Why 2012 is different to 2004 (and why that could mean a Romney win)

[Politico]

Boys, it's just Politico. He is just as annoying now as he was before his apology for being such a jerk a couple of weeks ago.

Ignore him, maybe he will leave when nobody reacts to his remarks anymore.

Even if nobody reads my posts, I still read theirs, and enjoy responding to some of them even if nobody cares to read my responses. Of course, this place is not nearly as informative as it was six or seven years ago. Alas, nothing lasts forever. People are free to choose not to read my posts just as I am free to choose not to read theirs. I'll never understand why anybody takes the tone of my posts as being disparaging. I can assure you I am respectful of different viewpoints, even if they may be completely wrong IMHO. This place is not Democratic Underground, so one should not be surprised when they encounter opposition to their Democratic sensibilities.

For a political forum, you would expect most everybody to have thicker skin...

[Earthling]

A couple of weeks ago you apologized for being such a Romney hack. You said yourself that you were trolling around but that you were finished now.

And now you are doing the same thing again. That is annoying because it shows how much your words are worth.

[Politico]

A couple of weeks ago you apologized for being such a Romney hack. You said yourself that you were trolling around but that you were finished now.

And now you are doing the same thing again. That is annoying because it shows how much your words are worth.

I do not believe I am being hackish right now. I am not attacking Obama in the way that I attacked Santorum and Gingrich, in particular, back when I was being undeniably hackish.

Believe it or not, I fully support Romney and believe in his message of economic freedom. I strongly believe it is in America's best interests for Romney to become the 45th POTUS.

[Earthling]

A couple of weeks ago you apologized for being such a Romney hack. You said yourself that you were trolling around but that you were finished now.

And now you are doing the same thing again. That is annoying because it shows how much your words are worth.

I do not believe I am being hackish right now. I am not attacking Obama in the way that I attacked Santorum and Gingrich, in particular, back when I was being undeniably hackish.

Believe it or not, I fully support Romney and believe in his message of economic freedom. I strongly believe it is in America's best interests for Romney to become the 45th POTUS.

So, you are really serious when you blame Obama for the behaviour of the Secret Service agents in Colombia?

[Democratic Hawk]

The EU is a confederation; the United States is a federation. North Dakota and West Virginia may have different conditions and policies, but they have much less leeway than Germany and Greece do.

The point is moot. You can check out the unemployment rate in Scandinavia (excluding Norway, which gets a boon from natural resources just like North Dakota, for example), and you will see that my comment about you generally preferring European-style growth/unemployment, which traditionally lags behind America, as being valid. Scandinavia is not paradise on earth. No nation our size is even able to compare to our quality of life and traditional levels of economic growth.

It can be bloody cold there I know that much

[Democratic Hawk]

A couple of weeks ago you apologized for being such a Romney hack. You said yourself that you were trolling around but that you were finished now.

And now you are doing the same thing again. That is annoying because it shows how much your words are worth.

I do not believe I am being hackish right now. I am not attacking Obama in the way that I attacked Santorum and Gingrich, in particular, back when I was being undeniably hackish.

Believe it or not, I fully support Romney and believe in his message of economic freedom. I strongly believe it is in America's best interests for Romney to become the 45th POTUS.

You've got that already

[Politico]

A couple of weeks ago you apologized for being such a Romney hack. You said yourself that you were trolling around but that you were finished now.

And now you are doing the same thing again. That is annoying because it shows how much your words are worth.

I do not believe I am being hackish right now. I am not attacking Obama in the way that I attacked Santorum and Gingrich, in particular, back when I was being undeniably hackish.

Believe it or not, I fully support Romney and believe in his message of economic freedom. I strongly believe it is in America's best interests for Romney to become the 45th POTUS.

So, you are really serious when you blame Obama for the behaviour of the Secret Service agents in Colombia?

What? I was talking about how the Obama Administration is responsible for the misspending on Gingrich's protection. It's a good example of the type of waste that is characteristic of this Administration. Obviously the Administration is not responsible for the actions of off-duty Secret Service agents. The situation there is completely different from continuing to waste resources on Gingrich's protection. Is somebody pretending to be me on the IRC chat again, and claiming that I have blamed Obama for the behavior of SS agents in South America? I've never been in the IRC room, and never will be (I barely have enough time for this place), so do not believe anything you see in the IRC chat room if it is coming from somebody claiming to be me. It's not me.

[Earthling]

Right, sorry, that was Winfield.

But every candidate has the right to ask for Secret Service protection. And there was a moment in the campaign that Gingrich was leading so it's not totally weird for him to get that protection.

Using that as a sample of the waste within the Obama government is just nonsense.

[Politico]

Right, sorry, that was Winfield.

