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Gravitymaster

The "Why Republicans Lost" thread

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Romney gave almost zero specifics on how he'd make things better, his entire platform was "I'll cut taxes (however I see fit), cut spending (however I see fit), and I'm not Obama." The 47% comment and unwillingnes to release tax returns reinforced the perspective of him as an out of touch elitist, and the religous side of the party hung a social issue anchor on him.

At the start of the primary season, I was willing to give Romney a chance to win my vote. I considered it a long shot, but the chance was certainly >0. He never gave me one single reason to think I should vote for him (vs against Obama), so I went with Gary Johnson instead.

Blues,
Dave



No queston G. Johnston was better than Mitty but a vote for Johnston was a vote for OBAMA.

SO THAT's WHAT HAPPENED? Plenty of white guys but they just we're not organized enough to win the election. You need to stick together to win. The single reason to have voted for Mitt was to not let OBAMA to continue! Jeesh, not too hard to figure out. Didn't you think that you vote wouldn't count if you voted for Johnson? Yikes!



Who do I need to stick with in order to "win"? And what part of "not one single reason to vote for him (vs against Obama)" was unclear? Romney never tried to sell me anything that sounded worth buying, so my vote wasn't his to lose. I happen to like individual liberty (thus the Johnson vote), so if it'd had been just Romney and Obama on the ticket, with no option to write-in, I'd have gone for Obama. Same poor economic plan, but less religous nonsense.

Blues,
Dave
"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

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No queston G. Johnston was better than Mitty but a vote for Johnston was a vote for OBAMA.



The problem is our antiquated plurality rule election system, which guarantees two parties run the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law


Run-off elections, or approval ballots would enable us to actually have 3rd-party options.
"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

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Romney gave almost zero specifics on how he'd make things better, his entire platform was "I'll cut taxes (however I see fit), cut spending (however I see fit), and I'm not Obama." The 47% comment and unwillingnes to release tax returns reinforced the perspective of him as an out of touch elitist, and the religous side of the party hung a social issue anchor on him.

At the start of the primary season, I was willing to give Romney a chance to win my vote. I considered it a long shot, but the chance was certainly >0. He never gave me one single reason to think I should vote for him (vs against Obama), so I went with Gary Johnson instead.

Blues,
Dave



No queston G. Johnston was better than Mitty but a vote for Johnston was a vote for OBAMA.

SO THAT's WHAT HAPPENED? Plenty of white guys but they just we're not organized enough to win the election. You need to stick together to win. The single reason to have voted for Mitt was to not let OBAMA to continue! Jeesh, not too hard to figure out. Didn't you think that you vote wouldn't count if you voted for Johnson? Yikes!



Who do I need to stick with in order to "win"? And what part of "not one single reason to vote for him (vs against Obama)" was unclear? Romney never tried to sell me anything that sounded worth buying, so my vote wasn't his to lose. I happen to like individual liberty (thus the Johnson vote), so if it'd had been just Romney and Obama on the ticket, with no option to write-in, I'd have gone for Obama. Same poor economic plan, but less religous nonsense.

Blues,
Dave



OK, if you were for OBAMA then a vote for Johnson was the right choice. You got what you wanted--OBAMA. Makes sense. Now if you were not for OBAMA continuing--wrong choice. Thanks for explaining.

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Didn't you think that you vote wouldn't count if you voted for Johnson? Yikes!



My vote for Johnson counted more than a vote for Obama or Romney.

With the California pre-election polling preferences and the same voter turnout as in 2008 2 million Obama supporters would have needed to vote for a third party or stay home, 2 million Romney suporters who weren't voting would have needed to show up, or 1 million Obama voters would have needed to choose Romney to change who got our 55 electoral votes and none of that was going to happen.

Obama would have still won 55 electoral votes if I voted for him and Romney would have still lost 55 electoral votes if I voted for him.

All 210,000 third party voters (even the real socialists) getting behind Romney wouldn't have changed things.

OTOH, in the next election cycle the Republicans may attempt to gain a plurality by swinging a little more libertarian at least in their messaging.

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New Mexico, Colorado, and Florida might object ;)

Here, this is better-written that i ever could and explains the whole "information bubble" i was talking about:

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/gop-denial-2012-11/



Very interesting article, and brutally true. Thanks for posting.

