In Ohio, students who register to vote as Democrats are seeing their voter registrations routinely challenged by right wing groups for bogus reasons. This is intentional. When a voter registration is challenged, the county registrar sends out a card to that voter telling them that they must respond by a certain date in order to preserve the integrity of their voter registration. That card gets buried in the pile of election materials, bills and other mail sent to that student's household, and quite often they don't respond, particularly when the reason is ridiculously stupid. If they don't respond, they can be purged from voter rolls without further notice.

Organizations like TrueTheVote.org have actually created tools for at-home "researchers" to use so they can comb through the voter rolls and target voters' registrations for challenge ahead of the election. It shouldn't surprise anyone to discover that the challenges are mostly to people with Hispanic surnames and young, first-time voters who have registered with the Democratic Party.

The right wing isn't subtle about this. JudicialWatch.org claims millions of voter records are flawed, and it's up to them, and them alone, to fix that problem.

In Florida, Rick Scott's purge of voter records in advance of the November election has caused hundreds of citizens to be told they're ineligible to vote when they clearly are eligible. In Miami-Dade County, over 1600 people received notice they were ineligible unless they proved their eligibility. Of those, nearly 400 have proven their citizenship and eligibility. Another 1,200 have not responded to the letter.

The Florida lists were developed by comparing voter registrations to DMV records. That yielded a list of 182,000 -- yes, 182,000 -- names and was rife with errors. Still, the Governor's office notified election officials of 2,600 people they were certain were not US citizens, only some of them actually were. Kurt Browning, Florida Secretary of State, resigned last year after declaring that he had no confidence in the integrity of the lists Scott was relying upon to purge voters from the rolls.

This election in November isn't about what Mitt Romney will do to the economy or whether Barack Obama understands the economy or whether John McCain thinks Romney's Bain record is perfectly fine.

It is not going to be about Social Security or Medicare or tax cuts or billionaire birthers like Donald Trump. It's not going to matter whether a so-called "bipartisan panel" sits around a round table on Sunday morning and pearl-clutches over this week's gaffes and surges.

None of that matters. Not one whit. The only thing that is going to matter is whether or not Republican astroturf organizations like TruetheVote, Republican governors like John Kasich, Rick Scott and Scott Walker, and Republican True Believers will team up to suppress the vote in enough states to guarantee a stolen election.

And from our mainstream media, our Sunday talkers, and our newspapers, we hear....crickets. They spew forth reams of speculation and handicapping about the election, but no one wants to talk about the real deal, which is that this election will be decided by states that have actively suppressed the vote.

Maybe it's time we woke up the sleeping corporate media and started forcing their eyes on this BEFORE we're facing recounts in November.

I love this Bain debate. It is exactly the kind of debate about the nature of business and job creation we need to be having in this campaign. The Republicans, along with pro-Wall Street Democrats, are squealing like stuck pigs about the Obama campaign “attacking free enterprise” because they want to change the subject fast. They are saying to themselves: please, let’s talk about anything else. Deficits would be their first choice, but anything would be preferable. Maybe we’ll see them start talking about contraceptives and how people shouldn’t have sex again just to change the subject. Because this debate goes straight to the heart of what kind of economy we should be trying to build in this country.

This is isn’t about being for or against free enterprise. This is about how the economy should work better for everyone in it, not just the top 1 percent. The Republicans -- and Democrats like Cory Booker and Harold Ford, who both have raised millions of dollars in Wall Street money (including money from Bain) for their campaigns -- say that it is great when financial corporations like Bain make money by loading up the companies they buy with debt, taking all the tax write-offs the law allows, and then walking away with tons of money whatever happens to the original company. In fact, the companies Bain bought frequently went bankrupt, and Bain usually profited when those companies did go belly-up because of tax write-offs and sucking the companies’ assets dry. But in this line of reasoning, it’s all good, because capitalism should be unrestrained and some people got very rich.

What Obama and other Democrats are arguing is that our government should be on the side of the businesses that create not just wealth for a few at the top, but jobs and incomes for a lot of people. That is why Obama made the incredibly gutsy move to save the American auto industry, a policy that saved 1.45 million jobs in the short run, and kept desperately needed manufacturing jobs in this country for years to come. It is why Obama has made big investments in the budget for Small Business Administration jobs. It is why investments have been made in clean energy jobs of the future. It is why the U.S. Department of Agriculture has emphasized rural economic development and small business development in areas where jobs and incomes are desperately needed.

