US Elections 2012 Obama v Romney Official Thread

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Colorado called for Obama, Ohio now irrelevant.

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Captain Cadillac said:

unrepentant said:

Not close at all. The vast majority of votes still to be counted in Ohio and Florida are in strong democratic districts. Romney has won his last state, will lose by well over 100 electoral college votes. Only an egotist in denial would fail to concede at this stage.

I was talking about the election in general being close. You know, the one where you suggested Obama would win in a landslide? Ain't happening. As I said before it could easily go wither way and there was a very good chance that Romney could win the popular vote and lose the electoral vote. That seems quite likely. Even should Obama pull ahead in the popular vote, and he may well, I don't see him winning by 10,000,000 votes like he did in 2008.

I never suggested a landslide. I suggested a big win and this is a big win, over 100 electoral college votes.

Willard has conceded. Good riddance to a pisspoor, lying, truly awful candidate. Big issues facing the GOP. They lost 5 senate seats because of the morons on the right tonight. They need to sort out the tea party or they will never win the presidency again.

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I bet Sheldon's feeling a bit sick. Piss $100 million up against the wall for what? Serves him right.

Willard is talking about honesty in his concession speech. I think I'm going to vomit..

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Ryan looks like he's about to cry. As he should, he gambled and lost and he's fked for 2016.

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Wadeski said:

I was out in a bar for the results, but now I'm watching Fox News' coverage of the loss on replay.

Its f***ing brilliant watching the fox blowhards be hit with the cold hard slap of electoral reality.

I'm off work tomorrow but I almost wish I wasn't. Apart from the $200 I have to collect from a right wing colleague (it's going straight to Planned Parenthood in his name ) I'd love to see some of the faces of my workmates who were convinced Romney was going to win. I'll wait until Thursday.

I will listen to that Rush Limbaugh though. He was convinced all the pollsters bar Rasmussen were wrong, Romney was going to win by a landslide etc.. (Sounded like one or two of the more ignorant posters on here - not the US based ones). I can already predict what he and all the other nutters will be saying tomorrow - "told you it was a mistake to pick Romney, too liberal" etc..

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devonshiredave said:

Leaving the electoral college to one side, this was actually a very close run election, looking at the 'popular vote'. Given that Romney really was a poor offering from the Republican party, I do wonder what a 'better' candidate would have returned in this election; if of course such a candidate was available.

To suggest that this was not a huge victory because the popular vote was reasonably close is to completely misunderstand the process. Right from the get go this election was going to be decided in 12 states. Obama campaigned exclusively in those states and it looks like he has probably won all of them bar North Carolina. Had he spread himself thinly across the nation he would have won more votes but possibly lost the election.

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Mermaid said:

Did Obama win, or Romney lose?

Obama would have beaten any of the candidates that contested the primaries. Had they chosen Santorum or Gingrich, who were his two closest rivals, the victory would have been much bigger IMO.

The republicans have a huge problem. Their leaders in government stated that their function was to obstruct the president and, in Mitch McConnells own words, ensure that Obama was a one term president. The result has been a disaster, that policy has led congress to a historically low approval rating and has failed, Obama has been re-elected. They allowed the tea party to dictate their policy and to pick their candidates and as a result they failed to take back the senate, something that should have been reasonably straightforward. They have shrunk their base and when the final analysis is done it will be apparent that their key support came from the over 65's and white males without further education. That is not a healthy base for a party that wants to govern. It's likely that Romney lost women by 11%, the under 30's by 23%, those aged 30-45 by 7%, Latinos by 44%, African Americans by 86%, post grads by 13% and all college graduates by 2%. He even lost the catholic vote.

Unless they can somehow ditch the tea party and abandon the right wing evangelical social agendas that have truly hamstrung them it's difficult to see a path back for them. A populist candidate like Christie would maybe work but as things stand it's difficult to see him getting the nomination.

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Dixie68 said:

This isn't a dig, I genuinely want someone to explain this to me - if everything was so 'close' why did Obama win so many of the swing vote states? I'm assuming they were states that were undecided? Last I heard, (last night so it may have changed), was that he had 9 of the 12 states.
Some people are surprised that Obama won whereas I, as someone looking from the outside and with no bias, am surprised that anyone could ever think Romney could win. Romney seemed to be running a campaign based on nastiness.

He won 10 out of 12, probably 11 when Florida is decided. It wasn't close at all, it was a thrashing.

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Ok, that's over.

I'm canvassing now for the Warren / Castro 2016 ticket.

Too early?

