Nobama 2012

I really hope this Obama guy doesn’t steal another term. Anyone out there still support Obama even though he will be more detrimental to the economy in a second term?

It is going to be really hard for him to get relected. He isn’t going to get VA like he did last time or NC. FL will be tough and with the failed recall in WI, WI could go to Romney.

Well, 17% of the vote is still a slam dunk for him. As much as I’d love a fiscally prudent president, I have a feeling will have Obama makin’ it rain low income handouts all while pounding the gavel against the evildoer 1%ers.

I would, I figure he got delt a bad hand in terms of the timing in which he entered office. I’d like to see what he wouldve achieved under more normal circumstances.

Of course im a Canadian which automatically means I am a screaming anti-capitalist tree hugging commie, who has no standing anyway…

If Romney is elected, how do you think he will balance his promise to cut federal gov spending with trying to grow the economy? Similar austerity plans in the UK and other European countries are killing growth.

Obama is still a pretty strong favourite to win on the betting exchanges by the way. Romney most likely has to win Ohio, Virginia and Florida which will be tough.

I dislike both candidates. Why are all these elections more of a choice between 2 evils

What election isn’t like that? Just pick the least bad candidate. Most of them will lie and change course anyway (like Obama).

I’m in for Walker 2016.

Simple. Don’t vote. Or vote for the candidate your like instead of against the candidate you hate.

Obama is going to wipe the floor with Romney. It’s not even funny. Romney can’t get many types of conservative excited. Social conservatives - nope, Evangelicals - nope, fiscal conservatives - possibly, white working class conservatives-nope, neoconservative hawks-yes.

So all those people that you mentioned - social conservatives, Evangelicals, etc. are going to vote for Obama? No, they will still vote for Romney, not because they like him, but because they hate Obama. Romney doesn’t have to be popular. He just needs to be less unpopular than Obama, whose approval rating is about 47% at the moment.

Keep in mind that in this sort of economic environment, Obama’s approval rating has been tracking consumer sentiment, stock market levels, and other indicators like that. The election result will basically come down to how people think the economy is doing in November. If things get worse, Romney will probably win. If the economy improves, Obama will have a better shot.

(I accidentally posted this answer in another thread, but it was intended here)…

As for why does it always come down to a choice between two evils, there are at least three answers to this:

  1. We are living in a time where there are no good choices for us right now. We’re really just deciding who is going to f*ck whom while we start taking away things that had been (unrealistically) promised. Whose entitlements get taken away, and who pays? Social Security? Medicare? Drug Benefits? Military? 3% tax cuts for the highest tax bracket? Employment? Education? Fire and Police? Health? That’s what this election will decide, in a very sloppy, and probably incomplete, way.

  2. The way our voting system is structured, we have congress (and arguably the presidency) structured into single-member districts (where the president’s district is the entire country). When you have voting structures like this, they almost always evolve into two-party dominant systems. This is because if you don’t get 50%+1 vote, you don’t get anything this round. Therefore the two parties serve to coordinate voters so that they have the best chance of fielding a candidate that can win.

If a third viewpoint opens up, it’s generally more productive to try to get it incorporated into one of the major parties, rather than launching out all on ones own, because it is just too hard to get to the 50%+1 hurdle in any reasonable length of time on one’s own. This is actually how the Tea Party is operating, more as a faction within the Republican party attempting (and largely succeeding, in my view, though this can be debated) in trying to take over the entire apparatus.

When you have had third party candidates, they have tended to be Republicans and Democrats who are disaffected with the existing party or did not win a primary election and have therefore decided to try running as their own candidate to capitalize on their individual popularity. It usually doesn’t work, and tends to divide the vote between themselves and the party they are ideologically closest to (Nader/Gore/Bush, Perot/Bush/Clinton, Anderson/Carter/Reagan, T.Roosevelt/Taft/Wilson). Occasionally it can work in small states like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, because in smaller environments, you don’t need quite as elaborate an organization to win, and so smaller candidates have better chances.

In many European systems, you have proportional-representation, which says that if you pass a minumum hurdle of say 5%, you get seats in the parliament proportional to the number of votes that you got. This tends to result in multiple parties representing many different platforms, but then introduces complexities in creating governing coalitions.

There are also differences between presidential and parliamentary systems as well.

  1. Democracies generally need to have real majorities in order to govern, not just pluralities. In order to do this, someone has to have more than 50% of the voting power. So it generally comes down to a choice of two people for head-of-government even in proportional representation systems, and especially in presidential systems.

Uh no. They can simply choose to not vote. If you cannot get your constituency excited they will stay home.

Well, you have to consider that they *really* don’t like Obama. That will motivate voter turnout as well. Don’t forget that significant political movements, like the Tea Party, are mostly inspired by dissatisfaction with the current administration.

Is it just me, or is AF fugging up alot lately?

I think the “Tea Party” is a foolish movement and has nothing to do with the original. The original Tea Party had to do with taxation with no representation. Colonists did not want to pay taxes to a group of people they did not elect. All of the current Congress and Obama was elected by citizens of the US. It’s a movement I would not want to be associated with if I was running for office on a conservative ticket. (and I am conservative)

Obama took conservative states like VA and NC so people have no one to blame but themselves.

Don’t forget that Mccain was leading until Lehman’s collapse. Too early to make any kind of prediction.

And until he picked sarah palin.

at the moment, Obama looks like dead meat, but all it takes is the economy to pick up a little by itself and he’ll bounce back.

At least Romney hasn’t rolled over and played dead like McCain did,

And people always make the argument that if the GOP pick a moderate (like Romney or McCain) then conservatives will still vote for the GOP because they’re not going to vote for the liberal Dem nominee. The reality is that many of them choose to stay home, as they did in 2008.

The way things are, people are going to vote for not-Obama in November.

A guy in prison got 40% of the vote against Obama in the WV primary, that’s how pissed people are

Obama’s position in the 2012 race is different from in 2008. In 2008, Obama did not have a Presidential track record for people to like or hate. So, the people who voted for McCain generally had to actually like McCain. In 2012, voters who simply “have had enough of this shit” will play a much larger role. People are much more frustrated with the poor economy in 2012 compared to 2008, and they will express this by voting against the incumbent.

Plus, unlike McCain, Romney is not afraid of running a dirty campaign. He is going around telling people to kick Obama out of office, while proposing no specific policies himself. He knows that he can better motivate Republican voters by blaming Obama for 2012 problems than by coming up with (probably implausible) solutions.

Romney himself is a mannequin. He does not have a superstar personality and has trouble relating to most voters. “Not-Obama” (as the other guy puts it) is the real Republican candidate for 2012, not Romney.

Edit: Romney is also raising a lot more money than McCain did. In 2008, McCain raised only half of what Obama raised (roughly $380 million vs $750 million). In 2012, Romney will probably raise over $2 billion, compared to Obama, who will probably get about $1 billion. I’m not saying that Romney will win for sure, but that has to count for a few % points at least.

WV has open primaries. Those were Republicans voting for the prisoner.