is reasonably fair in the United States. And so the video shows what he actually thinks about his fellow Americans. We all understand that he wouldn’t have been so blunt if he had known non-millionaires were watching. We don’t like Romney, but we don’t think he’s an idiot.

The issue in the United States is not people who don’t take responsibility for their lives. The issue is people like Romney who want to take responsibility for things they didn’t do. He won’t admit the fact that his success is mostly luck. He was born reasonably intelligent. He was born into a rich family. He was sent to good schools. He knew lots of people who could help him out in life. Even at Bain & Company, Romney didn’t see the opportunity with Bain Capital. He only started it because his boss gave him the deal of a lifetime to start it: not only would he get his old job back if he failed, the company would cover for him so it didn’t reflect badly on him. Romney is the one with the responsibility issue. And now he’s trying to push responsibility for his “47 percent” comment onto some anonymous donor, who regardless totally agrees with Romney about what they see as the moocher class.

There has been a lot of bad polling news for Democrats in the Senate recently. In fact, the Princeton model’s daily forecast yesterday had the Democrat’s chances of holding the Senate in the low 20 percents. It’s come back up to 39% today, but The Monkey Cage is down to 23%. Generally, however, the models are right about where they were two months ago with the Democrats having about a 40% chance of holding the Senate. Should we freak out? Of course not. But we should prepare ourselves for a less than sunny election night, at least as far as the Senate goes.

Nate Silver wrote an excellent article, Senate Update: When Should Democrats Panic? His main point is that people tend to think in terms of trends and waves, but that’s not what’s happening at all. There have been some good polls for Republicans in the last week or so, just as there were some good polls for Democrats a month ago. It doesn’t mean that the polls are going to get better and better for the Republicans.

Another important point is that this is a bad year for Democrats based upon the “fundamentals.” Yet the Democrats are generally doing better than expectations. This is actually a very big issue for me. I’m okay with the Republicans taking over the Senate. For well over a year, I’ve known there was a very good chance of this. But what I dread is watching the election results coming in and hearing pundits say things like, “Well this just shows that the people are unhappy with President Obama’s policies.” Or, “When all is said and done, America is a center-right nation.” Or, “Liberalism is dead.”

No! No! No! This is an election where the vast majority of Senate seats up for election belonged to Democrats — most in red states because the Democrats had a shockingly good year in 2008. What’s more, Democrats are poised to have a rather good year in terms of governorships. Of course, these facts won’t matter. I know that on election night, I will be seeing people say these things. It’s what they always say because nuance is not allowed on television.

From my perspective, a neutral result should have been Republicans getting 53 or 54 Senate seats — which is still quite possible. Most of the models are now predicting 52 seats. If that comes to pass, the reporting really ought to be that the Republicans did poorly. It’s funny that when it comes to something like presidential debates, the commentariat are totally focused on how well the candidates do compared to expectations. But when it comes to elections, it is only the absolute numbers. If the Republicans end up ahead it means the country has turned right and if the Democrats end up ahead, the country has turned left.

If the Democrats do manage to maintain control of the Senate, the reporting should be along the lines of, “In a year where the Republicans had every structural advantage, they failed to succeed. This does not speak well of the party during this election cycle.” But instead, it will mostly be pitched as a wash, with some even claiming it is a big win for the Republicans because they picked up five seats.

As always with elections, this one will all come down to how many Democrats manage to show up to the polls. Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien at The Monkey Cage wrote an informative article about this last week, Why Likely Voter Polls May Be Misleading. As I pointed out just after the 2012 election, a lot of polls were wrong because of their “likely voter” screens. Only 87% of those who said they were sure to vote actually voted, and more surprisingly, 55% of those who said they were unlikely to vote did vote. Now 2012, was an on-year election, so it is different but the same thing goes on.

The article at The Monkey Cage noted that most of the recent shift in the polls toward the Republicans is not about people changing their minds; it is about the polls providing data on likely voters. Registered voters are still polling the same way. This is potentially cheerful news for the Democrats. Supposedly, the Democrats are spending big money on “get out the vote” efforts. So if they really do succeed at this, the final composition of the Senate might not look that bad.

But I won’t be shocked if the Republicans have 54 seats in the Senate next year. We’ll get through it. There is no reason to freak out.

Le freak n’est pas chic!

