Politico: Veterans retreating from Obama
Poetrooper sends us a link to Politico which seems surprised that veterans aren’t supporting Obama in the numbers that everyone expected. Apparently we’re supposed to be grateful that Obama “got” bin Laden and ended the Iraq War, but veterans are able to see through the smoke and mirrors, much to the chagrin of the Democrats;
Back in May, Obama had the lead among Afghanistan and Iraq veterans. But a Reuters/Ipsos poll from September says that’s evaporated, with Romney now up 48 percent to 34 percent.
Obama campaign aides said the slip in the polls needs to be considered alongside recent surveys showing the president ahead of Romney on questions regarding foreign policy, leadership and keeping the country safe from terrorist attacks.
The Obama campaign makes some good points about the Romney campaign, in that Romney has all but ignored veterans and the troops serving in the war against terror;
Obama campaign spokeswoman Clo Ewing predicted that the president’s standing among veterans would improve by November, flagging a Zogby poll released Monday that puts Obama up 14 points with a small sample of active-duty military and their family members.
Ewing also knocked the Republican’s omission of the Afghanistan troops “during the most important speech of his career” at last month’s Republican National Convention in Tampa and swung at Romney for proposing a voucher program for veterans benefits. “Mitt Romney hasn’t shown he will stand up for the military family and veterans community,” she said.
Yeah, well, the Obama Administration hasn’t “stood up” for veterans, either. Yeah, they’ve increased spending at the VA, but the other hand is increasing our Tricare costs, and we can’t forget that Obama wanted us all to buy health insurance to cover our service-connected disabilities early in his term. The only reason he didn’t follow through with it was because he needed to get re-elected. So what’s to stop him from doing in the next four years? Obama went through the motions of fighting the war against terror without really doing that which is necessary to win. Most veterans opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but somehow the Obama campaign thinks that helps them.
Basically, the Obama Administration is vulnerable on the issue of veterans and national defense, unfortunately for the Republicans, so is Romney which is obvious because he won’t summon the testicular fortitude to confront Obama on those issues. So, it’s a coin toss.
Category: 2012 election, Veterans Issues
There’s only a problem for obama if one narrowmindedly looks only at his record on veteran issues, national defense, the economy, foreign policy, Federal law enforcement, health care, and the debt, among other items. But when one looks at what really matters–how much money he raises and how many times he appears on The View and Letterman, well, he’s our guy!
This cannot be correct…those geniuses at DU this morning were clucking about how young vets and their families were now supporting Obama by the metric ass load.
This is no surprise since the Military tends to vote more Republican. In other news I heard over the radio that Romney is leading in middle class voters also. Here is one of the articles I found on it.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81584.html
There’s a reason the Democrats have actively tried to nullify military absenttee votes in the past folks-and that’s not going to change.
I don’t need a candidate to suck up to me personally in a speech to get my support. It’s their policies and ideas that I am looking for.
For someone to say or imply that I shouldn’t vote for someone because my particular demographic wasn’t mentioned in a particular speech is the most shallow and stupid reason I have ever heard in my life. But that’s pretty much par for the course from these idiots.
Even up among GWOT vets…despite Paul Dickoff and those turds at VoteVets.
I think sequestration is one of the biggest issues to face the military as well as so many veterans who moved on to become contractors. I personally blame Obama and the Tea Party equally (to include Paul Ryan), which makes this election so hard. I voted for Obama last time, but am pretty sure I’m going Romney this time, but on the other hand, I don’t want to reward the Tea Party for being so inflexible and counter-productive.
The sequestration issue, if it gets major airtime, will likely peel away more veterans and service member votes from Obama… unless, of course, Obama successfully notes that Ryan was on the “supercommittee,” which turned out oh so well. Ugh.
Help me out here, JAGC. I am truly interested in learning what Obama has accomplished that you would like to see more of. I am not picking an argument. I loathe Obama. I am truly curious.
I also friggen love the presumption in the lefty logic that military folks prefer Obama because (among others) that HE got Bin Laden-the presumption being that the entire military and intelligence services combined simply weren’t trying before Obama took office.
A-holes.
