2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Xiahou]

So, do you see any significance in this election at all? Anything?

I think Obama's get out the vote effort was truly impressive- much better than I expected. But, it didn't translate in a significant way to the house or senate... why? I'm curious to see what explanations there are for that.

Also, I think the biggest question mark is will Obama do anything different? Unfettered from the worry of reelection: Will he shift some to the right ala Clinton? Will he move further left? Or will he stay the course? We'll see.

[gaelic cowboy]

Also, we may see some reformation in the right-wing echo chamber. A good takedown:

Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. WorldNetDaily brought you birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka the Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemies in a "Grand Jihad" against America. Seriously?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pandered in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they were plausible presidents rather than national jokes who'd lose worse than George McGovern.

How many months were wasted on them?

How many hours of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories did Fox News broadcast to its viewers? How many hours of transparently mindless Sean Hannity content is still broadcast daily? Why don't Americans trust Republicans on foreign policy as they once did? In part because conservatism hasn't grappled with the foreign-policy failures of George W. Bush. A conspiracy of silence surrounds the subject. Romney could neither run on the man's record nor repudiate it. The most damaging Romney gaffe of the campaign, where he talked about how the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes are a lost cause for Republicans? Either he was unaware that many of those people are Republican voters, or was pandering to GOP donors who are misinformed. Either way, bad information within the conservative movement was to blame.

In conservative fantasy-land, Richard Nixon was a champion of ideological conservatism, tax cuts are the only way to raise revenue, adding neoconservatives to a foreign-policy team reassures American voters, Benghazi was a winning campaign issue, Clint Eastwood's convention speech was a brilliant triumph, and Obama's America is a place where black kids can beat up white kids with impunity. Most conservative pundits know better than this nonsense -- not that they speak up against it. They see criticizing their own side as a sign of disloyalty. I see a coalition that has lost all perspective, partly because there's no cost to broadcasting or publishing inane bullshit. In fact, it's often very profitable. A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption.

Unreported World on CH4 basically said this punditocracy is merely making money from hysteria.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/u...k-radio-nation

[Fisherking]

Not trying to be rude, it just seemed as though "straining to see" was oblique-speak for "disagree."

So, do you see any significance in this election at all? Anything?

As much as they don’t want to hear it, the Republicans need to stop pandering to the religious right and some of the other tinfoil hat crowd.

A stand on individual liberties, deficit reduction, and smaller government is a good start. Most of the rest is either a lost cause or just not that important at the moment to generate much support. Lowering taxes is popular but getting the deficit and entitlements in order should be a national priority now.
If the two parties can’t find common ground to keep us afloat then we may as well just send them home and petition to join Canada or maybe the EU.

What this election has done is highlight the US voting system, and it has not been impressive, at all. Many of the laws seem to foster voter fraud and the media calling TN. Two minutes after the polls closed without exit polls and no presents reporting was not impressive from outside the country.

Hurricane Sandy also highlighted the poor state of US infrastructure. It is a good thing Obama won. At least it distracts most reports from the rest of the idiocy.

[TinCow]

I Obama's get out the vote effort was truly impressive- much better than I expected. But, it didn't translate in a significant way to the house or senate... why? I'm curious to see what explanations there are for that.

Actually, it made a big difference in the Senate. The Republicans were well placed a year ago to take control of the Senate, but instead they lost seats. Most startling was Scott Brown, who got thrown out despite having broad public approval from his constituents. He was tossed out because he was a Republican, not because he did a bad job.

In any case, the Senate is a very different creature from the House due to the nature of the constituents they represent. Senators represent the entire state and thus the entire state votes for them. As such, there is no impact from redistricting. House seats, on the other hand, are manipulated very heavily by the states (red and blue alike) to ensure that the party in-power in that state keeps as many of their state's representatives as possible. This results in very odd districts that tend to be resistant to any small or moderate demographic or political changes. Large changes in House representation require truly significant shifts in public sentiment or demographics, and that certainly wasn't present between 2010 and 2012. Minor changes will usually return a relatively static House.

[Strike For The South]

I want to repeal Obamacare

That or get a job with a large health insurance company

[Greyblades]

I want to repeal Obamacare

Why?

[Strike For The South]

Why?

Because it hand delivers 30 million young and for the most part healthy people onto insurance rolls. The same insurance companies who, make no mistake, will be crying pittance in a few years as they reap record profits

It hamstrings doctors with ridiculous stipulations

It does nothing about going from reactive to preventive care

It still caters to old people wildly

Its a watered down peice of bullshit

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Apparently 42% of voters said that Obama's response to Sandy was "important" in their vote. Please tell me that's misleading.
****
There is no such thing as a mandate. If you win you have the powers of office. If you win so strongly that people are scared to oppose you then they will compromise. If you don't they won't.

