Foster McCollum White Baydoun in Florida: Romney 54%, Obama 40%

[pbrower2a]

These are the numbers we are converging towards, but I doubt we are there right now.

Brave yourselves, Obama youth: Huge backlash against Obama for those 30 and older is in the making with youthful apathy back on the rise as a result of the dismal economy.

You assume something that has no cause to happen. Sure, I have shown models of Obama landslides, but those all come with a little but important word -- if I could also create a model of a Presidential election that has Florida going 14% for Romney... basically, Reagan won Florida by 17% in 1980, and I figure that because Florida is about 3% more R than the US as a whole that would imply a 56-44 win for Romney.

But just as I would use the word if followed by qualifications that might seem absurdities for President Obama winning 450 or so electoral votes I would have to do much the same with a 56-44 scenario for Romney.

The GOP has nothing to offer but 'secret methods' to put the economy back on track. Maybe they are secret because they would offend too many sensibilities. We know that they include tax cuts for the super-rich to be paid for in higher taxes and reduced services for others. They include expanded expenditure on military weaponry. So what could be the secret stuff?

Further destruction of workers' rights. Sweetheart deals with crony capitalists to sell off the assets of the public sector while defaulting on services.

"Dismal economy"? I can imagine far worse. A return to the practices of the 1920s or earlier implies mandatory, unpaid overtime whose benefit goes entirely to elites while wearing down those who do the work.  Impose that along with means to ensure that there could never be any meaningful political opposition in the vote (like putting property qualifications on voting)... and the color "red" might suggest a vastly different sort of republic here.

A hint: you do not want to make Marxism-Leninism politically relevant in America. 

[pbrower2a]

Gee... even Politico thinks Romney is a mediocre politician. What if he is a mediocre president?

These are the numbers we are converging towards, but I doubt we are there right now.

Brave yourselves, Obama youth: Huge backlash against Obama for those 30 and older is in the making with youthful apathy back on the rise as a result of the dismal economy.

You assume something that has no cause to happen. Sure, I have shown models of Obama landslides, but those all come with a little but important word -- if I could also create a model of a Presidential election that has Florida going 14% for Romney... basically, Reagan won Florida by 17% in 1980, and I figure that because Florida is about 3% more R than the US as a whole that would imply a 56-44 win for Romney.

But just as I would use the word if followed by qualifications that might seem absurdities for President Obama winning 450 or so electoral votes I would have to do much the same with a 56-44 scenario for Romney.

The GOP has nothing to offer but 'secret methods' to put the economy back on track. Maybe they are secret because they would offend too many sensibilities. We know that they include tax cuts for the super-rich to be paid for in higher taxes and reduced services for others. They include expanded expenditure on military weaponry. So what could be the secret stuff?

Further destruction of workers' rights. Sweetheart deals with crony capitalists to sell off the assets of the public sector while defaulting on services.

"Dismal economy"? I can imagine far worse. A return to the practices of the 1920s or earlier implies mandatory, unpaid overtime whose benefit goes entirely to elites while wearing down those who do the work.  Impose that along with means to ensure that there could never be any meaningful political opposition in the vote (like putting property qualifications on voting)... and the color "red" might suggest a vastly different sort of republic here.

A hint: you do not want to make Marxism-Leninism politically relevant in America. 

....and with these sort of threats? I think you will be begging for someone as conservative as Obama 30 years from now.

If I am around 30 years from now I will be 86.

I am not the one who threatens a Marxist insurgency; it s a corrupt system that enriches and pampers elites but gives the worker no chance that makes a Marxist insurgency possible. Healthy societies do not have an angry and desperate proletariat that falls for a Lenin, Mao, or Castro. Sick societies with somewhat-modern economies with pre-modern attitudes toward working people do.

.....

The best thing possible for America will be for President Obama to become the exemplar of the status quo, and what is generally understood to be the basis of conservatism. By 1970 the Republicans posed as the defenders of the New Deal. The GOP seems to seek to undo about every liberal reform since 1928 except perhaps the abolition of Jim Crow practices. Maybe that will make the current GOP irrelevant. Heck, some have said that they want to abolish the 17th Amendment that allows popular election of US Senators.  

We have no heritage of one of the two main parties going extremist... but that could be one way toward the demise of the GOP. The Federalists and Whigs became irrelevant for very different reasons.

I figure that after the demise of the GOP, American politics would become more similar to those in some countries in western Europe, with the unwieldy Democratic Party splintering into perhaps a Christian Democratic Party and a Social Democratic Party.


 

[pbrower2a]

I said  that I would show what the 2012 election would look like if Mitt Romney could win Florida by 14%. Florida was about R+3 in the 2004 and 2008 elections, so that means a split of the popular vote of about 11%, or 55-44. This pollster has Michigan going to Romney, so you can add that as a data point for this model.  It's your choice on whether Maine splits its electoral votes.

Not as lopsided as Carter vs. Reagan in 1980; America is just too polarized for that.

...This is one possible consequence of believing outlier polls.

[pbrower2a]

The problem with your theory, pbrower, is that the GOP isn't extremist in the traditional sense, of being dictatorial and doing things people don't want.

The Republican Party has been a legitimately-democratic party for decades.  It has been taken over by a clique hostile to some of the norms of democracy, including the checks and balances that underpin republican government. A Party Boss dictating how its elected officials are to vote and another dictating who gets the financial support based upon positions on critical legislation, neither of them elected to any public office and not responsible to any elective authority, is democratic only in the sense that "democratic centralism" is democratic.

The agenda could as easily be traditionalist and conservative as Commie -- and "democratic centralism" would indicate that practically no freedom exists within the Party.

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Nearly half. But no consistent majority, as shown in 2006 and 2008. The 2010 election shows what can happen when unlimited funds on behalf of stealth candidates has excellent organization  (especially FoX Newspeak Channel, which plugged the Tea Party Movement at every opportunity).

We shall soon see in elections as in the polls whether those stealth candidates remain popular enough to win re-election. I count on well-heeled elites to richly fund anyone who believes that a pure and inhuman plutocracy is the right way for America forever, especially after the Hard Right is able to impose a dictatorship by lobbyist.

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Plausible? Sure. But it also portends the sort of America that people emigrate from if they have a chance -- especially if they belong to minority religions or have any tendency toward intellectual independence.