Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Why OIbama Won, IMO

a) Constituency politics. President Obama has perfected it to a level that hasn't been witnessed since the days of FDR (free contraception to younger woman, low-interest student loans to college kids, health-care waivers to better connected unions, etc.).............b) The fact that the President and Vice President were somehow able to convince the American people that our budget shortfalls can essentially be rectified solely by raising taxes on the wealthy (Mr. Biden literally said as much during the debate).............c) Hurricane Sandy gave the President another opportunity to look Presidential and the man took advantage of it.............d) Governor Romney was an extraordinarily flawed Republican candidate (that rope-a-dope strategy at the end was just plain dumb). The man just couldn't decide who he was and the American public evidently didn't want to fill in the blanks.............e) Changing demographics. Hispanics are the fasting growing population in America and Romney's decision (in what had to be a cold, calculated political move) to place himself to the right of even Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry on immigration was just flat-out moronic.............f) Media coverage. While I'm certainly not as paranoiac about it as Hannity and O'Reilly are, I do in fact think that a lot of the major outlets (NBC News, the Associated Press, The New York Times, CBS News, Newsweek, etc.) significantly preferred the President and it showed (CBS, for instance, sitting on the President's comments pertaining to Libya).

14 comments:

Jerry Critter said...

The republicans lost this election more than the Democrats won it. Obama was vulnerable, but Romney was a crappy candidate and the republicans ran a horrible campaign. It was almost like they did not want to win. Hmmmmmmm! Ya think?

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

He was a real crappy candidate, Jerry. That voluntary deportation line in the Republican primary alone probably killed him with Hispanics......That, and he came across as a total phony, too.

Jerry Critter said...

You are right, Will, and he was the best republicans had.

dmarks said...

CBS chucked any pretense of balance out the window years ago, when they aired Dan Rather's "Bush went AWOL" hoax based on forged documents. After the truth was known about it, CBS waited for weeks, hoping it would blow over. They actually wanted to keep Rather on! But since it didn't blow over, they reluctantly had to sack him.

It's too bad. Imagine what other great scoops Rather could have brought us on Prime Time. Like a list of the incriminating names found in Jack Ruby's Blackberry.

dmarks said...

Jerry said: "You are right, Will, and he was the best Republicans had."

I wonder if there is anyone here who disagrees, you included, that Huntsman would have been better.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I liked Huntsman a great deal, dmarks, and would have seriously considered voting for him (and from what I can gather, a lot of Democrats DID vote for him in Utah).

Jerry Critter said...

I say Romney is the best that the republicans had because he is the one the majority of republicans selected. Certainly there are republicans who would have preferred someone else, but the majority of republicans believed that Romney was their best candidate.

Ema Nymton said...

.

The people of USA put President Obama in Washington D.C. in 2008 and the political class acted against the people’s will. The national GOP political class in Washington D.C./New York actively decided to behave toward President Obama in a reprehensible and despicable manner.

The GOP were vociferous in their open vicious contempt and hatred. They were blatant about it and went out of their way to declare and actively make Mr Obama a failure. The national GOP approach over the past four years was, ‘it did not matter who or what else was hurt, if, at the end, they could make Mr Obama fail, they achieved their anti-USA goal.’ (I imagine it will not be better in the coming four years. They will just be more subtle in their nefarious deeds.)

When the RepublicanT Party finally nominated Mr Romney, it was beyond belief. (Amazingly, only a few years after the economy was brought to its knees by a gang of predatory Wall Street plutocrats, the GOP nominated a predatory Wall Street plutocrat!) The open level of mendacity, lies, and dis-honesty of the whole Romney/Ryan and RepublicanT Party campaign was breathtaking in its audacity. Even when caught in a simple verbal mistake (Jeep production moving out of Ohio to China), instead of acknowledging an error, Mr Romney simple repeated the falsehood.

From the get-go the R/R/GOP ran its national campaign for President on verifiable and demonstrative lies. They even based their entire convention on taking one of the President's statements out of context (hammering President Obama about the "They didn't build that") and railing against it, knowing full well it wasn't what the President meant!

USA suffered over the past years because of the GOP sabotage/obstruction. The Washington D.C. RepublicanT Party’s petty efforts to hurt the President at every and any opportunity regardless of the effects their political actions had on the people of USA was wrong. The voters rejected Mr Romney and the reprehensible, despicable behavior of the Republican Party.

The people of USA by the 2012 election, affirm their support for President Obama.

Ema Nymton
~@:o?
.

BB-Idaho said...

Huntsman would have been better for
drawing independents and democrats,
but the GOP far right would never abide with,
"To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." He said, "The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012."

dmarks said...

That would be true if there were any truth in it. Check the House, and governorships, and the fact that Obama won by a small margin... and tell me again that voters rejected Republicans.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Ema darling, this President has been mediocre at best. On the domestic side, he did the same stupid-assed shit that Hoover and FRD did in the '30s and Japan did in the '90s when both countries pissed away in excess of a decade. And on the foreign front, no less of a progressive expert as Noam Chomsky has said that in many aspects he's been worse than Bush (surging and sacrificing American lives in Afghanistan, coming up with some sort of a "kill list", and sextupling the drone attacks in going on 4 counties now). If Mr. Romney is worse than Obama, I'm suspecting that it isn't by much.

dmarks said...

Ema seems kinda lost.

Looking at the four major areas of government, nationally, that were affected by this election, "voters rejected Republicans" in two of the areas. In the other two, voters supported an expansion of the power of Republican elected officials.

As for 'the political class', none of this represented a change in public sentiment. The political class won.

dmarks said...

Will said: "On the domestic side, he did the same stupid-assed shit..."

Bush ran deficits much higher than those before him. The same is true of Obama. Yes, there are a lot of similarities.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Actually, I was comparing him to Hoover and FRD on the economy but, yes, you're right (and economist Dan Mitchell make the analogy, too), there are certainly some similarities to W, too.