I’m a little under the weather today. Bad weather, a headache, no good food to eat in the house, a toddler who is doing his best Tasmanian Devil impression, etc. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t noticed the humorous angles in the campaign today. For example, the idea that George W. Bush is more popular than Mitt Romney and would, presumably, have a better chance of beating Obama. And, of course, the whole question of whose idea was it to nominate Romney in the first place. And then the hilarious effort by Politico to turn Romney’s indisputable terribleness into an asset. It’s almost as if Politico wants us to vote for him out of pity. We shouldn’t fault him for trying to say anything that will get him into the Oval Office because he’ll really be great once he gets there and can do whatever he wants. What a joke!
The only thing that still has the power to surprise me is that there are still states in this country that strongly back Romney over the president. I think we need to figure out why that is. And I don’t think race really has all that much to do with it. I don’t think any Democrat would be given a chance in Idaho or Alabama. But at some point the difference in quality in candidates gets to be so obvious that you just can’t explain how people don’t care. I suspect that the politicization of abortion is probably the biggest factor. But Mitt Romney probably isn’t even anti-choice in his heart of hearts. Or, maybe he is. How the fuck would we know?
The ads are relentless here in Ohio, as I’ve repeatedly mentioned, but I think the overkill has numbed the average voter and they just don’t watch them. I think that abortion is a perennial issue that voters will never relent on, and in fact, state abortion rights are slowly being eroded away, so maybe the Right to Lifers are the ones propping Romney up. This would also be a small part of keeping the Supreme Court leaning to the right.
I hear some mumblings about Romney the Businessman, and his supposed magical powers to save the economy, but those are half-hearted at best.
I think your basic premise is still right, Booman. Nobody likes Romney. They’re just voting against Obama at this point.
Hope you feel better soon!
Oh, media are openly in a pity state. Like, let’s pompously feel sorry for this bloated oligarch.
I feel like one good thing that sports teaches us is that sure victory can always be taken away through even the slightest decrease in competitiveness. Even if victory is inevitable, it’s also necessary that this putrid corpse of right wing ideology receive the very severest beating that electoral politics will allow.
The severest beating that the politics of today will allow will, unfortunately, still not be enough. I remember back in 1964, after Goldwater received the severest beating possible, the cry from the right was that 27,000,000 Americans can’t be wrong (apparently they thought 43,000,000 Americans could be. And ultimately, the Goldwater wing persevered. Of course, today, Goldwater, like Nixon and Reagan, would be considerd apostates for some of their views.
This year the election fraud and voter suppression will merely offset the wide support for the President and other Democratic candidates to deny President Obama a mandate to govern left of center.
Sadly the media has skin in the game- they have to legitimize the republican plutocrats for financial reasons and if that party would shivel and die from their stupidity- how could the media appear non-partisan?
Hope you feel better!
“The only thing that still has the power to surprise me is that there are still states in this country that strongly back Romney over the president. I think we need to figure out why that is.”
That’s because of those states having large population of Mormons.
I take it Booman doesn’t buy the “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” thesis.
I do. I think the Republicans are the Party of White Supremacy. The Democrats have been rendered (or more favorably, explicitly chosen to be sometimes) the opposite.
We need to stop pretending that people are voting against their interests. I always assume people can be rational. Racism is their interest. They don’t want Hispanic neighbors. They don’t want their kids to have to compete for jobs and college admissions with Asian kids. They don’t want a black boss. Heck, they don’t even want a woman boss. They don’t want gays sharing PDA at the park.
They want a homogenous society they remember from a bygone past, and the world is conspiring against them. The Republican Party is their only collective action, short of mass depression and despair (or potentially violence).
But at some point the difference in quality in candidates gets to be so obvious that you just can’t explain how people don’t care.
I believe this is where the vaunted 27% Theory kicks in. My favorite piece of political scholarship in the last ten years.
Time to reread What’s the Matter With Kansas?, or how folks came to vote against their own interests.
Or “….how voters came to redefine self-interest in ways not exclusively economic, or even primarily economic.”
