2012 US Presidential Race Catch All

This is beautiful.

If you listen to 3:20-ish, she starts blaming the loss on all you people who voted for Gary Johnson and Ron Paul.

She literally says she wants to kill you. "you helped obama win you f**king assholes."

I can appreciate an irrational rage monster.

Question -- and I'm too lazy to google it and I'd rather hear it from sane people; what in the hell is this "obama phone" meme?

edit: I have become much less judgmental over the last few years, but goddamn do I hate the word "supper."

Seth wrote:

Question -- and I'm too lazy to google it and I'd rather hear it from sane people; what in the hell is this "obama phone" meme?

Government program to subsidize phone service to the poor. It was (relatively) recently adapted for cell phones and not just land lines.

Of course, the program and its change were both in play before Obama took office, but that's not really getting in the way of that particular complaint gaining momentum.

I don't understand how winning 50% of the vote vs 48% of the vote for the loser is seen as a huge Democratic victory. I agree with whoever said it, I don't think the GOP will see this as damnation of their party and they have to make some radical change, they lost by 2%, they'll keep on doing what they do and try harder next time.

I also don't think it is fair to categorize Republicans as "old angry white men", there are not 58 million of those and that is how many voted for Romney. We shouldn't dismiss and marginalized what 48% of people voted for, it isn't like some small minority of voters that are solely old white men that you can laugh off as yep that is my crazy uncle. Almost 60 million people believed in it enough to vote, I don't think Republicans are going anywhere as a main political party.

5 minutes in...will I really get a single payer system?

And to recap. Socialism for Oil companies=Good. Socialism for people with the power to cast votes=evil?

I like how she equates web trolling with working her ass off.

Butterscotch Schnapps?

Obamaphones are those phones they advertise on afternoon tv during the courtroom tv shows and Maury? huh.

Okay this is might be a tough request but I'm curious -- can anyone find liberals flipping out in a rage after the Bush re-election in 2004?

btw -- listen to that video to 19:40 and she ALSO blames the Romney loss on truthers, birthers, chemtrail people, and those who are trying to say Brietbart was murdered. "Your conspiracy theories make us all look insane so shut the f**k up."

so, umm....silver lining?

edit: she was born on July 4th, so that "gives [her] a better perspective." nevermind.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't understand how winning 50% of the vote vs 48% of the vote for the loser is seen as a huge Democratic victory. I agree with whoever said it, I don't think the GOP will see this as damnation of their party and they have to make some radical change, they lost by 2%, they'll keep on doing what they do and try harder next time.

I also don't think it is fair to categorize Republicans as "old angry white men", there are not 58 million of those and that is how many voted for Romney. We shouldn't dismiss and marginalized what 48% of people voted for, it isn't like some small minority of voters that are solely old white men that you can laugh off as yep that is my crazy uncle. Almost 60 million people believed in it enough to vote, I don't think Republicans are going anywhere as a main political party.

Latinos voted for Obama by like 40-45 points or so. If you look at the changing demographics of this country, you see a population that is getting progressively more diverse, and the GOP traditionally does better in the white vs. the nonwhite vote. The people who traditionally vote for the GOP are declining in number, and, if the Republican party doesn't change, its likely voter base will be smaller in 2016 and smaller every year after that.

Nobody is categorizing Republicans as "old angry white men" (other than Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, his quote), it's that those old angry white men are admittedly a group who traditionally votes solidly Republican. That group is shrinking in size, and the GOP's policies have clearly not been oriented towards appealing to women or nonwhite voters. If the GOP doesn't change, they'll be irrelevant for years to come.

Yeah look at this year's demographics. Click on the one for ethnicity.

Obama is +85, +64, and +44 with blacks, non-whites, and latinos respectively.

Romney's up +22 with whites. White men, it's +33.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/eU7pt.jpg)

Most shocking part of that video "I don't have children, I live alone". You don't say!

I must admit, I'm a little pissed off. I just found out that "America is officially a socialist nation". We'll its been 48 hours and no one has given me sh*t. I WANT MAH HANDOUTZ!

Bear wrote:

Most shocking part of that video "I don't have children, I live alone". You don't say!

I must admit, I'm a little pissed off. I just found out that "America is officially a socialist nation". We'll its been 48 hours and no one has given me sh*t. I WANT MAH HANDOUTZ!