2-17 AirCav… I don’t think there is a fight to have. Obama has been a disappointment, and I fear for what he will do in a second term without having to concern himself with reelection. I’m am mostly certain that I am voting for Romney. My personal conflict comes from my disdain for the Tea Party, which I view as counterproductive and dangerous as liberals. The handling of sequestration and that debt ceiling fight was just bad all around… At the end of the day, I think Romney will manage things much better than his campaign ability.
Okay.
@10, Romney is what the TP folks call a “RINO”…despite how in line with their views he tries to make himself seem during the election, he is a pro-life moderate at best.
I’ll vote for him over the other guy, even if it’s only because I think 4 years of Romney will do far less damage than another 4 of Obama.
Vets for Obama is synonymous with Chickens for Col Sanders.
(did I read that here earlier?)
JAGC, great points. I’m not a Tea Party fan, but wonder what Obama would do with four years and no election to contend with. Suspect I’ll be holding my nose tighter than usual when I vote this year.
Talking with my Soldiers, they tend to think Obama will be reelected. I asked why, and almost to a man it’s because ‘the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t’. I thought it was interesting that it doesn’t have so much to do with political leanings.
JAG…really? You loathe the Tea Party? Why? They are free market thinkers, support the Constitution as the law of the Land, and want fiscal change. Is the debt ceiling issue the sole example of inflexible?
Also, why Obama in 2008? I really don’t get it. Because he had zero experience in any kind of job other than Academia, and his senatorial term was a sham. It’s my personal opinion that the shallowness of the voters for Obama was because they wanted to be able to say they voted for a black President, and not because he was in any way ready for the office of running this Country.
When I hear people say things about Romney being a liar, cheat and worse for the COuntry than Obama, I cringe. They have no filter…so what was it that made You vote for him?
ScubaSteve…
That meme sounds like the media directive. Tell your troops to get on the Blaze.com and read about what Romney does as a man, not a politician…there were several people shown at the RNC…but Glenn Beck had more people he interviewed. And this is not because Romney has my vote. It’s because I want to point out the outright hypocrisy of the words that the devil you “know”…What do they know about Obama? What can they look up about Romney? Nearly anything. He has nothing to hide and Obama is still hiding.
Whatever your inclination may be, Bo was at the UN this morning making a speech, and still harping on THAT VIDEO as the cause of unrest in the Middle East.
Now, in reality, this means that he’s either completely out of touch with the news, or he’s so badly informed and cocooned that he won’t change his tune until someone smacks him upside his empty head. In his speech this morning, he said hate speech can be reduced with more speech. Does this mean that when someone comes up to you with a baseball bat or a big stick or a gun, screaming hatred at you, you let him whack you while you try to soothe his wounded feelings? This is so completely off the wall, it’s damned scarey. It reeks of incompetence and being completely out of touch. This is NOT a time to choose ‘better the devil you know’.
Even CNN, which has published parts of AMB. Stevens’ journal is slowly moving to the real-world end of the news in the Middle East, and questioning what the WH is doing and saying. Slowly, yes, but slow is better than nothing.
It’s too bad that the democrats don’t have the sterling record that republicans do when it comes to veteran’s issues:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/09/23/senate-gop-obstructionists-throw-veterans-under-the-bus-vote-down-bill-to-help-vets-in-need-of-jobs/
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/ad-lib/2012/sep/23/republicans-turn-their-backs-veterans-vote-down-jo/
http://woundedtimes.blogspot.com/2012/08/paul-ryan-pick-is-against-veterans.html
@18 The writers intro to article from the first link.
Rick Ungar, Contributor
Writing from the left on politics and policy.
From the second link you posted
Who We Are
This is the Communities at WashingtonTimes.com. Individual contributors are responsible for their content, which is not edited by The Washington Times. The opinions of Communities writers do not necessarily reflect nor are they endorsed by the Washington Times.
From the third link you posted
Jon Soltz
Iraq War Veteran
Chairman, VoteVets.org
@JonSoltz
Not exactly a stirling examples of non-partisanship. You would be better off using a comment from the comments section in Yahoo news.
