US Presidential Election: Tuesday November 6th, 2012

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It's also about money.

If the Romney camp gets the Obama team to spend money in a state that should be relatively safe then that's less money they can spend in the likes of Ohio, Florida and Colorado.

And with the Romney camp still out raising the Obama team that could be crucial.
 
Very good column from Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity — and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be.

President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women — about 11 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll — and enormous leads among Latinos and African Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-to-1 advantage among white men.

It is too simplistic to conclude that demography equals destiny. Both men are being sincere when they vow to serve the interests of all Americans. But it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.

When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.
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Nate Silver has only Colorado and Virginia as true tossups. He has Ohio as 'likely Obama' giving him a 75% chance of winning Ohio.
 
Plechazunga said:
Well I know, that was the point of my post.

That said, I'm not sure there's much evidence the second two debates had any effect. The polls started to revert back to the June-August equilibrium before them.
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Here are some interesting graphs though. That sounded weird, just here are some graphs:

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http://election.princeton.edu/2012/10/26/ro-mentum-watch-john-dickerson-cbsslate/

In relation to state polls at least, the movement certainly seems to match the debate dates.
 
MrMarcello said:
What has caused all of this?

Was it 9/11 and subsequent wars?

Was it a greed/power craving by certain elements within the top level of government?

Was it a push by certain elements to ensure a gender/racial control of the nation?

Other factors?
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My two cents - the Goldwater Revolution of the '60s never went away, it just gave rise to a generation of fanatical young Republicans, the 'culture warriors' rebelling against '60s liberalism - first the likes of Gingrich, Lee Atwater, and Karl Rove and later Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, and Ralph Reed, who fought an orchestrated and committed campaign to take the party over, backed by clearly defined principles (such as Randism), which the moderates didn't have. Reagan's electoral success had them convinced that the True Way was also the way of the 'silent majority', and dreaming of a permanent conservative reign, a Golden Age Forever. After the 1994 House takeover, they thought their time had come, but when Gingrich was forced to resign in ignominy, that sort of fell apart, but the goal remained unchanged.

Then there's the alliance of the Christian Right with Big Business, engineered by the likes of DuPont Labs in the '30s to battle FDR's New Deal policies, and taken by Fox News to new heights. GWB seemed like the perfect synthesis of all these elements, but his disastrous presidency paradoxically only proved to be a catalyst for renewed fervour for the Even Truer Way (rejection of his Big Government, compassionate conservative approach).

Throw in changing demographics, acute insecurity about White identity, and the prospect of becoming a minority race - perfectly embodied by the election of a Black President with a funny name who is both academic and street - and the fifty-year old project finally comes of age.
 
Good news for Mitt: he appears to have momentum.

Bad news for Mitt: it's 'shopped.
 
I would suggest that the image is more one of poor quality control rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive people. I can't believe anyone attempting to Photoshop a picture for the purposes of fooling anyone with a pair of functional eyes would do such a horrible job of it, so I suspect they just tried to use Apple's shitastic photo-stitching software and did a piss-poor job of it.
 
It's so entertainingly awful that you might be right Excal, although how come bits seem to be transplanted randomly in different directions? Genuine question as I have no idea how those panorama apps work.

Back to precious polling news, on the plus side Obama's up 50-46 in Ohio according to CNN. The bad news is that this is a tie, according to them:

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Also, this is a rather entertaining look back in time at RCP, circa 2000 http://web.archive.org/web/20001212163700/realclearpolitics.com/Polls/polls-Electoral_11_06_EC.html
 
Dammit, thought I'd got away with it.
 
It did take me all of 10 minutes to figure out, in fairness :lol:
 
And yeah, RCP was (and still is) a right-wing site. It's just learned to be slightly less ridiculous in order to be taken seriously, (though it's still only used as reference by the gullible and those with an agenda.)
 
Another Republican pollster, Civitas, showing a 1 point Romney lead in NC, 48 to 47. Not over just yet.
 
radd said:
Another Republican pollster, Civitas, showing a 1 point Romney lead in NC, 48 to 47. Not over just yet.
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Dems are more or less matching their final 08 lead (~50-30) in early voting too, although at the same stage in the race last time the lead was bigger. That said, it's all about turnout, rather than the lead itself. Still a longshot, but good to see they're keeping it competitive.
 
Ubik said:
Dems are more or less matching their final 08 lead (~50-30) in early voting too, although at the same stage in the race last time the lead was bigger. That said, it's all about turnout, rather than the lead itself. Still a longshot, but good to see they're keeping it competitive.
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My feeling is Obama is winning all states currently that he last won except IN which he wont win of course but both FL and NC is only just out of reach. In fact NC looks more likely than FL. But if he keeps up the GOTV efforts, he will get both of them.

So 303 plus 44. reaching 347.