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Mermaid said:

unrepentant said:

Mermaid said:

Did Obama win, or Romney lose?

Unless they can somehow ditch the tea party and abandon the right wing evangelical social agendas that have truly hamstrung them it's difficult to see a path back for them.

Tony Blair

I've said it before, Romney reminds me of more of Blair in his mendacity and slipperiness than of anyone lese.

Where he differed from Blair is he's not as good a politian (by miles) and he had no control over his party. A reforming character would have a hard time overhauling the GOP because the structure is so different and the characters that need ousting are the ones that control it. If the pragmatic right want to do anything they may need to break away.

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Some of the side stories are good. Elizabeth Warren defeating Scott Brown was great, the repugnant Todd Akin was thrashed and Tammy Baldwin beat the old warhorse Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin to become the first openly gay senator.

In Indiana the odious creep Richard Mourdock was roundly beaten by democrat Joe Donnelly. This is the race that should send chills up the republican spine. Last time out republican Richard Lugar won this seat in a safe republican state with 87% of the vote. 87%! But Lugar didn't suit the local tea party activists who have hijacked the party. Lugar was too concilliatory, too prepared to work across the aisle for the good of the country, in short not extreme enough. So they put up lunatic evangalist right winger "Rape is God's will" Mourdock against him in the primaries and ousted him. And yesterday savvy Hoosiers split the vote, went for Romney and republican Gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence and sent Mourdock packing.

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MonkeyHanger said:

TheHeretic said:

Bachman kept her seat, again. The mind boggles.

How about Turner & Overdrive?

They're takin' care of business but watch out - you ain't seen nothing yet.

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Oh dear, Rush isn't happy. He did predict a Romney landslide yesterday so I suppose that's not a surprise. He's confused and angry. How could he be wrong? Obviously he's not wrong, the American people are! What a bunch of ingrates they are, he told them to vote for Romney and they ignored him. He told them that Obama was a black anti Christ who would lead us to ruin and they ignored him. What a bunch of aholes they are! Apparently Romney ran a great campaign, expousing traditional American values of charity, self reliance and kindness. He showed America a route to prosperity and they ignored him. He was open and honest with the American people and they rejected him. It's all the fault of the great unwashed, everyone who voted for Obama believes in Santa Claus etc...

The self styled voice of the right simply can't belive it!

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devonshiredave said:

unrepentant said:

To suggest that this was not a huge victory because the popular vote was reasonably close is to completely misunderstand the process. Right from the get go this election was going to be decided in 12 states. Obama campaigned exclusively in those states and it looks like he has probably won all of them bar North Carolina. Had he spread himself thinly across the nation he would have won more votes but possibly lost the election.

Im actually not sure you understood my point - which was "leaving the electoral college to one side" - when looking at just the two candidates and the votes they received, then it was a very close run thing. The electoral college or other political machinations/campaignning/whatever are completely irrelevant to this point. I am simply commenting on how many votes each candidate received relative to the other - quite how they chose to generate this level is irrelevant after the fact that this is the amount of votes they received regardless of any other consideration.

Please dont use your obvious fervour to support Obama to take away from what is a very clear, numerical based observation.

I understood exactly what your point was. The fact is that here in the USA we have an electoral college system for choosing a president. Obama campaigned in the states that he needed to win to win the presidency. The popular vote is irrelevant to the outcome of the election although he is over 50% and looks likely to win that measure by 3 million or so votes.

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Jon Stewart really enjoying himself tonight at the expense of FOX, Billo, Palin, Rove etc...

FOX has an audience of mainly old extremely dumb white people who are a diminishing market. If I were Rupe I would be thinking of a bit of a re-position, maybe dump Billo, Dobbs, that vacuous bint Megan Kelly, Hannity etc.. and try and pick up some intelligent centrists who can align with the majority. If he doesn't the future is probably not great for his network.....

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chris watton said:

smn159 said:

Really? Nothing to do with rejection of the nutty social agenda of the right that Romney had to embrace to even get on the ticket?

If the above is a reflection of conversations at Republican HQ I suspect that they'll be out of power for a good while yet.

So, you think that a country spending way more than it can afford indefinitely is a good idea?

There’s nothing ‘nutty’ about that?

From what I have seen, socialism kills aspiration dead, in its place is a culture of state dependancy. Is that a 'good' social agenda, for the long term health of a country?

I don't know, perhaps it is, and perhaps if I worked in the public sector or relied on state handouts, my view would be different, I don't know....

