How to Tell It's Time to Quit the Presidential Race

[steve2470]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/03/how-tell-its-time-quit-presidential-race/49684/

Is the time right for Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum to get out of the Republican primary? Mitt Romney says yes, that only God is powerful enough to change the tide of math that makes his delegate count nearly insurmountable. But it seems like a bad idea to take the word of the candidates' competition. Instead, maybe it's better to see whether recent media coverage indicates the end is nigh. Just like in Revelations, there are telltale signs the jig is up just before your political world ends. We looked back at the media coverage of the last three weeks of several doomed campaigns and found Three Signs of Campaign End Times.

Scouring Lexis Nexis archives for The New York Times and The Washington Post for the last three weeks of seven candidates' campaigns -- Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, and Jon Huntsman in 2012, and John Edwards and Mitt Romney in 2008 -- we uncovered a pattern emerging in the final days of their campaigns:

Narrowing focus to one make-or-break vote.

"Pawlenty Courts Evangelicals in Make-or-Break Moment" -- The New York Times, August 9, 2011

*more at link above*

[lunatica]

1. Everything that happens in election years is a historically entrenched pattern

We just keep forgetting it because it's like falling in love again and again and who can resist that? We firmly believe that this time it will be different.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. I sense that something is different about this election cycle, however

Mittens just won't take the numerous hints that voters have given these past months that they're 'just not that into him.' They've been especially coquettish, going so far as to make the likes of Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann & Rick Perry momentarily relevant - serial flirtations with the latest Not Romney. I've never seen anything that comes close to this behavior, and my political memory is fairly long.

[lunatica]

3. Perhaps this election is just the natural

evolution of political discourse gone wild. And Rachel Maddow has maybe hit on why Mitt hangs in there. Even though he doesn't get ahead in the polls what he does have is the millionaire voters coming out to prop him up. She went into a lengthy segment with charts and references showing that he gets the overwhelming majority of wealthy voters every single time.

His comments about corporations being people too, and his apparent gaffes concerning his statements that keep reminding everyone that he's rich and out of touch are probably dog whistles to the rich. Vote for me, I'm one of you guys and I'm sending you this message. I have many cars, many homes, and I'll do good by you. Dog whistles.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. I hadn't given consideration to that angle

It would make sense, after all. Perhaps the 'gaffes' that we mistake for 'cluelessness' are, in fact, merely shout-outs to his 1% homeys.