[Official Thread] OBAMA WINS RE-ELECTION

[Mr Bean]

Even more so than the last three and a half years?

Actually, yes. We have more gizmos.

Technology! More beeps, more boops, more switches and dials. All of which can go wrong and are all custom jobs with help people only a phone call away to a number that does not work.

[Dalton]

Technology! More beeps, more boops, more switches and dials. All of which can go wrong and are all custom jobs with help people only a phone call away to a number that does not work.

Dude, you have no idea. Fuckin' field circus.

[D.Turtle]

Uuuuh, I hope MSNBC has something to beat the CNN hologram (it was CNN, wasn't it?) from last election.

[Dalton]

Uuuuh, I hope MSNBC has something to beat the CNN hologram (it was CNN, wasn't it?) from last election.

*snort* That gimmick? iPad apps and virtual sets blow that shit out of the water. After the idea was floated of a Reagan hologram, I seriously doubt they'll try that again.

[Mr Bean]

*snort* That gimmick? iPad apps and virtual sets blow that shit out of the water. After the idea was floated of a Reagan hologram, I seriously doubt they'll try that again.

Robotic Richard Nixon! A full motion, free walking mechanical Nixon-bot that will sit on the panel left of Al Sharpton and cycle through sixty thousand hours of Nixon recordings to find the most cogent political analysis to provide on demand.

You laugh but the only reason it's not on the set yet being lubed up by Dalton is the fact 90% of all analysis just contained profanity, once they fix that bug expect to see panels conducted by nothing but robot hosts.

[Dalton]

One could argue, if they listened to your average Fox devotee, that we are already overrun with liberalbots.

[Mr Bean]

One could argue, if they listened to your average Fox devotee, that we are already overrun with liberalbots.

They are not mechanical or even cyborgs they would be vat grown Liberationists.

[Lord MJ]

What's your assessment on how the debates are going to go?

I don't think there is any way Obama will lose the foreign policy debate, but the other two debates I'm not sure about. I have a feeling that Romney will be a formidable opponent on the economic issues, and I'm not sure Obama will be able to come off to the American people that he is more knowledgable about the economic engine in a one on one debate with Romney.

[Block]

What's your assessment on how the debates are going to go?

I don't think there is any way Obama will lose the foreign policy debate, but the other two debates I'm not sure about. I have a feeling that Romney will be a formidable opponent on the economic issues, and I'm not sure Obama will be able to come off to the American people that he is more knowledgable about the economic engine in a one on one debate with Romney.

I have yet to see Romney sound intelligent on broad economic issues let alone sound intelligent while giving any sort of specifics.

[Lord MJ]

Romney has a few grenades to toss regarding the economy. He can toss unemployment numbers obviously, but he can toss the spending/rate of job creation metrics, difficulty for small businesses to start and thrive, etc.

I would be interested to see what Obama can toss back that will convince the American people that he is the answer. He can state how he created jobs, but in the words of my co-worker "Mr. President the jobs you create have to be greater than the jobs lost."

Obama doesn't just have to state factually correct answers, he has to state them and debunk Romney to the point to convince people watching the debate.

[SirNitram]

What's your assessment on how the debates are going to go?

I don't think there is any way Obama will lose the foreign policy debate, but the other two debates I'm not sure about. I have a feeling that Romney will be a formidable opponent on the economic issues, and I'm not sure Obama will be able to come off to the American people that he is more knowledgable about the economic engine in a one on one debate with Romney.

I must disagree. Romney has repeatedly shown he won't give any details, at all, and his campaign only discusses policies it wants to. Repeating the reporters name works locally; on a national debate stage, he'll look idiotic.

[Block]

Bill Clinton's numbers should be enough to shatter anything Romney comes up with. Republicans haven't had a valid economic policy in 20 years and it shows if you present it right.

[Dalton]

I'm more interested in seeing if Biden gets whupped in the Veep debate. He'll likely be strong on foreign policy given his experience, but I think Paul Ryan may smash him with economics.

[SirNitram]

I'm more interested in seeing if Biden gets whupped in the Veep debate. He'll likely be strong on foreign policy given his experience, but I think Paul Ryan may smash him with economics.

This depends heavily on if the moderator asks for a specific or not. As Ryan doesn't have those.

[Lord MJ]

Part of me fears that they are saving the specifics for the debates. The specifics could be BS, but unless Obama and Biden can accurately predict what the specifics will be they there could be some problems.

[Lord MJ]

So Mitt Romney says the biggest challenge he has in the debates is that Obama "tends to lie alot" and that he will have to deal with Obama lies during the debate.

[SirNitram]

So Mitt Romney says the biggest challenge he has in the debates is that Obama "tends to lie alot" and that he will have to deal with Obama lies during the debate.

