[Bubba_Leroy]

There is no question that Obama was extremely beatable this year. But the “crawl through broken glass to vote against Obama” voters were not enough to do it. We needed a strong candidate that would draw voters to the polls. We didn’t have one.

According to the most recent figures I have seen, Obama got a total of 59,127,919 votes this year. That is less than the number of votes that McCain got in 2008 (59,950,323). So all Romney had to do to beat Obama this year was to get more votes than McCain, and McCain was one of the worst candidates that the Republicans have ever nominated.

Bush got 62,040,610 votes in 2004. If Romney had simply gotten as many votes as Bush did 8 years ago he would have beaten Obama in a landslide this year.

[beckysueb]

Well, perhaps those who didn’t vote for whatever reason put pettiness, laziness, whatever, first, instead of love of country. We have become a nation of blame others first.

[Callahan]

You’re going off election day totals. There are still votes being counted. Romney is likely to end up with about 3M more votes than McCain got and Obama will fall short of his 2008 total by a couple million. This was still a pretty close win and many factors could have turned the tables, but the idea that Obama was “extremely beatable” was based on the idea that people who voted for him in 2008 would punish him for his horrible economic record and the monstrosity that is ObamaCare. Instead 50% of the electorate blamed Bush, which neutralized that issue. And low info voters won’t get pissed off by ObamaCare until they start actually feeling the negative effects when it is fully in place. Of course, Obama lost some support, but they just stayed home instead of voting for Romney. And the Dem voter registration/turnout machine, buoyed by favorable demographic trends was able to make up for much of that.

[x]

Both candidates got fewer votes this time than the candidates did last time because there was less interest and less enthusiasm this time. The overall pool of voters shrank. It would have been hard to buck that trend, whoever was nominated.

To say a candidate is "beatable" in the abstract isn't saying much. Every candidate has weaknesses, but you have to find another candidate who can make the most of those weaknesses and win. There wasn't such a candidate this time around, and you can't beat somebody with nobody.