Month: October 2012

Early Voting to Help Obama, Hurt Romney

Buck Banks

Two-to-one, people who say they have already voted are Barack Obama supporters. The majority of people who plan to vote early are Barack Obama supporters. The majority of people who plan to vote on election day, Romney supporters. I think that’s what gets tricky — you have to have a huge margin on election day to offset the Democrats.

— Pollster Ann Selzer, in an interview with TPM on the impact of early voting.

Mitt Romney Alleged to Have Committed Perjury in Staples CEO’s Divorce Trial – Mitt Was Also Accused of Perjury in 2002

Jon Ponder
Tom Stemberg and ex-wife Maureen Sullivan
Tom Stemberg and ex-wife Maureen Sullivan

Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred has a pretty good track record when it comes to lobbing political bombshells. In 2010, she permanently hobbled the gubernatorial campaign of Mitt Romney’s friend Meg Whitman with the revelation that Whitman had employed an undocumented worker for years and then tried to cover it up.

More recently, Allred was instrumental in bringing then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s extramarital affair with his housekeeper to light, providing proof, finally, that Schwarzenegger was a scumbag philanderer — a fact that had been common knowledge in Hollywood for decades for the action star ran for governor.

Now Allred is investigating testimony provided by Romney during divorce proceedings for Staples CEO Tom Stemberg and his then-wife Maureen Sullivan. In the testimony, Romney is alleged to have helped Stemberg conceal the true worth of Staples Inc. from the court.

[…]

U.S. ‘Lucky’ to Have Obama as President

Buck Banks

For Romney, he made no massive mistakes. No Gerald Ford moments. And since the momentum of this race is now his, if now faltering a little, a defeat on points on foreign policy will be an acceptable result. But this was Obama’s debate; and he reminded me again of how extraordinarily lucky this country has been to have had him at the helm in this new millennium.”

— Andrew Sullivan, in the Daily Beast.

Romney Seemed ‘Nervous, Scattered’ in Third Debate

Buck Banks

President Obama won the foreign policy debate, cleanly and decisively, on both style and substance. It was as clear a victory as Mitt Romney’s in the first debate. And Romney lost in similar fashion: he seemed nervous, scattered, unconvincing — and he practiced unilateral disarmament, agreeing with Obama hither and yon … on Iraq (as opposed to two weeks ago), on Afghanistan (as opposed to interviews he’s given this fall), on Libya and Syria and Iran. He didn’t have a single creative or elegantly stated foreign policy thought and, indeed, seemed foolish at times.

— Joe Klein, writing in Time’s “Swampland” column.