If you follow the financial news, you are well aware that Bill Gross has left Pimco. In general, I do not follow the financial news, because it makes my brain hurt. But I’m well aware of Bill Gross. He’s a big bond trader with a huge reputation. I’ve never really understood it. People like him are never wizards. They are smart people, but usually depended upon a huge amount of luck. Let’s consider that for a moment, shall we?

The way bonds work is kind of weird because they work the opposite of the way that stocks do. Let’s suppose you have a stock and you think the stock price is going to go up. Then you hold onto it so that when it is worth more, you can sell for the higher price. But a bond just pays you a set amount of money. So if you think bond rates will go up, you want to sell. Let’s suppose you have a bond that pays you 2%. If you think the rate of new bonds will go up to 4%, you should sell your 2% bond now so that you can buy the new higher paying bonds when the rate goes up. That’s the kindergarten overview, which is about as much as I know. But it is enough to understand the politics.

Back in February 2011, Bill Gross decided that all of our government debt and the end of quantitative easing was going to cause US Treasury bond rates to go way up. If you follow economics at all, this must sound very familiar. Ever since Obama moved into the White House, conservatives have been screaming that the government is going to have to pay oh so much more to borrow money because… Well, to be honest, no one really has any good reasons for why this would be the case. For most people, it is just an excuse to do what they always want to do: cut Social Security. Bill Gross may be a smart guy, but I’m sure that he heard all of this. Or maybe he listens to Rush Limbaugh every day. I don’t know.

Regardless, at that time, Pimco’s Total Return fund had as much as 22% of its money invested in US Treasuries. Gross got rid of it all. The 10-year rate was then 3.7%. So Gross was betting big time that the rate was going to go up. It didn’t. Within eight months, the rate was down to 1.8%. (These are straight rates, not inflation adjusted.) It was around this time that Bill Gross wrote his angry column, The Ugly Side of Ultra-Cheap Money. You see, the problem wasn’t with his lack of understand of economics, it was those meanies at the Federal Reserve were keeping money too cheap.

This makes no sense. People either buy bonds or they don’t. And the quantitative easing that the Fed was doing was having at best a marginal effect on the economy anyway. But no matter. What’s really interesting is that Gross seems to think it is more important that people like him continue to make ridiculous sums of money rather than people like you and me have actual jobs. That is after all the trade-off. Most people would rather have jobs. But the super rich would rather get a great return on their bonds. Tighten that money supply so that people who already own things can make even more money off them!

But I was really struck by a couple of things in a column by Michael Hiltzik today, How Bill Gross and Pimco Got Too Big for Each Other. The first is just that what Gross did with Pimco is not that surprising, if you look at what happened to US Treasuries, “Since its launch in May 1987, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond has fallen from 8.61% to 2.52% and bond prices have risen commensurately.” Again, I don’t doubt that he’s smart and very good at his job. But as with most things, aren’t there at least a million people on the planet who would have done as well or better given his opportunities? That isn’t something I say because he works in finance. I’d say the same thing of just about every job.

More interesting is just what a weird person Gross has turned into:

He didn’t want the little people making eye contact with him? That’s disgusting, but entirely typical of the super-rich. Gross was apparently paid $200 million per year. He has a net worth of over $2 billion. Here in the United States, we don’t have an aristocracy. He have “job creators.” Except they don’t create any jobs. And those like Bill Gross do everything they can to destroy jobs.

I have a certain fondness for political extremists. We have far too much middle-of-the-road thinking with few people willing to stand up for anything. This is especially true of the nominal left of the political spectrum. On the right, there are a lot more of what we might call true believers. The problem is that, in general, these people are every bit as spineless as the middle-of-the-road caucus. A great example came my way via Jonathan Chait, Tom Cotton Is Now the Perfect Republican.

Tom Cotton is currently a Republican Representative from Arkansas who is now running for Senate against Mark Pryor. But earlier this year, he voted against the Farm Bill. This did not go over very well. The president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau said that he was “disappointed” by the vote. Now, Cotton is fighting back. In the following commercial, he claims, “When President Obama hijacked the farm bill, turned it into a food stamp bill, with billions more in spending, I voted no. Career politicians love attaching bad ideas to good ones. Then the bad ideas become law, and you pay for it.” I’ll get to everything that’s wrong with this in a moment, but watch it. It’s a highly effective ad:

As everyone should know, the Farm Bill and food stamps have been bundled for decades. There was a political reason for this: it created a coalition of Representatives from rural and urban areas. But there is an ethical reason as well: much of the Farm Bill consists of price floors, which makes food cost more. As a result, it is just a matter of fairness to help the poor pay for food made expensive by government regulation. So it is a baldfaced lie to say that Obama hijacked the farm bill and turned it into a food stamp bill. Cotton and his extremist colleagues hijacked the Farm Bill and tried to make it only apply to wealthy farmers.

