...Otherwise known as the "Victory Lap Thread." We will begin with the winners and losers: WINNERS 1) Barack Obama's campaign. David Plouffe and Jim Messina said there were nine states they had to win and will end up winning eight of them. The ninth was lost by less than 100,000 votes out of over 4 million cast. They spent their money exactly where they needed it, they sent their candidates precisely where they would win, and organized hundreds of thousands of volunteer organizers to propel their candidate to a close but healthy 2-point victory on Election day (as of writing, 2012 turnout is below 2008 and 2004, but this is almost entirely due to the presence of Sandy - more on that later today and tomorrow). Also, they got outspent 2 to 1. 2) Nate Silver. The dude predicted that the polls were right and the pundits were wrong. He was right, and they were wrong. 'Nuff said. 3) ME. ME ME ME ME ME. About a three months ago, in the summer, I told you guys to place money on a 332-206 victory with a 2-2.5% edge. As of right now, with Washington State, Colorado, and Oregon yet to report significant chunks of their vote in, Barack Obama has a 2.2% lead, and will win 332 electoral votes. And all I did was aggregate the polling forecasters. Had Sandy not hit, I may have been less accurate. LOSERS To be discussed later.
To the Obama supporters congrats. To those of you who put in actual time and legwork getting him reelected double congrats. To us who are tired of stuffed mailboxes, 10 phone calls a day and tedious commercials triple congrats.
Took the night off from this place to watch returns. What an election. I won't try to analyze it right now, on about two hours sleep. But we'll be picking apart this electoral carcass for many months.
Oh, don't you worry! They're too stubborn to change. Next time they'll do the same but with a better spray tan!
BIG loser: Karl Rove. He bilked a lot of very rich people out of a LOT of money. Probably looking for a quiet place in the Marquesas as we speak. Loser: Paul Ryan. The bloom is off the rose; no longer the wunderkind of the GOP. Loser: Allen West. Ha ha, f**k you. Loser: Donald Trump. Duh. Loser: Sheldon Adelson & the Koch Brothers. If the only benefit of Citizens United is watching these guys throw money away, it will be worth it.
I was going to say that I was satisfied with the results but that I don't feel any schaedenrfreud (I'm too tired to look up correct German spelling.) But then, I look at this list, and I guess there are some asshats that deserve to be labeled as losers . . . or loosers as the case may be. That feeling for me does not extend to the candidate, his family or staff, or to the many, many republicans that I know and many who voted for Romney. I know guys like him. To get to where he was in the business world, you have to be brutal. You have to be able to look at a company that is operating okay, look at the numbers putting a value on the parts, and then break it apart. I couldn't do it, but there are good people who do. They are able to compartmentalize these parts of their lives and keep them separate from who they are as people. You could probably make the same argument about Obama and others who make decisions about drone strikes. A heinous concept to many of us, but he does it within the context of his job and I truly believe that that does not make him bad or evil. So, I will go back to what I said at the beginning of the general. Romney is basically a good guy who is flawed and ran a flawed campaign. I still maintain that out of the republican choices available (and I don't consider Huntsman or Johnson a part of that choice as they were never considered by their own party) Romney was the best choice to actually run the country. I truly wish him and his family the best (not that they will care about my wishes. ) Most of my friends have mellowed on Obama through his presidency and don't see him as this horrible, socialist threat to America. They still voted for Romney as a closer ideological fit, but they don't hate Obama. They will be fine and move on. My hope is that there is a big block of republicans and conservatives who dislike the President because of the influence of nutbags (including everyone at Fox) who will finally accept that he is president and will respect the man and the office even if they disagree with him. Time to move on.
I don't think so. Anybody who was smart enough to make big money, as opposed to just inheriting it, had to know that Romney was a long-shot. If anything, he preyed on their fears. And this election will have confirmed those fears, which means he was right. And he may just be able to get as much big money next go-round. LOSERS: Voters. If anything, this election proved how crucial the battleground states are. And if you don't live in one of them, your concerns aren't going to be addressed. Now, living in Maryland, I was spared the junk mail, and I don't have a TV, so I was always going to miss out on all the advertising, so that's all good. But Senator Mikulski, who was not up for election, didn't spend any time here campaigning for anyone or anything. Not that she ever does, but all her trips were out of state... And shamefully, Maryland's gerrymandered map just continues to add to the marginilization of voters. We're going to continue to put voters in safe little boxes where they can be further ignored.
Another winner were the pollsters. Silver was scary right, got 50 1/2 states out of 51 (called Florida a draw, so that's half credit), nearly all by very close to the actual margin of victory, and was almost exactly right with his popular vote count too. But ... he's only as good as his inputs, the state polls. And they were spot on. There wasn't a hint of a shred of a ghost of accuracy in ANYTHING that was said by the right wing pundits, "experts," press, etc. about the polls being incorrect. It was all a total waste. A loser was the mainstream media. Against the evidence, it bought into the horsey race story and misrepresented the Presidential race. That Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, et al were "in play" was an invention of the faked-up story about the polls being biased, and the mainstream media crapped itself in being manipulated by such a story.
I don't think they were manipulated as much as manipulatING but otherwise I couldn't agree more. Even the politically unsophisticated could see through this clearly last night.
well i think calling the whole world a winner is going a bit far but we certainly dodged a big fat bullet. perhaps better to say arrow. it's just too bad that we have to play william tell with the world every four years. expecially considering that william tell's son is starting to look like st. sebastian.
Losers - The PACs Winners - The American people Karl Rove and the Kochs wasted a monumental amount of money and time, with no results whatsoever to show for it. The voters weren't for purchase.
Then again, they made it a pretty close race (yes, even with the electoral college landslide). They got pretty good mileage out of an unpopular platform and a candidate nobody likes.
They were always going to get pretty good mileage when facing an incumbent President burdened by a deleveraging economcy. They're going to find it quite different in 2016, because as the housing market returns to normalcy, the POTUS is going to look a whole lot smarter on economics without doing a darn thing.
Winners - the political advertisers and PACs Losers - the American people Donors and volunteers on both sides of the aisle wasted a monumental amount of money and time, and ended up returning to gridlock.
Winner: Claire McCaskill. Nobody saw her getting above 45% in Missouri. Then she decided to assist Todd Akin in the Republican Senate primary, and we see the results now. Loser: Linda McMahon She spent $80 million of her personal wealth in 2010 and 2012 in order to lose by the same margin of 12 points in both races.
Winner: The gays. Seriously, 4-0. This will be the last time anyone dares to put a gay marriage ban on the same ballot as the presidential election. On the other hand, what NC did with Amendment One is still a viable tactic.
Winner: People named Bush or Nixon. Why? Someone pointed this out on Twitter and I can't remember who, but by 2016, it will have been 88 years since the Republicans won the White House without a Bush or Nixon on the ticket.