But every candidate has the right to ask for Secret Service protection. And there was a moment in the campaign that Gingrich was leading so it's not totally weird for him to get that protection.

Using that as a sample of the waste within the Obama government is just nonsense.

That time was many months ago. We should not give Secret Service protection to people who clearly cannot win the presidency. For example, John McCain stopped receiving Secret Service protection immediately after the 2008 election results.

[Earthling]

As for as I know it's law. After the murder of RFK every candidate has the right to have Secret Service protection when it's needed.

You might have dismissed Gingrich, but he was leading in the polls for a while. So he was a serious contender at the time.

[Politico]

As for as I know it's law. After the murder of RFK every candidate has the right to have Secret Service protection when it's needed.

Actually, RFK had SS protection, I believe. If memory serves, RFK did not follow the SS's proposed route for leaving the hotel. Or perhaps I am confusing the SS with his private security and/or local law enforcement.

I believe you can only get SS protection if there are credible death threats and/or you are a serious candidate who can win the presidency, either as an independent or one of the prospects for the nomination of a major party. Gingrich has not met this criteria in months. Any other administration would no longer be wasting resources like this.

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And Romney is the presumptive nominee, but nobody in the Obama Administration knows how to properly handle resources, so nobody realizes it's probably prudent to pull the plug on Gingrich's SS protection. I am not arguing Gingrich should have never received SS protection. Obviously he was a serious candidate at one time who deserved the protection. I am arguing the SS protection should have been dropped quite a few weeks ago.

[CLARENCE 2015!]

Politico- I think there are far bigger issues then the what- 10K per day that is spent on Newt's protection? Lord knows some whackjob could wake up and want to be in the news...God forbid.

[Earthling]

As for as I know it's law. After the murder of RFK every candidate has the right to have Secret Service protection when it's needed.

Actually, RFK had SS protection, I believe. If memory serves, RFK did not follow the SS's proposed route for leaving the hotel. Or perhaps I am confusing the SS with his private security and/or local law enforcement.

I believe you can only get SS protection if there are credible death threats and/or you are a serious candidate who can win the presidency, either as an independent or one of the prospects for the nomination of a major party. Gingrich has not met this criteria in months. Any other administration would no longer be wasting resources like this.

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And Romney is the presumptive nominee, but nobody in the Obama Administration knows how to properly handle resources, so nobody realizes it's probably prudent to pull the plug on Gingrich's SS protection. I am not arguing Gingrich should have never received SS protection. Obviously he was a serious candidate at one time who deserved the protection. I am arguing the SS protection should have been dropped quite a few weeks ago.

As far as I know, RFK didn't have SS protection because he didn't qualify for it. He had local law enforcement protection but that is not the same off course.

As for Gingrich, it's not like Obama decides who gets protection or not. There are probably guidelines to follow and I presume those guidelines where followed. So it's nonsense to blame Obama for this.

[Politico]

Politico- I think there are far bigger issues then the what- 10K per day that is spent on Newt's protection? Lord knows some whackjob could wake up and want to be in the news...God forbid.

We're talking about $40K/day, so over $1 million/month.

There are bigger problems, but this is symbolic of the type of mismanagement of resources in Washington under the Obama Administration.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

As I just pointed out in another thread, when Newt stops getting protection is not up to Janet Napolitano alone, just as it was not up to her alone to decide when he started getting it.  She need to get an advisory committee consisting of Boehner, Pelosi, Reid, McConnell and a fifth person the four Congressional leaders named to decide that Newt is no longer a major Presidential candidate.

Besides, Newt's protection detail is a good holding place / training exercise for Ann Romney's detail, since she (and the running mate's spouse) can't get one until July 9 (120 days before the general election).

[Vosem]

Politico can be annoying sometimes, but in this thread he's dead right.

[m4567]

A romney win isn't out of the question, but it's going to be hard. He's has to flip a lot of swing states. I don't know if someone as standard/average as him can do it. Plus, Obama is a great campaigner. If the economy dips again, Romney has a bigger chance.

[pbrower2a]

There has been a strong case to use 2004 as a case study for this November. I understand the argument: A divisive, but personable incumbent with marginally respectable approval ratings against an unlikeable, flip flopping, prone to silly gaffes, challenger who the base is even relecutant to rally around. That being said, I think you need to look much deeper; and when you do, I think it's impossible to conclude that even with these similarities, the differences are too detailed to prove the same result as 8 years ago.

