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Author Topic: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections  (Read 88502 times)

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Brentai

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1100 on: September 19, 2012, 01:03:01 PM »

Quote
The question in this campaign is not who cares about the poor and the middle class.

YES IT FUCKING IS.
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Mongrel

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1101 on: September 19, 2012, 01:16:55 PM »

Paul Ryan clings to message in a hardball interview while watching his career sink to the bottom of the ocean with the leaky ship that is the Romney campaign.

The leaked Romney video was like an early christmas gift.


Transcript/highlights list anywhere? (Besides Brentai's post). Video not playing here at work.
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Brentai

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1102 on: September 19, 2012, 01:31:00 PM »

That quote was not from Paul Ryan.

That quote was from Mitt Romney, while attempting to explain his remarks.

(The quote is out of context - he was trying to imply that both candidates cared and so it's a non-issue - and I would normally not do that, but, well, it's not a fucking non-issue.  Not at all.)
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Brentai

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1103 on: September 19, 2012, 01:36:59 PM »

Linking is still hard: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE88G19620120919?irpc=932

I'm really enraged here.  I don't care at this point how much you don't like Obama (I don't either), or how little your individual vote matters, just go the fuck out and vote for him.  The GOP wanted a referendum election; now they've got one.
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Mongrel

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1104 on: September 19, 2012, 02:12:28 PM »

Quote
Romney already faced a more difficult path to victory as he can count on fewer sure wins among the 51 state contests that determine the outcome of the election.

Errrrrrr, are they talking about DC there, or just being HURRRR?
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Brentai

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1105 on: September 19, 2012, 02:14:33 PM »

They're talking about D.C..
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Shinra

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1106 on: September 19, 2012, 03:16:44 PM »

Paul Ryan clings to message in a hardball interview while watching his career sink to the bottom of the ocean with the leaky ship that is the Romney campaign.

The leaked Romney video was like an early christmas gift.


Transcript/highlights list anywhere? (Besides Brentai's post). Video not playing here at work.

Paul Ryan went into the interview with the obvious message being to spin Romney's comments as him saying that people are only dependent on the government because of the economy, and that Romney actually cares about those 47% and is committed to getting them up and working so they can pay income tax again. And also, that Americans are clearly smart enough to know he wasn't talking about veterans and old people. He repeats these same two points for five straight minutes, looking increasingly uncomfortable and irritated. This is a local news station interview so it's clear that he did not go into this expected to get hammered on the same issue for the entire interview.


The Romney camp is trying very hard to create a counter-gaffe from Obama to counter the 47% comment. The best they can do? Dig up a 1998 interview where he espoused redistribution of wealth. Come on, Mittens, that's weak even by your standards.
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Brentai

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1107 on: September 19, 2012, 04:29:57 PM »

According to Romney, 47% of the nation WANTS wealth redistribution.

(That term sends me into a different kind of frothing frenzy, but I'm not going to get into it here.  Most of it's not news to anybody anyway.)
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Thad

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1108 on: September 19, 2012, 06:48:31 PM »

I live in Virginia.  Virginia went for Obama in 2008.  Prior to that, Virginia hadn't swung blue since 1964, and basically took a sharp red turn from 1952 onwards.  The Southern Strategy is alive and well here, but Obama still won it in 2008.

I've learned not to take for granted that my state will go a certain way.

Yeah, Arizona over here, the state that voted for a Democrat one time since Truman.

I can't speak to Virginia and its likelihood to swing this year because I haven't looked at the numbers, but even the pundit class has given up all pretense of Arizona acting as a swing state this election.  And given that they've tried to sell me that line of bullshit for the last three, I think that really says something.

If Arizona DOES go Democratic again in the foreseeable future, it's going to be just like it was in 1996 -- part of a huge, nationwide surge of Democratic support that renders Arizona completely fucking irrelevant.

I don't care at this point how much you don't like Obama (I don't either), or how little your individual vote matters, just go the fuck out and vote for him.  The GOP wanted a referendum election; now they've got one.

