The new and improved, fight-free Romney vs. Obama thread!

I remember people being surprised that he picked Gore in 1996 because the perception at the time was that they were two similar people from the same region. Obviously, Clinton could have won without Gore.

The only two close elections since 1960 were 2000 and 2004 and I don't think the VP selection on either side had anything to do with the hopes of someone carrying a state. I doubt Bush needed Cheney to carry Wyoming and its three electoral votes. I doubt Gore needed Lieberman to win Connecticut and Edwards wasn't able to deliver North Carolina, but I don't think he was expected to...

 

The 1968 and 1976 elections were both extremely close. In '68 Nixon garnered a whopping 43.4 percent of the vote and his running mate didn't enable the ticket to capture Maryland. Humphrey's running mate was from the electorally insignificant Maine (which went Dem).

In '76 both Carter and Ford picked running mates from states that were usually locks for their respective parties.

 

Dem Senate candidate in North Dakota is also distancing herself from President Obama:

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76706.html#ixzz1vtcXOEF5

I imagine we'll see a lot more stories like this.

 

Winning by 57 in 1976 was hardly a blowout, but I'm not sure I would call that "extremely close" at least not compared to the 2000 and 2004 elections... Nixon won by more than 100 electoral votes in 1968.

 

It is time to be concerned.

The North Dakota candidate should come out strongly in favor of gay marriage.

 

The belief among candidates (and we've seen it from both parties that they can separate themselves from an incumbent President of their own party would be touching if it weren't so stupid. People like loyalty and dislike weaklings and opportunism.

 

I was going by percentage points in the popular vote. Nixon's margin of victory was smaller than Bush's in 2004.

 

More evidence that it's not the people who vote that count, but the people who count the votes.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/05/ohio_republicans_want_to_disallow_ballots_with_errors_caused_by_poll_workers_.html?dummies

Whether it’s onerous (and expensive) voter ID rules that will render as many as 10 percent of Americans ineligible to vote, proof of citizenship measures, restricting registration drives, cancellation of Sunday voting, or claims that voting should be a privilege as opposed to a right, efforts to discount and discredit the vote have grown bolder in recent years, despite vanishingly rare claims of actual vote fraud. The sole objective appears to be ensuring that fewer Americans vote in 2012 than voted in 2008. But as strange as the reasons to purge certain votes have been around the nation, things have grown even stranger in recent weeks in Ohio, where GOP lawmakers have gone after not only voters but the federal courts, in an effort to wiggle out of statewide voting rules.

Basically, the Ohio Secretary of State wants to be able to reject any ballot if there's evidence of mistakes by a poll worker. Not acts of malice, but the kind of screwups that come with have an army of 85-year-olds working the polls. By the way, Ohio's GOP tried (and failed, so far) to pass a law that would bar any poll worker from directing you to the right precinct (for example, my polling site has four different precincts, so if I went to a table and found out my name wasn't there, under a law like this the poll workers couldn't tell me where my correct table is, or even if I were at the wrong one).

 

North Dakota has gone Tea Party. There is hell to pay, though, when the farm subsidy checks are late.

 

How DARE anyone question my right to be ON THE TIT!?!?!

 

I wish popular vote mattered more than it did.

There are 40 states right now that barring something major happening, we already know which candidate they're going to support. Hell, there are probably 35 states where we already know which candidate they're going to support in 2016.

Do you think Obama goes to NY or California for anything other than fundraisers? Do you think Romney makes too many stops in Alabama, Mississippi and Texas?

It's all about 9-10 states and if you break it down even more, it's probably really about Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.

 

That might help explain why Ohio and Florida are among the states pushing hardest for election "reform" that magically seems to have the effect of making it harder for voters of traditionally Democratic constituency to vote, or otherwise depressing turnout. For all the talk of preventing vote fraud, little has ever been found, and one prominent case -- the conviction of Indiana's Secretary of State on felony charges relating to voting based on an address that wasn't his -- had fuck-all to do with the state's voter ID law. Let that sink in -- the state's top official handling elections was engaged in voter fraud. (Also, Mitch Daniels got it finagled so the second-place finisher, a Democrat, didn't get to take office, and he instead got to appoint someone to replace him.)

I know I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but to me the attempts at suppressing votes are clear indicators that the Republican party, knowing it is gradually losing its base demographically, will instead trying to make sure the other side's base either doesn't get to vote, or has a damn hard time doing it. This is hardly the first period of time in the United States when this has happened.