The 2012 "Election" thread

[Jerky]

I thought the most telling part of Chris Hedges' "S&M Election" screed was his revelation that he spent his schoolboy days dodging wedgies, swirlies and the like. Not very shocking, but telling, nonetheless. It really does explain a lot.

[Elvis]

I estimate turnout was about 47% or 48% of Voting Age Population (VAP) -- an all-time low.

Election ........ % Turnout of VAP
1828 ............... 57.6%
1832 ............... 55.4%
1836 ............... 57.8%
1840 ............... 80.2%
1844 ............... 78.9%
1848 ............... 72.7%
1852 ............... 69.6%
1856 ............... 78.9%
1860 ............... 81.2%
1864 ............... 73.8%
1868 ............... 78.1%
1872 ............... 71.3%
1876 ............... 81.8%
1880 ............... 79.4%
1884 ............... 77.5%
1888 ............... 79.3%
1892 ............... 74.7%
1896 ............... 79.3%
1900 ............... 73.2%
1904 ............... 65.2%
1908 ............... 65.4%
1912 ............... 58.8%
1916 ............... 61.6%
1920 ............... 49.2%
1924 ............... 48.9%
1928 ............... 56.9%
1932 ............... 56.9%
1936 ............... 61.0%
1940 ............... 62.5%
1944 ............... 55.9%
1948 ............... 53.0%
1952 ............... 63.3%
1956 ............... 60.6%

Election ...................VAP............. Turnout .... % Turnout of VAP
1960 ............... 109,159,000......68,895,628 ...... 63.11%
1964 ............... 114,090,000......70,651,298 ...... 61.93%
1968 ............... 120,328,186......73,199,998 ...... 60.83%
1972 ............... 140,776,000......77,744,027 ...... 55.22%
1976 ............... 152,309,190......81,531,584 ..... .53.53%
1980 ............... 164,597,000......86,574,904 ...... 52.60%
1984 ............... 174,466,000......92,653,233...... 53.11%
1988 ............... 182,778,000......91,594,686...... 50.11%
1992 ............... 189,529,000......104,423,923..... 55.10%
1996 ............... 196,511,000......96,277,634...... 49.00%
2000 ............... 205,815,000......105,405,100......51.21%
2004 ............... 215,694,000......122,267,553......56.69%
2008 ............... 225,499,000......131,144,000......58.20%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections

Here's a nifty Graph of Voter turnout in the United States presidential elections from 1824 to 2008:

[justdrew]

of course, the House is still going to be a problem, although I suspect the R cockus is due for an attitude adjustment.

[ninakat]

I thought the most telling part of Chris Hedges' "S&M Election" screed was his revelation that he spent his schoolboy days dodging wedgies, swirlies and the like. Not very shocking, but telling, nonetheless. It really does explain a lot.

I had a similar, albeit much tamer, form of abuse of growing up gay, in my case. Probably explains why I resonate with Hedges, since we both have experienced mean-spirited thugs and bullies up close and personal. But being the victim helps you see things more clearly -- you're more acutely aware of who the oppressors are and the methods they use. So his use of S&M as a metaphor for the relationship the public has with its leaders makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. I think there's such a degree of programming, well into mind control territory, on a mass scale, that it's very doubtful to me how we are not going to avert human catastrophe of an unimaginable scale. Look for more wars, bigger ones, well hidden ones. Expect more of the same ass-fucking from your leaders, you little slave dogs -- but you know you love it, you keep coming back for more.

Hedges: So it is with some morbid fascination that I watch Barack Obama, who has become the prime “dominatrix” of the liberal class, force us in this election to plead for more humiliation and abuse. Obama has carried out a far more egregious assault on our civil liberties, including signing into law Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), than George W. Bush. Section 1021(b)(2), which I challenged in federal court, permits the U.S. military to detain American citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military facilities. U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest struck down the law in September. The Obama administration immediately appealed the decision. The NDAA has been accompanied by use of the Espionage Act, which Obama has turned to six times in silencing whistle-blowers. Obama supported the FISA Amendment Act so government could spy on tens of millions of us without warrants. He has drawn up kill lists to exterminate those, even U.S. citizens, deemed by the ruling elite to be terrorists.

Obama tells us that we better lick his boots or we will face the brute down the hall, Mitt Romney. After all, we wouldn’t want the bad people to get their hands on these newly minted mechanisms of repression. We will, if we do not behave, end up with a more advanced security and surveillance state, the completion of the XL Keystone pipeline, unchecked pillage from Wall Street, environmental catastrophe and even worse health care. Yet we know on some level that once the election is over, Obama will, if he is re-elected, again betray us. This is part of the game. We dutifully assume our position. We cry out in holy terror. We promise to obey. And we are mocked as we watch promises crumble into dust.