Sadly the last handout I remember getting was that 300 dollar check from W.

The GOP has lost the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections. They Republican's haven't won by a margin as large as Obama did since Reagan. I think the gap is a lot larger than the 2% suggests.

Seth wrote:

Obamaphones are those phones they advertise on afternoon tv during the courtroom tv shows and Maury? huh.

Okay this is might be a tough request but I'm curious -- can anyone find liberals flipping out in a rage after the Bush re-election in 2004?

btw -- listen to that video to 19:40 and she ALSO blames the Romney loss on truthers, birthers, chemtrail people, and those who are trying to say Brietbart was murdered. "Your conspiracy theories make us all look insane so shut the f**k up."

so, umm....silver lining?

edit: she was born on July 4th, so that "gives [her] a better perspective." nevermind.

I think your observation is part of the reason there are very few liberal or progressive radio programs. They just don't have a big enough audience to stay alive. Yet on the other side, you can't go through the AM dial without hitting dozen "conservative" stations. The local station here in Syracuse is almost exclusively "Obama is the devil" 24/7. Liberals just get on with their lives. They don't sit by the radio all day long listening to how much the other party sucks chat.

As for this troglodyte on the YouTube, this is what you get when you feed someone with a questionable grasp on reality is fed a steady diet of Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh. My fear is that one of these nutters crosses the line and tries to act on their irrationality.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't understand how winning 50% of the vote vs 48% of the vote for the loser is seen as a huge Democratic victory. I agree with whoever said it, I don't think the GOP will see this as damnation of their party and they have to make some radical change, they lost by 2%, they'll keep on doing what they do and try harder next time.

Except they didn't lose by 2% of the vote--I know what you're saying, but you're leaving out that they lost by a lot more than 2% in (edit for numbers: Virginia : 3.0/ Colorado: 4.7/ Pennsylvania : 5.2/ Iowa: 5.6 percent/ New Hampshire: 5.8 / Nevada: 6.6 / Wisconsin: 6.7 so that's 68 EC votes by my count; 46 by 5% or more) waaaay more swing states than the minimum the Democrats needed to get the Electoral Votes to win. In the end, that's what wins elections: not the popular vote, the EC vote.

That said, your post did trigger a question in my mind beyond just the EC: we hear about vote totals, but not everyone votes. So I did some quick math, and I could be wrong as I was adding up a bunch of numbers quickly, but if you total up all the people living in states that went for Obama and all the people living in states that went for Romney, I come out with only about 120-odd million people for Romney. So that's not 2%, that's almost twice as many people living in states that went for Obama.

I'd really like to see an official number on that, because that's even more lopsided than the EC vote. I figured that would be the case since the EC has those two electors for every state regardless of population, but that's like supermajority lopsidedness. If we had a straight-up popular direct vote, it's possible Obama could have won an even bigger landslide.

I also don't think it is fair to categorize Republicans as "old angry white men", there are not 58 million of those and that is how many voted for Romney. We shouldn't dismiss and marginalized what 48% of people voted for, it isn't like some small minority of voters that are solely old white men that you can laugh off as yep that is my crazy uncle. Almost 60 million people believed in it enough to vote, I don't think Republicans are going anywhere as a main political party.

It's true that they're not all Crazy Uncles, but there's something there that's fishy, and I think this article that was on Slate a couple of days ago nails the issue:

Polarization would mean that various races were mutually pulling apart, toward their favored candidates. "Minorities" is not a race (nor, you may have noticed, is "women"). Minorities and women are the people standing still, while white men run away from them.

...

White people don't like to believe that they practice identity politics. The defining part of being white in America is the assumption that, as a white person, you are a regular, individual human being. Other demographic groups set themselves apart, to pursue their distinctive identities and interests and agendas. Whiteness, to white people, is the American default.

Yet Mitt Romney's election strategy depends on the notion that the white vote is separate from the rest of the vote, and can be captured as such. Back in August, National Journal ran a report on campaign math headlined "Obama Needs 80% of Minority Vote to Win 2012 Presidential Election":

Romney’s camp is focused intently on capturing at least 61 percent of white voters. That would provide him a slim national majority—so long as whites constitute at least 74 percent of the vote, as they did last time, and Obama doesn’t improve on his 80 percent showing with minorities.

