Nov07
Michael Barone
on November 7, 2012 at 10:08 amI take some pleasure in finding I have been wrong, because it’s an opportunity to learn more. As I prowl through the 2012 election statistics I will have an opportunity to learn much more about America and where we are today. A nation dissatisfied with the results of a Democratic president, Democratic Senate and Republican House has decided to return a Democratic president, Democratic Senate and Republican House. Lots to learn for all of us.
Indeed.
Gallup expected the white vote to be 78% of the electorate. Rasmussen expected 73%. It was 72%.
Demographically, 2008 was not a fluke. Instead, it looks like a preview of a new normal (for presidential election years, anyway).
Yes, and Republicans had better get over their fear of immigrants and start courting Latino voters if they want to have any chance of competing in future elections.
There is nothing the GOP can offer Latinos that the Democrats cannot one-up. The Democrats are globalist universalists. They would tear down all borders everywhere if they could, and any stated reservations to doing so would only be unprincipled exceptions.
Yes, they can. Not by offering a lite version of the same product, but by explaining why a vote for the GOP is in their, and their children’s, best interest.
Sorry, platitudes pales in comparison to amnesty and subsidized college tuition.
If the Democrats dared to be globalist universalists they wouldn’t define “Universal Health Care” in such a way as to exclude 95% of the globe.
They’d never even admit the cognitive dissonance to themselves. I wonder how much support the welfare state would continue to have if it became clear that, for a utility function which values welfare more than property rights, the simplistic utilitarian optimum isn’t “We take rich people’s stuff and give it to you” but rather “We take your stuff and give it to the billions of non-Americans poorer than you”.
(Not to slag on utilitarians: when the non-simplistic ones see Americans with an order of magnitude more wealth than billions of others, they think to ask “how did that happen” and “how can we replicate that” before “how can we spread that around”)
We lost this election when we threw out the melting pot.
The GOP is no long able to communicate American ideals, only parrot Democrat-European-Fabian ones writ small.
It’s time for the theological wing of the Republican party to sit down and shutup. Nobody cares about abortion, it’s never going to be made illegal so get over it. Shut up about gay people, they don’t hurt anybody and any perceived moral decay of society is in your head. We need to embrace classical liberalism, stop being so damned protectionist, and for the love of god never ever discuss the topic of rape again.
There’s also the notion that marijuana intoxication is somehow much worse, and thus prohibited, than alcohol intoxication.
Well, I do have a problem with this. If I don’t want to be intoxicated, I can avoid drinking alcohol. I can’t avoid breathing when someone lights up right next to me, though.
Ban it in public spaces like smoking cigarettes, and treat violators the way violators of using marijuana are treated now. Those who respect the right of others, let them munch in peace.
No. They need education just like the rest of the population. The difference is most of them are getting it. They aren’t the one’s making all the noise, they just need to learn not to respond when being poked. Most of the theological wing you are talking about have already taken your advice, but there will always be some that lack maturity (regardless of age.)
There is a reason these hot topic subjects are out there. Because the media wants it out there. Even if that ‘wing’ didn’t respond at all, they would march past them with big gavels and make stuff up.
I agree somewhat. The topic of rape is something that the liberals love to throw in a conservatives face so they can watch them squirm. They just need to pivot to being tough on crime and then leave. it. at. that. And this whole business of proposing an amendment to ban gay marriage has just got to stop.
Yeah, what happened to that Romney landslide the pro-freedom blogosphere was predicting? I guess conservatives and libertarians are as good at political prognostication as most Obama Zombies are in grasping basic economics.
Well, they look at the youth vote and think it was a fluke based on history being made. We were all being told how disengaged they were this time.
Romney won the over 45s and lost the under. Satan went after the less experience Eve and it continues to work.
This is now a permanent condition that will only get worse. Big tent isn’t the solution because a compromise of principles is part of the problem.
The only solution at this point is collapse and renewal. Just what the left wanted but ironically it comes only after they took power. This actually fits scriptural prophecy about food costing a days wages which I thought to be only to happen locally in some places. Perhaps it will happen generally and world wide? I was reminded today by someone, “not to lean on my own understanding.”
“The youth vote”–members of the Dumbest Generation who get their political philosophy from such astute scholars as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.
The solution to Bill Maher and Jon Stewart is ridicule. We need some to forcefully ridicule their ideas in a way the youth will respond to. Young people are very sensitive to looking stupid (older folks, if still involved in life have gotten over it. They’re used to looking stupid.)
According to the latest counts, Obama received about 10 million fewer votes than the 69 million he received in 2008. Romney received about 2 million fewer votes than the 59 million McCain received in 2008. I understand where Obama voters went, but I’m at a loss why Romney didn’t pick up at least a percentage of those voters. If Romney held on to at least all McCain voters the results of the election last night would very likely have been much different as Obama’s margin of victory in the swing states was very thin.
