FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

JayFarrar · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

My best guess is, and one I've been sticking with for nearly a year now is that Romney wins or is in a statistical dead heat in the popular vote but Obama cruises in the Electoral College and is 300+ there.

I figure the Midwest, with the exception of Indiana holds for Obama and it is over before it hits Colorado and the Mountain time zone.

Double Down · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

In 2004, in the days leading up to the election, I remember thinking: The polls are lying to us. There is no way the President will be re-elected. Look at Zogby! (The hip outlier poll at the time.) Republicans are going to be in for a real surprise come election night. Clearly no one is accounting for the youth vote in these polls! John Kerry is a military man. No one really believes this shit about the Swift Boat, right?

And then ... Fail. Crushing fail.

If your closing argument is "All the polls are wrong about my guy" you are throwing a 50 yard Hail Mary. You CAN win -- hell, on Mitt Romney's "favorite" show FNL, the Dillon Panthers won that way almost every week -- but you are in serious trouble.

MileHigh · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

It's been over for a year. Obama will win with at least 290 EVs, probably closer to 310.

Though I'm rooting for 269-269 only for the chaos and media meltdown that will follow.

BitterYoungMatador2 · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

zagoshe said:

trifectarich said:

zagoshe said:

Any Presidential candidate who is not talking about these things ----

1.) Significant LEGITIMATE budget and spending cuts
2.) A complete restructuring of the tax code so that it makes sense, brings in enough revenue to run the government and is not a constant loop hole waiting to happen.
3.) REAL deficit reduction to the point where the national debt is actually coming down
4.) Nuclear power/wind power/alternate energy and reduction of dependence on oil
5.) Significant reduction in the size of the federal government - as in the actual number of people on the payroll of the government.
6.) Significant cuts in our military budget, significant troop withdrawals from many areas we have no business being...

---- Is not truly interested in trying to put this country back on the right track.
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That's a great idea, but as we all (unfortunately) know, campaigning is about saying whatever it takes to make everyone happy, and you don't become popular by suggesting there is sacrifice ahead.
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And therein lies the biggest problem - we won't elect people who tell the truth about the situation we are in, are honest about where we are at in this country and are honest about what it will take to get things moving in the right direction.

Instead, we vote for sound byte guys who use talking points to make us feel better.

I lost all hope in mainstream politicians a few years back when our esteemed governor Fast Eddie Rendell -- who I actually sort of liked despite what a shady character he was because he was pragmatic and took a solutions approach to issues and attempted to be fiscally responsible -- backed down to the teacher's unions, who of course, his party needs to win this state.

But Fast Eddie was the one guy who had the cache, the popularity and the power to pull off what he himself proposed -- consolidation of schools and elimination of something like 30 percent of our school districts in this state.

He laid it out, it made sense, it made fiscal sense, it made geographic sense, it made sense from the fact that our population has declined significantly in the past 30 years and continues to trend downward.

But it was loudly shouted down before it became anything more than an idea and he backed away from it because the teachers unions and whining liberal educators in academia flexed their muscles and in this state, a Dem can't win without them in his pocket.

But a Dem is the only one who has a chance to make a change like this without the "he hates children and education" charges being thrown around.

This was a great disappointment to me, it is something that needed to - and still needs to - happen but it never will.

Instead we will continue to have far too many of these tiny school districts with very little tax base, very little ability to sustain itself, shrinking population of students and wonder why we are broke.

Of course, the education in many of those schools suck, those kids have no prayer once they get to college and those schools can't offer the opportunities of bigger schools, but hey it is the Republican meanies, not the teachers unions, who hate children and education..... :

And that is just one example of many of how the Democrats and Republicans don't really want to solve problems nor do they have the courage to solve problems, they just care about winning elections and staying in power and they need each other to keep this monopoly on our government alive.
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If a candidate stood up and said, "Here's what we need? We need the unions to agree to concessions, we need the defense budget slashed by 80 - yes, I said 80 - percent, and we need the rich to go back to the tax rates of the 1970s." Not only would they not get one special interest group on their side, they wouldn't get one vote....despite this platform making more sense than the wishy-washy crap we see today.

