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

Opinions about the 2012 presidential campaign today are fairly similar to the public’s views in June 2004. At that time, 79% said the campaign was important (the same percentage as today), 52% said it was too long (59% today) and just 33% said it was interesting (34% today).

only 59% today say that the campaign is too long?? that's kind of amazing. i guess i've never really looked into it too closely, but i always assumed that campaigns in america are waaaaaaaaay longer than in most other countries and that the effects of being in permanent campaign mode are obviously detrimental.

I think there are a lot of people that pay no attention to commercials/the news/the world around them and don't notice campaigns until late in the game.

at the neighborhood july 4th party i enjoyed listening to a sloshed new neighbor do his "anybody but a kenyan socialist who hates america" speech, and then 10 minutes later listen to his very nice, aussie spouse explain that they were soon moving with their two kids to australia because of the superior social safety net, health care system, and quality of life. the husband would be the only one with visa issues, but would somehow have favored status, blah blah.

beautiful

safety nets are for white people, like duh.

they're called "hammocks" for everyone else

Richard Posner on his batshit party.

ha, Posner OTM; this is exactly what happened to my father

(or more accurately, the Republican embrace of social conservatism, which is anathema to him, at the expense of fiscal conservatism drove him away)

The social conservatives have taken over the party and pushed out many of the fiscal conservatives and their irrational take on society is now reflected in their irrational take on economics. They're still free-marketers ('cause Jesus, duh!) but their ability to actually see the world around them has been diminished by a rigid, partisan, ideological orthodoxy so they're practically forced to espouse ideas like Obama's a Kenyan socialist and Obamacare is substantially more socialist than Medicaid.

gop just used to have a more respectable sheen on their mean spiritedness before the internet

by no means do I pine for the good old days of WFB Jr, Goldwater, and Greenspan, all of whom would drink a martini with a liberal and then pour the remains on the impoverished waiter and set him on fire.

Johnson's prescience about the Civil Rights Act has actually come to pass; the South just won't for a Democratic party (once very largely their) party because they distrust any democratic impulse for non-white ppl. As that has become more and more socially unacceptable, they switched parties, won over more and more local parties and school boards and slowly asphyxiated the blue dogs and other conservative Democrats that used to represent the Old South. They got their way but they're still going to lose generationally and perhaps, all the more so that their distilled version of American social conservative is unalloyed to any rational or circumspect thinkers.

the problem is that by the time they die they will have ruined 75% of the United States

I know this doesn't happen all that often in Anglo-American politics but perhaps one the present parties in the duopoly might die. It happened to the Whigs.

I mean the fiscal conservative party is now the Democrats. The Republicans are batshit economically right now and not even in a unified way. It all vaguely reminds me of Bismarck instituting social welfare legislation in the 1880's to screw the Social Democrats.

it could happen MW but I think the GOP has at least another 20 years in it even in its current configuration

at least that'd be my guess

The Dems are not the fiscally conservative party.

we have no fiscally conservative party.

the thing re the shift in the south to the gop and the shift in the rest of the country of liberal republicans to the democratic side is it more of a natural correction of a aberration which was that the parties were not ideologically aligned cause of ancient grudges held over the civil war than it was a result of the voting rights act etc - that helped it along but it was inevitable, its not the normal situation to have liberal and conservative wings of both parties in a two party system

fiscal conservatism means you spend money on the things you think are the important common sense things

A good post about it: http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-which-conservatives-get-their-own.html

fiscal conservatism means you spend money on the things you think are the important common sense things

― lag∞n, Friday, July 6, 2012 6:34 PM (54 seconds ago

Socialism is the language of priorities.

Karl Rove's contribution to the economy:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/rove-backed-super-pac-25m-ad-buy-attacks-obama/

its kinda funny these super pacs cant find anything better to do w/their cash than buy ads in the presidential race

not a v good value!

Get ready for some dumbshittery on this one:

Akron Restaurant Owner Dies Hours After Meeting Obama:

The owner of an Akron restaurant where President Barack Obama stopped for breakfast this morning died, apparently of a heart attack, shortly after meeting him.

Josephine “Ann” Harris, 70, of Copley Township, was taken by ambulance to Akron General Medical Center after complaining of fatigue and a tingling feeling. She was pronounced dead at 11:18 a.m., according to the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Harris, just a few hours before, had the honor of meeting — and hugging — Obama when he stopped at her family’s restaurant, Ann’s Place, on South Hawkins Avenue for breakfast. This was Obama’s first stop on the second day of a bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“I’m sure this was her highlight,” said Frankie Adkins, Harris’ sister, who lives in Tulsa, Okla., and heard about her sister’s sudden death from family members. “She loved Obama.”

Obama stopped in Ann’s Place for breakfast about 8:30 a.m. Harris was ecstatic about his visit when a Beacon Journal reporter spoke to her shortly afterward.

cant believe he poisoned some lady who just wanted to hug him, what a dick

Clearly he has mastered the Touch of Death.

