Here’s a good excerpt from a Salon.com post by Jonathan Bernstein:

The truth is that Romney is constantly constrained by what conservatives want him to do and by what they believe. Furthermore, what they want is generally unpopular, and what they believe is far too often simply cut off from the reality that the rest of the nation lives in.
So Romney cannot have a coherent foreign policy because what his voters want to hear is that Barack Obama sympathizes with terrorists. Most Americans, meanwhile, think of Obama as the guy who took out bin Laden. Romney cannot have a sensible tax policy because conservatives insist that he promote large, self-funding tax cuts for the rich. Most of the nation, however, supports raising taxes on the rich, and reality insists that cutting taxes also reduces revenues. Also, Romney didn’t invent the 47 percent nonsense; whether he truly believes it or not, he was simply parroting back what his voters have been hearing for years from Rush Limbaugh and others like him…
Sure, we’ve had some campaign goofs that appear to be about Romney and not the GOP. But for the most part, what’s been happening hasn’t been a series of gaffes; it’s been the very predictable consequence of the triumph of Tea Party conservatives in the Republican Party.

Read the rest of it right here.

Commenting on Thomas Edsall’s New York Times post, “What’s Wrong With Pennsylvania?,” TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore notes at Washington Monthly that,

A New York Times post by Tom Edsall late last night makes an essential point about swing voter categories, and particularly the non-college educated “white working-class vote” that is supposedly the target of both parties this year: it varies significantly by region. National numbers for this demographic are distorted by the disproportionate GOP direction of southern white voters. Elsewhere, Democrats are not doing as poorly as the stereotypes suggest…

Kilgore quotes from Edsall’s post, adding:

Among southern working class whites, Romney leads by 40 points, 62-22, an extraordinary gap…The story in the rest of the country is different. In the West, where Colorado and Nevada are battleground states, Romney leads by a modest 5 points, 46-41. In the Northeast, which Obama is expected to sweep, except perhaps for New Hampshire, Romney holds a 4-point advantage among working class whites, 42-38. In the Midwest, where Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin are in play, Obama actually leads among working class whites by 8 points (44-36).