Democratic policies are in fact far more pro-business than policies like the Romney-Ryan budget, which independent studies estimate would cost the nation more than 4 million jobs in the next two years. That’s a lot of business customers who no longer have money to spend.

The Republican attack machine (helped by Democrats like Booker and Ford who have been feeding at the Wall Street trough for their entire careers) wants to intimidate the Obama campaign by making the claim that any attack on greedy business practices like the ones Romney perfected at Bain is an attack on all business and the market. It’s the same kind of argument Republicans make when they complain about class warfare politics when Democrats suggest that millionaires ought to pay a little more in taxes. It is an utterly soulless, amoral argument. But this is a fight Democrats can and will win if we make our case, because I think most people understand that there are ethical and unethical business practices. And they get that there is a difference between making money by manipulating the tax code and squeezing all the value out of businesses before throwing them away, and making money by making and selling good products that people want to buy. Biden laid this case out beautifully in a speech in Youngstown:

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Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital is one of the few quantifiable ways voters can see how he intends to approach employment issues and corporations, and the Obama campaign has done a terrific job of pointing out the "vulture capitalist" Romney so desperately tries to hide. In fact, they launched a new website this week highlighting the swath of devastation Romney left behind. It gives details about the different companies they stripped of all assets in order to maximize profit to investors.

Also this week, Joe Biden gave a speech where he was on fire -- as on fire as I've ever heard him -- about the differences between the middle class and the 1 percent and why Romney's Bain Capital profit model was guaranteed to benefit only the rich while further destroying the middle class and leaving them farther behind. It was a speech for the ages. It also had Republicans on the run, scurrying to counter the message in the Wall Street Journal and wherever else they could spread the word.

So this morning on Meet the Press Mayor Cory Booker just managed to undo all of that work with a few measured sentences. Start at about 5:31 of the video clip embedded above and watch until you hear Booker tell the panel that he's "uncomfortable" with the attacks on private equity. Via TPM:

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, Newark Mayor and Obama bundler Cory Booker said he was “uncomfortable” with the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s career with Bain Capital.

“It’s a distraction from the real issues,” Booker said, of both attacks on Bain and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “It’s either gonna be a small campaign about this crap, or it’s gonna be a big campaign about the issues the American public cares about.”

“I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity,” Booker added. “If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses — to grow businesses. And this to me, I’m very uncomfortable.”

Well, Mayor Booker. Thank you so much for that false equivalence. The Bain Capital issues strike right at the heart of what this campaign is about. Are we a country of financialists or a country of opportunity and growth for the middle class? Is the goal to maximize profit at the expense of workers or is the goal to simply strip the value from companies in order to reward the private equity investors.

To be clear, there is absolutely no equivalence between the bogus Reverend Wright revival and Romney's actions while at Bain Capital.

Digby:

If Romney can't be criticized for his vulture capitalism and we can't "indict" private equity then what does he think this campaign should be about? The deficit? Some abstract notions of "jobs" and "the economy" without any reference to the fact that it was the financial sector and "private equity" that caused this situation in the first place? Sounds perfect. For Wall Street.

Sadly, this is exactly the kind of concern trolling that will make the Village declare that the Democrats are hitting below the belt by criticizing Bain Capital and the Dems will fall in line. Indeed, the fact that it's Cory Booker who's saying it today indicates that it's the Democrats themselves saying "stop us before we hurt the Masters of the Universe's feelings again."

Yes, this. Exactly this. Already the RNC has popped out with their version of "even Democrats agree with us" on this issue, thanks to the careless remarks of Mayor Booker, and even though he attempted a halfhearted walkback via Twitter, he did a terrific job of stepping on the success of last week's campaign messaging.

Please, politicians. Stop being so darn polite on these shows. Stop assuming that people like David Gregory will actually try to insert facts into factless discussions. Bain Capital and Romney's conduct while there is absolutely relevant to this election and no one should think otherwise.