But here’s the thing: if that’s what you believe in, own it. I believe we should get rid of the Farm Bill and just have an independent food stamp program. The poor need help. Farmers are not poor. It is no longer the Great Depression. The Farm Bill is one of the most egregious examples of corporate welfare in the country. Cotton is like the vast majority of Republicans: he wants to shovel ever more money to the already rich and screw the poor as much as possible. If that’s what he believes — and he does — then he should own it.

But the Daily Kos polling has Cotton ahead of Mark Pryor by 4.5 percentage points. Cotton doesn’t need to stand for anything or do anything for his constituencies. All he has to do is promise that he’s going to get “those” people and he will be swept into office. For almost fifty years, the Republicans have won election after election and pushed the country far to the right by appealing to the white majority’s latent racism.

And I really don’t know what Americans think they get for all this. Reagan rode into the White House in 1981 promising to get that mythical welfare queen. And now we’ve had five consecutive presidents who have done almost nothing for average Americans even while the economy has growth quite well. Reagan and Clinton have managed to make the poor poorer, so I guess they were true to their word. But is this what the American middle class will accept? Is it good enough to see themselves go further into debt and not see their living standards rise, as long as they can have the thrill of watching the poor writhe ever more in pain?

I guess this is how great empires fall now. But I think ritual sacrifices to the gods was actually less cruel.

Recently, it’s looked rather hopeful for the Democrats holding the Senate. I am sorry to report that things look much worse now. There are two reasons for this: one not surprising at all, but the other quite surprising. The first reason is that we are finally getting some good polling out of Alaska, and Mark Begich is doing very poorly. Up until now, I’ve been skeptical about his chances, regardless. I mean: it’s Alaska. They get far more from the federal government than they pay in taxes. So of course their people would be conservative and want to get rid of all that welfare that goes to them.

The surprise is in Colorado. Mark Udall is suddenly losing badly to Cory Gardner, who is a conservative freak. In Alaska, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. But this is Colorado. Of course, you may remember the recall election in Colorado last year. Two state senators were removed, even though what they did was hugely popular. So how did they lose? The usual way: only the right wing nut jobs came out to vote.

The only real hope for the Democrats at this point is that the big get-out-the-vote effort will make a difference. And it could in Colorado. I’m not too hopeful in Alaska. So at this point, we’d have to say that the best case scenario for the Democrats is that they hold 49 seats in the Senate. And if the Republicans have the majority, I don’t know what that means for Kansas where Orman hasn’t said who he will caucus with.

As of today, here are what the models say with the most likely number of seats and the percent chance the Democrats have of keeping the Senate:

• 48 seats (33%) Daily Kos
• 48 seats (40%) FiveThirtyEight
• 48 seats (42%) Huffington Post
• 49 seats (30%) The Monkey Cage
• 49 seats (39%) Princeton
• 48 seats (33%) The Upshot

I’m not sure what is going on with the Princeton model. The numbers I listed were the daily snapshot. But the election day model still predicts a 70% chance of the Democrats holding the Senate. And the meta-margin is Republicans +0.4%. Regardless, looking at all these numbers, it is hard not to conclude that the Democrats will have 48 seats in the Senate starting next year.

Also worth noting, it assumes that even with Republicans getting the majority, Orman will still caucus with the Democrats. That may be the case. It is almost certain that the Democrats will take back the Senate in 2016 and I expect them to hold in 2018. So long term, being with the Democrats would give him more power. But caucusing with the Republicans might make his re-election in 2020 easier. And it is not clear he’s going to win. More recent polling makes that race closer than it had been.

A couple of week ago, I read about a poll that found that a majority of Americans trust the Republicans more than the Democrats on the economy. When I read that, alarm bells went off. I think the Democrats are terrible on the economy. But what could possibly make people think that the Republicans are better on the economy? They have done nothing but drag down the economy since Obama entered the White House. Let me summarize their economic thinking:

In other words: in the majority or the minority, they will destroy the economy, but they will be more able to do it with complete power. The fact that after decades of bad Republican economic policy, the people still think it is a good idea is a good example of why our country is dying. And I fear it is like a virus that will eventually destroy the world. We don’t need dictators in the United States, when politicians can so effectively manipulate the people into voting against their own interests. And the rest of the people have become so disillusioned that they don’t even vote.

