US Elections 2012 Part II: The Conventions, Debates and Election results

[Ithekro]

In possible relation to that:

Police blow up 'suspicious' items at Fla. early-voting site

http://news.msn.com/us/police-blow-u...y-voting-site/

Would-be voters were evacuated and nearby roads were cleared as police investigated.

Orange County, Fla.'s bomb squad blew up two suspicious items Saturday afternoon outside an early voting location at Winter Park Libary, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Voting was suspended and nearby roads were closed as the bomb squad's robot X-rayed a cooler with an electric cord, the paper reported. A second item was later found by a bomb-sniffing dog near the front door of the library and was also detonated.

It is unclear when early voting will resume at the library location, the paper reported.

What what you will of that.

This would seem to be in Florida Congressional District 7 (Republican seat since 1993)

[Urzu 7]

So some people are very concerned about Obama turning America into a "socialist" nation (although it might only be as socialist as Austria or Switzerland).

If Romney is elected, do we have to worry about him/the GOP turning America into a plutocracy and an aristocracy? Would those be unfounded concerns? Would that be a more valid set of concerns than the people who think Obama will turn the country into a 'socialist' nation?

Are we really seeing America turn into a plutocracy and aristocracy? Are the democrats going against that, or not really because of status quo and all of that?

[monir]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

I'm not sure how big of a factor the race-card is. I know it isn't the only factor and I know not all anti-Obama people are racist against blacks, but I think the race-card matters a good amount, not just "kinda". People could be a bit racist or very racist, and then their dislike for Obama's ideologies feed off of that, and then you end up with some of the nastiest anti-Obama people.

I know there are plenty of people that hate Obama that aren't racist against blacks, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more people that hold Obama's race against him than some of you guys think. They don't all have to be very racist. It could be a more mild racism.

I won't say you are wrong, but I just can't help but wonder what if the economy turned around and people were feeling upbeat? Would that have made a difference toward how Obama is viewed right now? My answer is, "yes." I think the targeted negativity toward him during the most of his term would have had less effect, and he actually would have run away with this election. He is still winning this election just because there are way too many question mark as to how Romney's campaign decided to run with it since the first debate. I think the GOP made a miscalculation when they decided they will win enough votes in a national stage based on the dislike/hate toward Obama even if they are playing lose with tangible and fundamental facts. Like Xellos^ pointed out earlier, those sort of campaign may work at local level (i.e Michelle Bachman), but it won't work in a national stage. Republicans are still trying just because how desperate they are, especially when they look at even as little as 10 years down the road. They have a lot to lose in the coming years as the country is poised to become even more diverse, and yet they aren't keeping up with the change required for a party to attract new group of followers........

GOP sure can use another Eisenhower right about now....

Whoever wins the election, we probably won't get riots, but I'm starting to get pessimistic about politics in America. I'm starting to get pessimistic about American citizens and politics. It seems like they've become nastier and uglier than ever before with politics and how they conduct themselves when involved in it. It just seems like, in these regards, we are just sliding down and down. Just look at the "debates" this year. A real shame. Romney sets the tone for them all with his aggressiveness and rudeness, and then we have Biden playing the game to try to win his debate and he overcompensates, and then we have Obama playing this game and he is interrupting more and being more aggressive. These things ended up being the things that won the debates. Undecided voters were less swayed about what the politicians actually said and whether or not what they said was even true and if they even agreed with the stances they've held for months!

I absolutely agree with you on this....... Obama, for example, had a lot of substance in the first debate and yet, he is the one that "lost" because Romney had an edge even if that edge came at the expense of going 180 on almost everything he ran his campaign on until the night of that debate. The counter reply from the Obama camp was to play the game for what it is or lose the election. In the last few election, it is becoming evidently clear how polarized people's views are becoming and ultimately losing sight of what exactly at stake. When people are asking for change, they aren't always ready to admit or fathom that the change starts from changing one self, and if one is resisting the change from within, then it is nothing but making soundbites. People are getting exploited because deep down they don't mind the lies and negativity as long as it is done to uphold their views. There was a survey earlier in the year which showed most follower for both party don't mind truth-stretching or even outright lies if it is coming from the party they support. That is very disturbing in itself. It's like how general public shows so much frustration toward a dysfunctional congress and yet, it's the same people that are getting elected based on party affiliation and what not....