Update: Mayor Booker responds to the criticism:

I'm not sure how the Republican party came to be known as the party of "compassionate conservatism," unless it was simply because they used to at least pretend to care about the problems of the middle and low-income class people. In this 2007 video of Republican Mitt Romney's exchange with a wheelchair bound man suffering from a rare and deadly form of muscular dystrophy, Romney's compassionate conservatism takes an icy cold form, as he turns his back on the ill young man, Clayton Holton, and walks away without answering his question.

This exchange, and others like it, will no doubt keep cropping up to haunt Romney throughout his campaign. His complete inability to relate to, or show anything resembling empathy towards mainstream Americans is stunningly on display here. If his position on medical marijuana was due to something he believes is a greater good, as a contender for president of the United States, he should certainly be able to articulate that.However this is likely due to the fact that Romney has no real solutions for real people's problems.

Transcript:

Sick Man: "I suffer from an extremely rare type of muscular dystrophy and I have to take medication or I'll die. Right now I weigh less than 80 pounds, I have all my life. Um, I have support of 5 of my doctors that I am living proof that Medical Marijuana works. I am completely against legalizing it for everyone but there is medical . . ."

Romney: "And you have synthetic marijuana that's available and other . . . "

Sick Man: "It makes me sick. I've tried it and it makes me throw up. I have tried all the medications they are and all the forms they come in after my stimulators, the steroids. I have muscular dystrophy, that's completely against my DNA."

Romney: "I'm sorry to hear that."

Sick Man: "My question to you is, will you arrest me and my doctors if I get medical marijuana?"

Romney: "I'm not in favor of medical marijuana."

(Romney looks away, moves on to next person mid-conversation)

Sick Man: "So, will you have me arrested? . . . "

Romney: "Hi, how are you?" (moving on to next person in line)

Sick Man: "Excuse me, will you please answer my question?"

3rd Person: "You're not going to answer his question, Governor?"

Romney: "I think I have."

3rd Person: "No, he asked you if you were going to arrest him. He asked if you were going to arrest patients like him, Governor? You're just going to ignore a person in a wheelchair?"

Romney: "I spoke with him."

3rd Person: "Yeah, but you didn't answer his question!"

Granted, the Obama administration's stance on medical marijuana isn't any more appealing to medical marijuana advocates than Romney's, and came under fire from Democrat Nancy Pelosi earlier this month for the continued raids on marijuana dispensaries. The difference is that I doubt Obama would turn his back and walk away from someone with a legitimate concern about any issue, let alone a sick man in a wheel chair.

At least Romney didn't throw this man down on the ground and cut his hair off.

Clayton Holton, while still wheel-chair bound, and suffering the effects of the muscular dystrophy as it ravages his body, he is able to maintain some semblance of normalcy in his quality of life. He continues to credit marijuana for keeping him alive, and remains a staunch advocate of medical marijuana.

[Video Credit: Heather, H/T Ministry of Truth]

Americans Elect, the organization for people without an opinion, has died, and not a moment too soon.

Via Washington Post's Chris Cillizza:

Late Thursday night, Americans Elect, a much-ballyhooed group dedicated to securing ballot access for a serious third-party presidential candidate in 2012, issued a statement acknowledging failure.

“As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect online convention in June,” the statement read. “The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.”

Darn. I'm not sure what anyone truly thought would happen with this group, but it was not one that benefitted progressives at all. Other opinions, via Cillizza:

In the end, no candidate was able to clear the relatively low 10,000-vote threshold to “win” the Americans Elect nomination. The candidate who came closest was Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who boasts a decidedly ardent group of supporters but is far from the centrist problem-solver the founder of Americans Elect had in mind when they hatched the idea. (And Paul wasn’t even a “declared” candidate for the Americans Elect nomination; former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer, who got north of 6,000 votes, did the best of that group.)

McKinnon and other true believers in the possibility of a third party insisted all was not lost. “The results are disappointing, but until confidence is restored in the parties and our institutions of government, disruptive ideas will continue to emerge,” said McKinnon.

Added former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination but since dropping out has been a major advocate for a third party: “Today’s pathetic political environment will be upended either by visionary solutions-based leadership or by the kind of disruptive organizing technology being fine-tuned by Americans Elect.”