@15… In 2008, I wasn’t enamored with either candidate (though respect McCain as a person). I certainly held my nose on that one… I don’t recall what pushed me over to vote that way… maybe it was Palin… but meh. I think at the time I did want to be inspired, and while I saw the empty suit coming, I pushed the button anyway, so that’s on me.
As for the Tea Party, I personally view their elected officials as extreme. I don’t like extreme on either end of the spectrum. There needs to be some discourse and open-mindedness, which is why I’m also turned off by pledges. It makes elected officials too rigid, and when it’s already polarized with extreme lefties, we get nothing. I do think Romney may be much better at leading.
The debt ceiling issue probably is my best example of the Tea Party. But I don’t minimize the result of what the rigidness and lack of leadership on both sides created. We’re talking about a detrimental effect on the military and veterans who got contracting jobs.
Also, I am not defending Obama in any way, nor am I attacking Romney, who I likely will vote for.
Every time somebody tries to tell me that Romney doesn’t care about the troops because he didn’t suck up to us in his speech, I remind them that the Democrat convention paid plenty of homage to the military-the Soviet Navy and the Turkish Air Force.
The fact that no one in that convention hall noticed the photos were of the wrong military shows me the whole bit was simply about pandering to a different group of perceived victims.
I know Obama is not who should be running the nation, it only leaves me one choice and it’s an okay choice….I understand where JAG wants to be inspired. It would be nice to have an option to vote for someone who is challenging to do the hard things over the next 8 years, “not because they are easy but precisely because they are hard”…someone who says
“even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. “
Well… The GOP is certainly running from Veterans. They just fillibustered a Veterans jobs bill that had 58 votes.
Small correction to your articl. The state of the race is NOT a “coin toss”. President Obama is winning. He’s winning in the swing states, he’s winning in National Polls, he is already farther ahead right now then he was against McCaine in 2008. Romney can win, but he has to start campaigning better than President Obama or there has to be some kind of economic calamity. Other than that he’s done.
It also looks like Democrats are keeping the Senate and have a real chance of taking back the house, making the “wave” election of 2010 more of a fluke election.
Seems to me about this time in 1979, Carter was whooping Reagan.
Pretty similar situation too. Shitty economy. High gas prices. Craptastic overseas/mid east relations.
Insipid…Obama is winning in polls that use a Dem +13% weighting.
Pretty sure that’s not reality.
When Reagan first ran, he was portrayed as a third-rate actor and a Nazi. All hell would be visited upon the nation and the world if were elected, we were told. He was lost w/o a teleprompter, we were told. Well, aside from some knucklehead air traffic controllers who didn’t heed his warning to get back on the job or be fired, everyone prospered and the world got safer on his watch. Romney is no Reagan but I am reminded of the latter when I hear the silly attacks on Romney.
Actually Reagan was consistently ahead all through the summer of 1980. Carter did gain some ground but never gained a lead in the polling aggregate (there was one gallup poll-an outlier- that had Reagan ahead, but that’s it):
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/debunking-a-myth-reagan-was-leading-carter-long-before-that-final-october-debate/trialheats1980/
Furthermore Reagan, unlike Romney, had the benefit of having a third-party candidate who was taking a significant portion of votes mostly from the incumbent.
Your also forgetting that, long before the final debate, a significant and large percentage of people will have already debated. If Romney is going to catch up, he pretty much must do it in the first debate. Judging by Romney’s prior performance- especially under pressure- he’s far more likely to make it worse than better.
While he wasn’t a nazi- nor do i remember anyone portraying him as such. He was a lousy president who gave us a temporarily good economy by trippling the debt. He decimated the middle class, our manufacturing base, turned us from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation and generally has fucked up the last thirty years.
The 50 years before that- led by demand side economics- were far better in almost every respect that the last thirty, dominated by Reagan’s idiotic supply-side economics.
@26
You’re absolutely right. Romney is no Reagan. At least not from anything I’ve seen.
But he’s a damn sight better than the other guy.
When Obama won, I wasn’t surprised, though I was disappointed. Then the stimulus package crap started to be noised about. I told my friends and coworkers “Well maybe this won’t be SO bad…if he puts that stimulus money into the infrastructure, that might be ok.”
Instead we got Solyndra. Nuff said on that one.