You think Romney's plans would have fixed the economy? They consisted entirely of tax cuts which would benefit high earners only and cost $5 trillion and be paid for by closing unspecified loopholes of which there are not anywhere near enough (and he ruled out the only big ones), extra military spending that we don't need and which the chiefs haven't asked for and err.... that's it.

The fact is that every indicator in the economy is pointing in the right direction and the defecit will start to come down pretty rapidly as the economy continues to move forward. In fact right wing commentators were already saying yesterday that the economy will move forward over the next four years and Obama will "unfairly" claim the credit!

Your last sentence, which seems to write off the majority of Americans as spongers is deeply insulting and not worthy of you, you're usually a more thoughtful poster than that.

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Turnout is not much down. Votes counted so far are about 10 million less than total cast in 08. But only 69% of CA so far counted so probably another 3 million there, NY has counted only 86% so another 800,000 or so there, 500k more to come in Ohio etc.. It will be close to 08 which will be pretty amazing considering the huge number of new voters who turned out in 08. Plenty of interest in this election from all sides.

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martin84 said:

Only old white rich men think Romneys defeat was all due to economic matters. That might be all that matters to the old, white rich men of the West but the other 95% seem to think differently.

You really think this is why Romney didn't win? So you don't think it might've had something to do with;

a) The people of Michigan didn't want to vote for a man who openly said he wants to make them all unemployed.

b) Those 'selfish bribed poor' didn't want to vote for a man who described 47% of them as worthless or a man who has a history of flip flopping his positions. Would you trust this man with launch codes at his desk?

c) They didn't want to vote for a Republican after they've been making backwards comments about rape, religion and abortion recently - and indeed for many years.

d) The black and hispanic people didn't want to vote for a President whose party is practically openly racist.

e) Romney didn't put forward a credible alternative economic plan anyway, he had no USP. He advocated some rehash of Reaganomics which the country cannot afford and extra military spending which the military isn't asking for. That was it.

f) Women didn't want to vote for a man who wants to overturn Roe v Wade - abortion is still listed as the top issue for women voters in America and no doubt Paul Ryan scared a lot of them off.

I could go on, but that's just a few examples of how the economy may be the biggest issue but it wasn't the only one and Romney fell down on all of the others. The other discussion in these pages about how Government has eroded freedoms over the last century shows the unfortunate backwards side of PH. People who say that actually mean 'old, white rich men haven't got the power they did 100 years ago.' That's what you want to say isn't it? Be honest and just say it, I'll respect you more for it.

I'm not sure what you Romney supporters actually expect. Do you expect the poor to vote for a man who dispises them? I'm not sure where the 'free money and laptops' comment has come from, I've not seen anybody in America getting free laptops from the Government but so long as it suits your prejudice you go ahead Do you expect the auto workers of Michigan - whose jobs were saved by Obama - to vote for unemployment? Do you expect people who can't afford healthcare to vote for a man who wants to end any program which will give them access to it? Did you expect women to think it's my duty to give up control of my body and allow Romney to give tax cuts to old white rich men?

Let's get this straight; old white rich billionaires want practically non-existant Government because they don't need anything from anyone else. The other 95% want some form of social democracy which is not the same as a Stalinist utopia or Michael Foot led socialist dream. The distain shown by people on here to those who are not either rich or willing to serve the rich is quite revealing.

I tried my best to like Romney, I did a long post on here evaluating his positions and I think as an individual he has some plus points. He may have done better a few years ago when he was popular, perhaps a Gore victory in 2000 could've led to Romney running against him and winning in 2004. But at the end of the day he made himself hard to like, I tried my best but the people behind him in that 1950's party just don't deserve to be in charge. His choice of VP was abysmal as well.

Pretty much spot on.

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martin84 said:

I caught a few clips of Fox News on You Tube last night and I was astonished. I'd heard all of the jokes about it being a right-wing news channel but dear god. I saw a part from 2008 when Fox picked up on an Obama radio interview from 2001 - claiming it as an exclusive reveal - and quite clearly drummed up a false news story around the words 'redistribution of wealth' which he never said. They then put the caption of 'McCain hitting Obama over wealth remarks' on the screen when McCain was saying no such thing. What amazed me more was the clip of Megan Kelly arguing very aggressively with someone from the Obama campaign on air about it.

I'm sorry I know we talk about BBC bias but can you imagine Sophie Raworth having a confrontation like that on air with someone from the Tory party? I know Adam Boulton and Alastair Campbell had a small ding dong but nothing on the scale of Fox News.

For all the criticism we give our media, I for one would like to say how grateful I am that I live in the UK.

Anyon who thinks that "bias" at the BBC is anything like what happens FOX is bonkers!