Double Down · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I LOLed at this funny tweet by Alec MacGillis of the New Republic:

@AlecMacGillis: Obama gets The Economist AND Mike Bloomberg in the same day? How many Electoral College votes does the Acela quiet car carry?

zagoshe · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

LongTimeListener said:

zagoshe said:

Lugnuts said:

It's over, Moddy.

A Colin Powell endorsement, now Bloomberg, you got Chris Christie doing photo ops with him. They know.

Everything I've seen, the popular vote will be close. The EC? Not that close.
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Colin Powell endorsed Obama in 2008 and we've already been over Bloomberg's "endorsement" and Christie needs aid for his state.

I agree it is over, but those three events are not significant indicators of anything.
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Oh, they're indicators. They're just reverse indicators, like "Team A wins every time Running Back X rushes for 100 yards."

He isn't going to win because of all those endorsements. He is getting all those endorsements because he's going to win.
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Again, Powell endorsed Obama in 2008. Christie didn't endorse Obama, he praised the way he came to New Jersey's relief - because he knows he needs more relief and Bloomberg didn't exactly endorse Obama as much as he simply said Mitt Romney is an idiot.

Michael_ Gee · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Moddy, I think all Obama's political problems stem from something you just said. Things were way worse than he thought. Everything. The economy, the banking crisis, the nature of his opposition, the nature of his own party in the Senate, etc. So he wasn't aggressive enough at the start when he had momentum. And the unrealistic expectations of many of his supporters didn't help.

Dick Whitman · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

LongTimeListener said:

Moderator1 said:

OK, seriously - who wins this thing? All the poll aggregation sites seem to think Obama wins, with a very close (and maybe negative) popular vote but not a tremendously close Electoral vote. I saw one earlier that had him with 330?

I don't think the incumbent has it in the bag at all. Can anyone here put away their leanings and objectively address the question?

I saw an article mocking Nate Silver that basically said, "Trust us, no one in the Obama camp thinks there's a 77 percent chance. Maybe 50.1, and they'll take that."
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Yeah, that was Joe Scarborough's quote.

I have seen probably a dozen articles on Nate Silver in the past three days. It is shaping up as the same scouts vs. nerds debate that raged in baseball after the release of Moneyball.
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It so closely parallels the baseball battle, circa the mid-2000s, that it's spooky.

You even have the same dude in one of the lead roles.

GoochMan · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

AWESOME.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/blacks-should-vote-republican-ad-ohio.php?ref=fpblg
And to think I was leaning McClellan!

Double Down · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I feel like Old Tony teamed up with hondo to write the copy for that spot.

LongTimeListener · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Michael_ Gee said:

Moddy, I think all Obama's political problems stem from something you just said. Things were way worse than he thought. Everything. The economy, the banking crisis, the nature of his opposition, the nature of his own party in the Senate, etc. So he wasn't aggressive enough at the start when he had momentum. And the unrealistic expectations of many of his supporters didn't help.
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He also started his administration with Rahm Emanuel calling the shots. That's a guy who is very easy to hate. Not a wise personnel choice when the idea was to reach across the aisle and build consensus.

zagoshe · Nov 1, 2012

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I've actually gone over this for the last few days and really studied it and frankly, I cannot come up with a realistic model that gets Romney to 270, especially if he, as I predict he will, loses Ohio, but here is the road he must travel and he is still in play in these states so if he wins them all I suppose he could get there.....

The best case scenario I can come up with is this ---

Romney wins Ohio, Va., NC, Florida and Iowa to get 81 EVs.

Add that to the 191 he already has and he gets to 272.

If he loses Ohio, though, I can't come up with 16 other EVs to replace Ohio's 18 to get him to 270.

So the election basically does come down to Ohio, though, unlike Romney, Obama could lose it and still win the election.

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FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

JayFarrar Well-Known Member

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FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

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