I'm happy to vote for Kyrsten Sinema and Richard Carmona for Congress.  I'm happier still to vote for Paul Penzone for sheriff.

But there's a very real possibility that the Obama Administration just got Arpaio re-elected.  I live in a place where one of my neighbors was once arrested in front of my house for being brown, and the current administration has decided that's not a problem.  Not only decided it's not a problem, but ANNOUNCED it's not a problem BEFORE the election instead of after.

I don't care how much of a plutocrat the guy my state's electoral votes are going to is, I'm still pretty big on due process and this administration is not.

...you know, this is coming out eerily similar to the post I just wrote about how French racists are still assholes even if they aren't murderous thugs.


PUT ANOTHER WAY: I don't think having a referendum on politicians who claim half the population is made up of moochers AND firing a warning shot toward Democrats who take their supporters for granted are mutually exclusive goals.  "Romney loses, but by a slimmer margin than McCain" isn't just a possible outcome, I'd say it's the likeliest right now.
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Brentai

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1109 on: September 19, 2012, 07:10:19 PM »

I want a landslide, and I specifically want a landslide for the most odious democrat since Buchanan.  Just a big, red, flashing message that the Neocons can go tie themselves to a rock, roll it off a pier, build a city at the bottom of the ocean and then kill themselves with magical slug gas.
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Thad

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1110 on: September 19, 2012, 09:12:43 PM »

the most odious democrat since Buchanan.

Yowch.  I think comparing the first black President to a guy who supported the Dred Scott ruling and helped ratchet up the pressure that led to the Civil War is a bit much.

(Assuming we're talking James, right?  Seeing as how Pat is most definitely not a Democrat.)

Besides, you're letting LBJ off pretty fucking light there.  I'd say Vietnam trumps anything Obama's done.  (Granted, the Civil Rights Acts trump anything GOOD Obama's done, too.)

Just a big, red, flashing message that the Neocons can go tie themselves to a rock, roll it off a pier, build a city at the bottom of the ocean and then kill themselves with magical slug gas.

But Romney's not a neocon.  Bush was a neocon, or at the very least a neocon puppet.  Romney -- well, he's belted out this "the Palestinians don't want peace" horseshit, but that's as close as I've heard to a bellicose foreign policy from him.

Romney's a plutocrat, and he's a more obvious representation of one than Bush or Reagan, but that's because of his total lack of charm as much as anything.  From a pure policy perspective, he's nothing new; he's business as usual for the Republican Party and I find it vexing that people are behaving as if this were a radical departure from the same shit the party's been saying for 30 years.

Obama winning in a landslide?  I can honestly say that's not what I want; I want him to sweat.  Ideally I want him and every other Democrat to realize they're in trouble because they've been acting like Republicans and start course-correcting.  But if he DOES win in a landslide, it'll be a landslide in electoral votes, not simply the popular vote.  When's the last time the electoral vote was significantly different from the popular vote?  (2000 doesn't count; statewide recounts give Florida to Gore.)

Realistically I don't think the third-party/write-in/none of the above vote is going to be significant.  But if it were I think that would be a worthwhile message in and of itself.
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NexAdruin

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1111 on: September 19, 2012, 10:27:43 PM »

I'd love to send the democrats a message that their bullshit isn't working but I do not want to do it by getting Romney elected.
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Bal

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1112 on: September 20, 2012, 04:02:11 AM »

I really wonder what the number of people who are simply not going to vote for Obama, no matter what the alternative, looks like at this point. It concerns me that Romney may not have to convince all that many people to make up the difference between him and the White House based on that number.
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Shinra

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1113 on: September 20, 2012, 04:07:23 AM »

For the republicans waiting for the big Romney moneyball to hit: It's not coming.

Apparently most of the money that the Rmoney campaign has been reporting that they raised was earmarked for the RNC and downticket races. There is apparently not as much faith in the Republican party's main ticket as previously believed.