Be humble, ask questions, listen, learn, follow the golden rule, talk when necessary, and know when to shut the fuck up.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-careen-into-craziness-20121111,0,7598535.story

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Right-wingers will not let go of their own misleading mythology. They have a constricted vision of who the “real Americans” are and who they are not. Until election night, they still believed that people like themselves constituted a majority in this country. Now that they are faced with the truth of their own diminishing numbers, they are rejiggering reality. Incapable of accepting that the millions of people who voted for Obama are overwhelmingly hardworking, family-loving, patriotic Americans, they have to imagine them as the “takers” that Ayn Rand warned them were coming.

This is a necessary self-deception. Otherwise, conservative crazies would have to face an inconvenient truth: On election day, a majority of real Americans rejected them.


quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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>OK, if you were for OBAMA

I think that's the thing you are missing. He wasn't for Obama, he was for Johnson.



I'm not missing anything, its all in how you look at what you want. He has acutally 2 choices that he wants.
He was for: 1, Johnson, but if Johnson failed he was satisfied with OBAMA. A vote for Johnson would not have produced a favorable vote for Romney that an exact vote for Romney would have produced. They talked alot about this, that Johnson pulled votes away from Romney.

Now in the case of "I don't want OBAMA to continue" there is only one choice--Romney. As a vote for Johnson to get Romney wouldn't make any sense. He said if he didn't vote for Johnson he would have voted for OBAMA.
You can want something but when it is nearly impossible to get it, you bet next best choice and he did that.

I know he wanted Johnson, but lets face it, that wasn't going to happen. A vote for Johnson helped OBAMA win.

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Whyre you posting left wing garbage from the LA Times?

Not exactly an unbiased source of information, is it?



Yeah, actually, it pretty much is. It may lean ever so slightly to the left of center in terms of the country, but it's by no means the FoxNews of newspapers. It's certainly not the left wing equivalent of say, The Washington Times.

I mean, it's owned by Tribune. How left wing do you think it can really be?
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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>You can want something but when it is nearly impossible to get it, you bet next best
>choice and he did that.

His vote would not have resulted in a Romney win. It's one vote. Thus his vote for Johnson was just as fruitful as a vote for Romney would have been.

"But wait" you say. "If lots of people voted for Romney instead of Johnson maybe Romney would have won!" Yes - and that's true for Johnson as well.

In general democracies (and representative governments) work best when you vote for what you want, rather than trying to game the system.

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No queston G. Johnston was better than Mitty but a vote for Johnston was a vote for OBAMA.



The problem is our antiquated plurality rule election system, which guarantees two parties run the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law


Run-off elections, or approval ballots would enable us to actually have 3rd-party options.



Some form of proportional representation in congress would also be a huge improvement over the current geographical sub-divisions which disenfranchise people even when not Gerrymandered.

Although libertarians make up 15 - 25% of the population we're geographically dispersed and get no representation in Congress.

This also holds for various professions. If there were tech worker candidates they couldn't win on that even in Silicon Valley where we make up just 29% of the work force. OTOH with proportional representation San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties together would likely have enough of us to support one representative and lumped in with Austin, Boston, Boulder, Raleigh, and Seattle we'd probably net even more.

Congress would probably be able to pass fewer laws with proportional representation although that would be a good thing.

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>You can want something but when it is nearly impossible to get it, you bet next best
>choice and he did that.

His vote would not have resulted in a Romney win. It's one vote. Thus his vote for Johnson was just as fruitful as a vote for Romney would have been.

"But wait" you say. "If lots of people voted for Romney instead of Johnson maybe Romney would have won!" Yes - and that's true for Johnson as well.

In general democracies (and representative governments) work best when you vote for what you want, rather than trying to game the system.



It goes back to what you want. Each holds his own idea about that. If you think you don't want OBAMA to continue then the BEST solution to achieve that end was to vote for Romney as the whole world knew Johnson never held a chance to stop OBAMA. And to show up to prevent OBAMA from re-election. It's not gaming the system, it's doing what is necessary to reach your individual objective. Voting is a private matter right? The vote was for re-election. OBAMA was not a new candidate hence the matter at hand was: do you want OBAMA to continue or not. We learned what people wanted.

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Ohchute, the only place where you could realistically say that voting for a 3rd party helped the other guy win is in the very close swing states. (and i don't even agree with that, but YMMV)

I live in CA. Obama winning here was a foregone conclusion. How the heck was me voting for Gary Johnson in the hopes he would garner just 5% of the popular vote in any way going to change the outcome of THIS election?

answer: it wouldn't have. so all the people who live in non-swing states who thought "gosh, i like Gary Johnson, but it would be a waste of my vote" were ACTUALLY wasting their vote by voting for obama/romney. DUCY?
Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

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> It's not gaming the system, it's doing what is necessary to reach your individual objective.

