The Politics Thread

[JaneAusten]

Thanks for posting. Fascinating article and process.Almost like Nate Silver, they turned the entire electability and campaign process into a science.it sounds almost cold, but its brilliant in a way. Determine your demographic, target them, and leave the ability to connect with them to Michelle, Biden, Clinton, and the President and of course the local campaign workers most of all. It explains the lack of worry on the part of Obamas campaign staff.NO ONE in the media had this. And they say there are no secrets in politics anymore. I can't believe the republicans didn't know this, but on the flip side they might have and like with Nate Silver, discounted the science around it, spewing hatred of the president instead.

On a side note I want to know who and when they decided to pull Bill Clinton in. The Clinton's have in some sense sort of regained their lustre over the past few years. Hilary being Sec of State probably helped improve that, but it would be interesting to understand why, despite the obvious in 2008 when she ran against Obama.

Edited November 8, 2012 by JaneAusten

[GoldenDogs]

Stock market in the toilet yesterday, reacting to the results of the election. Do you all think that trend will continue?

Also, I read an article this morning where a business owner fired 22 of his 114 workers in reaction to the election; the man's concern was with the cost of rules and regulations related to Obamacare. Boeing cut workers yesterday. McDonald's posted it's first sales drop in a decade.

What's going on here? Anybody else concerned with all of this?

[GoldenDogs]

Lord, what would the response have been had a Republican said something like this during Katrina??? Glad to see the condemnation here... but it's easy to pick on an idiot like Chris Matthews... Does ANYBODY actually take this guy seriously anymore?

[marceline]

No. The stock market goes up AND down.The stack market was at 8,000 when Obama took office. It's over 13,000 now. If you are going to freak out over one day drops and gains you shouldn't be in the market. The markets dropped, in part, because the banks know that a lot of this new regulation is going to stick. Good since when they weren't regulated they crashed the economy. Also the market is affected by more than one factor and part of what drove the drop was Europe.

http://finance.yahoo...-160911325.html

If that's true then he's either a bad businessman, using the election as a cover for his own incompetence, lying or I suspect: all of the above.

Boeing has been cost-cutting for a while due to Pentagon budget cuts. http://www.nytimes.c...hita-plant.html

The fact that we aren't going to be a perpetual war is cutting into the profits of defense contractors. As it should. War as business isn't a good long term economic strategy.

Are you really trying to tie that to Obama? Not saturation of fast-food market or increased competition or even just a change in the consumer base.

"McDonald's Corp. reported its first decline in monthly U.S. same store sales in nine years Thursday, as the chain began to suffer problems plaguing the rest of the fast food industry for several years."

http://www.chicagotr...,0,565967.story

What going here is that you are pulling together lots of unrelated news in the effort to create a narrative. Correlation is not causality.

Edited November 8, 2012 by marceline

[thelma42]

I find it so amusing that some keep blaming Christy and Hurricane Sandy as the reason Obama won and Romney lost.

All they need to do is look at the exit polling and those demograhics will tell them the REAL reason why Romney lost.

[Ann_SS]

It is called being a typical Republican.

Edited November 8, 2012 by Ann_SS

[DRW50]

The more I read that about that man firing people and then using Obamacare as his excuse, the more annoyed I get. Once upon a time people used to take personal responsibility. What gets me about this man is that he basically says that he would fire people who vote for Obama. Then he says, oh, that's not why I fired them.

http://www.idigitalt...ama-win-led.htm

Edited November 8, 2012 by CarlD2

[JaneAusten]

Isn't personal responsibility the mantra of the republican party. The party of entrepreneurs right.

My dad is a senior and a retired executive and does volunteer work for SCORE and advises people wanting to start new businesses. 75 percent of those coming for counseling are women and minorities. You know the people who are all looking for handouts.

I just can't with the blame game and the excuse makers.

[ReddFoxx]

Romney completely underestimated the electorate, his campaign was counting on it being more white than 2008, but that didn't happen.

Obama's campaign was anticipating this and allocated resources to getting out the minority vote.

[DRW50]

You heard things like black voters wouldn't turn out in higher numbers because Obama hasn't focused on them as much as he should have in his Presidency, or because of gay marriage, or school vouchers, or whatever. But when you spend four years seeing people pass around photos of Michelle Obama as Cheetah, you're probably more likely to be motivated.

[marceline]

Until someone verifies the name of this business owner or the business he supposedly runs then I'm not interested. Any crackpot can call up a talk radio station and say that they fired a bunch of people and Lord knows these people have no problem making things up when reality doesn't work for them.

[DRW50]

The only reason I thought it might be real was down to his starting to backtrack toward the end, like he was worried about ramifications of all but saying he told people how to vote and then fired them.

[AdelaideCate007]

I have two ignorant questions (sorry if this stupid), but what's the deal with all the people questioning whether or not Barack Obama is American and wanting to see his birth certificate? And who or what are Birthers?

Also, why are the conservatives so afraid of socialized medicine (I guess that is what Obamacare is...correct me if I'm wrong)?

[quartermainefan]

Obamacare isn't even socialized medicine. All Obamacare says is "our health insurance system sucks and is incredibly expensive, therefore we are making it a law everyone must have health insurance and we are making no effort to socialize medicine to get around the health insurance problem". It makes no sense.

How much do you pay for healthcare? Here a family of four with top of the line all-access, gold standard health insurance will pay thousands per month.

Oh, about birtherism. Obama is black, so repu---I mean racists cannot accept a black man as president so they came up with a theory he isn't even american. Far from being a theory of the fringes, this theory has been adopted by Donald Trump, joked about by Mitt Romney and been used to attempt to pass legislation by actual republican elected officials. It is so entrenched in mainstream republican thinking that the main source of republican news--Rupert Murdoch--has used his network to gin up the conspiracy theories and spread the lies. No republican repudiates this theory with any teeth in their statement, opting instead to say vague nonsense like "I have no reason to think he is not American" thereby leaving his republican brethren breathing room to continue to fan the flames. Maybe John McCain said in black and white terms this was all nonsense, but that's somewhere close to being about it.

Edited November 8, 2012 by quartermainefan

[AdelaideCate007]

If all you have is Medicare (the universal healthcare), you pay the Medicare levy which is 1.5 to 2.5% of your salary and that's it. Medicare covers all hospitals cost and 75% of primary care. If you want that other 25% paid, you have to take out a private policy. That's pretty much the basis of it.

The Birthers sound ridiculous. Do they even have anything to back this up? I mean the whole thing just sounds so absurd. I didn't realise that the President had to be born in America (I thought you just had to be a citizen).