Welcome to this week’s Voice Votes, a feature in which we grade the week’s headlines—and poke fun at them. You can join the fun by suggesting your own #win, #fail, and #meh candidates via Twitter. (Send tweets to @nationaljournal). Need more space? E-mail suggestions to Readers@nationaljournal.com or leave us a comment on Facebook. We’ll publish the best suggestions in this space every week and credit the authors.
Here’s how we vote this week:
#Win on President Obama’s decisive edge over Mitt Romney among registered voters on the question, “Who would you prefer to have take care of you if you were sick?” We take this to mean that Democrats are now both the daddy party and the mommy party.
#Meh on the Fed’s Thursday announcement that it would buy $40 billion worth of securities to stimulate the economy in a third round of what’s known as “quantitative easing,” or QE3. You know you’ve got trouble when the Fed has more QEs than Cunard.
#Fail on the lobbying struggle that’s broken out over olive-oil regulation as congressional dysfunction dims the chances of passing a five-year farm bill. When the U.S. government starts looking this much like Italy’s, it might be time to say, “Arrivederci, America.”
#Fail on the news that a shadowy political action committee has used look-alike websites to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars away from intended candidates and toward equally shadowy companies no one’s heard of, misleading donors. Like everyone else, we’re fine with shadowy political groups moving around lots of money without accountability, but misleading donors is sleazy; the point is supposed to be to mislead the American people.
#Win on the announcement of a $40,000-a-plate Obama fundraiser in New York next week to be hosted by Jay-Z and Beyonce. Hip-hop’s first couple’s got 99 problems, but apparently a weak recovery ain’t one.
#Fail on the importance Twitter has attained in political messaging this year. Is 140 characters enough space for serious political discussion?
#Win on the unexpected Gallup results showing that by several indicators, Americans are better off than they were four years ago. The results are made even more surprising by the fact that four years ago Americans had yet to be hit with MTV’s Jersey Shore.
#Meh on Romney’s hasty condemnation of the administration’s handling of an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya and protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. As Obama put it on Wednesday, “Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later.” That’s not to be confused with former Vice President Dick Cheney, who shoots birds and aims at lawyers.
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