Howard
Politics and Phillies baseball are competing obsessions of mine. In Philly, a solidly blue town, the big debate is whether to write off the Phils’ playoff chances or not. I say NOT, but last night I was nevertheless raptly watching MSNBC’s ongoing “47% video” pundit fest, occasionally flipping to the Phils-Mets game for quickie peek-in updates.
So it looked mighty grim when a flipover landed me in the very last ditch between hope and the abyss of an early off-season: the Phils were down 2-1 with two outs in the ninth, facing a hard-throwing lefty reliever, long the Phils' late-innings nemesis, who was poised to register the last out and finish off the Phightin’ Phils. For the game and the season.
But the batter at that moment happened to be the ultimate samurai-warrior Chase Utley, so for the first time all night I stayed with his at-bat all the way. Every pitch to Utley was the potential last pitch of a taut game in which the Phillies had but two hits over 8 2/3 innings. Rookie Josh Edgin had struck out the first two batters to come up before Utley. Chase fought through a ten-pitch battle with Edgin to draw the walk. After ball four Utley stayed in the box as if it had been ball three, though it wasn't clear if the ump had lost count or Chase was trying to milk another bite at the apple. He was sent to first base.
So Howie comes up (teammates call Ryan Howard Howie). His results against lefty relievers had been a little less than encouraging: 0-for-2012. But I had read an article in yesterday's Inquirer that made the counter-intuitive case that Ryan was still the key to the Phillies' offense. So, instead of visualizing the inevitable lunging whiff at a curve ball a foot off the plate -- 38 pitiful-looking strikeouts in 80 AB's against all lefties don't lie -- I went with yogic breathing and both eyes open to the possibility of magic.
First pitch: strike one.
Second pitch: letter-high fastball, inside half, hands move, bat flashes, contact, take-off
Ala-ka-BOOM!
I whooped and roared, as did most of the Delaware Valley. It was just a regular season game, a game that is unlikely to change the Phils' 2012 fate, but it was a good dream come true. Howie’s homer's not going to eclipse one-legged Kirk Gibson's 1988 fairy-tale pinch-hit World Series drive that vaulted the Dodgers to a championship, nor should it. But it was the closest thing to it that Phils fans have seen since Matt Stairs played hero in the '08 LCS -- which by chance happened at the same venue as Gibson's blow against the A's impenetrable Eckersley.
When you consider the Phils are now 3-59 this year when they trailed going into the 9th, you can see why we might read something more meaningful into this than merely a one-day reprieve from pulling the plug. Such a long-shot happy ending couldn’t be just a random blip with no implications, could it? Surely fate, destiny, some cosmic will is tipping its hand in this improbable last-second escape from doom.
I mean, after all, they don't have to play the Astros again, so who's going to keep them from winning out?????
So then I went
back to the 47% video festival to watch the continuing evisceration. I learned from Lawrence O’Donnell that Mitt
even misled the Boca Raton heavy donors about his having received nothing from
his family on the way to financial mega-success. Turned out that Ann had told the world about
the stock stash George Romney had given his son and that had sustained them in
college years; dad also bought them a house for $47,000 that they later sold
for $90,000. They not only lived
rent-free, she said, they made a big profit to boot!
One still-open question for serious independent American voters is whether the Boca Raton Rombot is The Real Romney, the one who'd occupy the Oval Office, or whether that video only captures Rombot wearing the Tea-Party mask he believed he needed to wear for the occasion, to please those $50K-a-plate donors.
Undecided voters know he's a flip-flopper, so they figure he might not be as bad a POTUS as his words imply. Progressives, we already decided ones, know beyond any margin of uncertainty that a Romney/Ryan administration would double down on the direction that Bush/Cheney took the country on all fronts: tax cuts for wealthy folks, Wall St. deregulation, environmental laws gutted like a Wasilla trophy moose, and ruthless rollbacks of rights for workers, women, gays, immigrants.
But many of those who are still undecided have to some degree bought into the notion that Obama (as distinct from, say, the obstructionist Congressional GOP with its personhood bills, its 32 ACA repeal bills, and its record-setting number of Senate GOP filibusters) is at fault for the slowness of the economic recovery. They think maybe Romney is the business powerhouse who will take the reins and get the thing galloping. Of course other undecided voters include disappointed liberals, but that's a subject for another post.
