For the record–here’s the best argument I’ve gotten against overhyping the Obama science of voter control: OH was much closer than either his or Romney’s “internals” showed. Plus there was a strangely low turnout of rural, white, mainly evangelical voters in that state. A strong turnout there of such voters (which Romney must have pretty reasonably expected and Obama feared) would have turned the state.
As Olsen pointed out, Romney had reason to believe that his OH strategy was failing, just as Obama thought his firewall was solid. That’s why Romney was scoping out PA etc. in a kind of desperation. Anyone with any brains knew that the PA mirage was fooling Republicans yet again, and Obama wasn’t particularly worried, given the mega-margin he was going to get in Philly.
OH was much more in play than both sides thought. In general, the low evangelical white turnout across the country–lower than both sides expected perhaps–has yet to be adequately explained. Some, such as Steve Hayward, have mentioned the word Mormon–not as a strong factor, but strong enough to keep enough evangelicals home. Others, maybe more plausibly, fall back on the scientific success have Obama’s negative campaigning against the plutocrat that’s not one of us, campaigning Romney apparently thought he didn’t have to counter all that much.
And we can say, with Olsen, that Romney needed a strategy to attract white, nonevangelical, blue-collar, mainly union men in the MIDWEST. He could have trumpeted that, although he was against public-employeee unions, he was more than okay with the proudly American industrial unions. And he could have been more clear about how his aim was to mend–not end–the system of entitlements and safety nets on which Americans had come to depend.
Obama’s negative campaign amounted to this guy wants to destroy what had made the working man middle class. It’s not Obama’s genius that deprived Romney of a strategy to counter that negative campaigning.
We can also mention that Romney left the evangelical turnout largely to chance–to volunteers not under his supervision. Obama wouldn’t have done that.
Speaking of chance, I may also, as the thread below suggests in a couple of places, be underestimating the impact of Romney’s bad luck–beginning with Sandy–near the end of the race. I admit that exit polls suggest that Sandy did help the president significantly.
I don’t think Sandy helped him enough to have turned defeat into victory, but probably enough to give him the now very noticeable popular vote margin. That means, I hasten to add, that Nate Silver’s hyper-accuracy was more lucky than strictly scientific.
It goes without saying that these are the uninformed speculations of an amateur intended to provoke discussion.
November 8th, 2012 | 2:55 pm
Yes. The “Mormon” factor was the problem. The “base” was upset that they didn’t get a Santorum-Bachmann ticket. Most of the moderate Republicans I know didn’t give a plug nickel about Romney’s Mormonism even if we did make the usual jokes about polygamy and whatnot. But deeply troubled evangelicals led by James Dobson couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Mormon.
In a year in which the Wisconsin GOP introduced a bill trying to label ALL FORMS of single parenting as child abuse with criminal implications, and discussed contraception and other things for four months with an incumbent presiding over the worst economy and most unpopular bill in decades, it is time to reassess the GOP coalition. The Tea Party is nothing more than the newest face of the Moral Majority.
With their insistence that this nation be Christian or else, and that freedom only applies to certain lifestyles, they’ve already lost the black, Hispanic, and youth vote. Add in legitimate rapes and “some women rape easy” and “can’t stop being raped might as well enjoy it,” the Tea Party running at candidates who would’ve run from the far right, and the GOP has lost a lot of us youth who were on the fence.
I’ve NEVER met mainstream liberals who were as far to the left as I routinely meet conservatives who are way out there on planet fascism. Evangelicals have within the last decade published articles simultaneously praising Nazi treatment of gays in concentration camps and blaming Nazi brutality on the fact that many of them were closet gays (false.)
When the GOP wants to come back to reality, and Fox News/Limbaugh/Glenn Beck no longer reinforces what might be the most depressingly and inexcusably uneducated “base” in the history of democracy given the widespread availability of knowledge these days.
Today’s Tea Party is little different from yesterday’s Dixiecrats. It’s become an albatross around sensible conservative values and needs to go.
November 8th, 2012 | 3:05 pm
Mr Harper: Your entire post is absurd, but your second paragraph in particular has absolutely no connection to reality. Thanks for playing, though.
November 8th, 2012 | 3:16 pm
“Romney needed a strategy to attract white, nonevangelical, blue-collar, mainly union men in the MIDWEST.”
BTW, I always said Chris Christie was the no-brainer pick for this exact reason.
