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?

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?

I've seen alot of R/R bumper stickers on cars in Atlanta, which is more or less a Dem oasis in a vast sea of Republicans.

Atlanta, maybe, the Atlanta metro area not so much so

xp Nah, I'm underlining Tracer's point upthread, that getting 48% of the vote isn't exactly the sign of a party on the decrease. Though some of that is just How Politics Works these days, it's been 28 years since the runner-up got less than 45% of the vote (after you throw out any third-parties).

By the estimation of Nate Silver, a "landslide" is a ten percent or higher edge over the opponent.

I assume that's electoral votes. Ten percent in the popular vote seems unlikely nowadays. :(

That's funny, I was just pondering the other day, here in Atlanta, why I've seen almost NO Romney bumperstickers this close to voting day.

Even Dukakis was within eight points with 45.7%--and the electoral was 426-111 that year. (Mondale, on the other hand, barely inched over 40%.)

when 48% becomes yr roof, you have a big picture problem, even if you can still win a (democratically unrepresentative) congress on a good year.

xp

so uh how many obama bumper stickers have y'all seen

i saw one but it turned out it said "nobama" and i thought i heard someone say "obama" the other day but they said "fauxbama."

If registered Democrats were as likely to vote as registered Republicans, the margin would be a lot wider.

so uh how many obama bumper stickers have y'all seen

In Atlanta? SO MANY.

Bama, Bama, Bo Bama
Faux Bama Fanna, Faux Bama
Fee Fie, No Bama
Obama!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MJLi5_dyn0

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qilVUxdSdKo/T9qYMQE4QsI/AAAAAAAASYw/rmb3D5ONhvo/s1600/BARRY+CHOOM+OBAMA+VERSUS+MITT+Romney.jpg

this pretty much sums it all up for me

i wonder if "close" (ie, non-landslide) elections aren't just a permanent reality now--given the media environment, polling, and the mutability of the political parties. they're kinda *too* good to allow either side to really get swamped. the "middle" will just get shifted to wherever certain antagonisms can be best exploited.

I think so, pretty much, at least until some huge paradigm shift like another Great Depression.

Our politics have been a binary system for over 150 years now. That's several wars, one depression, many recessions, several Constitutional amendments, among other things. It will take something positively seismic to bump a third or fourth party into prominence.

Sullivan just pointed to this:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/107177/daily-breakdown-fox-news-poll-undermines-romneys-theory-the-race

I agree w/ that johnny fever, I just don't think the 2nd party will be called the republican party

yeah the GOP will just morph into something else. but the GOP as we've known it since most of us were born is dying and is gonna die within my lifetime.

so uh how many obama bumper stickers have y'all seen

In Atlanta? SO MANY.

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, September 13, 2012 5:14 PM (1 hour ago)

so guess what was on the car in front of me when I pulled off the hwy lol

that said I don't feel a lot of passion from either side this go-around, maybe because ppl realize our problems are so deep and long term at this point they can't be fixed in one term - 10 year wars, 5 year recessions

honestly i don't see the republican party disappearing any time soon. the current two-party system's been more or less stable for a century, and i think the tea partiers breaking off and forming their own party and getting 2 percent of the vote in 2016 is more likely than the GOP breaking apart and dissolving.

The 27% crazification factor continues to hold true:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8305/7982844829_b64b827613.jpg
27-percent-again by dengre.bj, on Flickr

Xxxxxxxxpost to Edward III, I've seen a lot of Obama stickers in NE Ohio.

GOP probably not going anywhere anytime soon

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/13/major-ron-paul-operative-jesse-benton-departs-to-work-for-the-ranking-republican-senator-mitch-mcconnell.html

it's not going anywhere, it's just going to change into a radically different animal