President Obama Re-Elected - Page 79

On May 02 2012 01:49 BluePanther wrote:


On it's face, it purports to be entirely environmental. But your mandates solution affects me in small ways, such as in fuel prices. To observe your pet project, you're essentially asking me to pay the costs. It dilutes my money, and indirectly my freedom to do with it what I wish (we're talking non-taxed income expenditures here).

I'm not saying both sides don't engage in this behavior. I'm just saying that Dems do it in a far more subtle and powerful ways. It's far better politically as well.

On May 02 2012 11:49 Jon Huntsman wrote:


Just because someone is academically educated does not necessarily mean they are intelligent. Most Republican voters have done pretty well for themselves financially because they have entrepreneural minds, whereas a lot of Democratic voters who are academics at university would never know how to make money out in the real world.

On May 02 2012 03:14 Wegandi wrote:


You are aware that at no time in the 1930s did unemployment ever dip below 14.6%. (caveat it was ~9% in 1930..), and for the majority of the years involved it was above 20%. If you call that a fix, I don't want anything to do with your disastrous economics and value-system.

On May 02 2012 12:45 DeepElemBlues wrote:
There's no rule that you have to refer to a President as "President <Last Name>," nor is it considered bad manners to refer to him to as "Mr. <Last Name>" or simply by his last name.

On May 02 2012 12:45 DeepElemBlues wrote:
After three years too much time has passed to blame your predecessor.

On May 02 2012 12:45 DeepElemBlues wrote:
Great polarization is good, it means that a lasting change is coming one way or another and sooner rather than later. At the time people think it's terrible but it's just a sign that the old political orders are not delivering results anymore and people are interested in finding new solutions.

With most current presidential polls of likely voters showing 9 percent to 10 percent undecided, the question of where the undecided votes go becomes of paramount importance.

To answer this question, I compared the final Gallup polls with the actual results in every race in which an incumbent president was opposing an insurgent since 1964. This included the Johnson-Goldwater race of 1964, the Nixon-McGovern race of 1972, the Carter-Ford race of 1976, the Reagan-Carter-Anderson race of 1980, the Reagan-Mondale race of 1984, the Clinton-Bush-Perot race of 1992, the Clinton-Dole race of 1996 and the Bush-Kerry race of 2004.

In these races, the undecided vote went heavily for the insurgent and the incumbent lost vote share between the final poll and the election, even when the incumbent was winning the contest easily overall. Six of eight presidents seeking reelection performed worse than the final Gallup poll predicted, while one finished the same (Reagan in 1984) and one gained votes (Bush in 2004). Seven of the nine insurgent candidates did better than the final Gallup survey predicted.

• In 1964, Johnson lost 3 points to Goldwater at the end.

• In 1972, Nixon lost 1 point to a third-party candidate.

• In 1976, there was a 4-point swing to Carter.

• In 1980, there was a 3-point swing to Reagan or Anderson.

• In 1984, there was no change between the final poll and the results.

• In 1992, there was a 1-point shift away from Bush. In that contest, there was also a 5-point swing away from Clinton to Perot at the end.

• In 1996, there was a 5-point swing away from Clinton and to Dole or Perot.

• Only Bush in 2004 ran better in the result than in the final poll, by 
2 points.

In other words, of the total of 
19 points that shifted between the final poll and the election results, 17 points or 89 percent went to the challenger.

The implications of these findings are that the current polls, while seemingly close, portend a strong Republican victory. The RealClearPolitics.com average of the past eight presidential horse race polls shows Obama with a 47-44 lead over Romney. But among likely voters, in the Rasmussen survey (all others were of either registered voters or adults), the president was running behind Romney by 48-44.

But given the historical fact that the final results are almost always worse for the president and almost never better, we really need to focus on the Obama vote share rather than his lead or lack of one against Romney. If Obama is, indeed, getting 44 percent of the vote, he is likely facing, at least, an 11-point loss. If he is getting 47 percent of the vote, he is looking, at least, at a 6-point defeat. (Given the fact that six of the eight incumbent presidents not only lost the undecided, but finished lower than the pre-election survey predicted, it would be more likely that Obama’s margin of defeat would be greater than even these numbers suggest.)

