• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

U.S. 2012 Election

On Nov 6 Who Will Win President Obama or Mitt Romney ?

  • President Obama

    Votes: 39 61.9%
  • Mitt Romney

    Votes: 24 38.1%

  • Total voters
    63
  • Poll closed .
Redeye said:
Or Canada in general - the contrast is stark and honestly, it's disturbing.

I'd further that to say that the best way to defeat a fringe opinion isn't to silence or ignore it, but to shine the light on them. Generally, such things don't hold up to scrutiny, after all. The problem is that too many people aren't willing to look deeper and see the reality.


I would argue that most partisan political opinion, from the parties themselves, from the media and, especially from the blogosphere, is fringe opinion. Most of the people I know, Americans and Canadians, are mildly partisan - while being able to admit that their party is imperfect and the opposition party/parties is/are not evil incarnate.  But many of us seem to lose our objectivity (and civility) when we are online and we condemn, utterly, that with which we simply disagree and support, vehemently, that which is, generally, more appealing to us.  :-\
 
Or it is minutiae, and I hey, I was wrong. I didn't know they included in the planned to include anything that specifically would be considered a mosque - more a cultural centre. In any case, it was spun relentlessly - and it's far more than a mosque. More to the point (and this actually demonstrates the point about reframing issues - that we're discussing something relatively minor), it shifted the discussion from anything reasonable to nonsense.


I suppose, since we're talking more than one instance, minutiae works.
 
Senator John McCain endorses President Obama!

link here http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/video/video-john-mccain-mistakenly-endorses-obama/article2294013/

This is fabulous news! Finally America is getting over the bitter partisan divide that has so long hindered them!

Things are really looking up!
 
Thank you Kalatzi; with that - let's stay on topic.
 
A viable alternative to Obamassiah & the Dumbocrats or the Rabidpublicans.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrhA0sEkuaM&feature=player_embedded


 
Haletown said:
A viable alternative to Obamassiah & the Dumbocrats or the Rabidpublicans.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrhA0sEkuaM&feature=player_embedded

I think there's quite a few people down here who would probably think that simply handing the reins over might not be so bad!

I'm going to catch some of what one of my favourite pundits calls the "GOP Clown Car" debate tonight. I'm most interested to see how Santorum's theocratic bent plays in New Hampshire, and if he and Newt get called on their rather racist comments over the last couple of days. Sure you were saying "blah", Rick.
 
Redeye said:
I think there's quite a few people down here who would probably think that simply handing the reins over might not be so bad!

I'm going to catch some of what one of my favourite pundits calls the "GOP Clown Car" debate tonight. I'm most interested to see how Santorum's theocratic bent plays in New Hampshire, and if he and Newt get called on their rather racist comments over the last couple of days. Sure you were saying "blah", Rick.

I hear they also eat the babies of democrats after the debate is over....  :facepalm:
 
If they handed the reins over to us, where would Americans go to get healhealthcare for which they are willing to pay?  And how on Earth can we as Canadians pretend to be so awesome at everything?  I mean, we can't go around, all smug-like, saying stuff like "Pfffft....we're so much better than americans...."
 
One of the reasons the current nomination process seems to be a gong show may be related to the ideas presented here: the "establishment" is going all out for a "low Beta" candidate, while outsiders want a "high Beta" candidate to break open the establishment and enact a much more radical agenda:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/safe-moderate-electable_616153.html

Safe + Moderate ≠ Electable
Low-beta isn’t always better.
Lawrence B. Lindsey
January 16, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 17

The conventional wisdom among the chattering class about the Republican field is that voters face a choice between “electability” and “ideology.” But a careful look at elections since the end of World War II suggests that is not the case. What most pundits think of as “electable,” a safe candidate attractive to moderate voters, has historically been highly unlikely to unseat an incumbent president. In the five elections since World War II in which the party out of power has picked a “safe” candidate to take on a sitting president, the result was defeat for the supposedly safe, electable challenger.

To understand why this is not always the case, consider the math of an election as composed of two parts: the “normal” or “expected” result and the variability or chance part around that normal result. The term used in markets to denote this chance or variable part is “beta.” A high-beta stock—or a high-beta candidate—might do a lot better or a lot worse than what would normally be expected, whereas a low-beta candidate (or stock) is pretty much going to do as expected, or, in the case of a stock, as the rest of the market does.

If there is an election a party would normally be expected to win, the smart thing to do is to nominate a low-beta candidate. If, on the other hand, a party is thought likely to lose, it might select a high-beta candidate. That would increase its chances of winning, though it would also increase its chances of losing big.

Statistically, the odds of winning depend a lot on whether there is an incumbent seeking reelection, as has happened in 10 of the 16 presidential races since World War II. Incumbency offers tremendous advantages, by some estimates adding at least 3 points to the “normal” result, turning a 50-50 election into one that is 53-47. Job performance matters, so a bad economy tends to subtract from this edge. With subpar growth, but no recession, President Obama might normally be expected to win narrowly, say by 1 percentage point.

