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2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

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Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Bakunin said:
In politics, perception trumps reality. Was the economy really that bad in the fall of 1992? No. However, enough voters thought that it was, so Clinton was elected. Something similar could happen in 2012, this time favoring the GOP candidate.
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The only way this parallels 1992 is if you assume two things: Bloomberg runs as an independent ala Perot and garners 25% of the national vote, and the GOP finds someone even half as electable as Clinton.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Bakunin said:
It's America's waist. And just like the population as a whole, it's in an unhealthy state.
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It was a joke.

Bakunin said:
In politics, perception trumps reality. Was the economy really that bad in the fall of 1992? No. However, enough voters thought that it was, so Clinton was elected. Something similar could happen in 2012, this time favoring the GOP candidate.
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...and in the end, Obama still has considerable appeal (vs what GW had).
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

unofan said:
The only way this parallels 1992 is if you assume two things: Bloomberg runs as an independent ala Perot and garners 25% of the national vote, and the GOP finds someone even half as electable as Clinton.
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I thought Perot only got 20%, and Perry might be half as electable as Clinton.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Bakunin said:
I thought Perot only got 20%, and Perry might be half as electable as Clinton.
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Clinton countered the demographic alignment.

Perry exacerbates it: he'd win the South by 25 points rather than 20. That gives him NC and VA, but may even cost him in the rest of the country because he has the Dubya Texas Stank on him.

No, nobody misses you yet, you POS:

miss-me-yet-billboard.jpg
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Bakunin said:
I thought Perot only got 20%, and Perry might be half as electable as Clinton.
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Yeah, 19%...although who knows how he'd have done if he hadn't pulled out for a few weeks after his daughter's wedding - he was leading in the polls at one point.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Kepler said:
Obama's people will run "it's morning in America" ads that will make Reagan's look anarcho-fatalist.
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Only if something - anything - improves markedly in the economy in the next 12 months. Pretty tough for an incumbent to run an "It's Morning in America" campaign when everything still sucks as badly as it did 4 years ago (if not worse). There HAD been major improvements from 80-84 (credit to the President or not), which is why it worked so effectively for Reagan. If they don't get an improvement, they'll have to switch to the "we just need more time" strategy, which is rather unlikely to sway voters in the NOW! NOW! NOW! society we have...
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

LynahFan said:
Only if something - anything - improves markedly in the economy in the next 12 months. Pretty tough for an incumbent to run an "It's Morning in America" campaign when everything still sucks as badly as it did 4 years ago (if not worse). There HAD been major improvements from 80-84 (credit to the President or not), which is why it worked so effectively for Reagan. If they don't get an improvement, they'll have to switch to the "we just need more time" strategy, which is rather unlikely to sway voters in the NOW! NOW! NOW! society we have...
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Keep in mind no president has won re-election with an unemployment rate above 7.2% since FDR and its very unlikely to be down that far by the election.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

LynahFan said:
Only if something - anything - improves markedly in the economy in the next 12 months. Pretty tough for an incumbent to run an "It's Morning in America" campaign when everything still sucks as badly as it did 4 years ago (if not worse).
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Point is, perception is reality. The GOP marketed itself for 30 years as "fiscally responsible," when all it was doing was replacing tax revenue with debt. It's always darkest right before you claim "dark" is "light." ;)

To quote Animal House, "Will it work?" "Gotta work better than the truth."

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Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

MinnFan said:
Keep in mind no president has won re-election with an unemployment rate above 7.2% since FDR and its very unlikely to be down that far by the election.
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And why did FDR win re-election with a high unemployment rate? Because the electorate thought his predecessor ruined the economy.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Kepler said:
And why did FDR win re-election with a high unemployment rate? Because the electorate thought his predecessor ruined the economy.
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Why do you hate America?
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Awesome chart.

I want to remind everyone that that he did that adding 5 trillion in debt, two wars, and his Tax Cuts to job creators.
 
Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

This is actually a pretty good article on Glenn Beck and what he managed to do on his little circus.

One of the things I find most depressing about talking politics with people (of any persuasion) who haven't actually gone to primary sources is how they can be swayed so easily by scammers like Beck. Those commentators can distort history or even just make shit up, and their listeners have literally no way of knowing they are being misled. Even more striking, they come away with a heady idea of what they think they know -- they have a couple facile (usually erroneous) ideas of the Federalist Papers or Reconstruction, but because it's the very first time they've heard it mentioned, they think they have broken through to a secret truth. Like college freshmen, they don't know that there's a huge body of conflicting, complex facts about every one of these historical events. They have false certainty.

I had an ex-Randian friend who once said that because he only graduated high school before going to work, he never read or discussed anything about philosophy until he read "For the New Intellectual," and it blew his mind. It took him years to realize that Rand was at best a superficial reader's digest popularizer and more usually an outright fraud. The key was other books, other voices, and a gradual building up of context. In other words, knowledge. There is of course a solid conservative intellectual tradition -- but it's nothing like the twaddle peddled in the echo chamber marketplace.

There is nobody as foolish as someone who has read only one book, and that's what Beck did for his audience. But that's more nourishing than nothing, and the reality-based community should start realizing that talking about actual history, actual science, actual economics is the cure, not just mocking or trying to shout down these guys.
 
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Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel

Kepler said:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics site awaits you, with heated pool and bar.
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I know about the bar, where's the heated pool?

Capital City Brewery is located in the same building as BLS.
 
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