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?

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!

But JFK well then again...

Autre temps, autre moeurs

Willard Romney is the Eighties Meryl Streep of the American presidency.

Dingos ate his campaign.

Veep selection: Sophie's Choice.

he still won pretty easily.

― omar little, Wednesday, September 19, 2012 6:22 PM Bookmark

It's funny how these things have solidified because, and maybe I was just super hopeful, it seemed winnable at the time, even with Dems basically acknowledging they had a lame candidate, it still came down to an election-night nail-biter, right? It seemed possible, waking up on Election Day, that Bush would be a one-term president. The next day was probably the most bummed I ever got through the entirety of the Bush administration. But that itself might be a sort of distorted memory, I don't actually recall that day or how it went or whether I was on the schedule to work or anything really.

Lest we forget, Romney won the primaries because no matter how frantically the loony right grasped for an alternative, the alternative always turned out to be Michele Bachman or Herman Cain or Newt Gringrich or Rick Perry, all of whom would be mincemeat by now. The candidates with a heavier throw weight all sat this one out rather than face an incumbent.

I think it's impossible to HAVE a "heavier throw weight" within the Rep. party now.

It's funny how these things have solidified because, and maybe I was just super hopeful, it seemed winnable at the time, even with Dems basically acknowledging they had a lame candidate, it still came down to an election-night nail-biter, right? It seemed possible, waking up on Election Day, that Bush would be a one-term president

oh I don't know. The polls the last few weeks showed Bush with a small but decided lead. Plus, he had (a) incumbency (b) I'M A WARTIME PRESIDENT on his side.

A friend who was and remains a DNC hack said he knew the Dems lost the election after John Kerry's acceptance speech ("I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty!").

tim, are you forgetting gov christie?

I think it's impossible to HAVE a "heavier throw weight" within the Rep. party now.

― timellison, Wednesday, September 19, 2012 8:08 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/AP689319454044.jpg

could def not throw

xp

Maybe I'm a Dem hack, too, but I never thought Dukakis and Gore and Kerry were "lame candidates." Oh well.

polls had bush ahead but barely w/ margin narrowing. exit polls had kerry winning, and winning pretty easily tbh, carring virginia etc. i can remember going to go bar anticipating partying, then virginia went bush and i thought 'well, that's something but what were the odds of a dem carrying virginia anyway' and i told ppl not to panic, kerry had it in the bag. then florida went bush and i kinda knew the jig was up and just sat there and drank heavily waiting for ohio to fall. in 2008 by contrast i never panicked but at the same time i assumed nothing until ohio went obama and the networks called the election. this year i haven't panicked but i've also assumed nothing. i am at the point where if someone were to tell me today that romney was gonna win in six weeks i would be surprised.

My records show that I got off work, briefly attended an "election party" which I don't recall at all, and the next day I was feeling ill. It would appear I went to the bank and the thrift store, bought some candy, and was unsuccessful in attempting to pick up some photos, or something. And then there was a Guided By Voices show. It was, based on the available evidence, a fairly listless 24-hour period.

I mean, so freaking what if they weren't cool enough.

i remember election 00 and election 08 but not 04

i was not a kerry fan - dean supporter initially (still think his role in building the present day dem party is underrated), edwards voter (sigh) by the time of the ga primary. i did come to actually like kerry enough by the time of the actual election though. still think it was ultimately a good thing for the democratic party (albeit not the country) that kerry lost in 04. would go dukakis>gore>kerry. gary hart over the lot.

Kerry as prez nominee was a neoliberal administrator of a war economy, very far from his liberal roots in the late eighties. He wasn't Dean but I didn't dislike him as I did the vacuous Edwards.

i can remember the bush campaign totally bought those exit polls also, by sundown there were leaks from the campaign about how rove had blown it etc a la pick yr avg recent politico story.

the fuck did i do on election nite 04

I expect the 'debates' are just not going to give Mitt much of a push in the polls, bcz unless a whole new hot issue comes up, mitt has nothing new to say and no new way to say it. and if a hot new issue does come up, like an Israeli strike against Iran, it will probably work in favor of the sitting president. unless, of course, it is another Lehman-type failure and crash.

Mitt has nothing left in his quiver. And 'he leads in no polls'.

maybe i just stayed home

There was an ILX thread, right? I wasn't reading the boards then and I can't find it now.

I was drinking from 2 p.m. onwards on Election Day 2004, in full anticipation of a Bush win. The worst part: the next day, at the Memphis airport for a convention, every douche at a bar cheering Kerry's concession.

yah I joined ILX in January 2005 and skimmed the political threads from two months earlier and was frankly surprised at the number of people all like I'M MOVING TO CANADIA THAT'S IT

i remember election night 04 because i got out the vote in milwaukee in a dismally poorly organized effort (08 put it to shame) and drove back to chicago with friends listening to election coverage and went to sleep really late and woke up, turned on the news, cried, went to class.

edwards always felt like a televangelist to me. gore was a colossal fuckup imo, he ran a terrible campaign. i felt like he had it in the bag early on but he just played right into bush's hands. kerry is a decent guy who never had a real chance imo, i realize the polls were close-ish but still...he was running less as an answer to the country's problems and more of "hey at least i'm not bush."

Two different "prediction" threads:

Predict the electoral vote of the US Presidential Election
Predict the electoral vote of the US Presidential Election

er...hangon

Predict the results of the 2004 US Presidential Election

Romney's "Hey at least I'm like Bush!"

Kerry

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, March 12, 200

i feel like romney is a combination campaign-wise of both gore's errors and kerry's "other guy" routine.

Today I have my first significant doubt that Bush will win.

I will admit that Gabbneb's unrelenting ground campaign--endles, spintastic poll posting--has given me pause, but it has never been overly convincing.

It's because Bush is allegedly going after the Third Rail of politics tonight: Social Security. I am shocked he has the audacity to do this at the convention.

Even though Social Security (and more importantly, Medicare) is in dire need of reform, Kerryco has the brains to avoid discussing it in a forum such as this. Bush is set to open up a huge can of worms, and the Kerry campaign is going to be given a time-tested issue to hammer away with in the next two months. I am shocked Bush is going to hand over an issue that Kerry will be able to demogogue so easily with seniors, given the ramifications in states like Florida.

― don carville weiner, Thursday, September 2, 2004