Elections
If Obama is to win re-election one year from today, he'll need to prove a "historic" candidate in less esoteric and more statistically significant ways than propelled him to victory for his first term. He'll have to defy the historic trends for presidential elections as they presently stand. As the Washington Times notes:
At 43 percent approval in a Gallup poll conducted Oct. 28-30, Mr. Obama recently referred to himself as an "underdog" -- with good reason. Of all the presidents since World War II whose job-approval scores were lower than 50 percent one year before Election Day, only one went on to win a second term.
That was President Nixon, whose job approval stood at 49 percent in November 1971. He rebounded to defeat Democrat George McGovern in a landslide in 1972.
Obama's approval rating is much lower than Nixon's and, hopefully, the GOP candidate will prove more formidable than McGovern.
Unemployment is another statistical guide.
No president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has won a second term when the unemployment rate was higher than 7.2 percent. Reagan won in 1984 with a jobless rate at 7.2 percent.
Obama, of course, is no Reagan and present unemployment hovers at 9%.
So, Obama has his work cut out for him. But he does have a few advantages going for him.
He is still a formidable fundraiser, having amassed more than $150 million for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee this year.
Also, his re-election operation is more robust than any of the GOP camps, which are waging a long and costly primary battle. Mr. Obama's campaign is able to build on a 50-state network from 2008, an email list of more than 9 million potential supporters and an experienced staff with unequaled savvy in digital marketing and social networking.
In early polling of head-to-head matchups with potential GOP candidates, Mr. Obama comes out on top in nearly every instance. One poll in the battleground state of Florida this week showed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney tied with Mr. Obama.
And the Times contemplates the possibility of a third party candidate siphoning votes from the Republican nominee - but I don't foresee such a option in the tea leaves.
As I've noted previously, Obama is not being blamed by the American people for the state of the country. The buck, it seems, has not stopped with the president. It must be a priority for the GOP candidate to lay blame were it belongs and tie the economy as an albatross around the president's neck. Where the media has deflected blame from Obama, the GOP must nail it to his campaign bus. A Republican cannot win if Obama is not recognized as the culprit responsible for America's woes and deserving of its righteous anger.
"The buck, it seems, has not stopped with the president. It must be a priority for the GOP candidate to lay blame were [sic] it belongs and tie the economy as an albatross around the president's neck. Where the media has deflected blame from Obama, the GOP must nail it to his campaign bus. A Republican cannot win if Obama is not recognized as the culprit responsible for America's woes and deserving of its righteous anger."
Good luck with that.
In Florida, of all places:
"Do you think the Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected?
Yes 49
No 39
Undecided 12"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/will-voters-buy-the-idea-that-gop-is-sabotaging-economy/2011/03/03/gIQAJHziiM_blog.html
and at the notoriously left-wing The Week:
https://theweek.com/article/survey_results/219496
You'll also need to FoxNews more people into believing that the TARP bailout of the banks was Obama's doing, not George W. Bush's - the guy whom conservatives gave two terms and bid farewell to with chants of "Four More Years!" (which were perhaps intended, in the mature style of cowgirl, to get liberals' panties in a wad at least as much as from any actual desire to give Shrub four more years in office).
As a friend of mine pointed out a few days ago, conservatives need to put their supposed love of country (or even a dispassionate concern for it, let alone love) above their cynical political ambitions and hatred of Obama, the poor, and anyone to the left of Limbaugh. As it stands, their wide-ranging hatreds dictate their every twitch and have mostly eclipsed their devotion to the country as a whole. But perhaps this is a natural outcome when the belief that there is no such thing as society, only competing individuals striving for their individual liberties (VERY narrowly defined in economic and sometimes religious terms) becomes adequately popularized. It's going to be interesting, to say the least.
I so get under your skin. But then again, it doesn't take much to do so.
By the way, how is all that anarchists stuff working for you lefties. Raping, dealing drugs, fighting, beating innocent people up, shutting down businesses who create jobs, destroying ATM's, shoving old ladies down the stairs, and inspiring everyone by writing F$$K on the windows of Church attended by mostly minorities, and oh yeah blaming Wall Street and Big Banks on the Jews?
Of course here in the Stupid State, we have Stupid Cities like Oakland City Council and the Mayor who support the OWS.
The OWS are anarchists for statism and socialism. They are drugged-induced 2011 hippies demanding more and more total government control of everyone's life just so long as they can continue to be a drag on society. In their hearts, these worthless OWS want more of the same fix that has made America the brokest nation in history. On top of it they expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous capitalistic society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it. Furthermore they expect to be the people to run this society of theirs with all the benefits. This country and been dishing out entitlements since the 1960's. We have spent trillions of dollars and people are worse off now then ever before.
