kpete
kpete's JournalRasmussen Explains What Went Wrong
Rasmussen Explains What Went Wrong
Rasmussen Reports, which had Mitt Romney leading President Obama on the final day of the presidential campaign and picked the winner in just three of nine swing states, explains:
"A preliminary review indicates that one reason for this is that we underestimated the minority share of the electorate. In 2008, 26% of voters were non-white. We expected that to remain relatively constant. However, in 2012, 28% of voters were non-white. That was exactly the share projected by the Obama campaign. It is not clear at the moment whether minority turnout increased nationally, white turnout decreased, or if it was a combination of both. The increase in minority turnout has a significant impact on the final projections since Romney won nearly 60% of white votes while Obama won an even larger share of the minority vote."
"Another factor may be related to the generation gap. It is interesting to note that the share of seniors who showed up to vote was down slightly from 2008 while the number of young voters was up slightly."
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/weekly_updates/what_they_told_us_reviewing_last_week_s_key_polls2
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/11/12/rasmussen_explains_what_went_wrong.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalWire+%28Political+Wire%29
We Just Had a Class War - And one side won. - By Jonathan Chait
We Just Had a Class War
And one side won.
By Jonathan Chait Published Nov 11, 2012
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When President Obama took the stage at McCormick Place in Chicago well after midnight, we were all too wiped out with joy or depression or Nate Silver auto-refresh fatigue to pay careful attention to the speech the newly reelected president delivered. The phrase that lingered in most of our sleepy ears was the reprise of his career-launching invocation of the United States as being more than red and blue states. So soaring, so unifying. But those words were merely the trappings of magnanimity draped over an argument that was, at its core, harsher than the one he had regularly delivered during the campaign.
The telling phrase came when Obama turned away from the thank-yous and patriotic hymnals into the guts of his remarks. “Despite all our differences,” he transitioned, “most of us share certain hopes for America’s future.” The key term here is “most,” as opposed to “all”—“most” meaning less than 100 percent and possibly as little as 51 percent. He attributed to most Americans a desire for great schools, a desire to limit debt and inequality: “a generous America, a compassionate America.”
Obama then proceeded to define the American idea in a way that excludes the makers-versus-takers conception of individual responsibility propounded by Paul Ryan and the tea party. Since Obama took office, angry men in Colonial garb or on Fox News have harped on “American exceptionalism,” which boils our national virtue down to the freedom from having to subsidize some other sap’s health insurance. Obama turned this on its head. “What makes America exceptional,” he announced, “are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations.” Obama invoked average Americans living out this ethos of mutual responsibility (such as a “family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors,” the example of which stands at odds with the corporate ethos of a certain Boston-based private-equity executive). And even the line about red states and blue states began with the following statement: “We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions.”
Presumably more was at work here than mere uplift. The president was establishing the meaning of his victory. Even in the days leading up to Tuesday, clouds of dismissal had already begun to hover overhead. The election was “small,” in the words of one story in the conventional-wisdom-generating machine Politico, and “too narrow and too rooted in the Democratic base to grant him anything close to a mandate,” in the words of another. “I don’t think the Obama victory is a policy victory,” sniffed Romney adviser Kevin Hassett. “In the end what mattered was that it was about Bain and frightening people that Romney is an evil capitalist.”
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more:
http://nymag.com/news/features/obama-class-war-2012-11/
Patreaus & The So-Called Surge-"He convinced the entire DC establishment that we won the war"
PATREAUS:
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But the warning signs about Petreaus’ core dishonesty have been around for years. Here’s a brief summary: We can start with the persistent questions critics have raised about his Bronze Star for Valor. Or, that in 2004, during the middle of a presidential election, Petraeus wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post supporting President Bush and saying that the Iraq policy was working. The policy wasn’t working, but Bush repaid the general’s political advocacy by giving him the top job in the war three years later.
There’s his war record in Iraq, starting when he headed up the Iraqi security force training program in 2004. He’s more or less skated on that, including all the weapons he lost, the insane corruption, and the fact that he essentially armed and trained what later became known as “Iraqi death squads.” On his final Iraq tour, during the so-called Surge, he pulled off what is perhaps the most impressive con job in recent American history. He convinced the entire Washington establishment that we won the war.
MORE:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/the-sins-of-general-david-petraeus
Republicans should be terrified-What California looks like now is what the entire USA will look like
SUN NOV 11, 2012 AT 06:45 PM PST
Golden results in the Golden State: Democrats dominate California
by Dante Atkins
?1352444286
Republicans woke up on Wednesday morning to survey the damage, in few places could it be considered more horrifying than it was in California. With but few exceptions, progressive candidates and ideologies dominated California races on election night and handed stunning defeats to conservative candidates and their billionaire backers.
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The Bottom Line: Republicans should be terrified. What California looks like now is what the entire United States will look like in the future, and it is a world in which Republicans cannot win. California is done with the conservative ideology of tax revolts, and they are done with Republican politicians at the ballot box. Nov. 6 was a golden day for Democrats in the Golden State.
MORE:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/11/1158501/-Golden-results-in-the-Golden-State-Democrats-dominate-California?detail=hide
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324894104578106941506837334.html
Tonight's Simpsons blackboard: "I will not concede the election till Karl Rove gives me permission."
?@ditzkoff
Tonight's Simpsons blackboard: "I will not concede the election till Karl Rove gives me permission." pic.twitter.com/Tit6xnAr
https://twitter.com/ditzkoff/status/267799654824026112/photo/1
Christian Conservatives Have a Sad
It is not as though [Christian conservatives] did not put up a fight; they went all out as never before: The Rev. Billy Graham dropped any pretense of nonpartisanship and all but endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Roman Catholic bishops denounced President Obama’s policies as a threat to life, religious liberty and the traditional nuclear family. Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition distributed more voter guides in churches and contacted more homes by mail and phone than ever before.
“Millions of American evangelicals are absolutely shocked by not just the presidential election, but by the entire avalanche of results that came in,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview. “It’s not that our message — we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong — didn’t get out. It did get out.
“It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed,” he said. “An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/us/politics/christian-conservatives-failed-to-sway-voters.html?_r=0
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/11/11/164958/07
The "Group Of Four"
“Four presidents in the last century have won 50 percent of the vote twice: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Obama.” — Bill Kristol, reminding the GOP it’s time to wake the fck up.
http://underthemountainbunker.com/2012/11/11/roosevelt-eisenhower-reagan-and-obama/
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