I am beginning to become scared that Romney/Ryan will win. Can smart people please post here and say reassuring things to convince me that he won't?

is "He's a very nice man, I'm sure, but he *just isn't up to the job* a dog whistle? I've been hearing variants since Reagan.

Obama's going to beat Romney like a tied-up goat

I have no idea who's gonna win but this is my new favorite phrase

xp When it's my mom saying it, YES. She has never pulled this shit when talking about another president, and it is as if Obama has to be three times as good at presidentin' as the incredibly meatheaded white candidates for her to decide he was competent. Plus, creative Michelle Obama dissing, how else am I gonna get the angry white person's latest remix of what they say when they really mean 'uppity' :-(.

debates don't really change anyone's mind (Alfred OTM - the people who tune in and pay attention are already partisans) but they are usually pretty entertaining and duh Obama is gonna murder Romney how can there be any doubt

oh yah def, suzy

Obama might suddenly blurt out, "Goddamn, America!" That would be a problem.

i don't understand why the nowcast thing turned around so abruptly. is that all the dnc convention?

― caek, Monday, September 10, 2012 10:26 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

silver had a post saying basically his formula assumed a baseline convention bounce larger for the challenger than the incumbent which romney really needed but when he didnt get it it let to a fairly large correction, then obama did get a bounce so

Silver's got a book coming

Don't think debates in and of themselves change minds, but a clearly terrible performance can definitely hurt. Palin, for example, was helped by not totally flubbing it. Had she totally fucked up, her reputation would have eroded even faster. If Romney and Ryan simply hang in there, I think they benefit. But if Obama and Biden hammer them, they definitely come out weaker. The challenge is how to do that without coming off like Gore in 2000, but neither Obama nor Biden seem that sort.

I'd probably wait a couple of days till that last jobs report registers in the polling.

― clemenza, Monday, September 10, 2012 10:15 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jobs are a huge deal in this election obvs, individual job reports i suspect not so much, particularly when they keep being in the same ballpark aka limping toward recovery, which at this point p clearly favors obama

debates matter, particularly if a sweet zing occurs

I think the most important aspect of the DNC came via Clinton, when he reminded everyone how badly the US was losing jobs in 2008. That and saving the auto industry is prima facia proof that while things may not be good, we are certainly better off. There is absolutely no way to refute that. The narrative was so mired in the miserable jobs situation that many lost sight of the fact that it could be much, much worse.

this guy thinks michelle was better than bill http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/09/the-extremely-persuasive-michelle-obama

more racists have died in the last four years.

And... more have been born into racist families in racist neighborhoods in a society that has hundreds of years of institutionalized racism coursing through its veins.

Wait, four year olds can vote?

GOTTA CORNER THE INFANT ELECTORATE

Can I just point out to everyone boggling at Obama at 80% how absolutely horribly low public perception of the Republican party is and what an awful candidate Romney is. It's mind-boggling that anyone would vote that guy, frankly.

ha I was going to make Tracer's post but from the standpoint of "how many of the dead racists have been replaced by racists newly legal to vote" in order to avoid that joke

do like the idea of Romney pandering to the toddler vote tho

"Palin, for example, was helped by not totally flubbing it. Had she totally fucked up, her reputation would have eroded even faster."

How could it have eroded any faster?!?!?

when they keep being in the same ballpark aka limping toward recovery, which at this point p clearly favors obama

Yeah, that does seem to be the case; expectations have been adjusted, and 50,000-100,000 seems to be good enough. If a really bad report came through, something in the red, I'm sure that would present a problem.

Trying to imagine the world where Romney's trying to hang with DJ Lance Rock.

child voting rights is a worthy topic for speculative fiction imho

(also Alex, I don't doubt for a second that Obama is an overwhelming favorite at the moment, I just thought that American stubbornness re: changing one's mind would have mitigated more of that than it actually has based on Silver's model, hence me expecting a percentage chance number in the 70s rather than just over 80)

If a really bad report came through, something in the red, I'm sure that would present a problem.

― clemenza, Monday, September 10, 2012 12:54 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think wed maybe have to see a trend for this to matter, like two maybe three months, jobs move slow is the thing, an 08 like financial collapse on the other hand could bring down obama p fast

absolutely horribly low public perception of the Republican party is

citation needed

"The Republican party sucks." - me

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/08/21/approval-of-congress-matches-all-time-low/

Last week, a Gallup poll reported that Congress’s approval rating had hit 10%, matching a 38-year-low in that poll last reached in February 2011.