2004 is a flawed analogy. First, the 2012 election follows an election on the brink of a landslide; the 2000 election was a squeaker. President Obama would have to lose more  to lose in 2012.  I can't see any constituency of 2008 that he could lose except for the nabobs of Wall Street who wanted someone to save the economy and now are more concerned with tax breaks. That is a few tens of thousands of voters heavily located in states that are going to vote for President Obama by 15% or more anyway. President Obama can lose those and win much as he did in 2012.  The other constituencies that voted for him -- minorities, women, organized labor, highly-educated people, government employees -- show no signs of going some other way.  


Second, Barack Obama is a far better President than George W. Bush. Of course, Dubya left much delayed damage in his wake before 2004 that few recognized as such.

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Possible -- but Americans had yet to sour on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a prisoner, but things were not going to get better. Support for Dubya went from astronomical to abysmal; this time eight years ago his support was still strong.

It is more significant that the President is doing none of the things that can cause trouble. He is a cautious leader, and I can't see him risking re-election.

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One way of looking at that is to say that we see his floor and he has plenty of room for improvement. But can he improve enough?

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Partisan bases are never enough for winning a Presidential election.  Goldwater and McGovern both won the partisan bases of their Parties, but little else even if those bases were wildly supportive of their candidates.

You are right that many Republicans revile President Obama -- but unless they convince enough of those who voted for him in 2008 to vote for Mitt Romney the President wins re-election.

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Conceded here -- it is the big issue. It was also the big issue in 1936, too. Expectations are down from where they were before the economic meltdown of 2007-2009 because people see a great fraud of a speculative boom as the cause of the meltdown.

Of course President Obama has failed to inspire a fresh speculative boom. Nobody would trust any politician who promises a new one. To his credit Mitt Romney has scrupulously avoided  any promise of a speculative boom. He has instead offered an intensification of old-fashioned trickle-down economics that promises pain for multitudes for quick gain by the few with promises of an acceleration of investment due to cheap labor and low taxes upon the super-rich.

If out of desperation he promises a fresh economic boom based upon speculative activity he    
dooms his campaign. Nobody will trust that. But "no speculative boom" also means nearly no chance of an economic meltdown.  
 

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But the 2008 election was nearly a 53-46 split. Dubya was the definitive empty suit of a President, a stooge of interests that he did not understand. He was never a good speaker, and he frequently used language intended to obscure the ultimate agenda. His biggest legislative achievements were drains on the treasury without mitigation. He rode the early results of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to an electoral victory.

If you think that the Affordable Care Act is unpopular, then wait till you see how unpopular the Ryan plan to privatize Medicare is. Basically the elderly rich will get first-rate medical care, the elderly of the middle class will get second-rate care until their money dries up, and the elderly poor will just have to die. Separate the Affordable care Act into its components and those components are popular. The Stimulus began when Dubya was President when the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the head of the Federal Reserve Bank so dictated.

The stimulus worked. The economy is in better shape now than it was in 2009. A boom is impossible and about everyone knows that.

...Does anyone wax nostalgic for the tyrannical, murderous, terrorist-enabling, war-mongering regime of Moammar Qaddafi?  

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The referendum works both ways.  President Obama has done well in achieving the promises that he made to core constituencies without offending a large group of potential voters. He doesn't need to make fresh promises to a part of the electorate that did not vote for him in 2008 to get re-elected (that's really the Carter analogue).  

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Barack Obama became President of a deeply-divided nation with plenty of questions remaining about his stability, competence, core values, and experience. He has been a fine President from the standpoint of getting legislation passed when he had a cooperative Congress. He has proved an above-average diplomat and a fine Commander-in-Chief. He has not proved 'soft-on-crime'. Maybe he learned something from his experience as a Community Organizer -- that street crooks aren't 'misunderstood people who just happened to have been dealt a bad set of cards'. One would never learn that as a corporate lawyer who deals all the time with high-functioning sociopaths instead of the low-functioning sociopaths who deal drugs and pimp girls.  President Obama has wisely left what he knows least about -- military and intelligence operations -- to those who know what they are doing.

Maybe he isn't the starry-eyed, bleeding-heart, guilt-laden liberal as the Right wished to depict him.  I can assure you -- most liberals are patriots who have no illusions about criminals being 'poor little lambs who have lost their way'.
  

That being said, I think the differences outlined above also show that it could very easily go the other way.

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The ideologues who want America to be a country of severe inequality between gross need and opulent indulgence will find more of a purist... and Mitt Romney has been pandering to them well. The people who would never under any circumstances vote for anyone not white have seen no change in circumstances. People who still think that he is a foreign usurper are not going to vote for him.

But people who had their fears and find those fears unfounded might to some extent vote differently in 2012.  Fewer Obama voters of 2008 are going to believe their 2008 votes mistakes and vote differently. He hasn't kissed up to crooks and he hasn't used the federal government as a patronage system to his core constituencies. If he has apologized for Dubya's blunders he has also given America much less for which to apologize.