Again, why are "minorities" treated as a bloc here? The story mentions no particular plan by the Obama campaign to capture the nonwhite vote. Instead, it discusses how the Romney forces hope to get a bigger share of white voters than John McCain did—by "stressing the increased federal debt" and attacking "Obama's record on spending and welfare."

Romney's supporters might not be racist--and certainly a good amount of them are not--but the campaign used to reach them was.

CheezePavilion wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't understand how winning 50% of the vote vs 48% of the vote for the loser is seen as a huge Democratic victory. I agree with whoever said it, I don't think the GOP will see this as damnation of their party and they have to make some radical change, they lost by 2%, they'll keep on doing what they do and try harder next time.

Except they didn't lose by 2% of the vote--I know what you're saying, but you're leaving out that they lost by a lot more than 2% in (edit for numbers: Virginia : 3.0/ Colorado: 4.7/ Pennsylvania : 5.2/ Iowa: 5.6 percent/ New Hampshire: 5.8 / Nevada: 6.6 / Wisconsin: 6.7 so that's 68 EC votes by my count; 46 by 5% or more) waaaay more swing states than the minimum the Democrats needed to get the Electoral Votes to win. In the end, that's what wins elections: not the popular vote, the EC vote.

That said, your post did trigger a question in my mind beyond just the EC: we hear about vote totals, but not everyone votes. So I did some quick math, and I could be wrong as I was adding up a bunch of numbers quickly, but if you total up all the people living in states that went for Obama and all the people living in states that went for Romney, I come out with only about 120-odd million people for Romney. So that's not 2%, that's almost twice as many people living in states that went for Obama.

I'd really like to see an official number on that, because that's even more lopsided than the EC vote. I figured that would be the case since the EC has those two electors for every state regardless of population, but that's like supermajority lopsidedness. If we had a straight-up popular direct vote, it's possible Obama could have won an even bigger landslide.

I also don't think it is fair to categorize Republicans as "old angry white men", there are not 58 million of those and that is how many voted for Romney. We shouldn't dismiss and marginalized what 48% of people voted for, it isn't like some small minority of voters that are solely old white men that you can laugh off as yep that is my crazy uncle. Almost 60 million people believed in it enough to vote, I don't think Republicans are going anywhere as a main political party.

It's true that they're not all Crazy Uncles, but there's something there that's fishy, and I think this article that was on Slate a couple of days ago nails the issue:

Polarization would mean that various races were mutually pulling apart, toward their favored candidates. "Minorities" is not a race (nor, you may have noticed, is "women"). Minorities and women are the people standing still, while white men run away from them.

...

White people don't like to believe that they practice identity politics. The defining part of being white in America is the assumption that, as a white person, you are a regular, individual human being. Other demographic groups set themselves apart, to pursue their distinctive identities and interests and agendas. Whiteness, to white people, is the American default.

Yet Mitt Romney's election strategy depends on the notion that the white vote is separate from the rest of the vote, and can be captured as such. Back in August, National Journal ran a report on campaign math headlined "Obama Needs 80% of Minority Vote to Win 2012 Presidential Election":

Romney’s camp is focused intently on capturing at least 61 percent of white voters. That would provide him a slim national majority—so long as whites constitute at least 74 percent of the vote, as they did last time, and Obama doesn’t improve on his 80 percent showing with minorities.

Again, why are "minorities" treated as a bloc here? The story mentions no particular plan by the Obama campaign to capture the nonwhite vote. Instead, it discusses how the Romney forces hope to get a bigger share of white voters than John McCain did—by "stressing the increased federal debt" and attacking "Obama's record on spending and welfare."

Romney's supporters might not be racist--and certainly a good amount of them are not--but the campaign used to reach them was.

I'm not sure I understand your math here...
Are you saying just because someone lives in a red state like NC, if they didn't vote they wanted Obama to win?

I think the actual math overwhelmingly supports Leaping Gnome here.

Nomad wrote:

I'm not sure I understand your math here...
Are you saying just because someone lives in a red state like NC, if they didn't vote they wanted Obama to win?