Maybe. But the failure of Americans Elect to field a candidate in 2012 is yet more evidence that there is a cavernous gap between the idea of running a third party candidate for president and the reality of doing so — a gap no one has figured out how to bridge just yet.

Actually, I think a ticket with candidates who cancel each other out is a loser, and the death of this particular group is no great loss. Farewell, Americans Elect. Let's hope the Republican Party becomes as irrelevant as you were.

[Mitt Romney invokes Reverend Jeremiah Wright during interview with Sean Hannity]

Ah, I smell the odor of desperation in the morning. When the Fox polls are showing Obama pulling ahead of Romney, it is required that Mitt Romney's billionaire boys step up with a proposal for a smear, and so they have. Disturbed that the President is well-liked, this particular proposal is to mount a coordinated media campaign to make him a little less likable.

I should hasten to add that since this story originally broke in the New York Times, the Obama campaign has denounced the plan and accused Mitt Romney of failing to lead to a higher ground, Romney has responded by repudiating it outright after the Obama campaign called him out on it, and the originator, Joe Ricketts (founder of TD Ameritrade and Chicago Cubs owner), has now rejected it while claiming he is just an independent who is tired of government spending.

Such are the days in the life of a national campaign. Repudiated or not, the 54-page proposal is an instructive look at how these billionaire idiots hatch their plan, get PR flacks to put together a proposal, and agree to write a ginormous check for the whole shebang.

The trial balloon went up earlier this year, when Mitt Romney invoked Jeremiah Wright in an interview with Sean Hannity, who loves to mention Wright's name whenever he can, preferably in concert with Bill Ayers'. It gives Hannity a tingle up his leg every single time, and Mitt obliged (audio at the top).

The Campaign

It begins with an image:

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If you want a sense of what a Mitt Romney presidency would look like, have a look at his top fundraisers. Today's fundraiser of the week is Romney 2012 finance co-chair Frank VanderSloot, CEO of pyramid selling company Melaleuca, public education wrecker, Idaho mogul, Romney campaign finance co-chair, and professional victim.

Via Glenn Greenwald:

But it is VanderSloot’s chronic bullying threats to bring patently frivolous lawsuits against his political critics — magazines, journalists, and bloggers — that makes him particularly pernicious and worthy of more attention. In the last month alone, VanderSloot, using threats of expensive defamation actions, has successfully forced Forbes, Mother Jones and at least one local gay blogger in Idaho to remove articles that critically focused on his political and business practices (Mother Jones subsequently re-posted the article with revisions a week after first removing it). He has been using this abusive tactic in Idaho for years: suppressing legitimate political speech by threatening or even commencing lawsuits against even the most obscure critics (he has even sued local bloggers for “copyright infringement” after they published a threatening letter sent by his lawyers). This tactic almost always succeeds in silencing its targets, because even journalists and their employers who have done nothing wrong are afraid of the potentially ruinous costs they will incur when sued by a litigious billionaire.

Well, one media outlet isn't silent, nor is it worried about this particular litigious billionaire. Nay, nay. Fox News is more than happy to act as conduit and surrogate for Mr. Melaleuca so he can whine away about how the Obama campaign is "terrorizing" him. And as Rachel points out in the rather long but informative segment above, VanderSloot is whining about being treated like a public figure because he is, well... a public figure. When one serves as the finance co-chair of a national presidential campaign, one is a public figure, like it or not. By the way, that little tidbit about his role in the campaign is one you won't find on Fox News.

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Ordinarily this segment would be sort of a "meh" segment. After all, Sean Hannity and Frank Luntz gleefully celebrating Americans for Prosperity's dishonest ad is more or less de rigueur for the likes of Fox News. It gives AFP a free airing of their ad for the Hannity audience and then gives Luntz a chance to reinforce the lies. We've seen it a thousand times before and we'll see it a thousand times before November has come and gone.

But when you look at this segment and the ad in concert with the FEC ruling I received this morning, it really does shed some light on how these organizations who are not supposed to lobby, but only spend money on "issues", get away with what they do.

FEC ruling 2012-11 (PDF) was requested on a rush basis by Free Speech, an "unincorporated non-profit organization" in Wyoming. At least one of the three people who comprise this organization are affiliated with the Wyoming Liberty Group. Free Speech wants to run ads with scripts like this:

Across America, millions of citizens remain uninformed about the truth of President Obama. Obama, a President who palled around with Bill Ayers. Obama, a President who was cozy with ACORN. Obama, a President destructive of our natural rights. Real voters vote on principle. Remember this nation's principles.

