Election 2012 - predictions, discussion?

[we_are_toast]

Re: Election 2012 - predictions, discussion?

And now there's some kind of Romney biased conspiracy in the media?

Nope, I never said anything like that. False equivalency, means they are treated as equivalent. The media would treat them both the same. But Romney has gone beyond spin to outright lies. No Democrat or Republican has ever gone this far before in a presidential election. We should all be partisan against such dishonesty and deception, our democracy depends on it.

[Ghent12]

Re: Election 2012 - predictions, discussion?

I'll gladly take that bet. I'm not sure what "polls" you are reading, but you might want to consider going to a more fact based source.

Obama will win 303 EV and 50.2% of the popular vote, with Romney at 235 and 48.6%, and I'm being generous by giving Romney Florida.

How can a poll not be a fact-based source? In fact, people have various opinions about this or that, and say they will vote for someone or not. In fact, all polls which try to accurately predict the outcome of elections screen out various people they contact using different criteria. In fact, it is fundamentally impossible to exactly foresee the future, and everything is a guess to one degree or another.

The polls I was referring to have a pretty decent track record, and now they show a more even race than they did a few days ago. I guess people are giving President Obama some credit for acting like a President. Reminds me of a Chris Rock routine.

(Caution, language and racism.)

I still think Romney will win, though won't have much of a sweep in Congress. Either way the country gets screwed, as do all Americans who are not huge donors to the winners.

[DSpencer]

Re: Election 2012 - predictions, discussion?

Nope, I never said anything like that. False equivalency, means they are treated as equivalent. The media would treat them both the same. But Romney has gone beyond spin to outright lies. No Democrat or Republican has ever gone this far before in a presidential election. We should all be partisan against such dishonesty and deception, our democracy depends on it.

What are treated as equivalent? The candidates? The lies they tell?

So I'm clear are you referring to the following statement by Romney?

I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China.

Gee, I wonder how he could have possibly thought that...

Fiat SpA (F), majority owner of Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both automakers’ operations in the region.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...nd-climbs.html

The story was poorly worded but didn't actually say what Romney claims he thought it did. So Romney made a mistake. Or maybe stretched the truth. Or maybe told an outright lie. But to say that this is some kind of new low in presidential elections is comical in my book.

Where have you been the last 4 years? Didn't Obama promise us a new era of transparency and accountability? Did I miss something? Did Obama fire Eric Holder? Is Jon Corzine in jail? Please fill me in on these breaking stories!

Just to be clear I'm not voting for Romney either.

[reallife]

Re: Election 2012 - predictions, discussion?

My prediction: Bachmann flames out early. Palin never enters the race. Perry and Romney split the primaries by pandering to the tea partiers and the religious right, leaving the moderate center to Obama. Romney wins the convention after a vicious floor fight when the tea partiers walk out. Obama wipes the floor with Romney in the general election.

I guess I wasn't so far off track as some on the forum thought. My mistake was in thinking that Romney would shift to the center right before or during the convention. Instead, he chose a far right looney tuner for Vice Pres to lock in his base. Well, the outcome speaks for itself. For all the hundreds of millions spent to elect a Republican to the presidency, the GOP only picked off two swing states won by Obama in 08. Now, Romney is pumping his own gas:

[Forrest]

Re: Election 2012 - predictions, discussion?

Re: Election 2012 - predictions, discussion?
I think it matters. Words have meaning and largely define our perceptions.

If we describe Obama and the Democratic party as "progressive," then we should be able to define what that means and point to cases that demonstrate this as fact. If Obama is a socialist, as so many seem to believe, then it should be an easy thing to identify this or that policy that makes him so.

The converse is also true; if Obama's policies are "crony capitalism with a dash of raw authoritarianism and contempt for the Constitution" then so were the policies of the Bush administration (and to a degree, Clinton), given the remarkable continuity between them. It's also hard to see much daylight between Romney and Obama on the key issues of foreign and domestic policy. What differences do exist seem more of scope or speed of implementation rather than any substantive disagreement.

So what exactly are we saying when we call Obama a progressive, leftist or socialist (or Romney a conservative)? Do these terms have any common meaning? Does our understanding of their meaning in any way reflect the reality these terms attempt to name and describe? And how can we have politics without a common language possessed of meaning? If we can't, what exactly is it that we're doing here?



I am very simplistic about the word Progressive. It has no complex meaning, it is merely a label for all those who would like to progress, bit by bit, nudge by nudge, in moving our country towards more government, less sovereignty, less free markets, and so on. They would like to progressively remove our rights, and our constitution, with or without legal means. They would like to progressively change what's left of America to Greece without the good climate.


A Progressive is a follower of Saul Alinsky, in part or in full, for the aggrandisement of those in power under a tale of communitarianism, and the cooperation of the U.N. through the propaganda of the media.


So far as I can tell, there are very few non-progressives in D.C., no matter their political label.


That covers Bush, a neo-conservative Republican; Clinton, a very liberal Democrat, and Obama, a very marxist Democrat.