If that model is right and the Republicans ran a “zero-beta” candidate, one with absolutely no variability around the “normal” result, he would perform quite respectably but lose. To be precise, he would lose by one point, 50.5 to 49.5. A very low-beta candidate, say one with a variability equivalent to half a point, would have an equal chance of producing a “tie” or losing 51-49. A high-beta candidate, with 10 times the variability of that very low-beta candidate, would have an equal chance of winning 54.5-45.5 or losing big, by 55-45. But if a party really wants to win—and doesn’t care about how badly it might lose—it should pick a high-beta candidate.

Stated simply, given the incumbent’s built-in advantage, the opposition party must nominate someone who will “shake things up” in order to win. After all, if an election was simply going to be a rerun of the previous election, the incumbent would win again. Indeed, running the same opposing candidate as the last time is the ultimate “low beta” strategy—the candidate has been vetted, is therefore “safe,” has good national name identification, and obviously has the support of the party machinery. But this recalls Einstein’s famous definition of insanity—doing the exact same thing and expecting a different result. Actually both parties have tried this—Dewey ran in 1944 and 1948 and garnered just as many votes both times; Stevenson ran in 1952 and 1956 and got clobbered by roughly the same margin.

There were three other postwar incumbent elections in which the opposition party tried the next safest thing, picking a party stalwart who had experience running for national office. Bob Dole, Senate Republican leader in 1996 and a runner-up in the 1988 presidential contest, was one such example. So was Walter Mondale in 1984, who had been the vice presidential candidate in the two previous contests. John Kerry was also “safe” in 2004, a war hero running in a nation at war. Kerry, with the least experience, probably had the highest beta of these candidates and, by the way, came the closest to unseating the incumbent. And unlike his lower-beta colleagues, Kerry actually increased his party’s popular vote over its previous performance. Still, low-beta choices have been zero-for-five at unseating incumbents.

By contrast, the five high-beta candidates who have taken on incumbents have shaken things up, sometimes in a positive way producing a rare victory over an incumbent, and sometimes in a negative way producing a disastrous landslide. Two obvious disasters were Goldwater in 1964 and McGovern in 1972, and these are the candidates most people think of when they think that high-beta candidates can’t be elected. But Ronald Reagan was the high-beta choice in 1980—and incumbent President Jimmy Carter’s preferred opponent. High-beta candidates can also be “unknowns” who simply capture the imagination or bring in a new class of voter. Carter was one such candidate in 1976, running against his party’s establishment and as a Washington outsider. Bill Clinton in 1992 was one of the highest-beta candidates ever in purely statistical terms; he actually ran third in the polls in the summer of 1992. He was also the first Boomer in a country that had been governed by World War II-era G.I.s for the previous 32 years. And Clinton, like Carter, appealed to a part of the country long ostracized by the Democratic establishment—the South.

Each of these successful high-beta candidates brought in new votes. Clinton’s 45 million was the highest total received by a Democrat until that time, even though he won with just 43 percent of the vote. And of course, Reagan reshaped the political landscape, creating the famous “Reagan Democrat.”

This is not to say that it can’t be different this time—Romney, the obvious low-beta candidate, could win. As they say in markets, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” But it is certainly not the case that, based on history, he is obviously the most “electable.” Statistically, he may be the least electable. But he may well be the candidate most likely to put in a “respectable” showing. After all, a Santorum or Gingrich might be more like a Goldwater than a Reagan.

The real attractiveness of a low-beta candidate to a party establishment is not the chance that he will win the White House, it is that other incumbents, particularly in Congress, maximize their chances for reelection precisely because things are not shaken up. Incumbents like low-beta candidates above them on the ballot. That is why the Republican establishment in Washington is overwhelmingly supportive of Mitt Romney. He maximizes the chances that Republicans hold the House and take the Senate. And there is an added bonus—if the low-beta “establishment” candidate happens to win, he is beholden to the establishment.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have nothing to disclose. I am not affiliated with any campaign and haven’t even contributed to any of the candidates. But we should realize that the electability argument is a phony one the way it is currently framed. What really should matter is which candidate will actually enact a very ambitious legislative agenda during the first six months of 2013—the historic window of opportunity for legislative accomplishment. For if we do not achieve entitlement reform, tax law changes, and regulatory improvements that lead to faster economic growth and a sharply falling deficit, by late 2013 markets will be treating us the way they are now treating Italy. And since the voters intuitively sense this, nominating the individual most likely to pull off an ambitious legislative agenda in 2013 will probably also mean nominating the most electable candidate in 2012.

Lawrence B. Lindsey’s most recent book is What a President Should Know .  .  . but Most Learn Too Late.
 
Technoviking said:
And how on Earth can we as Canadians pretend to be so awesome at everything?  I mean, we can't go around, all smug-like, saying stuff like "Pfffft....we're so much better than americans...."

