Posted on 11/06/2012 7:15:57 PM PST by 11th_VA
Washington: An uncertain four years could await President Barack Obama if, under one possible outcome of Tuesday’s election, he clings to power despite losing the popular vote to Republican Mitt Romney.
Never before in US history has a sitting president won a second term without winning the popular vote. This year, it’s within the realm of possibility. A very tight race seems to favor Obama in the handful of most competitive states that will decide the winner, even if growing Republican enthusiasm means more voters overall go for Romney.
If that happens, Obama would face mounting problems—stubbornly high unemployment, Mideast unrest, the “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts in January—with little ability to claim Americans support his way forward, political analysts say.
“If there’s any room in these results for Republicans to say the public doesn’t support what he’s doing, it would make an already toxic, incredibly difficult situation that much worse,” Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer said.
Call it Al Gore’s revenge. In the 2000 election, the vice president was denied the presidency despite winning more votes than President George W. Bush. Even after the Supreme Court settled the race, allegations of a “bloodless coup” deprived Bush of the clear mandate needed to unite a divided nation, until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks united Americans against a terrorist threat.
A decade later, as a bitter election draws to a close, Americans are even more divided.
Four US presidents have assumed office despite losing the popular vote, including Bush and John Quincy Adams, who in 1824 lost both the popular and electoral vote but was handed the election by the House of Representatives.
All of those elections involved non-incumbents seeking their first term. For a sitting president to lose the popular vote and yet remain the world’s most powerful leader would be uncharted territory, raising difficult questions about our electoral system.
A look at the map makes it easy to see exactly how it could happen. Passions run high this year among Republicans, and turnout for Romney probably will be big — especially in Southern states that he’s likely to win. But last-minute polls show Obama clinging to a small advantage in a handful of battleground states like Ohio and Florida, which could enable him to block Romney’s path to the requisite 270 electoral votes. Those votes are won state by state and decide the election.
“This is going to be a turnout election,” Obama said Monday in a radio interview. “We’ve got the votes to win Florida. It just depends on whether people turn out or not.”
If Obama marches to 270 but loses the popular vote, he would face the unpleasant prospect of spending four years as a president with little power. “Republicans would have a pretty strong hand to play against him,” said Craig Robinson, the Iowa Republicans’ former political director.
No politician wants to be relegated to irrelevance. Unshackled from Democratic donors and with his last election behind him, a second-term Obama could maneuver sharply toward the center, seeking compromise with Republicans on major issues as did his Democratic predecessor, former President Bill Clinton. He might rethink his call for raising taxes on wealthier Americans to pay for deficit reduction, or pull back some environmental or business regulations in the interest of getting things done for the American people.
Such a move inevitably would anger the liberal base to which he owes his presidency, said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist. But Obama may not have a choice.
“If you’re on the way out the door and you’re a ‘lame duck,’ offending people doesn’t matter anymore,” Sheinkopf said.
What matters is salvaging your legacy.
Americans remember the big, sweeping acts that define a generation. Think Mars exploration, a major climate initiative or a war on cancer, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.
“President Obama will need to put his stamp on something large,” Brinkley said. “Our country is dying for something that unites us.”
I understand your black humor (no pun intended), however, the President can exercise his pardon privileges anytime he wants. If he loses, if he wins ... anytime.
This is so frustrating tonight. Allow me to throw a FUBO toward Washington DC.
I don't need Obummer to survive, his supporters need budgets to survive ...
Being a community organizer means never having to say you were defeated.
My 11’th grade history teacher told us the first time that ever happened it would start a second civil war. We got away with it in 2000 because the whole world knew that the situation had been created by the media and had not occurred naturally.
Hey now.
Hey now.
“Yup even if it means a million of us need to go to DC carrying the Gadsen flag while demanding more of our own.”
I was there in Sept. ‘09. The media virtually ignored it. We need to make sure they don’t let that happen again when we return....
If King Obama wins you can blame the GOP. These asses destroyed America.
I mean, should I be worried at all?
CA and WA will push the Obama popular totals above Romney.
Hard reset
Soft reset
Galt.
Can anyone think of another viable outcome?
exactly
Unfortunately that is very true,
Wonder if we will start seeing more of those shirts and bumper stickers that say “If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.”
We’ve had some pretty large rallies in DC already, between the Tea Party and Beck.
The press and our public servants ignore them.
So whats the play when you’re dealt an electoral defeat with a 51% majority?
Obama cannot strangle that which he has yet to even grasp. The american idea is an idea of freedom, individualism, and self-reliance. Obama imfanticly rejects all of theses ideas in-favor of his socialist collectivism, dependency and ultimately state slavery.
The idea that formed and defined America is undeniably dead to Obama, and struggles to breath under the weight of his jackboot. This is why I say with compete honesty in a very real way we don’t have a country under Obama. Washington is not a illegitimately american Government anymore. It has abandoned that tittle under Obama in favor of foreign ideas at war with the very concept that defined America from the beginning.
The flag & republic we pledged alegence to does not exist anymore!
Obama cannot strangle that which he has yet to even grasp. The american idea is an idea of freedom, individualism, and self-reliance. Obama imfanticly rejects all of theses ideas in-favor of his socialist collectivism, dependency and ultimately state slavery.
The idea that formed and defined America is undeniably dead to Obama, and struggles to breath under the weight of his jackboot. This is why I say with compete honesty in a very real way we don’t have a country under Obama. Washington is not a illegitimately american Government anymore. It has abandoned that tittle under Obama in favor of foreign ideas at war with the very concept that defined America from the beginning.
The flag & republic we pledged alegence to does not exist anymore!
Obama will talk a humble game in his speeches, but he will still pursue to things, more taxes, further gutting the military. We can only hope that in his second term, the bottom falls out on him like W's second term did as we..
“That is knee slapping funny. Chairman Obama famously said and proved that he did not need Congress to rule. It appears a majority of a once free people voted to enslave us all.”
You mean declared war upon our rights. We are not enslaved until we surrender & give up on our freedom.
There is an old saying Patriots like you should remember:
Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.
Don’t give up the fight! No matter what
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