So the choice comes down to who is stretching the truth less or lying less. I know it's a sad affair, but that's pretty much the choice we've got right at this moment.

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

So some people are very concerned about Obama turning America into a "socialist" nation (although it might only be as socialist as Austria or Switzerland).

If Romney is elected, do we have to worry about him/the GOP turning America into a plutocracy and an aristocracy? Would those be unfounded concerns? Would that be a more valid set of concerns than the people who think Obama will turn the country into a 'socialist' nation?

Are we really seeing America turn into a plutocracy and aristocracy? Are the democrats going against that, or not really because of status quo and all of that?

The question I would ask to some Americans would be why that dumb fear of any "socialist" measures when Scandinavia and Germany are full of that, and yet remain among the most successful capitalist countries/regions you can find on Earth at this time.

I agree with you about what would come if Romney is elected. Since Nixon and onwards, the Republicans have always been doing everything for some form of aristocracy to remain on top while the rest of the population would suffer at the hands of a few. If you asked me, I think the GOP deserve a 20-year drought out of the Presidency, the same length in time when the Roosevelt-Truman administration kept a sustained success.

[Dr. Casey]

monir's sig made me realize who the next President of the United States should be: Haruna from Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka. With her at the helm, the US would be headed for its most glorious years.

[monir]

Originally Posted by Dr. Casey

monir's sig made me realize who the next President of the United States should be: Haruna from Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka. With her at the helm, the US would be headed for its most glorious years.

I concur!

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by Dr. Casey

monir's sig made me realize who the next President of the United States should be: Haruna from Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka. With her at the helm, the US would be headed for its most glorious years.

Originally Posted by monir

I concur!

blasphemy! Eu all the way! especially delusion Eu!

[Anh_Minh]

I'd prefer Seraphim.

State of the Union: "You're all perverts and you give me the creeps."

[Urzu 7]

Originally Posted by monir

I won't say you are wrong, but I just can't help but wonder what if the economy turned around and people were feeling upbeat? Would that have made a difference toward how Obama is viewed right now? My answer is, "yes."

Just to add, maybe that could be the case by now if the GOP was playing totally dirty in an effort to make Obama fail as a president. Not that he and his administration would have been perfect otherwise, but they've committed to that for four years straight, and it's made a difference.


I don't like the democrats telling outright lies in their campaign ads and campaign efforts, and they are the ones I'm rooting for. I hate that the GOP does it, and I don't like seeing the democrats resort to that. I think the democratic party aligns with the truth more, is what I've gathered. That is one reason why I'm for them and not the GOP. Don't get me wrong, go to a fact checking site and you'll see plenty of instances where the democrats do so-so, poorly, or fail on a truth-o-meter.

People keep voting the same people into power based on political affiliation because that matters. It is part of the broken system we have here. People want the house and senate to have a majority that is of their political party of choice. I'd be so worried if Romney become president and then we had GOP dominance with the two houses of congress. They'd steamroll forward, making a lot of changes I don't want to see.

[willx]

I just watched the movie "Recount" with Kevin Spacey and Dennis Leary .. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1000771/

I thought one of the ending quotes was poignant:

James Baker: People are going to say all kinds of things about this election, that is was down to 154 votes, that Bush's brother was governor, that the US Supreme Court gave it to us. But I want you to remember that we won every single recount. Never once did we trail Gore. And who knows how many votes we lost when the networks called Florida for Gore before all the polls were closed on election night. But more important than all that is that the system worked. There were no tanks on the streets. This peaceful transfer of power in the most emotional and trying of times is a testament to the strength of the Constitution and to our faith in the rule of law.

