the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

there will literally be an ad that's just the "corporations are people, my friend" exhange

I would hope so, but I've seen these sorts of golden opportunities overlooked or refused in the past, by candidates I thought would have smarter advisors. At the upper reaches of national campaigns you can't count on anyone knowing what ordinary people care about, except as abstractions based on polling. Obama is too deep in his cocoon by now to be in charge of these decisions. Maybe Howard Dean will be smart enough to do it, but idk.

Howard Dean?? isn't he two chairmen ago?

who keeps track of DNC chairmen?

not me, but he's yesterday's Scream.

yeah, it takes a couple hundred words to illustrate Obama's respect for corporate peoplehood.

this isn't nothing btw.

like, u don't need to be zizek to realize that the subtlety of the case you need to make is correlated to the volume of the crime.

I know, I'm just lamenting

look you guys I agree with you. it's just that Obama is presently in the "to make the case against me, you have to have a few minutes and not be crazy" position. that eliminates most of the people who want to unseat him, since they are of the distracted-by-light-on-a-bumper strain

"8% unemployment"

That's all Romney is gonna say, and that will be enough for some to vote for him.

x-post
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Dem is the current DNC chair.

What makes this a horse race is that a huge proportion of the voting population do not need to hear a reasonable case made against Obama. They will simply rely on their visceral dislike to guide their vote and Romney needs only to feed that dislike by telling them they are right to feel that way.

the distracted-by-light-on-a-bumper strain

are they related to the distracted-by-awesome-hair strain?

yeah, I caught a Bill Maher clip of Debbie Wasserman Schultz doing the Obama-doesn't-REALLY-support-indefinite-detention dance. Vile.

A significant minority are simply not going to vote for a muslim - nothing racist about that.

Wasserman-Schultz is beloved by her constituency. I can't tell her apart from Ros-Lehtinen tbh.

i think when the stakes seem so high ('the most important election of your lifetime!' but also, more seriously, this is the most public, possibly most powerful position in the world) you kinda psychologically want to hedge your bets about what is possible as much as you can. it's tempting to gird yourself for the possibility that romney wins so that you're not in a state of shock and horror if he does. there are probably other good reasons for wanting to see this as a horserace (to make it more exciting? to not make a prediction that makes you look like a fool? out of hope? out of the realization that the world is full of uncertainty and anything could happen). logically, tho, it's hard for me to accept that it's going to be a close election. everything i've learnt about american politics, and observed in my life, suggests that obama is going to win easily such that it'll be hard to believe that anyone thought he might not.

"Against stupidity even the gods contend in vain."

-- Fredrich Schiller --

pretty interesting unemployment post here from a Republican dude who I got googling around about the unemployment trends. I agree that "8%" is going to sound pretty bad, I assume the Obama campaign is going to hijack a little 99% rhetoric & that'll probably be where it happens. OWS ppl will be v. angry about this, there will be much rage in their self-contained circles.

kinda a truth about history is that ahistorical unpredictable events occur all the time, so any kind of prognostication always comes with the caveat, 'assuming a seismic shift in history doesn't change the facts about everything-'

Reagan won with 7% unemployment

(not to be interpreted as an endorsement of Obbie)

yeah because heaven forbid

1983-07-01 9.4
1983-08-01 9.5
1983-09-01 9.2
1983-10-01 8.8
1983-11-01 8.5
1983-12-01 8.3
1984-01-01 8.0
1984-02-01 7.8
1984-03-01 7.8
1984-04-01 7.7
1984-05-01 7.4
1984-06-01 7.2
1984-07-01 7.5
1984-08-01 7.5
1984-09-01 7.3
1984-10-01 7.4
1984-11-01 7.2

vs

2010-08-01 9.6
2010-09-01 9.5
2010-10-01 9.5
2010-11-01 9.8
2010-12-01 9.4
2011-01-01 9.1
2011-02-01 9.0
2011-03-01 8.9
2011-04-01 9.0
2011-05-01 9.0
2011-06-01 9.1
2011-07-01 9.1
2011-08-01 9.1
2011-09-01 9.0
2011-10-01 8.9
2011-11-01 8.7
2011-12-01 8.5
2012-01-01 8.3
2012-02-01 8.3
2012-03-01 8.2

so taking into account where each recession started, obama's recovery is only lagging 0.2 points behind reagan's?

The most shocking thing is there's no "Corporations Are People" auto-tune video on youtube.

nah I didn't even include the peak of the recession in that

afaics, it's a damn miracle we didn't have the Great Depression II when the worldwide housing bubble collapsed. As it stands Europe's still in deep shit, which Obama (and Bernanke) can do nothing about. But a majority of Americans either don't notice or don't care that there is world beyond our borders.

Is there like a "Most Robotic Things Romney Has Said" Top 10 anywhere I can look at for source material?

xxp anyway, still very comparable and we all know how reagan did that election

marking Bam down for 49 states then!

C-3P0 is more convincing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFDAZ1dMoxA

i'd guess no just bc i can't imagine that kind of victory for any candidate in 2012, but i think he's got the election locked up. if it turns out i'm wrong, i'll probably be more upset about president romney than about my failure accurately predict the election xp

xxp anyway, still very comparable and we all know how reagan did that election

nah they're not comparable tho!

gdp growth by quarter:
1983:2 10.90
1983:3 6.50
1983:4 7.00
1984:1 7.40
1984:2 5.00
1984:3 2.30

^ this is not happening

ftr 'I think obama will win' and 'I think unemployment will be around 8%'...but if last year looked like 1983, obama would win this by double digits

i think people are underestimating the "hey this isn't exactly how i think it should be i'm voting for the other guy" mentality among the electorate.

paying $4 at the pump, houses still worth less than the mortgages (if they haven't walked away yet), and an employer's market squeezing advancement opportunities/raises/etc.

i think people are underestimating the "hey this isn't exactly how i think it should be i'm voting for the other guy" mentality among the electorate.

look how well it worked for Kerry

A friend just lost his 3rd job in 3 years and is trying to figure out if at-home freelancing is going to pay more than UI ... he's not gonna vote for Mitt, but maybe not O either.

but that was a dissatisfied "anyone but Bush" portion because they paid attention to the war and the politics. I'm talking about people who don't generally give a shit but they just see that they're still in a not-great position financially. xpost

they just see that they're still in a not-great position financially

so they vote for the robot billionaire? makes sense.

after it became apparent that neither Gingrich nor Santorum were going to be the GOP nominee, i resolved that unless it's obvious that it's going to be too close for comfort, then i am not voting for President at all.

so lol disgruntled liberal at me all you like.

well if obama can't win nj he can't win the general election anyway so don't overthink it

what i mean is, i would've voted for Obama again if either Santorum or Gingrich were nominated only in the spirit of "Hindenburg v. Hitler" or a "Chirac v. Le Pen" b/c Gingrich or Santorum were exactly that bad. but since it's Obama and Romney, i really don't give a fuck which of those two corporate suck-ups wins.

if you're hungry and the choice is between more gruel, less gruel, or nothing at all, then you should ask for more gruel, even if you find the gruel itself difficult to get down.

unless you're in new jersey

the gruelest state

except that neither Obama nor Romney are "more gruel" candidates.

I don't think you actually understood Aimless's post

so they vote for the robot billionaire? makes sense.

that's my point. there's no logic to it, other than "this guy isn't working for me i'll try the other guy."

also if it were santorum or gingrich i might not have bothered voting but Romney is pretty much everything I really can't stand in the world all wrapped up in one person. no matter how much they both grovel to the corporations, Obama isn't Romney.