....even Nate has him at 295.
 
Looks like Obama's back nearly, but not quite, where he was before the conferences - with a small but stable-seeming lead.

If you'd offered me that in September - no RNC debacle, no Clinton speech, no 47%, but also no freefall after the first debate - I'd have definitely taken it.

The other thing that seems to have gone under the radar in the drama of the last couple of weeks is that the Senate has moved away from GOP clutches pretty much irreparably. That's a silver lining if Romney does win.

Or it would be if congressional Democrats weren't such incompetent pussies.
 
Plechazunga said:
The other thing that seems to have gone under the radar in the drama of the last couple of weeks is that the Senate has moved away from GOP clutches pretty much irreparably. That's a silver lining if Romney does win.

Or it would be if congressional Democrats weren't such incompetent pussies.
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Even if Obama wins, they have to change the filibuster rules at the start of the session, they can do it with a simple majority, otherwise the next four years could well resemble the last four.
 
It also isn't quite as simple as that. The reason the Dems don't enforce strict party discipline, is that many Reps and Senators have to win their seats in Red states, and they can't move too far from their constituents who naturally perceive them as 'liberals', which they mostly aren't.

The Repubs OTOH, being a militant lot, prefer to give up seats in favour of strict ideological adherence. Also, they cna still exercise 'minority control' and engineer 'government shutdowns' becaus they don't care if government works, they'd prefer it didn't. AS P.J.O'Rourke put it, 'Republicans believe Government doesn't work and then they get in office and prove it.'

The Dems do beleieve in the idea of government, so they can't be quite as irresponsible. That said, they are incompetent pussies.
 
Plechazunga said:
That doesn't look so great though under President Palin in 2020 or whatever.
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True, and to be fair, it was the Dems that started the ratcheting up of filibusters during W's second term. What goes around...

Looking ahead, the Dems have to believe that demographics will hand them a huge advantage from 2016 onward and take a few risks to pass jobs bills and a second stimulus. Otherwise, the economy may not get better enough soon enough to make 2016 winnable, especially against a set of strong Repub candidates - Jeb Bush and Rubio in particular.
 
You think Americans are stupid enough to vote in another Bush?

Well, yeah, they probably are.
 
radd said:
It also isn't quite as simple as that. The reason the Dems don't enforce strict party discipline, is that many Reps and Senators have to win their seats in Red states, and they can't move too far from their constituents who naturally perceive them as 'liberals', which they mostly aren't.

The Repubs OTOH, being a militant lot, prefer to give up seats in favour of strict ideological adherence. Also, they cna still exercise 'minority control' and engineer 'government shutdowns' becaus they don't care if government works, they'd prefer it didn't. AS P.J.O'Rourke put it, 'Republicans believe Government doesn't work and then they get in office and prove it.'

The Dems do beleieve in the idea of government, so they can't be quite as irresponsible. That said, they are incompetent pussies.
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You're right of course.

One thing I can't understand is the enduring shitness of Democratic messaging. Can you imagine if the GOP had had this term, inheriting the crash from the Democrats, and the Dems had been as maniacally obstructive and had the Tea Party thing etc.? feck trying to look bipartisan and serious, it would have been branded The Democrat Depression from day 1. And 'Democrat Extremism' would have been a bigger and more constant threat to the nation than Al-Quaida.

Red Dreams said:
they wont change the Senate rules...but the GOP will have no motivation to tank the economy for another 4 years since Obama wont be running again in 2016.
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:confused: some other Democrat will be though.

The fiscal cliff thing will be interesting if Obama wins. It would be so disastrous for Republican interest groups though - especially the rich and the military/defence contractors - that it probably wouldn't be worth the hit to the economy.
 
@ Saliph

To be fair, Jeb Bush is very much that endangered species, the near-mythical Moderate Republican and he's trying hard to pull the rest of the party away from the craziness. He's an intelligent, capable administrator, married to a Mexican and strongly in favour of immigration reform. In other words, as Kennedy said about George Romney, 'He's the one candidate I don't want to run against.'
 
Plechazunga said:
You're right of course.

One thing I can't understand is the enduring shitness of Democratic messaging. Can you imagine if the GOP had had this term, inheriting the crash from the Democrats, and the Dems had been as maniacally obstructive and had the Tea Party thing etc.? feck trying to look bipartisan and serious, it would have been branded The Democrat Depression from day 1. And 'Democrat Extremism' would have been a bigger and more constant threat to the nation than Al-Quaida.
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It's even more baffling when you consider that people like Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, who like nothing more than a street-fight were in charge of the messaging. The only way I can see it work if some Hollywood media types fund and set up a 501 (c) 3 - an 'issues-only' Super-Pac - and start hammering away, every week of every year, election or no election. Or they could just poison Roger Ailes's Scotch.
 
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