The following article, by U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL9), is cross-posted from, HuffPo:
Over the last few days, I’ve gotten a real life view of what a Romney-Ryan world would actually look like — and it’s not a pretty picture.
On Tuesday night, I went to a fundraiser for a local community leader whose kidneys have failed. He lost his good job and now he could lose his life because he can’t afford to continue his insurance. Oh, and he may lose his house, as well.
Even as I wrote my check at the crowded bar, I was shaking my head in sadness that in 2012 in the United States of America, Dave has to rely on the financial ability and generosity of his friends in order to get the life-saving care he needs. I thought about the donation cans one sees at convenience stores that carry the sad story of a child with cancer and encourage shoppers to drop in their change. And I realized that this is Romney-Ryan World.
Last Saturday, a glorious fall-like day in Chicago, I went to a suburban Farmer’s Market to meet voters and buy tomatoes. I met a woman named Darryl whose first words to me were, “I’m in a bad mood.” Why? Because, despite endless applications and many interviews, despite a burning desire to work, Darryl has been unemployed for four years. Her home is in foreclosure, her furnace is broken and, though she has nine more months to keep her home, she said she will move to her car when it gets cold if the furnace isn’t fixed. This once solidly middle-class woman spent her 401(k), never imagining she wouldn’t find another job. She has no family; there aren’t going to be any fundraisers for her. She looked at me with frustration and some amazement at her circumstances and said, “I just can’t take more rejection.” But what really animated her was her fury at “politicians who look at me as someone who doesn’t want to work!” This was before the Romney video, but she anticipated his words. Welcome to Romney-Ryan World.
Friends helping friends is a good thing. But it is no substitute for public institutions that keep people, in this richest country in the world, from dying from treatable illnesses or living in their cars.
Of course, my office is determined to find them the help they need, but in Romney-Ryan World that obviously makes me an enabler of “freeloaders” like Darryl and Dave. And if Dave had simply waited until 2014 to get sick, ObamaCare would have been in place so he (and everyone else) could afford needed health services. Unless, of course, the Republicans are successful in repealing ObamaCare, which Romney promised to do on his first day.
By now most everyone has heard Mitt Romney at a $50,000 per plate fundraiser (about the amount an average American household makes in a year), answering a rich man’s question: “How are you going… to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself.”
Mitt was ready with the answer, part of which is worth repeating. “There are 47 percent of the people… who are dependent on government, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it… These are people who pay no income tax. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Shame on all those “moochers” — minimum wage workers, children, old people, unemployed — who get an average food stamp benefit of $4.50 per day. All those homeless Veterans should get off their lazy, and maybe injured, butts, get a lucrative job and pay some income taxes. Mitt Romney wants those greedy students who need a Pell Grant to complete their education to “shop around” for an affordable school or break down and “ask your parents for a loan.” Or maybe they should do what he did — sell some stock. Great advice, Mitt.
Lucky Dave. Now that he’s so sick, he won’t have to pay income taxes. Darryl is one of the 47 percent. She took early Social Security and on top of her $16 in food stamps, she gets $1,600 every month — a benefit she earned but one that doesn’t cover her bills. She and all the others have also earned Mitt Romney’s contempt. He said, “My job is not to worry about those people.” Romney-Ryan World is a comfortable place for him.
Let’s be clear. You don’t have to be poor to earn Romney’s disdain. The 47 percent includes millions of middle class Americans who benefit from public programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid to pay for nursing home care, Pell grants and student loans, Veteran’s health care, the GI bill, and unemployment compensation — successful programs that make our country better and stronger.
There are other Americans who paid no income taxes that Mitt Romney failed to mention, maybe because some of them were in the room with him, and maybe because he is likely one of them. According to the Tax Policy Center, there were 7,000 individuals with income of one million dollar or more in 2011 who paid $5 or less in taxes. In Romney-Ryan World, these are not “entitled” people; they are the smart ones who most definitely “care for their lives.”
I simply refuse to believe that Mitt Romney’s cold, selfish, self-satisfied vision represents the views of most Americans, and not simply because so many of our brother and sisters, friends and neighbors today are looking to government for just a little help.
Lt. Colonel Tammy Duckworth, a true American hero now running for Congress in Illinois, told me a story that exemplifies the best of American values.
Tammy was piloting a helicopter when it was shot down in Iraq. A young, injured gunner in the unit she was commanding, rather than running to the evacuation helicopter, further risked his life by guarding the perimeter in the ongoing firefight until Tammy was evacuated. She later asked him why he didn’t run. He said simply, “Because we don’t leave anyone behind.” Tammy, who lost both her legs that day, adds, “That’s the America I love.”
And that’s the America I believe most of us love — the one that doesn’t leave the frail senior, the veteran suffering from traumatic brain injury, the child who goes to sleep hungry, the aspiring student, the single mom with cancer — behind. We don’t leave them behind, because it would just be wrong. It’s not what we do on the battlefield or in our neighborhoods.
I am repulsed by Mitt Romney’s words, but they inspire me to work even harder to make sure that after November 6, no one in this great nation is forced to live in Romney-Ryan World.

From an e-blast by Stan Greenberg, entitled “A Real Turning Point: Voter Contempt For The GOP Is Driving Democrats Upward”:

Having looked at a lot of polling data over the past few days, it is now clear to me that this election has reached a real turning point. The telltale factor many analysts haven’t noticed is that the Republican Party has lost five points in voter identification over the past month. Contempt for the Republicans is pushing Democrats into the lead at almost every level, not only in the presidential race but across Senate races too — and let’s watch the House races now. The voters have watched the primaries and the conventions, and Romney’s “47 percent” remark is going to seal it.
I don’t think they’re waiting for the presidential debates…

Greenberg explains more in his video right here

In his National Journal column, “Heartland Monitor Poll: Obama Leads 50 Percent to 43 Percent,” Ronald Brownstein reports on the new Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll, and sees President Obama holding a “tangible advantage” over Romney. In addition to his overall edge in the poll, Brownstein adds”

Race remains a jagged dividing line in attitudes about Obama’s performance. Just 40 percent of white likely voters give him positive job-approval marks, unchanged since May. But fully 77 percent of nonwhites say they approve of Obama’s work, up sharply from 64 percent in May.
The same stark racial divide runs through preferences in the November election. For Obama, the formula for success in 2012 can be reduced to a single equation: 80-40. If he can hold the combined 80 percent he won among all minorities in 2008, and they represent at least the 26 percent of ballots they cast last time, then he can assemble a national majority with support from merely about 40 percent of whites.
On both fronts, the survey shows the president almost exactly hitting that mark. He leads Romney among all nonwhite voters by 78 percent to 18 percent, drawing over nine in 10 African-Americans and slightly more than the two-thirds of Hispanics he carried last time.
Among whites, Obama wins 41 percent compared to Romney’s 51 percent. Obama’s showing is down slightly from the 43 percent among whites he attracted in 2008 but still enough for the president to prevail in both sides’ calculations. With more whites than non-whites either undecided or saying they intend to support another candidate, Romney is not nearly approaching the roughly three-in-five support among them he’ll likely need to win.