I think this gives a lot more weight to the theory that they never planned for Mitt to take the big chair to begin with, and the main goal was to further secure Congressional seats.

I really wonder what the number of people who are simply not going to vote for Obama, no matter what the alternative, looks like at this point. It concerns me that Romney may not have to convince all that many people to make up the difference between him and the White House based on that number.

Well, I think at this point those people were either always going to vote for Romney to begin with or simply weren't going to vote. I think the centrist racists are probably less likely to vote at all with how things have gone the last few weeks. Polls certainly seem to be supporting that idea. The candidates aren't exactly neck and neck right now in most of the battleground states that actually matter. If Virginia and Ohio keep polling at +5 this is going to be a walkover.

I've been saying from the beginning that Democrat turnout was something that was going to matter way more than Republican turnout and I stand by that assertion. Republican outrage at Obama has been set at 11 since the inauguration. Romney could have made a decent showing at the polls without a single day of campaigning, just fueled on partisan hatred of the sitting president. Multiple polls have shown that most Republican voters aren't voting for Mitt Romney, they're voting against Obama. I think turnout for them would have been high regardless. That's why I thought before, and continue to think now that campaigning to the right has been a huge mistake for Mitt's presidential aspirations. His support among independents isn't great and is nonexistent among minority voters and women. He had multiple opportunities this entire election cycle to reach out to those groups and I can't think of any legitimate attempt he has made at it, other than a middling-OK speech he did for the NAACP. As far as rhetoric goes, he's made some very vague, slightly toxic statements about policy and a series of increasingly more offensive gaffes that marginalize blue collar workers and the middle class - 47%, $200,000 is a middle class salary, etc.

I'm of the opinion that Mccain lost in 2008 not because of Palin (though she was a symptom of what I think is the greater cause) or because he was old, but because he went too far to the right when the American people were expecting a centrist. The same thing is happening now with Mitt. Mitt had a great amount of potential to be a centrist leader, and he blew it pandering to his base, which I'm simply not convinced wouldn't have shown up to the polls regardless of how much stumping he did to them. Now, just over a month before the election, he is scrambling to try to get back to the middle and get the handful of undecideds out there to actually vote for him. He's slipping in battleground polls across the country and nationally he is between 4 and 8 points behind his challenger (depending on who si doing the polling) and pundits are already writing the campaign off as a failure. People are calling this the worst run campaign in the history of the US.

I think the best thing that could happen for us is if the Republican party sees it as a mandate to go even further to the right. Things would get pretty miserable for us in red states for a while, but maybe if things get bad enough and the electorate changes as the oldest people die off, and the younger voters get to the age where they think voting is important, progressive politics will become something attainable again. At the very least, it will force the GOP to either move to the center like conservative parties in every other country have, or risk dying out.

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McDohl

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1114 on: September 20, 2012, 04:23:24 AM »

You can't fix everything in one election, and, right now, I feel that Republicans need a mandate.  A mandate that says that "political brinksmanship, to include threatening government shut down and credit downgrades, is not acceptable in this day and age.  By extension, pandering to the fringe elements to manufacture controversy is not acceptable either."

I agree that Obama sucks on civil rights, but, right now, Republicans are far more dangerous to the stability of this country right now.
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Shinra

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1115 on: September 20, 2012, 04:44:02 AM »

You can't fix everything in one election, and, right now, I feel that Republicans need a mandate.  A mandate that says that "political brinksmanship, to include threatening government shut down and credit downgrades, is not acceptable in this day and age.  By extension, pandering to the fringe elements to manufacture controversy is not acceptable either."

I agree that Obama sucks on civil rights, but, right now, Republicans are far more dangerous to the stability of this country right now.

Agreed. I am hoping Obama wises up on the civil right issue in his next turn, but I am not banking on it. If Obama's civil rights record is not great, I can't imagine what Romney's would be, or what a future Republican's would be. A vote for Obama today sends a message to the right - and that message is probably going to be interpreted in one of two ways. Either that the right needs to move to the center because the electorate is shifted, or that they need to go even further to the right because their base isn't energized enough. If they go further to the right, it's one step closer to marginalizing the republican party and forcing more of the centrist republicans to go across the aisle.