There are other indications of a Republican landslide in the offing. Party identification has moved a net of eight points toward the GOP since the last election. In Senate races, there are currently eight Democratic-held seats where Republicans are now leading either the Democratic incumbent or the Democratic candidate for the open seat.

The predictions of a close election are all based on polling of registered voters — not likely voters — and fail to account for the shift in votes against the incumbent that has been the norm of the past presidential contests.

On May 03 2012 13:11 xDaunt wrote:
Dick Morris (Clinton's former adviser) is predicting a landslide victory for Romney:

On May 03 2012 13:11 xDaunt wrote:
Dick Morris (Clinton's former adviser) is predicting a landslide victory for Romney:



http://www.dickmorris.com/undecided-lean-to-insurgent/

On May 02 2012 00:54 BluePanther wrote:


With all due respect, in America, legally speaking, Corporations ARE people. I know it sounds super confusing, but that's how corporations are treated under the law. What Mitt said was 100% accurate. What people think that saying means... is not what it means.

On May 03 2012 13:59 Signet wrote:
While I don't think it will be a landslide either way (unless the impact of voter registration and ID laws is large), I do think Obama's projected odds are inflated. It's hard to call anyone a favorite at the national level with the extreme amount of polarization today among the electorate; these days getting 53% of the split vote is a huge deal.

On May 03 2012 13:44 Jon Huntsman wrote:
Romney's much too intelligent to throw his hat in the ring if he didn't think he could win it. He's not like McCain, who was a career politician who had a stint in the army. Romney knows that if he wants to be a CEO of a company, he'll be one. He knows that if he wants to be President, and that the incumbent is someone who lacks experience, he'll get it. Obama relied on sentimentality to get elected. Romney isn't an meatheaded Christian like Huckabee who was too afraid to take on Obama becase Huckabee is like Obama - someone who influences people's emotions through hype, rather than rely on intelligence. Huckabee is gambling on the hopes that Obama will win this time so that he can challenge the Presidency in 2016. Mitt knows when a job has to be done, he can do it. You don't get to that level of richness without knowing how to get what you want.

On May 03 2012 14:19 Jumbled wrote:

I'm not sure I'd equate a willingness to say whatever people want to hear with intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- A prominent Iowa Republican, and a major supporter of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, did not hesitate to answer when asked recently how many of the Hawkeye State's 28 delegates he expects Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to have heading into the national convention in Tampa this August.

"Twenty," he said.

Conversations with numerous Iowa Republicans confirms the same thing: The state party establishment is dreading a Paul rout on June 15 and 16 at the two-day congressional district/state convention in Des Moines.

"Paul is costing the state a lot of credibility," said Bob Haus, a GOP consultant who most recently headed up Texas Gov. Rick Perry's campaign in the state.

Another Republican operative who works for a statewide official sounded an even more despondent note.

"It does not sound encouraging. The Paul people are in a position to control the delegates, and the result would be chaotic for the Republican Party of Iowa and bring it to a screeching halt, rendering it completely irrelevant to our efforts here," the Republican aide told The Huffington Post. "Nobody would rely on [the state party] for anything."

After the fiasco earlier this year involving the caucus results, Iowans are nervous that if Paul gets a majority of the delegates, it will endanger their first-in-the-nation primary status. On Jan. 3, Romney was reported the winner, only to have the state GOP announce two weeks later that the result was inconclusive, then to reverse again and say that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was the victor. The party chairman, Matt Strawn, resigned as a result of the confusion.

On May 03 2012 13:42 sunprince wrote:


Dick Morris was always a conservative except when he served as an advisor for Bill Clinton (who was a personal friend), and mostly "helped" Clinton win re-election by convincing him to adopt Republican policies. Describing him primarily as Clinton's former advisor, when he's a Fox News analyst and conservative writer, is disingeuous at best.

Regardless, his prediction is way too early; it's far from the final Gallup polls he's using as a basis for his argument. Obama hasn't even begun to deploy his sizable war chest, which will certainly make a major impact.