Not at all. What I'm saying is that if we assume that if someone lives in a red state like NC that even if they didn't vote they wanted Romney to win (and if in a blue state they wanted Obama to win) you wouldn't come out with a popular vote that was 50/48. You'd come out with something more like 60/40 or higher for Obama. It's just a stab at trying to figure out what a direct election by popular vote would look like because:

I think the actual math overwhelmingly supports Leaping Gnome here.

I'm saying that you can't just look at the popular vote and decide that one side lost/won by that amount. We don't elect based on popular vote, we elect based on Electoral College votes.

I'm sure Leaping Gnome understands that, so I think his point is along the lines of 'if you go by the popular vote and not the EC totals, the election looks close'. My point is that I don't think we can take the popular vote total under our current system and assume that's what a direct, popular vote would look like.

Actually i am glad for the electoral college because I think it shows a distinction for close popular vote races where the percentages are largely across the board versus one where you took you states and I took mine. The latter is much more indicative of a divided country than the former.

It looks like we got a mix of both scenarios. But of the 9 toss up states, Obama got 8. It doesn't mean everything but it significant to me.

I also think it is very significant that the focus really was on Florida and Ohio and Obama passed the electoral college mark without them. I think they called the election after they projected Ohio but if it had taken just 15 minutes longer or so, he would have reached 270 before then. That is a big deal as to me it underscores the fact that the media really pulled the rug out from under us with the neck and neck race.

And you can look at the popular vote as close but 2.8 million votes is a big difference. You can fit a few states entire electorate in 2.8 million votes.

Now don't take this to mean that the GOP is completely neutered. I think anyone who thinks that is in for a rude awakening. They still have plenty of earned power.

Seth wrote:

Obamaphones are those phones they advertise on afternoon tv during the courtroom tv shows and Maury? huh.

Okay this is might be a tough request but I'm curious -- can anyone find liberals flipping out in a rage after the Bush re-election in 2004?

Probably unlikely since there was no YouTube in 2004, and it's not the sort of thing you wait a year to post. I do remember stories of people crying they would move to Canada, but rage, not so much.

Seth wrote:

She literally says she wants to kill you. "you helped obama win you f**king assholes."

She should thank me, if I hadn't voted 3rd-party, I would have voted Obama.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I also don't think it is fair to categorize Republicans as "old angry white men", there are not 58 million of those and that is how many voted for Romney. We shouldn't dismiss and marginalized what 48% of people voted for, it isn't like some small minority of voters that are solely old white men that you can laugh off as yep that is my crazy uncle. Almost 60 million people believed in it enough to vote, I don't think Republicans are going anywhere as a main political party.

The problem is, their base is mostly composed of a few groups: low SES whites, old whites, and the filthy rich. It's not just angry white men as Graham put it, but it's a party with a pretty well defined base that is shrinking as a percentage of the population.

The filthy rich are an important demographic, but when it comes to actual number of votes there just aren't that many of them. Low SES whites aren't going away, but they're not having low SES white babies fast enough; the Democratic counter of low SES non-whites is where all the growth is. And old whites... well they're gonna die. And the "new old whites" that are replacing them are far less "conservative" when it comes to hating on gays and women and minorities and whatnot.

Basically, the GOP needs to clean up its act when it comes to pissing people off. It used to be they could just demonize and antagonize the groups outside of their base to rile that base up, but we're nearing a tipping point where they'll start losing more votes than they gain with that garbage.

They really need to tone down the crazy build-a-wall-around-it-all, you-must-have-this-rape-baby-that-god-gave you stuff. I certainly agree that this is not a change that is going to happen overnight, but it's clear that they absolutely must broaden the base at some point.

fangblackbone wrote:

It looks like we got a mix of both scenarios. But of the 9 toss up states, Obama got 8. It doesn't mean everything but it significant to me.

Just to nitpick a bit because Nate Silver won. There was only 1 toss-up state. The rest of them were known.

CheezePavilion wrote:

I'm sure Leaping Gnome understands that, so I think his point is along the lines of 'if you go by the popular vote and not the EC totals, the election looks close'. My point is that I don't think we can take the popular vote total under our current system and assume that's what a direct, popular vote would look like.