It's a pipe dream, entirely the stuff of fiction, but wouldn't it be nice if the Democrats were the right, and we got a party like the Greens on the left? If the choice wasn't always between a villain and a maniac?
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Shinra

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1116 on: September 20, 2012, 04:49:45 AM »

Tim Pawlenty jumps ship from Romney's campaign to take a job as CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable.

On one hand, the offer might have just been really good, but is this the first sign of rats scurrying from a sinking ship?
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Doom

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1117 on: September 20, 2012, 05:01:23 AM »

The first sign of rats scurrying from a sinking ship was the RNC, when Chris Christie forgot to mention Mitt Romney more than once. Then some nice back-stabbing bits from a frustrated Romney speech-writer, etc. If Romney doesn't go on the offensive soon, it's gonna be what, a little less than 50 days of bleeding out?

Also you guys seem to be giving Obama a lot of "weak civil record" guff considering the repeal of DADT and, if nothing else, the symbolic gesture of saying that gay marriage would be OK. Yeah yeah, not that he actually put any legislature into effect for it or anything and his track record suggests he won't, but it's still a nice starting point.

Quote from: Thad
But Romney's not a neocon.

Russia is our greatest geo-political foe and I can't wait to go to war with Iran. ... Alright, that is admittedly standard GOP nonsense. But I think these are the only concrete policy lines Romney has aside from lowering the tax rate on the rich.
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Royal☭

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1118 on: September 20, 2012, 05:25:34 AM »

Civil rights stuff?  Like how he's jailing more whistleblowers than Dubya? Or his expansion of the federal wiretapping programs? Or his silence while cops brutalize Occupy protestors? Oh, I guess he said that he, personally, is cool with gay marriage but is also cool with states repressing that right. And of course his former chief-of-staff has sided with Paul Ryan in a vicious attack on Chicago's teachers.

Or maybe we should look past the civil rights issue and into his war record, where he's expanded the drone war, which is now taking place in about 4-5 countries. Or his keeping a Kill List, which he uses to determine which individuals he's going to send out a drone hit on with very little evidence. Or maybe his considering everybody hit by a drone attack to be a militant, even ten-year-old children. Or hell, maybe we should just ignore his commitment to supporting Israel should they have to suffer the tragedy of attacking Iran.

Listen, I know Romney is a psychotic monster, but that doesn't mean I feel like voting for or encouraging others to vote for the other psychotic monster. All of this talk of "If Romney wins because you didn't vote it's your fault" is hogwash. If Obama loses, it's Obama's fault. The Democrats do not support labor, they through single payer healthcare under the bus, they have expanded - not quelled - Bush's war on terror, he has cracked down violent on civil rights, and he has done nothing to stop big banks and big business and give control of people's lives back to the people. He wholeheartedly embraces the neoliberal policies of austerity, secrecy and wealth accumulation. I cannot and will not vote for Obama, no matter how bad Romney is, because Obama is already bad.

In the words of Eugene Debs:

Quote
I’d rather vote for something
I want and not get it, than vote
for something I don’t want,
and get it.

Doom

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Re: 2012: The Mayans Warned Us Of Stupid Elections
« Reply #1119 on: September 20, 2012, 05:48:06 AM »

That's a very strong and respectable case, though a bit disconnected from my wishful thinking that mild social acceptance now could lead to a Civil Rights Act style boon later regarding LGBT Rights(I guess that's correct, given the other thread title.) I don't feel excited about Obama but I still prefer the status quo and mild improvement of such compared to the free-falling destruction of the US under the Bush years I experienced most directly.

I suppose the unspoken agreement is that the US loves Israel to the point of inanity, but I thought Obama was a bit stand-offish to them? Or is that just the white noise generated by Netanyahu's love of Romney and mild "snub" in this week or the last by Obama?
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