November 8th, 2012 | 4:58 pm
Wow Brian. That’s such a precise and accurate counter argument. It’s sure to win some of the 60% of the under 30s to the GOP.
November 8th, 2012 | 5:16 pm
@Brian: every single claim I made is verifiable. You can rest assured I have, with increasing dismay, documented these claims. I’m not some stupid young liberal, and I’m not a liberal bogeyman. Your condescension only serves to illustrate my point: the GOP has a generational demographic issue that’ll only get broader because the higher up I go in education and society the more unfashionable it is to align yourself with a party that routinely does things like the aforementioned bill in Wisconsin.
November 8th, 2012 | 9:01 pm
You call yourself a post modern conservative. What a contradiction in terms. Can’t take you seriously…
November 8th, 2012 | 9:22 pm
Sigh. You’re clearly a concern troll, but against my better judgment, please provide a link of some sort for your silly contention about some WI bill or other.
It wasn’t the GOP that was talking about contraception all year. Not by a long shot. There’s really no point in engaging someone so divorced from reality. Sorry if you were expecting a point-by-point rebuttal.
November 9th, 2012 | 1:14 pm
The bill Mr Harper is referring to is 2011 Senate bill 507. Here’s the link. https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/proposals/sb507
It does not do what Mr. Harper says, but it requires that the state “shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect” in its information and prevention of child abuse programs. Whether it is good legislation or not is one thing, but it is not over the top and there is evidence to support what the bill says. Contraception was not an issue created by Tea Party crowds or radicals, but by the Obama administration and its mandate, which it had to know would be problematic for the Roman Catholic Church and its bishops. Mr. Harper could have made his point without his own exaggerations, since there is plenty of craziness on both sides of political world in our country.
November 9th, 2012 | 1:48 pm
Tim: Thanks. To no one’s surprise, Mr. Harper’s claim indeed had absolutely nothing to do with reality.
I figure all the drive-by nutters will soon go away, and things can go somewhat back to normal.
November 9th, 2012 | 2:05 pm
Thanks for finding the link Mr. Anderson. If I exaggerated it was only slightly. The effect of classifying single parenting as an element of child abuse will be far reaching because it then becomes, by itself without any context, a prima facie element in a finding of criminal child abuse. A clever nutjob prosecutor could, and would, work it in in discussing legislative intent, etc. Regardless of statistics supporting it, it is absurd to have put that bill forward. Statistics also show people with incomes over 200K do well in life, let’s stigmatize making less than that as an element of child abuse.
Blaming the single parent who often is trying their hardest is not the way to start reform.
@Brian: By definition, a troll engages in discussion without being prepared to take it seriously. I, as I said and has been demonstrated, am prepared to cite all of my claims except the anecdotes. Don’t use lingo that your generation can’t or won’t understand flippantly. I know the Internets is such a hard technology and a scary place, but be brave.
November 9th, 2012 | 8:19 pm
“Romney left the Evangelical turnout mostly to chance.”
Take a look at the last two Republican primaries, especially 2008. Romney represented the fiscal conservative leg of the stool; McCain was the fiscal hawk; Huckabee was the social conservative. Perhaps the social conservative group is not the largest, but it has consistently been the second-strongest part of the party. Both McCain and Romney had questionable credibility as social conservatives, and the Republicans lost. George Bush the younger, on the other hand, was a plausibly credible social conservative and he won twice. The Republicans cannot win a general election without the support of the Huckabee/Santorum constituency.
Mr. Harper, you may not like us social conservatives, but politics makes for strange bedfellows.
November 9th, 2012 | 8:21 pm
Correction: McCain was the defense hawk.
November 9th, 2012 | 10:28 pm
Mr. Harper, Google-search “Child Abuse and the Boyfriend” and look at available statistics.
November 9th, 2012 | 10:55 pm
Mr. Harper, I would be willing to stigmatize those who make less than $200,000 if there were statistics that said those who made less were more likely to abuse children, but they don’t. Doing “well” in life is not the same thing as placing a child in a situation that is significantly more likely to endanger the children in that situation. I don’t happen to make $ 100,000 and my children were neither abused nor kept from succeeding as a result, but I deal almost daily with the struggles of young women and their children. It is not a matter of stigmatizing them, but of being aware of the risks of live in boyfriends, poverty and homelessness that might make us want to do exactly what the bill called for, to educate and inform. I have spoken with a judge and two lawyers and they think your claim about the bill just plain silly.
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