It wasn't the Hispanic vote that did in Ken Buck. It was the women vote. The GOP took 38% of the Hispanic vote in 2010 as a whole. That's the second highest % since 1994.
Probably because of a shrunken electorate. Bring back the young voters who went into hibernation and Obama wins Colorado more decisively than he did in 2008.
Michigan tends to alternate governors after two terms. Reactionary representatives who represent investment bankers and the Oil Patch will disappoint voters before their terms are up. Michigan has few oil wells and even fewer investment bankers.
Fluke? The district was still more R than the US as a whole. Obama wins this district only if he wins at least as solidly nationwide in 2012 as in 2008. NE-02 is still an urban district in an otherwise-rural state. More significant is whether Nebraska will re-elect its Democratic Senator.
No, some mass employers were shown to have told their low-paid employees that if they want to have jobs next year, then they had better vote indiscriminately for Republicans. When the Republicans promote tax shifts that push the burden of taxes from plutocrats to low-paid employees (as through a flat tax or a national sales tax) or a reduction of the minimum wage, then you will know what
class warfare means.
No. The stage was set for a very close election much like 2000 and 2004. The 2008 election looked much like the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections until the late summer. Obama was at a point at which he had secured every state that either Gore or Kerry had ever won (264), and pulled out Colorado (273) while making efforts to pick off a few more states (Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, and Virginia) in a beat-the-cheat strategy.
He won despite looking like the last sort of person many Americans wanted to see as President. In 2012 he runs on his record and wins.
There was no "mythical" smear campaign; there was only a real one complete with threats from "burn in Hell" to "lose your job". In 2012, what happens if people recognize that they got the shaft?
Achievers? Do you mean people born into the right family instead of one that must rely upon paychecks or small-business income? Do you mean people whose talent is for cracking the whip (figuratively, so far) on subordinates with threats of mass firings?
So more black people joined the middle class under Reagan than under any prior President. Under Dubya, lots of people dropped from the middle class (if by middle class one implies a living wage and some job security) into the Working Poor? The Reactionary pretends that what is good only for the upper 5% in income is the definitive good for America. That was tried in Russia about a century ago, and look how that ended! The most extreme radicalism of economics and government supplanted the most reactionary political and economic philosophy.
Here's how you get social justice: you tax the easy money from cash-cow activities and leave income earned the hard way alone.
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One spouse. Not selling out people in his union to McCarthyism as Reagan did while President of the Screen Actors' Guild. What matters is his political skills. He doesn;t have to win 49 states to be an effective President.
He will say anything, but so did Reagan. But it is now up to the Republican majority in the House and the near-majority in the Senate to show that it has something to offer for the 95% of Americans whose families depend largely upon the fruits of their toil with incomes much less than those of millionaires. We shall see whether the GOP dumps on the will of the people or whether it will serve only the upper 4% in income and the tastes of the most superstitious and mean-spirited.
If they were as strong as you say, then they wouldn't have tempted TR and Ross Perot to run against them.
The Republicans in the House and Senate will show themselves little different from what they were between 1994 and 2006 and what Americans voted out in 2006. Scandals are already in place for the Republican Governor of Florida, an incumbent Republican Senator up for re-election in 2012, and at least one newly-elected Congressman. if I would expect a Congressman who votes much like Charlie Rangell to disappoint voters in suburban Minneapolis, then what says that a Hard Right figure who serves as a stooge for Big Oil and giant banks will be re-elected in an a rural district in which interest and energy costs cut into profits?
Approval ratings in the high forties 22 months before the election suggest that if he does nothing stupid, he wins. He is a good campaigner, he learns from his mistakes, and he has a good campaign apparatus in mothballs. Against the weak prospects that the GOP has for President, Obama so far looks like a shoo-in. He is a far better President than Dubya, who actually won re-election. Every imaginable candidate of the GOP for President has a weakness that a challenger can't afford -- inability to relate to some region that the GOP must win.
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia haven't voted for a Republican for President since at least 1988. Random chance alone suggests that such could happen by random chance alone in 1 of a number best described as 38 followed by 24 more digits. The Republicans have lost 242 electoral votes, or almost 90% of the Presidential election before a vote is cast. Sure, that is less daunting than in 2000 or 2008, but not by much. The Democrats have to pick up 28 to win. Iowa? It has voted five or the last six times for the Democrat, including one blowout win for a Republican. The Republican must turn over almost 5% of the vote from 2008 to win the state. New Hampshire? Four of the last five. Like the rest of New England, it has been drifting D for a long time. New Mexico? Forget it. I see it more solid as a D state than either Iowa or New Hampshire and even some of the states that Republicans will have a tough time winning.
So don't count on any state that Dubya won only once to come through for any Republican nominee. That gives the Republicans 12 electoral votes of wiggle room.
President Obama has several ways in which to get 13 or more of the votes. The easiest looks like the combination of Colorado and Nevada, two states that seem to vote alike. Nevada has the casinos and Colorado has the ski slopes.. and lots of workers in the tourist trade who have to be fairly open-minded (which usually means liberal-voting) even if they are low-paid. Those two states will be tough pick-ups for the GOP in 2012.
Then there are Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, states whose results are probably independent of each other. Florida and Ohio are the definitive swing states and have been for several decades. Barack Obama may have been the first Democratic nominee for President to win Virginia, but he may be the perfect Democrat to win Virginia. So if the chance of Obama winning both Colorado and Nevada and the chances of winning either one of Florida, Ohio, or Virginia are each even then the Republicans have essentially one chance in 16 of winning the Presidency. Those are independent events, and even that mathematical model looks good so far for Obama. You can ignore Arizona (he has to win both Colorado and Nevada to have any chance of winning Arizona), Indiana or Missouri (he would also have to win Ohio to have a chance in either state), North Carolina (he would also have to win Virginia), or Georgia (which he does win if he has a successful and graceful pullout of troops or outright victory in Afghanistan and at least an Eisenhower-scale landslide in 2012).
I can as easily see an Obama victory of 450 electoral votes (that implies Texas) as a narrow loss.
See what happens in 2012. I see signs of GOP failure before the winners of 2010 are even inaugurated.
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