Well, my irony meter just exploded and coated me in hot, liquid irony.

[Flagg]

It's just a ploy to be able to say whatever the fuck he wants in the debates and ignore Obama's fact checking as "lies".

[Crossroads Inc.]

It's just a ploy to be able to say whatever the fuck he wants in the debates and ignore Obama's fact checking as "lies".

Basically this.

Romney should know his election is in deep trouble by now and is looking like his chances in Nov are slim to none.
Back in Jan I said that if he got the nomination, it would be a repeat of the 2004 election all over again. The far right are running a "Anyone but Obama" race, just as we ran "Anyone but Bush" back in 04. The problem is voting AGAINST someone isn't enough, you have to have someone to ralley behind.
Romney was THEE last pick of the party base, the only people that wanted him were the big power broakers. Romney knows this and for the whole race has been doing nothing but going more and more to the right, doing little to nothing to try and get votes outside of the GOP. And we all know how THAT plan goes.

My prediction is during the next month we will see him getting increasingly desperate and saying more and more silly and stupid things in an effort to stir up his base, all the while never lifting a finger to try and go outside of the GOP right wing.

[General Mung Beans]

Mitt Romney is not Ronald Reagan: Link

The American Debate: TO NOVEMBER AND AFTER

Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Republican challenger Mitt Romney, unlike Ronald Reagan, is as slippery as a bar of soap.


It was in the fall of 2010, during a break in the taping of a TV talk show, when I first heard the GOP's operative theory about the election of 2012. A conservative activist leaned toward me with a smile and excitedly intoned two magic words:

"Jimmy Carter."

And there it was. The template for beating Barack Obama would be Ronald Reagan's victory over the beleaguered Democratic incumbent of 1980. Indeed, Mitt Romney's people keep insisting that, just like in 1980, a bad economy will trigger a late surge toward the Republican challenger, and game over.

But with our presidential election just seven weeks away, the flaws in the Romney game theory have become glaringly obvious:

1. By several significant measures, today's economy isn't as bad as it was in 1980.

2. Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter.

3. Mitt Romney - do I really need to say this? - is not Ronald Reagan.

Those of us who were adults in 1980 remember what the economy was like. The jobless rate back then seems tame by today's standards (it was roughly 7 percent), but the real issue was the inflation rate. Today it is minimal; in 1980, it was nearly 16 percent. That was Carter's main economic albatross. Whether you had a job or not, you got whacked big time whenever you went to the supermarket. And everyone was still sore about the energy crisis of 1979, when it became necessary to queue up in long lines just to pump gas.

Obama is not stuck with runaway inflation. Nor is he saddled with a chronic stock-market decline, as occurred during much of 1980. Nor is he getting hammered by frustrated middle-class people seeking to buy homes - as was the case with Carter in 1980, when mortgage interest rates were 14 percent.

Carter fared no better in the foreign-policy realm. On a daily basis, from January to the election, voters were reminded that 51 Americans remained captive in Iran, and that their president seemed incapable of doing anything about it. That was Carter's narrative. Obama's narrative is that he keeps sending unmanned drones to kill top members of al-Qaeda - and, in doing so, he has erased the Carter-era perception that Democrats are national-security wusses.

The Romney people who pine for 1980 also forget that Obama enjoys domestic political advantages that Carter never had. Heading into the autumn campaign, Democrats are virtually united behind the incumbent - in contrast to 1980, when Democrats were deeply divided. Edward Kennedy had unsuccessfully challenged Carter from the left in the primaries, and it got very bitter. I can still remember the final night of the convention, during the balloon drop, when Carter literally pursued Kennedy around the stage, trying in vain to get the guy to shake his hand. The whole affair sowed bitterness in the ranks and weakened the party during the stretch drive to November.

Plus, there was a robust third-party candidate in 1980, a moderate Republican named John Anderson, and he gave disappointed Democrats another place to go. Plus, the electorate in 1980 was far less polarized than it is today; voters were far more willing back then to cross party lines. Reagan that November garnered roughly 33 percent of the Democratic voters. Romney this November will be lucky to get 5 percent.

And Romney is no Reagan anyway. Indeed, Republicans who actually worked for Reagan scoff at the very idea of a parallel.

Whether you agreed with Reagan or not, you knew where he stood. Romney, by contrast, continues to be more elusive and slippery than a bar of shower soap. Witness last Sunday's episode on Meet the Press, when he seemed to be amending his promise to kill Obamacare: "Of course, there are a number of things that I like in health-care reform that I'm going to put in place." But after the Republican right went ballistic, his staff spent the rest of the day insisting he hadn't meant what he had clearly said.