[...]

The poll also shows that President Barack Obama’s party maintains an edge in likability, with 42% viewing it positively and 40% negatively. When asked of the GOP, 36% said they held positive impressions and 45% had negative ones.

damn, the cook political report costs $350 a year

seems like romney is sinking after a terrible week, arguably his worst yet
repubs + everyone else are blasting him for dissing obama only 15 minutes before he made a statement on the murders in libya
his bumbling lack of direction is what gives me hope

I dunno, I'm less concerned about romney looking terrible than I am about people's irrational hatred of obama. I've got some conservative distant relatives as FB friends and today one of them posted about obama being weak on libya. feels like at this point he could put on a suit of armor and lead the troops into battle and conservative voters would still call him weak on defense. a buddy of mine works at an auto body shop in RI, prolly the bluest state in the nation, and there's a pretty deep and widespread hatred of obama there as well.

I'm hoping these are weird pockets of discontent. the polls would certainly indicate so.

if only these conservative white people had a strong black man to rally around. that would satisfy them. there's nothing conservative white people love more than a strong black man.

lol

I'm hoping there's some kind of reverse bradley effect in play where these people go into the voting booth and cannot bring themselves to pull the lever for a complete idiot, no matter what they say publicly

How could it have eroded any faster?!?!?

The real question is how it might have separated the 'would vote for zombie hitler if nominated Republican nominee' from the would-be independents who lean right. She didn't lose everybody since she came across to a lot of Independent women and white ppl, as a woman they were likely to have known and she didn't entirely flub it in the face of Biden's condescension. However, she probably turned away as many upper middle class, moderate Republican women as she kept 'starbursts' men.

i wouldn't go around saying mitt's handling of the embassy attacks has hurt his chances until you start to see some polling evidence that it's hurting his chances. yes even the gatekeeper press is giving him poor marks but that may not matter.

it might reach a point where romney's floor can't go any lower no matter what he does

The Republicans are still so much in thrall to the past (i.e. Reagan) that they're always rehashing stuff that worked once but is presently considered settled by everyone who isn't a die-hard. Name a competitive Socialist party in Europe that actually believes in the State taking over all the means of production? The new-found and largely incoherent Muslimphobia on the Right (Really? Sharia is your fear?) is weakened by the 'US is a Christian nation' silliness of the Xtian Right for Libertarians and Independents. The Republican brand is horribly weak right now; the kids are less racist, anti-immigrant and homophobic than in the past, there are fewer 'intellectuals' and they're less and less relevant and mostly scared of engaging with facts, the economy has been mixed since the 30's yet less sclerotically than in ages; all that's left are shrill zombies pissed off that the world doesn't revolve around their entitled little precious selves as much as when they were kids. Good luck finding a way to sell that as a path to a brighter future with that. It's the politics of pouting and even Reagan, God curse his Stanic soul, actually offered a brighter option than 'malaise' however wrong-headed he was.

Romney isn't the problem; the Republican coalition is the problem.

also dem party has legit co-opted many of the republicans most loved ideas

like why would foreign affair hawks stick w/ the republican party when obama is such a stone cold motherfucking killer?

Tomasky remarked today that if Obama is reelected then he will have taken the Democratic Party back to '48.

That sounds about right

w/o Thurmond, tho

Yeah, this makes sense:

http://gawker.com/5943076/rush-limbaugh-theorizes-that-al-qaeda-gave-bin-laden-up-to-help-obama-win-re+election

I really want to read a good history that addresses Johnson's claim that the Civil Rights act of '64 would lose the South for the Democratic Party and the radical, historical shift of the South from the bedrock of Democratic politics to the bedrock of Republican politics. From NASCAR to unborn fetuses to racial backlash about bussing and welfare, etc..., the egalitarian streak in Scotch-Irish commoners is now little about politics and rights and mostly about cultural butt-hurtedness. If they weren't such dicks I'd be happy to condescendingly feel bad about how fucked they've been by their 'betters'.

mw otm

throw in "the rise of the Sunbelt, decline of manfacturing"

manufacturing too

I think a total collapse of the republican party in our lifetime is not even a particularly radical prediction at this point. they've dug the hole too deep.

when romney gets 48% of the vote i think we're a long way off from a "collapse"