Economic self-interest isn’t the only kind of self-interest. Class solidarity isn’t the only kind of solidarity, class struggle isn’t the only kind of social conflict.
How the hell did this SOB gain 15+% in approval ratings since he left office? It’s not as if he’s done anything since then except to be out-of-sight.
It’s not a real mystery, but the answer isn’t pretty.
People have short memories.
We’re talking about people that can’t forget that Clinton diddled Monica and Kerry went windsurfing; so, they don’t have short memories. But they do need reminders to access those memories.
It’s not as if he’s done anything since then except to be out-of-sight.
There you go!!!!! People are thanking him for staying the f–k away!!
After years of lurking I have registered and am posting. Remind me how and I will also pony up.
Can anyone explain Indiana to me? Not eschatologically, but just how a state I think as being pretty whack job went for Obama in ’08 and now seems more in line with what I would expect, not a snowball’s chance in hell. Is there a story here, or are my facts/understanding incorrect?
Just a guess, but the northern part of the state is heavy Chicago suburbs, which went heavily for Obama four years ago. Since he was from Illinois, that could have given him an advantage he doesn’t have as much of now (since he’s now more associated with D.C. than Illinois).
yes, the Northern part of the state. Hoping Indianadem adds details.
Welcome 337328. Amazing how high the user numbers have gotten. 4333 here. The Donate tab is on the upper right of the screen. I have rated you up to help you gain some mojo. Perhaps others will as well.
re: Indiana – Good question. I wonder the same thing. I think there’s a resident expert around here somewhere.
welcome! on behalf of the commentariat (great term!)
re: Indiana – good question! paging Indianadem for details.
and there should be a donate button on the left hand menu.
welcome!
My best guess is that Obama won four years ago in Indiana because:
My best guess is that now:
Welcome to the Frog Pond, gusnite! Much of Indiana is populated with the low IQ redneck. They feed off a mixture of leftover racial hatred and the fear someone from the guvmint will show up and take not only their guns, but the pickup and bass boat (worth many times the value of their residence) as well. I’ve heard it said that a Hoosier is nothing but a Kentuckian who got lost while on the way to Michigan.
Fortunately, there are enclaves of liberals and folks who really do know to vote their economic interest, especially when prodded with a targeted GOTV effort. Bloomington/Monroe County, home of Indiana University, is one. I expect to see the Indianapolis inner city vote come in strong for the President, as should Da Region adjoining Chicago. The trade unions throughout the state are royally pissed about the Indiana General Assembly enacting “Right To Work (for less)” this past spring, so there may be a boost from them.
All the polling I’ve seen for Indiana sucks, quite frankly, except for the US Senate race, because the auto workers and related industry haven’t forgotten the the GOP nut job running was the guy to tried his best to sink the Chrysler bailout and leave all of them and their families in the economic toilet for good.
My final comment is that there is no science involved in any of my observations, just a feeling derived from many years of residence here that the state tends to live socially about 50 years in arrears compared to either the east or west coastal regions.
“The only thing that still has the power to surprise me is that there are still states in this country that strongly back Romney”
You know, that’s true. When Reagan ran for pres he pretty much swept the board ; even blue states like NY, VT and CA voted for him. But Clinton lost many states in the midwest to the R’s both times, even though he was running against pretty weak tea. I guess team D just isn’t as ‘partisan’ as team R. I wonder how bad a candidate has to be for the R’s in Idaho to vote for the other side?
There are no states that “strongly back Romney”; there are states that “strongly oppose Obama” or “always vote Republican”. That’s why so much of what Republicans are doing right now looks like going through the motions in order to salvage the downticket candidates.
You have the question backwards. Whatever the default position is, the alternative has to be demonstrably much better even to be considered acceptable.
Women and minorities admitted (often as a tokens in response to racial/sexual discrimination legislation/suits) into a white male dominated professions have first hand experience with what it takes to become accepted among colleagues and within the industry.