*****

Lot's of talk I've seen about how the Republicans need to "reach out" (aka pander) to latinos or minorities or women or whatever. I don't think so.

First of all that kind of pandering is cheap and doesn't work, anymore than a democrat trying to sound like a warhawk or trying to pander to evangelicals would work.

Secondly, romney won married women by a significant margin. It was single women that went for Obama. The republicans would have to start saying "marriage isn't important, welfare is better" to reach out to them.

Thirdly, a lot of minorities are enthused for obama personally, for democratic welfare type policies in general, and because of the media frenzy over trayvon martin type stories. The media regularly picks out anything any republican says that is anti one of those groups and exaggerates it. That's not going to change.

Unions went heavily to Obama. Auto bailout helps. Media gave a big assist, or as many of the pundits said last night "Romney shouldn't have let Obama define him with those dishonest Bain and "Let detroit go bankrupt" smears"--that's your job guys. Republicans would be better off weakening unions than pandering to them--and so would we all.

Young people to Obama. This is one I could actually see the republicans make a move on. There are plenty of young people who think the whole election is about weed and gay marriage. Those are two things the republicans should back off on. As far as reaching out? Well what we should do is raise the voting age and reform our college education system. But that's not going to happen.

I don't think politics is anywhere near as rational as we act like. Obama essentially won because most people think "he inherited a mess, he hasn't done a bad job, I can think of some successes, let's stick with him, I like him". People still associate the Republicans with the Bush years.

The Republicans should keep on nominating good candidates like Romney who are smart, capable, reasonable, and experienced. Voters don't really decide based on things like that but if your guy gets elected they will judge him and your party for years to come based on how he does. The last thing they should do is go for charisma, speeches that get great press, and policies that target the democratic base.

[Strike For The South]

It is impossible to rational at this level of politics

In other news, we just killed another civilian in Yemen

hope and change hope and change hope and change

[ICantSpellDawg]

Pandering works. Its what democracies are made of. You just have to do it well. Hispanics could use some pandering, there is no reason that they should feel like they only have one party to choose from.

[Papewaio]

Higher education is linked to higher wages is linked to more right votes.

Wouldn't the Republican Party be better off at raising education levels be it home, private or public across the board?

[rvg]

Higher education is linked to higher wages is linked to more right votes...

Not in America. Obama did considerably better than Romney among postgrads (i.e. people with Masters or Ph.D's). Romney did better among people with 4 year degrees.

[gaelic cowboy]

Why, yes. Why do you think the major news networks never go into detailed exposes on PACs and independent issue ads?

Because the money that gets spent is all going straight to the ad fees.

Not sure what your talking about here Gel C I understand that attack adds area nice little earner for the media but actually I was replying to how conservative echo chamber pundits are actually doing a disservice to conservatives themselves. You constantly you hear this refrain about "main stream media" when by all accounts all these fearmongers in talk radio and on tv are themselves mainstream(in the media at least).

The programme I linked to basically showed that cynical fearmongers are pretty much fooling there audience in pursuit of money.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Not in America. Obama did considerably better than Romney among postgrads (i.e. people with Masters or Ph.D's). Romney did better among people with 4 year degrees.

I should look up the statistics, but I wonder what % of 4 year degrees are for business...

[Lemur]

I think Obama's get out the vote effort was truly impressive- much better than I expected.

According to many reports surfacing today, it was not just that Team Hopey Changey had great organization. Team Romney invested time, resources and money quite badly. Here's a good collation of a lot of today's info, including the infamous Orca app:

This is precisely the sort of thing that he wasn’t supposed to be outmaneuvered on. [Romney's] ideological heresies were worrisome, but the comfort in nominating him was that his campaign would be smart and efficient enough to fight Obama to a stalemate. [...]

There was, to my mind, only one qualitative argument generally made in favor of Romney: that his management experience made him uniquely qualified to be president. He was a “turn-around artist.” A “genius CEO.” Now even the claim that his private-sector ability to master organizations and rescue them was a variation on process. And it always struck me as a little dubious. For one thing, it’s not immediately clear how the skill set of the private-sector executive transfers to the job of managing the executive branch of the U.S. government. [...]

But at least this was a falsifiable claim. And the fact that Romney could not master even his own campaign organization in order to win an incredibly winnable election demonstrates—incontrovertiably—that it wasn’t true. If he was a turn-around artist, he would be president-elect right now.

[Xiahou]

According to many reports surfacing today, it was not just that Team Hopey Changey had great organization. Team Romney invested time, resources and money quite badly. Here's a good collation of a lot of today's info, including the infamous Orca app

Yeah, the tales of disorder and incompetence in the Romney campaign are beginning to trickle in it seems. It's odd that there wasn't a whisper of it until after the election. I guess the failure of ORCA ect on election night may have just made it painfully apparent.