And then we got Romney's non-Reaganesque response to the embassy attacks in Libya and Egypt. In the midst of the violence Tuesday night, he rushed out a statement that condemned Obama for seeking "to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." It was bad enough that Romney was trying to politicize an evolving international crisis for his own partisan ends by painting the president as a terrorist sympathizer; worse yet, he made the charge without a shred of evidence (there was none) that Obama had ever voiced any sympathy for the attackers.

Compare Romney's response to Reagan's response in the spring of 1980. Carter's attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages failed when the military choppers crashed in the desert, but the Republican challenger made no attempt to exploit it or slime the incumbent. Instead, Reagan simply said: "This is the time for us as a nation and a people to stand united."

Which explains why old Reagan hands have been savaging Romney for days. For instance, former speechwriter Peggy Noonan: "In times of great drama and heightened crisis, in times when something violent has happened to your people, I always think that discretion is the way to go. I don't believe Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors." And here's ex-Reagan White House aide Ed Rogers: "At this solemn, serious moment, Mitt Romney had to be crisp and precise. He was neither. [President Obama] had to display stature and resolve. He did both. . . . The comparison between the two men is inevitable, and the president looked like a president is supposed to. I guess Romney looked like the candidate he is, and nothing else."

In fact, whereas Reagan was clearly in the ascent at this point in the 1980 calendar - he led Carter in the early postconvention polls - Romney has been descending. The race seemed virtually tied on the eve of the conventions, but no longer. A Gallup tracking poll showed Obama with a seven-point lead, and even the latest Fox News poll - which had Romney up by a point, preconvention - last week showed him down by five. In the annals of polling, every challenger who has trailed in mid-September has lost in November.

Who knows, maybe there's still time for Romney to grow a Reaganesque spine, for the Democratic Party to implode, for Obama to pull back his drones, for the inflation rate to soar . . . but no. The campaign of '80 was so 32 years ago.

[Dalton]

Romney campaign is panicking

[Max]

You only vote for Obama if you don't pay income taxes and feel you're entitled to everything

Here's hoping this bites him in the ass somehow, but people who vote for Romney (for the most part, not all) probably already feel this way. My dislike for this man has reached a low I didn't think was possible...

[SirNitram]

You only vote for Obama if you don't pay income taxes and feel you're entitled to everything

Here's hoping this bites him in the ass somehow, but people who vote for Romney (for the most part, not all) probably already feel this way. My dislike for this man has reached a low I didn't think was possible...

Probably the only time he honestly spoke his opinion..

[Crossroads Inc.]

For a long time I have debated with friends and family just how "Stupid" the GOP elite are and the power brokers are around Romney.

We say things like "Surely they don't actually BELIEVE stuff like this..." and "They must be saying these stupid things just to get support from the wackos"
But you begin to realize that there IS no reason for these comments, that, the only reason for them is that this Rich bastard DOES believe these things...
He does believe that "Middle Class" is someone making 200 to 250k per year...
That "47%" of Americans don't pay income taxes...
That making the rich richer really WILL Magically make the economy better.

In a way it would be almost BETTER if you could say that it's all a front, that he's doing this just to piss people off... But no, he simply is that out of touch with things. And I think, as it becomes increasingly apparent that Obama IS going to win, we are going to see much much more of this... The infighting is starting and the camp is getting desperate. The carefully planed scripts are being less and less planned and Romney is starting to commit the cardinal sin of the GOP... Speaking his mind...
The whole thing is the 2008 election all over again, except that we didn't start getting to this point till Mid October with McCain.

Personally I think this is indicative of a growing trend that may end with the GOP not being able to field a credible candidate for President for the next 20 years or more.
If Obama wins (and it looks like he will) I will be 1000$ Hillary is going to run in 2016.
And if she does run, she will win in a land slide.

The plain fact is that there is no fresh blood in the GOP. Everyone who could have connected with the people today are being purged by the Tea Party. The only people the GOP can field are all old white men (or women) and of the lot, Romney was the MOST SANE of the group. Just think about that, of everyone in the GOP, ROMNEY was the best pick.

When it comes to the Presidential race, the GOP is FCKED.

[DarkArk]

Personally I think this is indicative of a growing trend that may end with the GOP not being able to field a credible candidate for President for the next 20 years or more.

To a degree I rather doubt that. The Republican part could always get someone more credible to run for president. The problem for them is more demographics and the electoral college. If they don't change their tune it's going to become very difficult for them to win national elections.

I will be 1000$ Hillary is going to run in 2016.

Possibly, but Hillary would also be 68 in 2016 which is just about the oldest any person has been when inaugurated (only Reagan and Harrison were equivalent in age). She might be considered too old by that point.

Romney was the MOST SANE of the group.

But that's also because it was a reelection year for the opposing party. Parties don't generally run their best candidates those years.