In terms of the white working-class demographic, Brownstein notes,

In the new survey, Romney leads Obama among non-college whites by 54 percent to 37 percent, almost exactly the same margin as McCain’s 18-percentage-point advantage over the president with those voters in 2008 (when they backed the Republican by 58 percent to 40 percent). The new poll shows Obama winning only 39 percent of non-college white men and 35 percent of non-college white women; but to overcome Obama’s other strengths, Romney will need to generate even larger margins with those voters. In fact, Obama’s performance with those working-class whites has slightly improved since the May survey.

Brownstein adds that Romney still leads with seniors, holding close to 60 percent of them — about the same as McCain’s tally, and Obama is nearly matching his ’08 support among college-educated white and “millennial generation” (ages 18-29) LVs. Brownstein concludes, “Taken together, all of these small movements toward Obama have produced, at least for now, a tangible advantage for the president over Romney as the race hurtles toward its final weeks.” Not a bad position for the President less than 7 weeks from E-Day.

The following article, by democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
I am the first person to say Democrats should be taking nothing for granted in the presidential election. Things remain relatively close; the economy continues to weigh the president down to an extent; outside Republican groups have more money than God; the terrible campaign of Republican voter suppression will take its toll; surprising new developments and/or the debates could change the dynamics before we are done. Democrats are going to have to stay focused and on message, and our field ops are going to have to do a great job of turning out the vote. But we are incredibly blessed with one of the worst Republican presidential candidates and campaigns in modern history, and this election is getting tougher and tougher for us to lose. If this videotape turns what was looking like a fairly steady 3-4 point race into a rock hard 6 point or more lead, it could have bigger implications: a wave election. Because this is a nationalized election, and because we are winning the core debates of this race.
If you are like me and checking the new polling numbers every day in races around the country, you no doubt have noticed that in the last couple of weeks, most Democratic candidates have had a significant upswing in their polling. The trendlines in most of the competitive Senate races and a wide variety of House races are moving toward the Democrats. The numbers in most of the presidential swing states are moving in Obama’s direction. Elizabeth Warren is up after being down a little against Scott Brown. Tammy Baldwin is up after being behind Tommy Thompson for most of the race. Tim Kaine has opened up after being a dead heat the entire race until now. Sherrod Brown’s modest lead has gotten bigger. Bill Nelson has moved substantially ahead. Only in Conn., where WWE co-founder Linda McMahon is spending unbelievable amounts of cash and has thus cut the margin in her race against progressive leader Chris Murphy, and in Missouri, where Todd Akin is sadly back within range after being down 10 at the height of the “legitimate rape” story, has the Democratic trend not materialized in big Senate races.
The reason things are looking this good can’t be explained by the convention bounce, because the convention ended two weeks ago. Prior to the Romney videotape, Obama’s lead had faded 2-3 points from the post-convention high. And Romney’s mishaps over the last several days wouldn’t explain solid number shifts in races down the ballot. The reason Democrats are trending up nationwide is that we are winning the fundamental debate both in philosophy and in values.
The Republican argument is that our economic pain comes from three sources: Obama, his big government philosophy, and deficits. We would be in a lot better shape, they say, if we just let business be completely free to do what business does best- if we just lower their taxes and unburden them from regulation and let the free market have its way, the American economy will come roaring back. And sure, we want to help people in economic distress, too, but not by giving them government assistance that makes them more dependent, but by encouraging the private sector give them jobs.
The Democratic argument is that we are all in this together, that we all built the middle class together by investing in it and that we need to go back to that philosophy to rebuild this economy. They say that it was the Republican philosophy of letting big business have its way and failing to invest that got us into this mess in the first place, and if we go back to that bad idea, things will get worse. They argue that most Americans work hard and play by the rules, and deserve to have a fair shot, a level playing field, and the chance at a decent life for them and their families.
The Democratic argument is winning. It is winning both because it makes more logical sense, but because it resonates with American values of a community and family where we help each other make it. It is winning because most Americans remember both the Bush years and the Clinton years, and they know the latter were a whole lot better. And it is winning because people know that the wealthy and big business already gets huge advantages over everyone else, they know that the deck is stacked against regular people, and they don’t want a government that goes even more in that direction.
At the end of the day, this whole Ayn Rand idea of rewarding the strong since they do such great things for society, and doing nothing for anyone else because we don’t want them to become “dependent”, is not very appealing to a majority of the American people. Americans by and large know that selfishness is not a virtue, and that we should help take care of the elderly, those who are ill or have disabilities, and children who need food, medicine, and decent schools.
Since we Democrats are winning the argument, and since Romney and Ryan have given us such a great opportunity to have an open debate our values and philosophy, let’s drive our advantage home. We shouldn’t let up in making our case. We should reinforce the narrative and help lift the entire party up.
Anything can still happen and we should take nothing for granted, but there is a real chance if we keep pressing our advantage of making this a wave election. In that kind of election, in spite of the money arrayed against us, we can not only win the presidency and most of these big Senate elections, but there is a real chance at retaking the House. As I am looking at both the individual race dynamics and the way this election has been nationalized, it is clearer and clearer that we are far closer to winning the House than conventional wisdom believes. At this point the only thing holding up the Republicans is the unbelievable amount of money the wealthy special interests like the ones hanging out with Romney at that Wall Street fat cat’s house on the video.
We have a narrative, a philosophy, and a set of values that are winning this election debate. Let’s stay on message and drive this home to a big victory.