I think it mainly has to do with the information silo most people in those states have. Talk radio is still very, very big in the Deep South and Mountain West, which of course is still dominated by conservative talkers – not just Limbaugh and Hannity, but all of the little local clones of those guys you find on the dial over there. There’s also the fact that the Internet is just not as prevalent in lots of those areas, which means they’re not exposed to as many differing opinions (like the Facebook friends from high school who are total opposites politically, Reddit commentators to debate with, etc.)
No better evidence of what Politico is about than their trying to save Romney’s prospects. Does that make Sally Quinn happy?
I’m struck by the laugh time. Wherever you go on the news there is either a pundit outright laughing at Mitt and his Party’s latest gaffs, snarking, talking about the cartoonish characters…never seen it, even with Palin so now I wonder how much embarassment the Rep supporters can take?
Akin is back in the race as the Senate Conservatives Fund pledges $290,000.
Oh, I truly hope the Klan does this.
Don’t get me wrong, I have very little faith in MO or Missourians (I was one for 9 years), but what little faith I do have is that the Klan is disliked intensly in most of the state. Or at least it was.
Only the Bootheel was favourable country to the Klan. The Ozarks hated ’em, SW MO (Springfield to Joplin, Warsaw to the AR border) would have nothing to do with them. And forget it north of the Missouri River.
I hope it hasn’t changed that much, because this will absolutely Kill Akins.
I lived in St. Louis County for 10 years. Missouri was divided during the Civil War although it was considered to be bound to the Union. This article is interesting, I am not sure of its historical accuracy: Reconstruction Politics in Missouri.
I’m not saying they weren’t there. Just that most of the state thought they were losers.
As everywhere, the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing. A whole lot of nothing was done in parts of Missouri.
Should have labeled the display of the Confederate Flag as treason when we had the opportunity to do so. And the KKK (and related splinter groups) belong on terrorist watch lists.
It’s tribalism: loyalty to the group, especially when threatened, trumps any need for critical thought.
Like Digby said a while back, regarding all the social changes that have played out in the last few decades, and which have so many old-timers feeling apoplectic (I paraphrase): “Obama pledged to transcend the differences, but the right doesn’t want them to be transcended, they want them to disappear”.
Half the country (for now) will vote Republican no matter how absurd the candidate or platform, because Democrats accept the way things are, and try to make it work.
I was going to say they are part of a cult, but tribalism works too. And I agree with Booman that this isn’t a race thing in many areas, not a huge factor anyway. They have been anointed as members of an exclusive group – real murcans – and have been drilled in the catechism of hatred of liberals. They would react the same to Hillary.
No way a Dem will ever get a landslide like Reagan’s in this climate.
“And I don’t think race really has all that much to do with it.”
So cute. Of COURSE you don’t.
Hilarious watching the mysteries people create for themselves, 2 words after they rule out, a priori, the obvious and true explanation.
(shrug) have fun coming up with an explanation!
Sheriff, I gather over the years that you are black and most familiar with black people. I am white and most familiar with white suburbia. Yet, coming from such different backgrounds, we come to the same conclusion. I think that is significant.
🙂 and there’s the fundamental racism, live and in action.
I’m as white as Casper The Ghost. I simply have no qualms about calling out the passive acceptance of racism that damn near all of my other fellow white folks exhibit.
But golly, thank for your “support”!
lulz
There are a lot of us who have very intimate contact with people who are going to vote Republican. For me, it’s with my father. He is NOT a racist. Not at all, never has been. There is much more going on than that, and by over-simplifying the situation, you make it harder for us to reach these people.
In my father’s case, I believe it really is a matter of personal identity. He has always been a Republican, and to change now, he would have to admit that he has been supporting the wrong people for a long time. It’s easier to live in denial than to accept that he was lied to, and believed it.
of COURSE he’s not! nobody is!
my favorite part of the game is the “it’s not racism, as long as you don’t say ‘nigger'”. I’m confident everybody you know is AWESOME at observing that rule.
Naturally, this leads directly to the conclusion that black folks are simply oversensitive reverse-racism whiners.
hahahah! gawd bless us.
just for the sake of lulz though, i eagerly await your explanation why it’s essentially ONLY the former slave states and territories, that are oh-so-reliably red states? and have been ever since… oh i don’t know… the civil rights era of the 60s?
good times, good times.
