Sometimes, there is a paradigm shift and history no longer matters. They told Billy Mitchell that air power would never be a factor in war. Personal computers were never going to catch on. And, Obama is no Harry Truman or even Bill Clinton. He is a shift in thinking. The Progressives are running free tonight because the historical paradigm is different. All the old trends are useless from here on out.
Stop coming up with excuses for a crappy campaign. You will never get anywhere if you are not going to honestly take a good look at the party and campaign that just lost.
Calling Obama a Muslim, a Kenyan, or questioning his birth certificate is NOT going to help in a demographically dynamic country. Unless immigration is stopped and illegals and foreign born green card holders are removed (unrealistic), the demographics have changed too much. Personal attacks on Obama based on his foreign origin is not going to be a winning recipe in attracting those not of the typical American ancestry.
I think this is good analysis. Obama did poorly last night. Romney did even more poorly. This is no big left wing victory, although they will portray it as such. In 2016 they will be running a new non-incumbent candidate who is a mere mortal that they are not as emotionally invested in, and it will be unlikely to be a better scenario for Democrats than it was this year.
Also I expect Obama to be even more of a basket case this term than the last one. He’s not running for anything anymore, which was the only interesting part of the job to him. He’ll probably feel like quitting by mid-2013 when he realizes what a long period of time he has ahead of him before he can leave. It will be like when he was a Senator and didn’t bother showing up to work because that stuff was boring.
$7 Trillion in debt buys a lot of votes...
"Read my lips. No new taxes!"
Speaking of Historical Perspective, here’s one to consider....
I just did a quick lookup of the Obama vs McCain popular vote as compared to the Obama vs Romney Popular vote and here is what I see:
Election 2008
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008
2008: Obama: 69,456,897 McCain: 59,934,814
TOTAL VOTES CAST: 129,391,711
Obama Victory Margin: 52.9% to 45.7% (9,522,083 votes)
Obama: 365 EV McCain: 173 EV
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Election 2012
Source:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012-election-results
2012: Obama: 60,652,149 Romney: 57,810,390
TOTAL VOTES CAST: 118,462,539 (2,841,759 votes)
Obama Victory Margin: 51.2% to 48.8%
Assuming Obama takes Florida (which as of this writing is still uncalled)...
Obama: 332 EV Romney: 206 EV
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What I find interesting are the following:
1) There were more people who voted in 2008 compared to 2012.
2) McCain got MORE votes in 2008 than Romney in 2012. In fact, McCain got 2,124,424 MORE VOTES than Romney !!
QUESTION : WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE 2,124,424 McCAIN VOTES IN 2012?
3) Obama LOST OVER 8,804,748 Votes in 2012 compared to 2008!!
QUESTION: What happened to those 8,804,748 voters? Did they stay home?
I can only conclude the following, based on the above observations:
* There was LESS ENTHUSIASM by Americans to vote in 2012 than in 2008.
* Contrary to what we were led to believe by the GOP and what some FReepers claim they saw on the ground in their state, REPUBLICANS WERE NOT ENTHUSIASTIC TO VOTE THIS YEAR. In fact, I can see at least 2 Million of them staying home this year compared to 2008 based on the above numbers.
So much for the huge Get Out the Vote Effort, the huge, sellout crowds in Red Rocks Colorado and in Ohio...
* Even though Obama lost over 8 Million votes this year, most of those voters DID NOT switch to Romney, preferring to stay home ( I suspect many of these would be the disappointed youth of 2008 and the socially conservative blacks of 2008. The former still can’t find good jobs and the latter couldn’t vote for a gay marriage supporting candidate. However, they still could not vote for Romney. So, they stayed home ).
Also, I cannot help but conclude that a huge proportion of the GOP base STAYED HOME in 2012. Otherwise, where were the over 2 million votes that went to McCain in 2008?
This was a self-inflicted loss on the part of the Republicans.