A better way to do this would be to take the vote proportion for each state and multiply by the number of EC votes. Better better would be to multiply by population, since the number of EC per population is distorted. I did that, and the numbers aren't appreciably different from the popular vote, suggesting that the proportion of people who vote in each state is about the same. Of course, that assumes that the proportions don't vary by party, etc. etc.

Actual national spread: 2.50%
National spread weighted by EC: 2.30% (275.2 vs 262.8) (state vote pct * state EC votes)
National spread weighted by population: 2.87% (160,272,221 vs 151,319,695) (state vote pct * 2011 census state pop)

Average EC weight of a vote in Obama states vs national average vote weight: 0.97 (highest: 2.81, D.C.; lowest: 0.85, California)
Average EC weight of a vote in Romney states vs national average vote weight: 1.05 (highest: 3.06, Wyoming; lowest: 0.86, Texas)

Of course, one might argue that if every vote counted, Democratic turnout in safe blue states would increase and Republican turnout in safe red states would increase (probably giving an additional advantage to the Democratic party.) But it's hard to say.

Hypatian wrote:

Of course, one might argue that if every vote counted, Democratic turnout in safe blue states would increase and Republican turnout in safe red states would increase (probably giving an additional advantage to the Democratic party.) But it's hard to say.

I think this is absolutely true. The most startling thing would be what this would do down-ticket. I think you'd see more Democratic Senators and Congressmen in red states and perhaps visa versa.

Not sure if this is entirely accurate, at least the segregation part. I found some other copies of the slavery map and think that it is.

Anyway:

IMAGE(http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/1082_10101431274461982_2037135002_n.jpg)

I didn't know of Biden until the first Obama campaign, was he so "Joe Biden"-y before that or is that recent?

Not surprised. Map barely changed from 2008, and I remember similar comparisons then. Possibly even in 2010 in regards to the House/Senate races.

Here's 2008's map for reference:

IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/ElectoralCollege2008.svg)

EDIT: And for some funny, here's 1976:

IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/ElectoralCollege1976.svg)

RolandofGilead wrote:

I didn't know of Biden until the first Obama campaign, was he so "Joe Biden"-y before that or is that recent?

Biden is actually pretty frickin' cool if you look at him for his career. He came onto my radar when he stood up to John Ashcroft about torture at Guantanamo.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/we...

Amazing. Two interesting quotes from the comments:

As a registered republican, I can honestly say that the primary reason I voted for Obama is because I didn't want to be associated with these people in any way, shape, or form. They do more harm than good, and my party is worse off because of it.

I'll be voting Democrat until my party is no longer BAT sh*t INSANE. Looks like it will be a while.

My best friend voted for Obama despite being a registered Republican. When I asked her why, she said, "I'm a Republican, not an idiot.
Hypatian wrote:

Of course, one might argue that if every vote counted, Democratic turnout in safe blue states would increase and Republican turnout in safe red states would increase (probably giving an additional advantage to the Democratic party.) But it's hard to say.

That's exactly what I'm arguing. The popular vote is a product of the state votes: on the one hand, Massachusetts and Minnesota had very high turnout because of ballot measures and down-ticket contests. On the other hand, the President's home state had a record low turnout, as did New York and New Jersey, while Texas was in the bottom five. Sure it's hard to say, but it's necessary to say before coming to the conclusion that this election was as close as the popular vote numbers were.

Higgledy wrote:

Amazing. Two interesting quotes from the comments:

As a registered republican, I can honestly say that the primary reason I voted for Obama is because I didn't want to be associated with these people in any way, shape, or form. They do more harm than good, and my party is worse off because of it.

I'll be voting Democrat until my party is no longer BAT sh*t INSANE. Looks like it will be a while.

My best friend voted for Obama despite being a registered Republican. When I asked her why, she said, "I'm a Republican, not an idiot.

Not sure where I read it, but there was some interesting analysis saying that part of the reason why Romney picked up more of the independent vote is that a significant population of "independents" are ex-Republicans who don't want to associate with the party. Kind of contrary to those quotes, but I think it just goes with the earlier discussion about the GOP needing to reform its image.

I think something important to bear in mind here is that this election was not what I would call a popular landslide. I don't think the Republicans need to move a whole lot to remain competitive and win in 2016. Commentators saying that this will be a new dawn from the Republican Party are engaging in wishful thinking I think.