But whatever makes you, and your oh-so-not-racist-never-racist-never-heard-the-word-racist father feel better. 🙂
tldr version: THIS is a microcosm of why, and how, racism is permitted to exist by us white folks.
I’ll freely admit that most of the Obama haters I know are racist.
However, as a student of a “Freshwater” school of Economics, I can assure you that there exists a wide network of research and propaganda created entirely to persuade your average white college student that all Democrats are Commies; actively working to bring down American Capitalism and Freedom.
Now I realize that these theories were originally crafted to tap into the racial resentment and ignorance of the white working class, but the project has gone so far beyond it’s original second-order racism that I think people can buy into it without being racist.
Just my 2 cents.
Wow. It must be nice for you to be able to know the beliefs and thoughts of complete strangers. Either that, or you are willing to assume that everyone who disagrees with you can be judged on nothing more than that. Everyone in a group is the same, huh? I think I’ve heard that somewhere before…
How incongruous. Your father’s personal identity is exactly why he should not be able to bring himself to vote republican now.
What is more important his own individual ideals or remaining a “member of a group”?
Sad.
It’s tragic. But, of course, authoritarianism is a given GOP trait. If they were better able to put their own beliefs ahead of those of the group, they wouldn’t be Republicans.
Booman, I would love to see you expand on why you don’t think “race has all that much to do with it.” It seems to me that at least 27% of those who will vote for Romney are doing so purely out of racism and the remainder at least partially so. What makes you think differently?
Well, maybe I should have a little more explicit.
I meant the race of the president as opposed to race in general.
Obama got about the same percentage of white votes in Alabama as Gore and Kerry received. I forget the exact number but it was in the teens.
Obama’s race doesn’t seem to have hurt him as much as his party affiliation. But race has a lot to do with why white Alabamans don’t like the Democratic Party.
Your comment about Alabama could also apply to most ring suburbs around US cities that reliably vote Republican. I know that Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, and even Minneapolis are that way. Which is why Bachmann sounds no different that Louis Gohmert or Sue Myrick or Virginia Foxx or Paul Broun. Or why TPaw sounds no different from Sonny Perdue or Pat McCrory (NC’s Republican candidate for Governor).
The numbers do not bear that out. The Minneapolis suburbs are very Republican, but Democrats get much more than 15% of the white vote there. Same for Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, New York, Philly, St. Louis, or anyplace outside of the Deep South.
One-party states fall victim to pack mentality. It’s not just politics, but religion, music, everything. Here in Texas there is a definite divide between the “proper” white people who vote Republican, go to a megachurch every Sunday, listen to C&W faithfully; and the outcast rebellious liberal heathen free thinkers.
Racial minorities, of course, are just complete anathema to “proper” white people, who prefer to disappear them from their lives entirely if they can. Unless of course they perform menial work for said proper white people.
It’s not allowed to talk about this of course. The first rule of Fight Club and all that.
Here are the states with expecations of 60%+ Romney vote. Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming. That is as close to a firewall as the Mittster has.
So why is it that Dave Freudenthal can win in Wyoming and Romney has the lead that he does there? There’s one of your missing factors. What’s the difference between a state and national election in Wyoming?
What I would like to see is for OFA, DFA, or someone to rapidly set up GOTV campaign offices in the states that currently are 50%-59% Romney in the polls and use the next four weeks to create an infrastructure for future growth of a progressive presence in those states. We should not abdicate the field in those states forever.
Of the states in your list, I would think that Wyoming probably comes closer to being capable of being significantly changed than any of the rest. You could buy the requisite media outlets for less than any other place in the list. Once ANYONE has an option other than Fox, the social IQ goes up. Also, filter in a rising Hispanic population.
Utah. Mormons. $$$. ‘Nuff said.
Alabama. Racism. No problem
Alaska. ok, I don’t know shit about Alaska, but its too damn big to effectively change in a short period of time.
Oklahoma. Kansas with indians. Texas with less $$$.
