Comments on: Who Would Have Won If…

By: Jay Wegner

Jay Wegner — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 22:08:00 +0000

the ongoing voter suppression and disenfranchisement can be???? Proof?

By: Weekend Reading « Backslash Scott Thoughts

Weekend Reading « Backslash Scott Thoughts — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 19:48:07 +0000

[…] Who Would Have Won If…. on 2012 Elections Without Today’s Suffrage. […]

By: Kelly Holden

Kelly Holden — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 02:42:00 +0000

Well, I suppose we’ve never been officially barred from voting, except perhaps under measures that disenfranchise convicts. After all, until quite recently, under western thought at least, homosexuality was seen as something you did, not something you were, unlike the other categories.

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 01:07:00 +0000

A rock that prohibits the use of the letter “g” apparently…

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 01:04:00 +0000

Can they keep the hands-over-ears-“la la la” plank, at least?

By: Bagelsan

Bagelsan — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 01:03:00 +0000

No, no, he’s right; when I was a kid I regularly got unreported abortions from ethnic people and got medals and money for being depressed. It was hella sweet growing up liberal! ;p

By: NOBONGO

NOBONGO — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:23:00 +0000

MITT ROMNEY 2016

By: Lin

Lin — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:32:00 +0000

No statistics based on sexual orientation?

By: Yrro Simyarin

Yrro Simyarin — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Oh, fair enough. The studies I read about voter enthusiasm seemed to say it was low as well, and pretty much anyone I talked to was making arguments against the other guy. But you’re right that that doesn’t give a solid comparison to other “meh” type elections.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:47:00 +0000

I guess I’m not old enough to have ever seen a base get truly excited about an incumbent. Stirring up passion and enthusiasm for preserving the status quo requires some pretty exceptional circumstances. Idealists being disappointed by reality is about as unexceptional of a circumstance as you can get.

As for the usefulness of bumper stickers as data, that just reminds me of Peggy Noonan ignoring polls and predicting a Romney win based on…ahem…yard signs. http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2012/11/05/monday-morning/

By: Yrro Simyarin

Yrro Simyarin — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:53:00 +0000

I was largely going off of the lack of enthusiasm and very limited number of bumper stickers for Obama I have seen this election. GOP enthusiasm was definitely massively down for Romney, and I have a hard time seeing how any liberal could be *excited* about Obama at this stage, given the continuation of nearly every policy that they claimed to hate about Bush.

Just an opinion, though.

By: Yrro Simyarin

Yrro Simyarin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:34:00 +0000

Interesting, I feel like we *are* misunderstanding each other. I didn’t feel anyone was calling for corporations to be able to renege on existing pensions. Most of the pensions issues I have heard stressed were either

1) Renegotiating *government* pension systems.
2) Complaints about the order of creditors involved in the auto bailouts.

Most of the proposals I have heard of for government pensions preserved the pension benefits earned so far, but changed future contributions. Since no one has signed a lifetime contract, I don’t see an issue with that.

Most current pension systems are unsustainable. That doesn’t remove a company or government’s obligation to those who have earned theirs, but it is a good reason to rework the process for future workers.

It has nothing to do with being pro-rich people and everything to do with wanting our own government to get the best result for our dollar.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:49:00 +0000

Stronger than normal? This sounds like a bit of amnesia to me. How have you determined that Obama was considered less favorably by those who voted for him than, say, Kerry, or Gore? While Clinton may have aged into his party’s most perennially popular characters, he never managed to clear 50% of the vote.

Obama’s first-term approval ratings have trended almost identically to those of Reagan, who has since become a bigger deity in the GOP than God himself. Perhaps the most strangely underreported fact – the one that must have made the election results shocking for people who couldn’t do math – is that Obama is, and has been quite consistently, unusually popular for his party, and his stated positions on most issues tend to be shared by more than half the population.

Sure, the Republicans probably lost a lot of votes due to some stupid comments, but you might be underestimating how utterly critical some of those issues are to a hell of a lot of people. It wasn’t just the idiotic comments; it was also the platform – one which aggressively courted the angry old heterosexual white male vote but was hopelessly out of touch with everyone else.

Sometimes the problem is the wrong packaging, the wrong marketing, or the wrong moment (i.e. Johnson in the primaries). Romney, on the other hand, was quite simply the wrong product.

By: jcdyer3

jcdyer3 — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:32:00 +0000

The pension issue is one that infuriates me. In essence, it amounts to wealthy corporations asking the government for permission to renege on the contracts they established with their employees. And when supposedly “free market” conservatives are all in favor of this, how am I supposed to believe that they are not in fact not in favor of a free market, but actually just pro-rich and anti-worker? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but that’s how it looks to me.

By: Yrro Simyarin

Yrro Simyarin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:25:00 +0000

I can see how, from a liberal’s perspective, it is frustrating that the Republicans are not pushing alternative plans for things that liberals think are important. McCain’s talk about making a free market alternative for healthcare reform was halfhearted at best

Believe me, though, conservatives feel the same way about Democrats’ “proposals” to fix the deficit or deal with the long-term budget consequences of social spending programs or pensions.