Let me make a personal appeal. If you care about my health: vote. I’m not asking much. I’m not even telling you how to vote. Because I believe in democracy. I believe when everyone votes, we get good policy. When only the cranks who want to screw all “those” people, well, we get government by, for, and of the super rich. Just vote. Vote. Vote. It’s that simple: vote.

Image altered from one by Internet Weekly.

What made Dwight Eisenhower a great leader is not so much his presidency. What made him great was how he balanced all the different interests on the Allied Forces in World War II. But he was just doing a job — a job that many politicians asked him to do. It is hard to get people who nominally want to work together to actually work together, but it is far harder to get people to be willing to even try to work together. Maybe it was just a question of desperation — the fascists in Europe were a huge threat. Throughout my life, I’ve never seen anything like it. If I were to sum up the foreign policy of the United States for my entire life, I could do it in one word: stupid.

This brings us to the problem we now face with ISIS. One thing I really don’t like about the coverage of ISIS is that it is exactly the same as the coverage of any group we don’t like: ISIS is evil and must be destroyed. I’m not saying that they aren’t. But that is hardly helpful in understanding how we might eliminate them as a threat. The main thing that is reported about the group is that they are “worse than al-Qaeda!” It has been widely noted that they are so bad that even al-Qaeda thinks they are too violent. But that isn’t even true. It’s more a political rift in the extremist Islamic world.

One thing I remember being pounded with when I was a kid was that the Soviet Union wanted to “take over the world!” The same thing is said about ISIS. Yet that not only isn’t true, it isn’t realistic. I’m sure in a fantasy sense it is true. It’s like me wanting to be a billionaire: it would be great, but I have far too many other problems I have to deal with to focus on such dreams. This is Dr No thinking. From all reports, ISIS is far too involved with securing their gains than taking over new territory. That’s one of the frightening things about ISIS: they are extremists, but they are smart — they aren’t just capturing territory for its own sake so they can be destroyed like Napoleon at Waterloo.

Last week, Zuri Linetsky wrote a fabulous article over at The American Prospect, ISIL, Iraq and Syria: Why Military Action Won’t Do The Trick. If I were King of America, I would require it read on every television channel and in every classroom in the nation. Because it explains better than any other single source what is going on in Syria and Iraq right now. And it turns out, what is going on is exactly the same thing that has gone on over and over again for the last 35 years. It is just that America is a very slow learner.

Linetsky provided a history of the rise of the Afghan Taliban and compared it with the rise of ISIS. And guess what: there really is no difference. In both cases, these extremist groups rose up in the vacuum of a failed state. Of course, that isn’t the way that we look at it here in the United States. Here ISIS is presented as a kind of virus. And that might be fine if we combined it with a weak immune system that allows the virus to take hold. What was that weak immune system? An Iraqi government that oppressed the Sunni minority when it could bother to acknowledge it at all.

I forget where I heard it, but someone said or wrote that even if we could just magically eliminate ISIS, it would do no good. There are issues in Iraq that would still be there and would only lead to another group like ISIS. (Of course, we would all be told it was “even worse” than ISIS!) Linetsky’s idea is that we get Iran to help the Shi’a not have a failed government and Saudi Arabia to give the Sunnis political support so that their needs are met without turning to dangerous groups like ISIS.

Of course, we don’t talk to Iran. We can’t talk to Iran because of something that happened four decades ago. This is despite the fact that Iran is one of the best and most stable countries in the region. They could be a great partner in the region and they could have been for at least two decades. But instead, our foreign policy seems like it was developed by a clique of high school jocks. I’m not saying that Iran is wonderful, but if a country as terrible as Saudi Arabia is our ally, I don’t see any problem with making nice with Iran.

What’s more, we managed to work with the Soviet Union under Stalin during World War II. What good is our continued anti-Iran hissy fit? It makes no sense whatsoever. And it raises an important question: just how big a threat do we claim ISIS is? It’s been pitched as existential. So was Saddam Hussein. Both of these claims are ridiculous. But if we aren’t willy to finally grow up about our relationship with Iran, then I want the US to stop the bombing in Syria and Iraq, remove everyone from those countries, abandon all aid to Iraq. Because it means we don’t care at all about them and we don’t see them as important to our interests.