We got windmill companies in Texas being awarded contracts. Great, yah? No, not so much. These windmills are made from parts out of…you guessed it. China. We got tunnels for turtles. We got a whole shitpot full of shovel-ready jobs that weren’t shovel-ready.
#27–I think that graph makes my point, to some extent. Without insight into the weighting, I would hazard a guess that that graph reflects fairly closely the reality of where we are today, if current prevailing poll weighting was normalized. Dem+13% skews heavily.
#28–You and I have a COMPLETLEY different memory of the Reagan years and the years before. I VIVIDLY remember the things said about Reagan. Many by my family members. I VIVIDLY remember how much better things were then, too. Besides, if he “… gave us a temporarily good economy by trippling the debt” how come it isn’t working for the current prez?
Besides, I thought it was BUSH’s fault for everything…?
Oh, crap, VI, and here I thought it was all Nixon’s fault.
20, 22…
I want to be inspired as well. And Jag, Appreciate your owning that you made a mistake in your vote. So many people won’t do it, it’s frustrating.
As a Tea Party person, I don’t know if I think “extreme” when it comes to who has been elected since 2010, but, then again, there is that rock and hard place thing. If they stay on the hard line, there is room for “room”, if you get my drift. The problems we have are because people don’t stay on the tough side, IMO. We’d have been better off not to do what Bush, Obama did by those (non) stimulus bills, of that I am sure.
It’s all a crap shoot and I don’t want the COuntry sinking further.
National Rasmussen Tracking 9/22-9/24 47% 46%
National Gallup Tracking 9/18-9/24 48% 45%
Colorado PPP 9/20-9/23 51% 45%
Nevada ARG 9/20-9/23 51% 44%
Iowa ARG 9/20-9/23 51% 44%
Wisconsin WeAskAmerica 9/20-9/23 53% 41%
Florida PPP 9/20-9/23 50% 46%
Florida Washington Post 9/19-9/23 51% 47%
Ohio Washington Post 9/19-9/23 52% 44%
New Jersey Monmouth University 9/19-9/23 52% 37%
Ohio Gravis Marketing 9/21-9/22 45% 44%
Florida ARG 9/20-9/22 50% 45%
Michigan Rasmussen Reports 9/20-9/20 54% 42%
Nevada Retail Nevada/POS 9/19-9/20 46% 46%
Nevada PPP 9/18-9/20 52% 43%
As of 09-25-12
The reason why it’s dem’s +13 is because that’s the number in which registered dems outnumber register democrats. It’s no different then if we had wites +90 in a vermont poll. It’s not out of racism or unfairness, there’s just not as many blacks.
By the way, you reacted all wrong when i insulted Reagan, you’re not supposed to be all reasonable you’re supposed to go ape-dump so that I could have a good laugh. You’re taking all the fun out of poking you with a stick!
I meant outnumber registered Republicans in the first sentence.
The only polls that count are those entering and exiting polling places.
Uh, Sippy . . . given it’s recent track record, are you really arguing in favor of giving the VA another $1 billion to do little more than support temporary, make-work/manual labor jobs? Do you really want to make that argument?
Now, regarding the 1980 election: that bastion of conservative thought called the Washington Post would seem to disagree with you. They say
“The bottom line is that there was no evident momentum for either candidate as the 1980 presidential election neared its completion. That is until Reagan’s breakthrough debate performance.”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2008/10/reagans_comeback.html
The raw data in this study (see table 1) also appears to show more than one national poll released during the last 2 weeks of the campaign having Carter ahead – though all were released on or before 30 October 1980. I counted 5; you’re welcome to double-check my count if you like.
http://www.amstat.org/sections/SRMS/proceedings/papers/1981_011.pdf
Research, Sippy. Doing some actual research vice merely skimming the headlines is a good thing.
@23- Maybe because it violates the Congressional Budget Act by increasing mandatory spending $700 million over the Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s 302(a) allocation. Or maybe because the federal government already has six job-training programs for veterans and there is no way to know how well they are working.
This is nothing more than partisan politics. The Dems through that out there so they could point and say “the republicans hate veterans”.