In his Washington Monthly post, ‘”Makers:” The Tiny Band of Heroes,’ TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore explores some of the smug, twisted psychology behind Romney’s ‘47%’ rant, and paints a grim picture of what life under his leadership would be like. Kilgore quotes NYT columnist Paul Krugman’s insight that Republicans have all but embraced the John Galt thing as some sort of lodestar. Kilgore adds,

…If you don’t fall into the charmed circle of “job creators;” if you don’t own your own business, or have enough wealth to make significant capital investments; then your job, it appears, is to bear down, shut up, and do what you can to make life easier for your bosses. Abandon that union; stop asking for pay increases; gracefully accept that shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, or from any pension to none; pay your taxes and stop worrying about the tax rates paid by your superiors–you’re lucky they pay them at all, given the fact you already owe them your daily bread, everything you own, and your very life.
…So whatever else it represents, the Boca Moment provides a glimpse into the unsavory world view of people who look at their own employees, not to mention other folks with few capital assets, with what can only be described as contempt–as cannon fodder for the great competitive struggle in which they, the “job creators,” are the only fully human figures.

When you think about it, one would have to go back to the 19th century to find an equally-arrogant viewpoint at the helm of a major American political party. You can read the rest of Kilgore’s post here.

Ed Kilgore’s post, “Class Warfare on Taxes Not Real Smart for Romney” at The Washington Monthly makes a point the GOP nominee’s wingnut amen corner has overlooked:

I understand that when Mitt Romney made his now-infamous comments about “the 47%” in Boca Raton months ago, he was not anticipating it all going public and becoming a major campaign issue. But since some (if not all) conservatives, including the Big Blowhard from just up the road in Palm Beach, are encouraging Mitt to “go with it,” it’s worth noting that there’s little or no evidence a class war on tax burdens would go real well for the GOP.

Kilgore quotes from Greg Sargent’s ‘Plum Line’ post noting that the public does not feel low-income people are under-taxed, nor that the wealthy pay too much. Kilgore adds that “Mitt Romney is the one presidential candidate in recent history who needs to stay far, far away from issues about the morality of various folks’ tax burdens.”
In the comments following Kilgore’s post, a commenter with the handle “c u n d gulag” piles on with a worthy addendum: “Every, and I mean EVERY, Democrat needs to say, “Mr. Romney, before you talk about the 47%ers, prove you ain’t one of ’em! SHOW US YOUR TAX RETURNS!!!.”

