2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[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.
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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.