Wyoming has a total population of 548,000 (smaller than the average Congressional District). It takes maybe 150,000 votes to win in a Presidential year, fewer in an off year.
Utah has a population of 2.8 million.
Alabama has a population of 4.8 million.
Alaska has a population of 722,000 (slightly larger than an average Congressional District). It probably takes 180,000 votes to win there in a Presidential year. Most of the population is around Anchorage but campaigning in some of the small towns and settlements is important to winning. Also, Alaska’s population depends on shared oil royalty payments for a portion of their incomes.
Oklahoma has a population of 3.8 million. And major oil companies.
Total population in all four states is around 13 million–to win, you need to turn out maybe 3.75 million voters or so. To shift the vote 10%, you need to gain 750,000 voters from the swingy middle.
Alaska – A state that elected Sarah Palin as Governor. Tobacco Road in a freezer.
States don’t elect. Voters do. It would be an interesting exercise to figure out how that happened. My guess is that it was a low-conflict, low-information, off-year election.
I just checked Wikipedia and got this:
Consulting Dave Leip’s Atlas, she got 114,697 votes to Tony Knowles’s 97,238. Independent Andrew Halcro got 22,443. The Alaska Independence Party Don Wright got 1285, and the Libertarian got 682. Other candidates got a total of 977.
I don’t think that it is correct to stereotype Alaskans based on 114,697 folks being bamboozled by her “good government” platform. That’s less than 20% of the state’s population.
I apologize to the people of Alaska (and North Carolina) for the dismissive Tobacco Road remark. It was unworthy of me.
You know TarheelDem, sometimes I get nasty thinking of all the damnyankee remarks I got in Virginia. But that kind of bitterness is no good for your psyche. I try to put it behind me but sometimes I fail. I’m fond of saying “Sicilians are like elephants, we never forget”, but we should lest the USA become Sicily.
Booman writes:
Of course there are overt racists who would never vote for someone of a different race. But I think there’s more to it than JUST that.
Note that the “Black Sheep” self-deport from these places to the metropolitan areas where there is more diversity of ideas, leaving these places even more homogenous. Then the ones who stay there do it because they like being a Big Fish in the Small Pond, never experience much culture – and like it that way – because they fear that which is different. And it’s not just race. It’s anyone who challenges them to think differently.
If I grew up in Idaho, I would either move away or kill myself. Others actually move there to escape “Those People” that they hate/fear in the real world. But like most people, they cluster with the people who they feel safe and comfortable around. Sometimes they have to migrate to find “their people.”
Most of us look around at what the Alphas of our in-group like and fear before we announce how we feel about things. We don’t want to be rejected from the tribe. In these un-curious tribes, if the Alphas are afraid of a political leader because they’ll be challenged to think different, the tribe sticks together and rejects that pol for the most part – regardless of whether they happen to be white/black/Latino/female/LGBT/hippie/Jew/Muslim/whatever. They would even reject a political leader that they know to be honest, wise, brave and even looks and talks like them if that leader expects them to look at the world differently. (Think Al Gore.) Yet they will accept even a foreign-looking pol that they KNOW is a lying sack of crap just because that pol doesn’t challenge them to think different.
Republican pols dumb down the conversation and make issues sound simple. Democrats talk details – stuff that sounds scary. D’s talk about a complicated peace process while R’s talk about Hulk Smash – problem solved!
They probably would have been just fine with Herman Caine, for example. Happy darkie singin’ Pokémon songs, non threatening, will never challenge them to change their worldview.
Barack Obama, however, is threatening because he makes them consider that we all might need to change some to make the world better. And who cares about the rest of the world, anyway?
They hate Romney because he’s a snake-oil salesman and he doesn’t care about them at all. They know this. But he doesn’t challenge them to see anything different. He’ll rob them blind but he’ll play the game and pretend to validate their worldview while doing it.
Since it’s down to Romney and Obama, they’ll hold their nose and vote for Romney IF they vote at all. Some won’t want to feel responsible for Romney so they’ll skip this one. This scares the hell out of the Owner Class who pays for this puppet show for the simpletons.
I’m not an anthropologist or anything but that’s my theory.