Who's pretending?  And I always tell everyone in my office that Canada is way better. And to get ready, socialized medicine is coming. ;D
 
Jerry Pournelle on some of the longer term changes in US electoral politics:

http://jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=4588

A President must try to unify both his party and his country. It is not possible to win the 2012 election without attacking Obama. That will make it hard to unify the nation to begin with.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/pro-gingrich-group-posts-anti-romney-ad-featuring-mccain/

This ad was put up by a pro-Gingrich Super-PAC; in theory it was not approved by Gingrich himself or his campaign staff, and Newt is not required to comment on it. After McCain’s endorsement of Romney it was clear that Romney is the preferred candidate of what is commonly called the Republican Establishment or what I have for years called The Country Club Republicans, linear descendants of the Rockefeller Republicans who sat on their hands during the Goldwater election of 1964, and did their best to purge the Party of the Goldwater Republicans; as Bush I worked to fire every Reagan staffer at the White House, and his agents worked their way down through the party structure. The result has been an overturn of the way parties function. When I was a professor of political science I could truthfully say that the United States was, in effect, governed by a few hundred thousand self-selected volunteers who worked through from Precinct leader up. Since that time money and media have become the most important factors to parties; the Democrats rely on union members and hired campaign workers. Republicans continued to employ volunteer precinct workers for the ground game – getting the voters to the polls on election day, but over time they seem to have given that up. To some extent that has fallen to enthusiasts – the Religious Right, Tea Party – but it is not as well organized as the Democratic union-based machines.

But that’s another essay. I will say that a well constructed ground game organization can be decisive, and there is still time to build one; but the essence of the old party structure was that one supported the ticket, and got out the vote for the ticket, even if your favorite candidate was not the nominee. The Country Club Republicans relied on that kind of party loyalty to get conservative enthusiasts working for them, but they always found a good reason to abandon non-establishment Republicans, and over time the party system decayed.

With the Democrats the structure is so in thrall to unions that working your way to a decisive position in the Party starting at the precinct level seldom happens now.
 
I haven't a clue who Jodi Kantor is, but she alleges that the Obamas had a pretty lavish affair in the Whitehouse.  If a future President Mitt Romney secretly flew the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in for a private party, or a future President Rick Santorum had a secret Papal Mass, and those events became public, would there be an outcry?  I imagine that there would. 

Anyway, I have no horse in this race.  I'd much rather that both sides in this upcoming election would avoid ad hominem attacks, because I think that when people fail to counter an opponents argument (no matter what that argument is), and instead make personal attacks, then the person or side making those has just admitted defeat.  It's even more confusing when both sides do it.... 


(edited for format)
 
How else do you point out differences between your position and your opponents ? From my conservative view point the only real conservatives in the race are Perry and Santorum. Huntsman and Romney are on the left.Newt is a moderate once he sat on the couch with Speaker Pelosi supporting global warming,he was dead to me.Perry hasnt gotten off the ground.The media is giving Romney favorable press so that tells me the democrats want him to be their opponent.They did the same with McCain. There just isnt any wow factor with htis group of politicians.But any of them is better than Mr Obama.
 
tomahawk6 said:
How else do you point out differences between your position and your opponents ?
I would offer by avoiding talking about your opponent's character, and instead about their position.    EG: "You oppose/support 'x', therefore you are a bigot/hater/unintelligent".  That's the kind of argument I mean.

 
Technoviking said:
I would offer by avoiding talking about your opponent's character, and instead about their position.    EG: "You oppose/support 'x', therefore you are a bigot/hater/unintelligent".  That's the kind of argument I mean.

I agree thats a bit over the top which is why I dont vote for democrats. :camo:
 
tomahawk6 said:
I agree thats a bit over the top which is why I dont vote for democrats. :camo:
[tangent]  From my very unscientific view from afar, it appears to me that the democrats are quicker to resort to ad hominem attacks than the republicans.  (Neither side of any divide is innocent).  You know, calling G.W. Bush a moron, so and so a kook, etc. [/tangent]
 
From the election of 1800. :D

jefferson_01.gif
 
Technoviking said:
I would offer by avoiding talking about your opponent's character, and instead about their position.    EG: "You oppose/support 'x', therefore you are a bigot/hater/unintelligent".  That's the kind of argument I mean.

That's the high road of politics, however there are some that don't get the point unless its just low-brow attacks on a person, based either on facts or just simply made up.
 
PuckChaser said:
That's the high road of politics, however there are some that don't get the point unless its just low-brow attacks on a person, based either on facts or just simply made up.
I didn't just mean the politicians.  I mean even people on here, myself included, who have used terms such as "bozo" or "clowns" or "idiots" when talking about "the others"
 
tomahawk6 said:
But any of them is better than Mr Obama.

Why? What ideas have any of them advanced that are in any way credible?

It's interesting watching the candidates try to grapple with how 2011 was the best year for new jobs being created since 2005, to try to claim somehow it's in spite of the President.

Frankly, most of what I hear in the debates ranges from absurdity (sure, states can outlaw contraception), tired rhetoric (including Reagan worship), insanity (let's invade Iran, or the even more insane statement by Rick Perry about re-invading Iraq), etc. I don't hear a coherent alternative plan. I don't hear anything that is too likely to resonate I think. I do hear a lot of gaffes (Santorum's bizarre statement about blacks, Newt's almost as cryptic one), and a lot of noise.
 
Back
Top