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?

Obama handily carries the vote of the non-income-tax-paying poor in a lot of those red states.

Can you verify this?

The best push-back I've seen was some reader on Sullivan who basically said that Romney didn't mean he wouldn't govern in the name of all Americans but that his election strategy wasn't going to target this 47%. Which still begs the question, why not?

Non-unionized earners with only high school degrees are more likely to vote republican these days, and the south is a hotbed of non-union, god-fearing, low wage earners.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/18/1133341/-47-many-repubs-believe-this-stuff

Obama won 73% of the <$15K vote, 60% of the $15-30K vote etc.

David Corn also posted this "update" to his Atlantic piece:

Update: My colleague Derek Thompson picks up the baton from me and digs deeper into the demographics of the so-called 47 percent. One important note he makes is that it's often the lowest-income people in these red states who are most likely to vote Democratic -- it's just that the rest of the population is conservative enough to carry the states into the Republican column.

In 2008, Obama lost Georgia by 5 percentage points but he won 70% of voters who earned less than $30,000 -- which is precisely the demo most likely to owe no federal income tax. Obama lost Mississippi by 14 percentage points, but picked up 66% of voters who earned less than $30,000. As a general rule, Republicans win among richer voters -- both in the red states and the blue.

Of course, Romney's point remains completely fatuous

Huzzah:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/watch-full-secret-video-private-romney-fundraiser

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/06/18/the-party-of-the-american-working-man-and-woman/

At anything less than 10 percent body fat, says Martin Rooney, a well-known trainer who works with NFL and MMA athletes, “a man with his shirt off is lean and shredded. Veins everywhere and really cut up. This is the model and bodybuilder look. So if he is saying he is 6 percent, he is shredded with a six-pack and should have no reason not to do photo shoots everywhere.”

Bodybuilder language is funny to me.

i'm mainly talking about the olds and the red-staters making 55k/yr who - thanks to EITC, mortgage deductions, etc - don't pay any federal income taxes. i don't have numbers on this, but these two demos describe sooo many ppl around here (MS, TN)

well to get nerdy, nobody making 55k is getting EITC

oops yeah, sub that with child tax credit

Garance Franke-Ruta ‏@thegarance
Romney on MoJo full video: "This president speaks loudly and carries a tiny stick."

Wouldn't be surprised if most of the video was just dick jokes.

Also, the bodyfat and physical feats bragging is is the utmost reinforcing how douchey the guy is; when you feel the need the start involving all the dudebro gym-douche bragging, the highest estimation you could ever possibly pray to reach is "disreputable schmuck".

Man, caterers are going to get shaken down at these events from now on.

Eh, gym bros ALWAYS estimate their BF way lower than it actually is. I don't think of that as a lie (though obviously douchey) - Ryan has probably always been told by his workout buddies/etc. that he's @ 6% brah. Athletes do it to - NFL players claiming 3% BF etc. (Dez Bryant did that), which is just absurdly unrealistic given the demands of their sport.

Whereas Charlie Christ is among the 47%.

I mean Chris Christie. Easy joke.

Oh come on in the context of all of his other physical prowess nonsense I'm not giving dude the benefit of the doubt on any of this.

did i get my memes messed up or did romney just say that americans are 47% body fat

plz plz an interviewer needs to pull some calipers and offer to measure ryans %

wheel out a dunk tank, "hop in"!

"if he floats..."

lol

Whereas Charlie Christ is among the 47%.

I mean Chris Christie. Easy joke.

LOL, Crist is among the 10 percent. Easy mistake.

Chris Christie is among the 47 % body fatters.

Gym bro annoyance just seems like an additional douchebaggery he adds onto everything else.

I mean, I'm a fat drunk, I take this shit personally.

ryan is cut and shredded like a good slaw

http://wearethe47percent.tumblr.com/

kinda feel bad for republicans on the romney campaign who have to defend him at this point, they sound like malfunctioning robots trying to stay on message

obama.. class warfare... dividing our country

It's that dalek like monomania at work.

has this been posted yet? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/09/if_mitt_romney_loses_republican_leaders_rush_to_offer_post_mortems_on_the_campaign_indicates_that_the_gop_will_have_a_big_debate_about_its_future_.html

i took that are you smarter than john dickerson quiz this week and surprise i was

Asked what he thought of Romney's remarks, Ryan told the Nevada station: "He was obviously inarticulate in making this point." Ryan went on to say the point the Republicans are making is that, under the Obama economy, government dependency is up and economic stagnation is up.

Asked if he thought Romney regrets the remarks, Ryan says he thinks Romney would have said it differently, adding, "that's for sure."

going rogue already

Politicians used to pull out "I was misquoted" whenever this sort of thing happened. Now, with actual video of them saying shit, they have to resort to, "I may have said X, but I meant to say Y, so when you think about it, it's like I never said X. So let's talk about Y."

http://reason.com/assets/mc/_ATTIC/mattwelch/ScrewBall.gif

cellphones, guys

In one of the forecasts, I ran the numbers based solely on polls that do include cellphones in their samples. The vast majority of these polls also use live interviewers, since federal law prohibits automated calls to cellphones under most circumstances. (Note, however, that one or two mostly automated polling firms, like SurveyUSA, use a separate sample based on live interviewers to reach cellphone-only voters; these were included in the model run.)

In this universe, Mr. Obama seems poised for victory. The model forecasts him for a 4.1 percentage points win in the national popular vote. That compares with 2.9 percentage points in the regular FiveThirtyEight forecast, which includes polls both with and without cellphones.

Mr. Obama’s advantage is also clearer in the swing states. The cellphone-inclusive polls give him an 80 percent chance to win Virginia, a 79 percent chance in Ohio, and a 68 percent chance to win Florida, all considerably higher than in the official FiveThirtyEight forecast.

Overall, this version of the model gives Mr. Obama an 83 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, a full 10 percentage points higher than the 73 percent chance that the official FiveThirtyEight forecast gave him as of Monday night. So the methodological differences are showing up in a big way this year.

hopefully voter complacency will not ruin things for obama

maybe the lib vote will turn out to see how big of a landslide we can accomplish

i can totally see a lot of people checking out though like, oh yeah, romney has no chance, i'm not going to ask my boss for time off because he's fucked anyway

thing is that sort of thinking affects both sides

like '08 i feel like a ton of rightwingers are less excited by romney and more hating on obama. i don't think hate drives people to the voting booth, they need a candidate they love too. cf kerry vs bush in '04.

bush was the most hated motherfucker on the planet and the opposition was 2x as loud as it is to obama and he still won pretty easily.

kerry was kind of lame though, he had a similar sad sack sort of thing going on as mittins too

positive motivating factors outweigh negatives when it comes to voter turnout, this has been proven time and again

the opposition was 2x as loud as it is to obama

I dunno about this

kerry was kind of lame though, he had a similar sad sack sort of thing going on as mittins too

I believe the phrase you are looking for is "tired old satrap" (c)AlfredLordSotosyn

yeah i'm saying. i feel like mitt is an uncanny valley candidate, like from a distance in the abstract of the primaries people are thinking, "well he sure looks the part and sounds about right" but then in close-up he's not appealing.

basically anyone who nominates a candidate from massachusetts just pack yr bags it over

but... President Scott Brown!