Emphasis mine -- everyone put everything aside, take a moment to be proud of this and hope that this remains true over the coming days..

[Urzu 7]

Originally Posted by willx

I just watched the movie "Recount" with Kevin Spacey and Dennis Leary .. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1000771/

I thought one of the ending quotes was poignant:



Emphasis mine -- everyone put everything aside, take a moment to be proud of this and hope that this remains true over the coming days..

What is the movie about? The 2000 election, right?


What is the deal with the recount? With all the misinformation there is these days, well, with the 2000 election, who really won? Was it Gore? Was the recount a cheat? Or did Bush Jr. actually win? I've heard a lot that Gore actually won, but I'd like to verify whether that is true or not. Like I said, lots of misinformation out there. Just because you hear something a lot about American politics, doesn't make it true.

[willx]

Urzu 7 -- The short answer is no one knows.

The longer answer, my personal interpretation is:

If you have any experience with reams of information and data .. databases of any kinds or thousands/millions/billions of transactions .. then you also know that there will always be errors. Software errors, machine errors, human errors. There will be votes for each side that will get excluded, depending on the methodology you employ. Now, as a person who is aware of statistics .. I will say this .. the results of the election were so close, any victory declared for either individual would be within the "standard error"

Ultimately, the fact pattern is this:
1) Bush was declared the winner by the news stations
2) After the initial count, Bush remained the winner
3) After every "recount" Bush was always ahead, albeit at small or very small margins
4) There were problems with the voting process and the recount process
5) The dispute itself was deemed to be harmful to the electoral process

[Vexx]

Several states had documented miscounts in key counties, enough to have flipped the results. The Supreme Court jumped in to rule before Florida had gone through due process with the bogus reasoning of the "people needed a result fast". However, Gore conceded (mostly out of an over-rated idea of not tearing the country apart).

Ever get the feeling you've been "dog and ponied" on a product that doesn't really work? That's the feeling I got from the 2000 election. And the more I dig, the less pristine it looks.

edit: willx's bullet points are correct, though the recounts focused on Florida though later analysis found that Ohio had even more problems.

[Urzu 7]

Who knows what things could be like if Al Gore became president in 2000...maybe things could be worse now, but I'm inclined to think that things would be better now. Eight years of Bush Jr., we should have never had that.

[Dr. Casey]

Yeah, I agree. On a personal level, I liked Bush Jr. and he made for some pretty hilarious debates with Al Gore in 2000... but he was a bad president. My sorest point with him is the restrictions he put on stem cell research.

[monir]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

People keep voting the same people into power based on political affiliation because that matters. It is part of the broken system we have here. People want the house and senate to have a majority that is of their political party of choice. I'd be so worried if Romney become president and then we had GOP dominance with the two houses of congress. They'd steamroll forward, making a lot of changes I don't want to see.

As I noted in my previous post, if people are serious about change for the better, then such change will need to take place from oneself. People will need to rise above their affiliation before true change can be even considered.

As for the 2000 election, Gore is (I think) the first candidate who won the popular vote, but lost the election because Bush won the electoral vote count. What took place in Florida and Ohio are still anyone's guess, but there were enough evidence to get a few conspiracy theories going. That election will always have an asterisk beside it when it is put against the previous presidential elections in the history of USA.

[totoum]

Originally Posted by monir

As for the 2000 election, Gore is (I think) the first candidate who won the popular vote, but lost the election because Bush won the electoral vote count. What took place in Florida and Ohio are still anyone's guess, but there were enough evidence to get a few conspiracy theories going. That election will always have an asterisk beside it when it is put against the previous presidential elections in the history of USA.

I knew Gore wasn't the first so I did some googling to get details

In 1824, John Quincy Adams was elected president despite not winning either the popular vote or the electoral vote. Andrew Jackson was the winner in both categories. Jackson received 38,000 more popular votes than Adams, and beat him in the electoral vote 99 to 84. Despite his victories, Jackson didn’t reach the majority 131 votes needed in the Electoral College to be declared president. In fact, neither candidate did. The decision went to the House of Representatives, which voted Adams into the White House.

