The presidential race美国选战
Spinning towards the finish 美国选战：冲向终点
SEVEN days left in the campaign, and Team Obama is feeling confident. How confident? The Romney campaign has started spending in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania—three pretty solidly blue states. They see those states (heavily white, minimally Latino, where they believe the Obama campaign has underinvested) as ripe for the taking. But on this morning's spin call, David Axelrod, the Obama campaign's chief strategist, repeated a vow to shave his trademark moustache if Mr Obama loses any of those states. The real reason behind the buys, he charged, is that the Romney campaign's Ohio-based road to 270 is no longer tenable and its holds on Florida and Virginia are shaky, hence the need for this late-in-the-game "Hail Mary".
美国选战还有七天就将画上句号，而目前奥巴马团队自信满满。怎么一个自信法？罗姆尼班子已经开始为明尼苏达州、密歇根州和宾夕法尼亚州掏腰包了——这三个州是死忠的蓝州。这些地区的居民大多都是白人，拉丁裔极少。罗姆尼团队认为奥巴马班子对这三个州投资不足，而共和党拿下这些地区的时机已经成熟了。然而，奥巴马班子的首席战略家大卫•艾索洛在今天早上的导向性陈述中再次发誓：如果奥巴马丢掉其中任何一个州，他愿意把自己标志性的胡子剃掉。艾索洛义正辞严地表示，罗姆尼班子之所以不惜血本想要攻克这些蓝州，真正原因是他们那种以俄亥俄州为基础来争取270张选举人票的方法不再站得住脚了，而且共和党对佛罗里达州和弗吉尼亚州的控制也正在松动；因此在选战即将结束之际，罗姆尼团队有必要咕哝着“万福玛利亚”来孤注一掷了。
Perhaps. One intrepid reporter tried to turn the tables on Mr Axelrod, pointing out that the Obama campaign's efforts in Arizona seemed like a similarly desperate attempt to redraw the map. The response was as stony and unsatisfactory as you would expect. Still, the nice thing about this stage of the campaign is that the end of spin—the moment of empirical truth—is in sight. In a week's time one side will have won those three states and one side will have lost; Mr Axelrod will appear on Wednesday morning either with or without his moustache. From the current state of the polls I am inclined to predict that Mr Axelrod's upper lip will remain bestached (though the Romney campaign's effort to chip away at Mr Obama's hold on the upper midwest seems a sound strategy).
或许吧。一位“大无畏”的记者想要推翻艾索洛的言论，他指出奥巴马班子在亚利桑那州的努力似乎也是在铤而走险地试图重新划分选战版图。可以想象，这位记者得到了极为冷漠、极不令人满意的回应。话虽如此，大选现阶段的好消息是双方的口水战就快要结束了——用事实来说话的时刻即将来临。再过一个星期，某一方将拿下这三个州，而另一方将落败；下周三早上，艾索洛出现的时候要么还留着胡子，要么就已经剃掉了。从当前的民调状况来看，笔者认为艾索洛到时候还能保住自己的胡子（不过，对于罗姆尼班子来说，蚕食奥巴马对于上中西部地区的控制权似乎是一种不错的战略）。
If the Romney campaign has evinced desperation recently, it has come in response to Hurricane Sandy. Huge disasters allow an incumbent to look presidential (most of the time), while the challenger must decide whether to cancel or continue his campaign. The optics are not fair. But in an effort to have it both ways, the Romney campaign on Tuesday turned a planned rally into an ineffectively rebranded "storm-relief event". It involved $5,000 of hasty cosmetic purchases at Wal-Mart, a host of non-perishable goods that the Red Cross said it did not want (but eventually accepted), and a lot of cringeworthy stagecraft. Noam Scheiber writes that the event was unintentionally revealing, in that it showed the limits of what private charity can accomplish after a massive disaster such as Sandy. He has a point.
如果说罗姆尼班子最近表现得有些孤注一掷了，那么可以认为这种态度是由飓风“桑迪”引起的。巨大灾难往往让现任总统表现得更有领袖风范，而挑战者则必须决定是取消宣传活动还是继续。在灾难期间，民众是不会公平看待两位候选人的。但罗姆尼班子试图做到两全其美，把本周二一场计划中的集会拙劣地包装成了一次“赈灾活动”。本次活动包括匆匆在沃尔玛购买的物资（价值5000美元，用来装点门面）、一大堆不易变质的商品（红十字会推脱了一番，不过最终还是收下了）、以及种种令人尴尬的作秀行为。诺姆•沙伊贝尔写道：本次事件在无意中揭露了一个事实——在“桑迪”这样的大灾难之后，私人慈善行为存在种种局限性。言之有理。
It is hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for Mr Romney. Even though the president has kept an admirably low profile during the past few days, the storm itself put Mr Romney at an inherent disadvantage. His response has recalled the awkwardly ingratiating Mitt Romney of the primary season, when the strings and salesmanship showed, rather than the confident, pragmatic, post-debate front-runner. That latter version may still stand a chance of winning. The former does not—especially not in left-leaning states like Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
人们难免会突然有些同情罗姆尼。尽管在过去几天里奥巴马很有风度地保持低调，但飓风本身就把罗姆尼推到了在所难免的不利地位。他的反应让人们想起了初选季那个局促地逢迎讨好的罗姆尼（一如其宣传游说活动所表现的那样），而不是在辩论过后的那位自信、务实的选战领先者。如果罗姆尼采取后一种姿态，他还有赢得竞选的可能；如果他仍然保持前一种姿态，就没有什么胜选的希望了——特别是在明尼苏达、宾夕法尼亚和密歇根这几个左倾的州。
经济学家
2012-11-02
经济学家
413次
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