But then again, now they could be turned off by Romney's contempt for 47% of their fellow Americans (many of them are among the 47%!).
So David Brooks' best defense of Romney (the instantly famous Thurston Howell Romney NYT op-ed) is that it's not The Real Romney in Boca; Mitt's just pandering. We could spend two posts dissecting Brooks's right-wing spin on "entitlements" and how dearly the country needs Romney/Ryan's "reform ideas", but to keep focus on the subject at hand, Brooks says he believes The Real Romney is "a kind, decent man". Presumably this impression relies on Mitt's obviously warm family ties and his love of shaggy dogs. Unfortunately, that impression does not comport with any of Romney's policy or even philosophical statements, and, according to a letter from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, when he picked Paul Ryan he embraced in Ryan's budget a blueprint for destroying the "'circle of protection' ... around essential programs that serve poor and vulnerable people." The bishops' letter says Ryan's plan does not meet their "moral criteria". I guess "kind" and "decent" can be in the eye of the beholder -- or in the empty belly of the child in poverty with nothing on his plate at dinner time because SNAP lost out to new fighter jets in the very thoughtful Ryan budget.
Another view on The Real Romney question came from John McCormick, a Bloomberg political writer. He tweeted (as reported on Chuck Todd's MSNBC hour) yesterday that the Boca Raton version of Romney is what Mitt looks like when he inhabits his "severely conservative" persona. Romney has no gut feel for that far-right world view and no intellectual grounding in it, says McCormick, so what comes across is a made-up "caricature" of a severe conservative.
Both men say it's not The Real Romney in the 47% candid video. McCormick's take resonates for me as a valid assessment of that clownish performance, at least in the sense that it does feel like a caricature drawn from the vaporous “We are the 53%!” narratives of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
However, the takeaway for independent/undecided voters should not be that The Real Romney is, underneath the mask, a substantially different or kinder or better man than that Boca Raton Rush Limbaugh caricature.
The takeaway should be drawn from the full record of the man: he is a man of no principle but ambition, no conviction but those adopted for the audience, and he does not relate to or care about the impact of his actions on the "little people", such as the thousands who lost their jobs when Bain-bought companies were looted and tossed into the trash heap.
The real Mitt Romney is a man who can rationalize collateral damage with a poise and self-satisfaction that Dick Cheney must envy. Can anyone doubt that his stomach for massive casualties would make George W. Bush look like a squeamish Sally? Bread lines? Tent cities? Not his job to worry about them -- losers and moochers can't expect to be rewarded for their failure, for Pete’s sake! Anyway, let’s not forget that their pain is someone else's gain, and we have programs in place for them.
It would be way too delicious if the next revelation was that Romney himself did not pay federal income taxes in past years, but we can not count on that. That question has to be kept in the foreground of the campaign, especially in light of the derision Romney directed at half the population that may or may not be the half that includes him.
Absent that ultimate self-inflicted KO punch, there is one other point on which I concur with the "GOP political strategist" types who have been appearing on my TV the last few days: the race is NOT OVER. The Obama edge has narrowed from the post-convention bump max-out. The debates are coming. Voter suppression efforts of all kinds will challenge us to get Democratic votes cast. A billion dollars is likely to be thrown at Democratic candidates.
On this point, Bob Reich has an op-ed in Reader Supported News today that cautions us to take seriously that Romney could win. He cites four factors that belie the currently Obama-leaning poll numbers: the two upcoming monthly jobs reports, the three debates, the quasi-infinite PAC dollars and the filthy-dirty wave of voter suppression efforts
The outcome of the jobs reports and the debates is outside of our sphere of influence, but progressive voters can and must make a difference in GOTV, Voter ID efforts, and campaign finances. The other side will be throwing everything into the fight, and we had better be prepared to do no less.
So as the night comes to a close, the Phils still have a slim and unlikely chance. Even that depends on outside help, no matter how many they can win. The prospects for Obama and the Democrats are far better, and the outcome matters a whole hell of a lot more.
I end with the point that an Obama win means much more with down-ballot Democratic wins in Congressional races. However, even with a Repubbleton House, an Obama win should force the GOP to reassess the political strategy of obstructionism. If voters stick the tail for the GOP’s failure to work for the good of the country not on the “donkey” but rather where it belongs -- on the GOP’s asses – the moderates may regain leverage in that party. I hope.
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