The following article, by democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
All through the Republican convention, all we heard from media pundits was how Romney needed to humanize himself, and clearly that was a major goal for their convention. They tried to do it a whole bunch of different ways: Ann Romney’s speech, stories from people who had known Romney over the years talking about what a great guy he was, warm and fuzzy videos, and Romney’s own speech, where he talked about his family and early days in business. None of it really worked very well; Romney still came off as stiff and robotic. Even walking down the aisle of the convention center, shaking hands with his most loyal supporters, he never looked comfortable.
Now, though, with the video that Mother Jones just broke, from the Romney meeting with his most elite, millionaire megadonors and fundraisers, we have finally seen the real Mitt Romney. Sounding relaxed, confident, and even impassioned at times, Romney showed what his true values and beliefs were and revealed the private man behind the public candidate.
Now we know why he looks so stiff in his public appearances: He really doesn’t want regular voters to see who he really is.
For 32 years now, I have been working on campaigns or with political leaders as a staffer, consultant, or informal adviser, and one of my most fundamental rules for successful campaigns is that a candidate needs to be who he or she is and not try to be something they aren’t, because voters will see through the phoniness most of the time. Most of the time, with decent people, whatever kind of people they are are can be turned into an asset on the campaign trail. Insider, outsider, wonky, funny, folksy, intense — voters look for different things in different candidates, and a lot of different ways of being can work. But the problem for Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan is that the values they hold, the kind of people they really are, is not something that is very appealing.
Romney and Ryan really do believe the things Romney said in the video. They really do think that the people not supporting them are lazy no-accounts who are dependent on government and who believe they are victims. And they really do think it is their job to not worry about those people, even if they believe about half of all Americans are such people.
And here’s the most interesting thing of all. Historically, most candidates who would get caught saying something even remotely as offensive as that would be apologizing and backtracking as quickly as they possibly could. “I was tired,” they might say; “It was out of context”; “I sincerely apologize for the misstatement.” But not Mitt: He is standing by what he said, allowing only that it was “inelegantly” phrased. As embarrassing as this statement is, he can’t back away, because this is what the Republican base completely believes, and he can’t afford to offend them.
This is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, whom Paul Ryan has acknowledged as the person who inspired his political beliefs, but clearly Romney believes in her philosophy, as well. It’s the philosophy that anyone not wealthy and successful, anyone who ever needs a hand up from the rest of us at any point in his or her life, is a leech on society and a moocher who steals from the virtuous. This includes anyone who gets any form of help from the government (except of course businesspeople, even though they use roads and bridges and airports and educated workers and tax subsidies), such as Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or Pell Grants, or student loans, or disability payments, or Head Start, or veterans’ benefits. It even includes, as Romney alluded to in his remarks to the millionaire supporters, unemployed people, and part-time workers, and students, and retirees too poor to pay income taxes (even if they do pay sales and property taxes and all kinds of fees).
They also believe, like Rand, that anyone who opposes these ideas, even if they are successful themselves, are “looters,” enablers of these parasites of society who don’t take responsibility for their lives. That’s why Romney believes that anyone supporting Obama is a bad person, someone who believes in dependency.
The Romney-Ryan-Rand philosophy is to have government serve the financially successful and take money away from the “moochers.” This is the real them, and they aren’t going to apologize for it. While I’m sure the Romney campaign is very unhappy that this video came out, because its brutal honesty about Romney’s values is so stark and off-message, they can’t back away, because it is what the modern Republican Party believes to its core.
These are not the values I was taught in Sunday school, and not the values that made this country great. The people who founded this nation, and those who built and held it together through all the trials and tribulations that came along in the 236 years to follow, knew that, as Ben Franklin said, we’d better all hang together or we’ll all hang separately. They knew, as Jefferson did, that we had to build schools and roads and bridges in order to build the country. They knew, as Lincoln did, that creating land-grant universities and giving poor people free land through the Homestead Act would add to America’s greatness. They knew, as Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt did, that sometimes the wealthy and powerful abused their power and needed to be reined in, and that sometimes the old and the poor needed to be given aid. And they knew, as Martin Luther King, Jr. did, that our fates are “inextricably linked in a garment of destiny.”
You know who else knew that the values Mitt Romney expressed in that video were wrong? That guy I learned about in Sunday school, the guy Romney and Ryan claim to be followers of. In the one time he actually talked about how people would be judged, Jesus of Nazareth said that when the nations — including ours, presumably — are assembled before him in the last judgment, he will decide their fate based on one thing: how they treated the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the prisoner, “the least of these.” If Mitt Romney’s and Paul Ryan’s values and policies are the ones we choose, I’m guessing this nation won’t fare so well in such a judgment.