Nik: as I recall, in 1980 people were still deriding Reagan as being “that actor” and a “lightweight”, too. And in 2008, many people were referring to Obama in glowing terms and buying into that “hope and change” mantra.
So I’d be wary of judgement based on the “common wisdom” or “reputation” at this point. History shows it to be only a fair predictor of performance in office – if that.
At least the Romney camp isn’t threatening pollsters when the poll doesn’t go their way.
Sippy, Sippy, Sippy . . . .
According to that other well-known vocal bastion of conservative thought, the Huffington Post, in May the gap in voter identification was 5% – not 13%.
http://pollster.com/USPartyID-RLr.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/23/party-id-rl_n_725932.html
And the Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP poll ending in mid-June cited there appears to show a 3% differential vice 13%.
Of course, this poll was among registered and likely voters only. You know – those who actually vote.
@39
I remember my peers calling him Ronnie Ray-Gun. That moniker made a come-back when he started talking about Star Wars/SDI.
Okay here is my 2 cents and you can take it or leave it. You can tell how Obama has fared as a overall brand by watching what is going on in my home state of Missouri. We have Claire McCaskill who has tied herself very closely with him since before he was elected. She has stuck with him in almost every single instance. She put a considerable amount of money out on the table getting the opponent that she wanted on the November ballot. Todd Akin did her a favor and said the most stupid thing a candidate has probably ever said in a senate race and stayed on the ballot, if you look at the numbers she is barely leading in the most favorable polls to her. Now speaking as a brand and the Democrat name and Barack Obama what does that say about the candidate? In Missouri we have a sitting Senator who is viewed as more or less as in close with the president and she is actively distancing herself from the president, has a handpicked opponent who she should be trouncing, and is she barely winning.
Now taking that to a national level, there are tons of indicators that the Obama Campaign isn’t doing as well as it should be. First of all he isn’t going on the offensive. He is completely playing it safe with his little interviews on the View and Letterman, but this is working against him because in the eyes of many veterans…well myself I should say…he is being derelict. On the morning of September 12th he sounded like someone on the ropes, and what did he do after that? Letterman…what a joke of a leader. He has never actually done a hard interview where someone has pressed him for answers. He never takes risks, right now he looks like an empty suit which is what I have called him from day one. If the election were a football game he is trying to run out the clock right now.
Any veteran thinking about supporting the current President should read this post first:
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=31983
No matter what the polls say right now, everything indicates that this election will be marked by the same tight margins as those with Kennedy/Nixon and Gore/Bush, right up to the end-of-day closings at the polls.
This will also be one of those elections marked by seriously dirty tricks and nastiness all around, right up to the end. The only election prior to this one that will possibly be of equal nastiness is the 1884 compeititon between Cleveland and Blaine, and Cleveland won.
I’ll go out on a limb. I think Romney by an 8-point margin in popular vote and over 45 votes in the Electoral College.
Veterans issues should be talked about during this campaign. We should do more for our troops in general. This video says it all and should get way more attention, why doesn’t it get more play?
http://youtu.be/yrFixw7gSgA
sippy–uh, actually, no. Historically, voter turnout has been maybe +3 to +5 Dem, usually broken down as 37 Dem/33 Repub/30 Independent. What the MSM polls are doing is oversampling Dems like 40/29/31, or the worst case I saw was 50/45/5, which also gives a heavily skewed result towards Obama.
But one major thing to note is NEW registrations. In 2008, new Dem registrations were well above average, and new GOP registrations were quite low. The reverse is the case today. Turnout in primaries so far has shown that if one extrapolates results based on turnout, the GOP candidates are going to bury a lot of Dem candidates this year as well.
Also consider that Dem turnout in 2008 was FAR above historic norms, and that the MSM polls are using that basis in 2012, despite evidence that turnout is going to be much closer to those historic averages. If you do consider that fact, Romney is UP by an average of 5-7 points, or at least the results are skewed by that much.
#16 DefendUSA, I’ll check it out for sure. The conversation kind of bothered me. It’s like people have given up. Maybe that’s the idea…
My vote will be cast, and I’m going to finally listen to our CINC, and vote for change. Starting with him.
sippy? ZZZZZZZZZZ