Those two are not opposites and it IS gaming the system. In fact, every instance of gaming the system I have ever heard of has been implemented by misusing the system to get it to do what you want.

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> It's not gaming the system, it's doing what is necessary to reach your individual objective.

Those two are not opposites and it IS gaming the system. In fact, every instance of gaming the system I have ever heard of has been implemented by misusing the system to get it to do what you want.



Yes I know OBAMA and Romney were not equally opposite. Obama had the benefit of being an incumbant with prior experience of electability. So let me ask you this. If you personally didn't want OBAMA to be re- elected, for any reason, what would have been your choice to accomplish that goal?

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>Yes I know OBAMA and Romney were not equally opposite.

No, I am not saying that Obama and Romney were opposites or that they weren't. I was commenting on the fact that you seem to be saying that "gaming the system" and "doing what is necessary to reach your individual objective" are opposites. They are not. Indeed, that's why people game the system - to accomplish their objective.

The US electoral system is set up to allow people to choose which president their state votes for, via the electoral college. You are free to game the system, and rather than use it to choose who should be president, use it to try to prevent someone from becoming president.

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I voted for G Johnson on the basis that he most closely matches my personal beliefs and to see the Libertarian party and values get more support. I'm in Georgia... it was going Romney regardless. So I voted for Romney by default according to you since I didn't vote for Obama?
In every man's life he will be allotted one good woman and one good dog. That's all you get, so appreciate them while the time you have with them lasts.

- RiggerLee

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>Yes I know OBAMA and Romney were not equally opposite.

No, I am not saying that Obama and Romney were opposites or that they weren't. I was commenting on the fact that you seem to be saying that "gaming the system" and "doing what is necessary to reach your individual objective" are opposites. They are not. Indeed, that's why people game the system - to accomplish their objective.

The US electoral system is set up to allow people to choose which president their state votes for, via the electoral college. You are free to game the system, and rather than use it to choose who should be president, use it to try to prevent someone from becoming president.


You introduced "gaming the system." I'm not sure what you mean by that. In any event, attempting to label an objective has no consequence as the objective remains the same.

Here an example: OBJECTIVE-- get two miles down the river in a boat.

Here are your choices:
1. boat with holes, but looks good great lines, I like it, has wiskey
2. boat with no holes, looks godawful, I really don't like it and there is no booze.

Now you might like 1, but how in the hell could you ever get in a boat with holes. Unless of course you like wiskey and having a drink is better than reaching your objective. Maybe that is called gaming the system, I don't know but Obama had holes (not too good leadership holes), we know not what holes Romney had, would have had etc but getting in a boat with no holes might have been a better solution.

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>OK, if you were for OBAMA

I think that's the thing you are missing. He wasn't for Obama, he was for Johnson.



I'm not missing anything, its all in how you look at what you want. He has acutally 2 choices that he wants.
He was for: 1, Johnson, but if Johnson failed he was satisfied with OBAMA. A vote for Johnson would not have produced a favorable vote for Romney that an exact vote for Romney would have produced. They talked alot about this, that Johnson pulled votes away from Romney.

Now in the case of "I don't want OBAMA to continue" there is only one choice--Romney. As a vote for Johnson to get Romney wouldn't make any sense. He said if he didn't vote for Johnson he would have voted for OBAMA.
You can want something but when it is nearly impossible to get it, you bet next best choice and he did that.

I know he wanted Johnson, but lets face it, that wasn't going to happen. A vote for Johnson helped OBAMA win.



You're missing the line of reasoning that goes "I don't want either of them."

Personally, I haven't voted for a presidential candidate in a long time.

This time I would have voted against Obama, had Romney and the Republican party been a palatable choice.

But their behavior was so repugnant to me (both the party as a whole and Romney as an individual) that I couldn't "plug my nose, hold my breath" and cast a vote for Romney.
"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

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OBAMA



OK, I have to ask: why do you persistently type Obama's name in all-caps? It's clearly by design. Is that some kind of code? A reflection of maturity? A Tourette's tic? Why?



This.

The other person always written in caps by some posters is one of the characters in the bible - is OBAMA the messiah?
Never try to eat more than you can lift

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Whyre you posting left wing garbage from the LA Times?

Not exactly an unbiased source of information, is it?



Yeah, actually, it pretty much is. It may lean ever so slightly to the left of center in terms of the country, but it's by no means the FoxNews of newspapers. It's certainly not the left wing equivalent of say, The Washington Times.

I mean, it's owned by Tribune. How left wing do you think it can really be?



So you think that article is a well reasoned and unbiased look at "Why Republicans Lost"?

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