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?

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"

you guys are talking as if right-wing butt-hurtedness is some kind of formula for failure in times like these

yah, Romney's "no apologies/Obama is a wimp" line is actually resonating with the base right now.

Well the convention and Ryan pick didn't do it (in terms of, say, Palin levels).

Has anybody taken into account the yard sign/bumper sticker factor? By this point last year I was seeing a fair amount of McCain/Palin bumper stickers, even in Democrat-laden Chicago, but I can still count on one hand the number of Romney stickers I've seen. And in 2008 when I drove through rural Wisconsin, I saw hundreds of McCain yard signs. Making the same trip this year (though two weeks earlier, to be fair) I only say a handful of Romney yard signs.

er, obvs "last election" in that second sentence

Barely seen anything for Romney here in OC.

and the McCain campaign was not setting any engagement/enthusiasm records, either

romney can only pull 48% w/ this economy + that 48% is overwhelmingly made up of waning demographics + the hardest core republicans already don't even want to be called republicans = there's plenty of room for stuff to happen over the next decade

xp

people were freaking out about how awesome palin was though.

xp

i think a social + economically libertarian republican party could do very well in the future

he shot himself in the foot so bad with that libya shit, can't wait to see him do it again and again

xp you mean democratic party, right?

/morbs

and the obama fear factor the right wing was playing up was stronger. they're still beating that drum but 4 yrs have shown that he's not letting al qaeda into the white house to hang out and plot.

i don't think so xp

romney and paul might win, idk. but obama's energizing his base pretty well and the repubs just seem like assholes.

i think that's what it will come down to.

nov 6 forecast still at 80% but obama nowcast is now at 91.6%

saw a number of Romney signs in yards in Alexandria, Virginia (a mostly liberal town in Northern VA). They were outnumbered by the yards with no signs(the silent Obama majority!)

nov 6 forecast still at 80% but obama nowcast is now at 91.6%

Yeah, and a 51.2% - 47.5% popular vote landslide.

that's a landslide?