[TonyInOhio]

Fascinating, and opposite to the prevailing conventional wisdom about why Romney lost. It's clear now that running moderate candidates (even competent and decent candidates like Romney) means we will lose.

Romney bet that playing nice and running on conpetence would be enough, but bringing a knife to a gun fight leads to getting shot. He never respoded to Obama's attacks in kind, betting that playing nice would appeal to the mushy middle - he lost that bet.

This piece is long, but well worth the read if you want to understand the lessons of the election.

[HenpeckedCon]

“It's clear now that running moderate candidates (even competent and decent candidates like Romney) means we will lose.”

I think that's part of it Tony, but I think anti-Mormon bigotry cost Mitt most of the people who stayed home.

[x]

Both candidates concentrated on the swing states. Vote totals in those states went up. They ignored states that were already decidedly in one camp or the other, and vote totals in those states went down. People figured their voting wouldn't affect the result. Also, there may have been organized campaigns to get minority voters to the polls, something that would have been harder to set up for the larger White population. That's my hypothesis anyway.

[x]

BTW, check out the same writer's article, "Did JFK Lose the Popular Vote?."

It's fascinating, and it's not at all what you might think.

[Yardstick]

bfl

Interesting how so much of the post-election analysis centers on race.