THOU SHALL NOT COVET Scanlon. If you do, you will be punished by Someone you cannot control. Get that!
One thing more Scanlon. You might want to pick up a history book written by someone othan Howard Zinn and read why McGovern lost to Nixon in 1972...
Hint: It had a lot today with the crazy, drugged induced hiippies of the 1960's protesting, rioting and acting pretty much like the 2011 drugged induced hippies are doing today.
Don't get those panties wadded up to badly today.
When Barack Obama proclaimed his intention in 2008 to transform America, most people no doubt believed that he merely wanted to change the unpopular foreign and domestic policies of the Bush Administration. But few have failed to realize now that he intended much more than that. He spent unprecedented trillions with massive deficits and burgeoning debt, and courted enemies and abandoned friends abroad.
But there have been other transformations in our body politic, which have been dominating the media. The mobs intimidating citizens in New York City and elsewhere are attempting to accomplish by force what the President has been unable to do by persuasion. Shouting is the natural companion of mob behavior, for a mob is unable to articulate a rational argument.
Evidence is mounting that those of the wealth-confiscating Left do not intend to lose power. Whether that is the President demonizing successful business enterprises for making money or mobs demanding that Obama make good on promises that even members of his own party are abandoning, makes no difference. The common denominator is hatred for the American Constitution.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from making law abridging freedom of speech, or of the press, or preventing the people from assembling peaceably to petition for a redress of grievances. Dissent from government policies and criticism of its leaders is a protected right.
It is one thing, like the Tea Party, to hold rallies, give speeches and employ media to express a viewpoint. It is something very different to ”occupy” property for indefinite periods, chant mindless slogans and catch phrases, intimidate citizens on foot or in their automobiles, take no care for personal hygiene, sanitation or self-control, and demand that critics be silenced or even arrested.
The potential for violence was clear. Angry, self-righteous and paranoid persons have little patience for legal processes. They look for any excuse for violence, as they did in Oakland when a police tear-gas projectile accidentally struck an Iraqi war veteran, and began a burning and vandalizing campaign that the Oakland police lacked the manpower to stop.
It is possible that they have gone too far by closing down the Port of Oakland, which employs the very working people the enemies of capitalism profess to care about. Truckers and dockworkers employed there who might have sympathized with the occupiers surely have had their patience exhausted.
There is no point in beating about the bush as to the meaning of all this. The political Left has suffered a serious blow to its “transforming” ambitions. So the President has stooped to the low tactic of preaching class warfare against the wealthy few who invest heavily in business ventures that generate millions of jobs for their fellow citizens, while young people unemployed (and unemployable) because of his job-killing policies have taken to the streets. What the Left could not win at the ballot box last year, and will not win next year, it intends to win by mob rule.
Whenever the Left does not get its way, it contends that democracy has been thwarted and begins to bully our elected representatives. That’s what the union thugs and public employees resorted to in Wisconsin earlier this year and are doing now in Ohio. The compliant media romanticizes these activities, dominated as they are by the same liberal left which is only a few more years out of many of the same politically-correct colleges and universities that a large segment of the public employees and Wall Street occupiers attended.
Mob rule is the very opposite of the republican form of government established by our Constitution. Disrespect for election results is but the prelude to anarchy and ultimately despotism. Once legitimate government loses its authority, the vacuum created cannot be filled by anarchy but rather by force. That is how the Wall Street occupiers, according to the latest reports, are conducting themselves, as the loudest and most audacious step forward and silence critics in their ranks.
The Democratic Party has a history of stealing elections, not only in our largest cities but for decades in the lily-white Democratic South. What it can’t steal by fraud, it wins by voter intimidation, as the Black Panthers did in Philadelphia in 2008 and for which the Eric Holder Justice Department refused to prosecute them. The anarchy we are witnessing is but another name for secession, which defines Democrats now as much as it did in 1860. Oppression is next.
My post above.
Don't flatter yourself so much, cow. You do not get under my skin at all. Actually, I enjoy your presence here probably more than the NLT bloggers do. I simply acknowledge what you've previously stated to be one of your life's endeavors: upsetting liberals. Sure, it's juvenile and ridiculous, but at least it's some sort of goal.
I didn't bother to finish your 2nd paragraph...
No flattery. Just the facts Scanlon.
You won't respond to the second paragraph, because you have no response. It is hard to argue facts - easier just to get your panties in a wad.
"The Democratic Party has a history of stealing elections ...." Richard? Are you insane? Think back to Florida and, if you don't want to do that, have a quick look at a new report from NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, which presents good evidence that more than 5 million people could well find themselves disenfranchised. 5 million, almost all of whom are poor, old, students, black or Latino:
https://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/voting_law_changes_in_2012
This article argues it nicely:
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/31/republican-voter-fraud-fraud