Or this:

President Obama supported the financial bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, permitting himself to become a puppet of the banking and bailout industries. What kind of person supports bailouts at the expense of average Americans? Not any kind we would vote for and neither should you. Call President Obama and put his antics to an end.

The FEC could not come to an agreement on the first script as to whether it fell under the definition of "express advocacy." They determined that the second script did fall under that definition specifically because of the sentence "Not any kind we would vote for and neither should you," which they determined to be a call to vote against President Obama. That is specifically prohibited.

The fact that they couldn't make a determination on the first one should tell you everything you need to know about why Americans for Prosperity and other organizations get away with what they do, and why people like Frank Luntz are so valuable to the effort. Any ordinary listener would clearly understand that an ad that uses language like "palled around with Bill Ayers" or "Real voters vote on principle" is calling for viewers to vote against the President. But because they do not actually use the words "vote for," the ads are in limbo at worst, or permissible at best.

There's something wrong with this picture. Let's have a look at the Americans for Prosperity ad, which Luntz and Hannity crow is the most "tested ad" of the current election cycle thus far. I take that to mean that they've run it a few zillion times across YouTube, Facebook and in GOP mailing lists to see what the reception is.

Factcheckers have already debunked the ad, but facts don't matter in ads like these. If they did, John Kerry would have been President in 2004. Here's the script for this ad:

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Wow. Here I thought Mitt Romney's cruel streak was in that he likes to fire people. Five of Romney's former classmates from a prestigious all-boys college prep school recall a "vicious" attack on a new student who Romney and others believed to be gay.

The Washington Post reports:

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Romney never received any punishment for his actions.

Lauber was expelled from the school after being caught smoking on school grounds. He "came out" to family and close friends. Among other jobs, he later worked as a civilian contractor in Bosnia and Iraq. He died of liver cancer in 2004, according to his sisters.

Despite being booted from his opening gig at the Army concert for his inflammatory and eliminationist rhetoric toward President Obama, Ted Nugent is unapologetic and claims to have the support of the Romney campaign for his particular flavor of free speech.

Via John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, Nugent's claim of encouragement by the Romney campaign:

Ted Nugent, after a Secret Service investigation, a canceled Army concert and an outpouring of criticism, said presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney's camp "expressed support" for the controversial comments he made about President Obama last month at the annual National Rifle Association meeting.

The no-holds-barred Texas rocker told CBS' "This Morning" that Romney's campaign told him to "stay on course" and not to tone it down after Nugent said he will "either be dead or in jail by this time next year" if President Obama is re-elected.

"I got the sensation it was, not from Mitt himself or Mrs. Romney, stay on course Ted, freedom of speech is a beautiful thing," Nugent said in the interview, which aired Friday morning.

Now if this were false, one might expect the Romney camp to firmly deny they said such a thing. But they didn't deny it, choosing instead to release the same non-statement they released when Nugent first spewed his nonsense at the NRA convention:

"Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from," Romney's spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in the statement. "Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil."

So if Ted Nugent says it civilly, then it's totally all right with Romney? This is the problem with Mitt Romney and it will continue to be the problem with Mitt Romney. He is so afraid to actually take a stand on anything from his gay foreign policy adviser to a rogue supporter who now believes he has a blessing from the Romney camp to spew even more unpleasantries into the news cycle that he cowers behind a milquetoasty kind of "ewwww, divisive language" statement.

I have a confession to make. There was a time in the not-too-distant past where I believed civil conversations could be had between liberals and conservatives. The past three years have cured me of that misperception. Even Barack Obama, with his love of bipartisanship and civility stood firm on the issue of race and actually bothered to deliver a speech that called out those who were using his race (and his pastor) to score political points.

Yet Mitt Romney just continues his meander down the pathways of non-committal pandering in the hopes that it will get him elected. I would suggest that if he were elected, he would reveal himself to be the guy who thinks Ted Nugent's remarks were just fine. In fact, I could see him clapping Nugent on the back and telling him to keep up the good work. He just won't do it now. He's running for office, after all!