If you had told me on Tuesday morning Obama was losing 10 million votes, I would have surely thought Romney had a 99% chance of winning the election. Clearly, a certain percentage of the population was very unhappy with party bickering and simply decided not to vote.
I guess we are in for at least two more years of gridlock. Thank you everyone who stayed home.
So what did Gary Johnson get?
Gary Johnson got 1 million votes or about 1%.
Ken,
Only a million votes, 1 Percent, not enough to qualify for federal funding. Pity as he should have been the Republican pick, except he actually believes in personal freedom.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/07/gary-johnson-pulls-one-million-votes-one
Only a million votes, 1 Percent, not enough to qualify for federal funding.
So we’ve got to the point where the Libertarians want to qualify for a subsidy from the taxpayers, and you think that’s good?
Why is it so complicated to get everywhere in the ballot in the US?
It’s a shame Glenn Beck plays the clown. He very clearly states in his book “Cowards” why Ron Paul and Gary Johnson fail. Paul and Johnson are not among the cowards in the book btw. Beck has a version of libertarianism that would play very well with a national crowd if the right person championed it.
Perhaps Romney had trouble picking up those votes because, although we don’t want to admit it perhaps, it was a contest between:
1. A big-city Yankee liberal from a wacko religion, who is a bedmate of big-financial firms and supports government health care mandates.
2. See 1.
Don’t forget they were also both Harvard Lawyers
> According to the latest counts, Obama received about 10 million
> fewer votes than the 69 million he received in 2008. Romney
> received about 2 million fewer votes than the 59 million McCain
> received in 2008.
No mystery there, I think. Although Southern working class whites overwhelmingly turned out for Romney, it seems the ones in economically depressed Midwestern states stayed home (except for auto workers in OH and MI of course…for O). To some extent, Obama’s attack ads discouraged these folks from showing up. But a related problem is Mitt Romney felt totally “alien” to them … he wasn’t proposing anything tangible at all.
According to opinion polls, no demographic has a bleaker view of the future than white working class males. They dislike Obama, alright, but they don’t feel someone like Mitt Romney is going to make things better. So consequently Romney’s share of the white vote was underwhelming in those states where he needed it the most, although he did very well nationally thanks to the South and Mountain States.
If the GOP had nominated an “I feel your pain!” type of populist/Wall Street sceptic such as Mike Huckabee, I think the election would have been a bit closer. Santorum tried to fill the nice but he lacks political talent.
MARCU$
“I guess we are in for at least two more years of gridlock.”
Gridlock may be our only hope if “Il Dufe” uses his second term to go full Mugabe and implement the dreams he got from his commie father. (Not to mention commie Uncle Frank, apparently young Barry’s Obi-Wan Kenobi).
The only way I can reconsile the election results with related stats is massive democrat fraud. Given the visible misconduct yesterday, I’d be suprised if there wasn’t a great deal going on under the radar.
This would fit with his premium voters voting early (so they could also vote late.)
I am sure there was fraud as there is in every election but not in the tens or hundreds of thousands in any given state. Fraud was not needed for Obama to win this one.
Wodun,
I agree, and and usually it goes both ways with outliers from both parties engaged in it.
We should work to put an end to it.
Votes are still being tallied but looks like Romney got less votes than McCain in 08 and Kerry in 04.
It sure looked like Republicans and conservatives were enthused to vote but could not even muster the turn out of 08.
Maybe the voter suppression laws worked more against the Republicans than the Democrats, especially since many older retirees tend to vote Republican, which would be poetic justice
Ummm…
Since when is being required to do something you have to do to buy beer, cigarettes, or prescription drugs “voter suppression”?
It seems Philly had scores of districts with 99% voter turnout, with 99% of them voting for Obama – as Black Panthers guarded the polls.
He was wrong because he wasn’t as good at numbers as data scientists like Nate Silver (note that Nate Silver is not some unique prognosticator; a few other statistician guys got very similar results).
As for why the American electorate made the choice they did, that’s an entirely different question.
Nothing I having been telling you folks for a long while. The Tea Party may have started out as an economic movement, but they got astroturfed into being part of the Republican Religious Right which especially doomed their Senate picks.
But no, you folks didn’t want to learn the lesson of their senate losses in Nevada, Delaware, and Alaska when they picked unelectable (to be charitable) candidates to run, so you got another round of losers this year giving the Senate to the Democrats as a present wrapped in a bow.
What you need is a true freedom movement, one that supports both economic freedom as well as personal freedom. One Ayn Rand, who supported Abortion Rights and who felt the government had no business telling two consenting adults (gay marriage) to do, would agree with it. Unfortunately most Tea Partiers seem to just stop at her views on economic property rights and neglect the rest of her views of individual rights not realizing they are a package deal. Its impossible to have one without the other.
In 2008, Reid had the casino bosses march over their employees when it was clear that Sharon Angle was winning, which she did everywhere in the state including Las Vegas and Reno until he did that late in the game.
She won on ideas. He won on corruption. Reid may be the most dishonest politician in the country.