VA, NC & FL all went to Obama in 2008 fwiw

eating away at the edges

I have no idea where on South Hawkins Ann's Place would be

x-post
influx of new residents in those states helped Obama

xps

They got their way but they're still going to lose generationally

The Republican coalition now consists mainly of the extremely wealthy, who bankroll the party, call the shots, and reward themselves with trillion dollar tax cuts, together with important voting blocs made up of religious conservatives, small business owners, the poorly educated, the angry and the easily propagandized. It has become much less conservative and far more reactionary as the two parties have polarized.

As much as I hate to say it, this strategy has worked extremely well for them, especially given the heavy bias in the US constitution to give the controlling power to small states with low populations. Mississippi may be a shitty state to live in, but it's proved to be a great model to base political power on.

As for losing out generationally, I doubt it. The Democrats have made more gestures toward addressing the issues that concern the young, but they have hardly done enough to win undying loyalty. The Republicans will shift their message to suit the winds of change, because the party is very top-down and the keepers of the money will still call the shots. They will take the Tea Party out and shoot it in the head whenever they feel that is best for them.

two party systems tend toward balance with parties changing their views when they become unfashionable, but that doesnt mean you cant have lopsided adjustment periods

influx of new residents in those states helped Obama

lol at anybody for whom this is a meaningful fact

At any rate Aimless seems sadly otm to me here:

The Republican coalition now consists mainly of the extremely wealthy, who bankroll the party, call the shots, and reward themselves with trillion dollar tax cuts, together with important voting blocs made up of religious conservatives, small business owners, the poorly educated, the angry and the easily propagandized. It has become much less conservative and far more reactionary as the two parties have polarized.

not everybody's going to be a small business owner, but "the poorly educated, the angry and the easily propagandized" is a huge chunk of any given human population & a perhaps bigger chunk of the American population, for whatever reason. Republican rhetoric in recent years has pulled off the neat parlor trick of criticizing Democrats for being "angry" (at Bush, at the Iraq war, etc) while offering a place for people who've got a lot of free-floating displaced rage to vent. They will be able to persuade these people to vote against their interest for some time to come.

^ yeah, this. aimless and aero otm, sadly. the politics of unbridled fear, loathing and anger, as managed by very wealthy.

They're deomstrably on the wrong side of economics (eg. the Bush years and present refusal to ever envision any tax increases), race relations, foreign policy, civil rights, esp. LGBT rights, the environment and future nat'l security issues and however much the big money ppl think they can "take the Tea Party out and shoot it", the tiger they're riding's contumely will only increase as they represent a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole and they get increasingly fucked.

kinda funny these super pacs cant find anything better to do w/their cash than buy ads in the presidential race

― lag∞n, Friday, July 6, 2012 11:42 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not a v good value!

― lag∞n, Friday, July 6, 2012 11:42 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree! After experiencing Meg Whitman's campaign for governor in CA a few years ago, I'm somewhat surprised that this is still considered good strategy or an effective use of money.

Cool way to spread the wealth, tho

I mean that is real trickle-down at work, there.

M. White, I would like to believe in your future comeuppance for republicans, but I wish I could say that the majority of the voting population understood economics enough to punish the republicans for their policy failures. I wish Obama hadn't largely thrown away the opportunity to punish the CEOs and CFOs of fraudulent mortgage lenders and insurance companies at the start of his first term.

I wish the people who vote in favor of establishing stronger civil rights for minorities didn't have so many goddamn closet racists to offset them.

I wish more than a tiny fraction of Americans cared about foreign relations and the environment.

I wish the issue of national security wasn't mostly the province of jingos and super-patriots.

driving up ad prices between now and november doesn't strike me as a wealth-spreading activity. wealth-shifting maybe.

the shrinking GOP voter pool means that the citizens who vote for the GOP will eventually coagulate into a new, more formidable and loathsome political party. That's why human nature is awesome.

They're deomstrably on the wrong side of economics (eg. the Bush years and present refusal to ever envision any tax increases), race relations, foreign policy, civil rights, esp. LGBT rights, the environment and future nat'l security issues and however much the big money ppl think they can "take the Tea Party out and shoot it", the tiger they're riding's contumely will only increase as they represent a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole and they get increasingly fucked.

― Love Max Ophüls of us all (Michael White), Friday, July 6, 2012 12:38 PM (19 minutes ago)

this sounds true, but isn't, i don't think. the republican party represents not reactionary anger about this or that, but reactionary anger in general. therefore, they can keep shifting the goalposts. this is america, after all: there's always gonna be a big bloc of scared, angry reactionaries out there.

^ at least 60 years of republican politics in america seem to bear this out

Americans aren't more stupid than other peoples. Plenty of stupid French people. Look at Le Pen voters!

sure. i do think that we're a notably fearful, angry and puritan nation, though.