Here's a thought... could it be that the GOP has a crop of really lousy campaign consultants out there? The McCain campaign was also an undeniable mess- how many of the same people found jobs again on the Romney campaign?

[Beskar]

I have to be honest, as I have said elsewhere, did Romney really need to appeal to the far-right social-conservatives? I mean, I put it this way. I am a "Socialist" and I feel Obama and Romney are far removed from my position, however, I would rather have Obama than Romney. Wouldn't the same logic occur for the 'far-right' base, since it is either "Anti-Christ Muslim Kenyan Obama" or "Romney", wouldn't they have naturally voted for Romney regardless?

[classical_hero]

ACA (Obamacare) will not be repealed. And no population in any nation has ever repealed universal health care once enacted.


So the status quo in 2012 is remarkably different from the status quo in 2008 or 2010.

If you say that the Affordable Care Act is Universal Healthcare then I feel sorry for you, since it is basically allowing the insurance industry far great stranglehold on the American healthcare system, which is not very cost effective.

[Xiahou]

Its a lot simpler than that. The GOP campaigns, from the primary races all the way through until the election, was held hostage to Super PACs and Independant Expenditure-funded Issue Ads. Romney was never able to tell the world what his policy was, because Karl Rove, Fox News, and all the other residents of the echo-chamber were making it for him. I'm sure his own personal campaign advisors were telling him "Look, all this money is coming from the far-right social conservative base--you have to appeal to them!" Hence Ryan.

Obama had the distinct advantage of being able to run his own campaign.

Had Romney come out stronger on his own from the start, forging his own way as a viable candidate and running his own issue ads instead of relying on third-party groups to do it for him (and thus hijack the issues) he may well have reached a much broader base. But by that same token, he never would have won the Republican primary, which was basically a "Who can be the biggest reactionary dickhead?" contest.

That's neither simpler, nor explains why Romney's ground game was so disorganized. Project Orca is reported to be a complete disaster- you can't explain that by claiming they pandered to the right.

I worked on the Colorado team, and we were called by hundreds (or more) volunteers who couldn't use the app or the backup phone system. The usernames and passwords were wrong, but the reset password tool didn't work, and we couldn't change phone PINs. We were told the problems were limited and asked to project confidence, have people use pencil and paper, and try to submit again later.

Then at 6PM they admitted they had issued the wrong PINs to every volunteer in Colorado, and reissued new PINs (which also didn't work). Meanwhile, counties where we had hundreds of volunteers, such as Denver Colorado, showed zero volunteers in the system all day, but we weren't allowed to add them. In one area, the head of the Republican Party plus 10 volunteers were all locked out. The system went down for a half hour during peak voting, but for hundreds or more, it never worked all day. Many of the poll watchers I spoke with were very discouraged. Many members of our phone bank got up and left.

I do not know if the system was totally broken, or if I just saw the worst of it. But I wonder, because they told us all day that most volunteers were submitting just fine, yet admitted at the end that all of Colorado had the wrong PIN's. They also said the system projected every swing state as pink or red.

[Major Robert Dump]

Man whats with the wolves turning on Gov Christie? I don't particulalry care for the guy, but I hated this when Dems did it to Lieberman and I don't like them doing it to Christie, either. Are people really this stupidly partisan? Get over yourselves and your opinions FFS

[Lemur]

I kinda like the idea of pundit shaming. Especially since these on-air talking heads seem to pay no price for being wrong. Ever.

[Lemur]

And Florida is still finding ballots, eight days after the fact. Epic corruption or chronic incompetence?

The supervisor of elections, Dr. Brenda Snipes, said this happens all the time, especially when dealing with paper ballots… Snipes noted that it is a routine thing to look for these kind of mishaps after election night and she is just glad that they are now being tallied into that final count. [...]

Snipes said there is no reason for alarm.

“I’ve run several elections here, and this election was run no different than any other,” she said.

[Xiahou]

Explain to me again how paper ballots are superior to electronic ones?

[Lemur]

Obviously incompetence (and/or corruption) trumps all. But at least a paper ballot can be re-counted, as should be obvious.

And God hates Florida.

[Hooahguy]

Not really relevant but I love this gif of Obama:
https://i.imgur.com/yUNVY.gif

[Lemur]

Son, didn't your mama tell you that you can embed GIFs in the board? Weren't you raised right?

[Hooahguy]

Probably not.

[Lemur]

Son, I am disappoint. Now worship my sparkles.

[Memnon]

Son, I am disappoint. Now worship my sparkles.

[el_slapper]

here is not the right question. Ask to a forum of computer programmers. They'll all make the same answer : it may be easy to cheat with paper, but cheating is also easy to spot. It's harder to cheat with a machine, but the cheat is impossible to spot. A creative code can pass through all tests, and, the very day of the election, activate a secondary code that cleverly modifies the results. I can do it in less than a week - if I take time to make it really stealth.