In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the election (by a margin of one electoral vote), but he lost the popular vote by more than 250,000 ballots to Samuel J. Tilden.

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison received 233 electoral votes to Grover Cleveland’s 168, winning the presidency. But Harrison lost the popular vote by more than 90,000 votes.

Honestly the 1824 election seems even more screwed up than 2000 Funny how the winner was also the son of a former president.

[Ithekro]

The last theory that I heard was that if Gore had not conceded and they followed his Parties plan to recount only the districts in question, Bush would have won.

However, if the Bush plan to recount the entire state had gone through instead, they say Gore would have won. Weird, eh?

Simply put, the time the electoral college is counted is in December, and that was the deadline to get stuff done.

Oh and for historical purposes, there have been four elections where the one with the popular vote has not won.

The Election of 1824 was decided by the House of Representitive because there was no majority in the Electoral College. However I would point out that in 1824, the United States had only one remaining fuctional political party. The aftermath of the election saw the birth of the National Republican Party (later the Whig Party) and the Democratic Party from what had been the Democratic-Republican Party. There would four men up for the office and the split was too great. Andrew Jackson won the most votes in population and electoral votes, but not a clear majority. The House picked John Q. Adams in 1825.

The Election of 1876 was even worse as the Democratic challenger, Samuel J. Tilden, won the popular vote by 51% to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes' 47.9% The Electoral Votes ended up in Hayes' favor by one vote after a huge legal battle over the last 20 contested votes. The results of this election brought the Federal occupation of the South to an end, ending Reconstruction. Compromise of 1877.

The Election of 1888 had the winning win via the Electoral College (Benjamin Harrison won 20 states and 233 electoral votes with 5,443,892 votes to his name) while the loser won the popular vote (Grover Cleveland won 18 states and 168 electoral votes with 5,534,488 votes to his name).

The Election of 2000 of course it the most recent and know of them.


(Interesting trivia note: From after the election of 1880 - the election of 2000, no Republican presidential candidate had been able to get elected to office without winning in California. Garfield and Bush were the two to do that in 1880 and 2000, 2004 respectively) Aside from them, since 1856, no other Republican that lost in Califoria won the election. That does not mean that if Republican win in Califoria, he wins the election...as shown by the fate of James G. Blaine in 1884.

California, from 1860 to 1992 was mostly a Republican state, with periods of Democratic Party in there, Under FDR-Truman was the longest of these periods until the present day when it has been solid Democract since 1992. California was also full on the Progressive Wagon with Teddy Roosevelt.

[ganbaru]

Factbox: Close races in the battle for U.S. Senate
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8A206N20121103

A year ago, Republicans seemed headed toward capturing the U.S. Senate, now held by Democrats, 53-47.

But then things went awry, beginning with the surprise decision in February by Republican Senator Olympia Snowe to surrender her relatively safe seat and retire and, most recently, a series of attention-grabbing comments about rape by Republican candidates who could have unseated Democrats.

Thirty-three of the Senate's 100 seats are being contested, of which 23 are held by Democrats.

Democrats are now slightly favored to retain the Senate though a tie is also possible, in which case the vice president of the United States would cast the decisive vote.

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I'd prefer Seraphim.

State of the Union: "You're all perverts and you give me the creeps."

Some ( if not most) of them aren't pervert but, they don't even need that to give the creeps .

[Lost Cause]

Originally Posted by willx

I just watched the movie "Recount" with Kevin Spacey and Dennis Leary .. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1000771/

I thought one of the ending quotes was poignant:



Emphasis mine -- everyone put everything aside, take a moment to be proud of this and hope that this remains true over the coming days..

The James Baker quote was perfect! If I may add; At the end of the day despite the ongoing class warfare, innuendos, mud slinging, and name calling, the system works like it was supposed too. Like it or not. And at least we do have a say in it and are allowed to debate it and those in power.