Super Tuesday Winners Ahead of Time

Not exciting.

I'm not all that excited about Super Tuesday because it could turn out to be the Romney show and guarantee his nomination.  I still believe he is the antithetical candidate for a Republican win against Obama in November.  Rich, out of touch and stiff, he'll be easy fodder for the Democrats to portray as a cardboard candidate without real values and without empathy.  He'll be demonized in the ceter, the same place Obama is trying to shore up his own credibility.  He's very, very vulnerable in November, and a Super Tuesday win for Romney is more likely than Santorum or Gingrich to seal the fate of the GOP chances of losing the presidency in 2012.

That is not an exciting prospect.  Super Tuesday has me as uninspired as a David Hasselhoff made for TV movie. It's not something I want to see, but because of all the hype, it's going to be on a bunch of channels.  Who knows, maybe the Germans will be excited about it.

All that said, here's how I see tomorrow playing out.

Bernie Sanders, socialist, asks an important question.

It appears the Federal Reserve aid to the ailing banking sector went in no small amount to European financial institutions. While not alone in questioning the logic of the move of a country facing it's own solvency issues bailing out foreign institutions, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, asks one of the right questions (via FT);

“We’re talking about huge sums of money going to bail out large foreign banks,” said Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont. “Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?”

Sanders is a socialist.  Yet even he gets it.  It doesn't matter whether European banks have a presence in the U.S. or not - the bailout money was to keep financial institutions afloat. But not all institutions were meant to be protected.  That money comes from American taxpayers (or more correctly, future taxpayers). It is simply not meant to bail out Barclay's. Let Britain do that if it's needed. Or more appropriately, let the banks who have made bad lending decisions fail and it will teach the survivors a lesson - namely, be smarter about your lending decisions. And as a side note, another lesson is to keep the government out of lending decisions.

Helping Out Brian Dubie

Back in September, after an extremely close Democratic primary, Peter Shumlin was running narrowly ahead of Republican Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie in Vermont’s gubernatorial race. This is Vermont. Back then the gap was less than 5 points among likely voters. Like many other Republicans in this cycle, Dubie understands that the economy is the topmost item on voters' minds.

Jobs,



Growth,



Even Democrats see it;



Vote for Dubie.