As we are steadily stripped of power, we desire with greater and greater fervor to be victims and slaves. Our relationship to corporate power increasingly mirrors that of ancient religious cults. Lucian writes of the priests of Cybele who, whipped into frenzy, castrated themselves to honor the goddess. Women devotees cut off their breasts. We are not far behind.

[justdrew]

naw, this is when it all starts to get better, the corner has been turned.

[Project Willow]

Ha!

My state legalized marijuana and gay marriage.

Happy, wiggle-wobble dance!

[ninakat]

November 06, 2012
Or, I Had No Idea Americans Were Voting Today ... Really!
Screw the Elections!
by ANDRE VLTCHEK

Nairobi.

I am not inventing this: I really did not know; I had no clue! Until today, which is the 6th of November 2012… 1PM… Nairobi time… I had no clue that they were once again sticking those pieces of paper into boxes… far away – in the USA.

And how did I find out? I went to my favorite bookstore in East Africa and my friend, an Indian bookseller, simply pointed at a book written by Quintus Tullius Cicero. It was written some 2,100 years ago, and was called, “How to Win an Election”.

“Practice your Latin”, my Indian friend smiled. He somehow suspected that quite some time ago I had to suffer through a classic education. Traces of it have probably never left my face.

“It sucks”, I admitted. “My Latin sucks.”

“This…,” he pointed his finger at some magazine cover, with the grinning face of Obama, and of some other guy that I did not recognize, “This surely sucks much more than your Latin… And don’t you worry; the book is a by-lingual edition, so you can cheat.”

And so I did. I purchased Cicero and some Kenyan novel, and descended to a Congolese/French café, ordered a powerful espresso macchiato and a bottle of sparkling water. Then I began to read the English language side:

“Promise everything to everybody. Except in the most extreme cases, candidates should say whatever the particular crowd of the day wants to hear. Tell traditionalists you have consistently supported conservative values. Tell progressives you have always been on their side. After the election you can explain to everyone that you would love to help them, but unfortunately circumstances beyond your control have intervened…”

Elections? What elections?

Then I began to recall something. My ex wife, a concert pianist and a professor of music at Columbia University, wrote to me just yesterday, from New York City. She was urgently trying to get some dirt on Obama for her friend, who appeared to be in the terminal stages of dark depression over the entire US political establishment.

Without giving it much thought, I happily complied and forwarded to her the manuscript of my book on Indonesia, called “Archipelago of Fear” (published by Pluto, UK, 2012). The book contains some toxic flashes, illuminating Obama’s childhood in a fascist post-1965 Indonesia, as well as some revivals and vignettes on his Kenyan father – one of the luminous US-trained economists, who busily helped the West destroy everything slightly resembling ‘socialist’ or ‘social’ in Kenya, and the entire East Africa).

Then I wrote to my ex-wife, now a good friend; summarizing my moderate opinion on the President of the United States: “Regarding Obama: I do not have any particularly negative feelings towards him. He is a criminal, a war criminal, like all of those guys, ever since Washington and Lincoln. He is a crook, but not an exceptional one… just a regular bandit. But in reality just a sad clown serving Western market fundamentalism and imperialism.”

But why was everyone so obsessed with the elections and with our dear leader Obama right now?

* * *

I confess that at some point in time, I stopped watching television and reading the newspapers. Writing and filming in all corners of the world, I live most of my life in hotels and on board passenger airplanes; therefore periodically some glimpse of the headlines catches me. Most of the time, I avert my eyes from the screens or the front-pages, as I am not really that interested in who had been eaten by a shark, somewhere in Florida, who slept with whom and in what position, and who has been running for the US Senate or the White House.

I find it irrelevant. I ignore pop music, all Hollywood and Bollywood films, as well as most of the mass media. I also ignore all the coverage by all the news outlets, of what is occurring in the US and the European political scene, as I find this information totally unrelated to the suffering of the world which I am witnessing everywhere.

Western politicians are just like some pre-selected puppet theatre dolls, and whoever of them is occupying the throne, influences nothing of what is happening in the world, and even in their own countries – in the US and Europe. To borrow an expression of one great British playwright – Hanif Kureishi: “These guys are not even in charge of the farts coming from their rectums.”

Since the beginning of this year, I decided to go back to the basics, to do it all – or at least in the field of investigative journalism – in an old-fashioned way; the way it was done a long time ago, by Orwell, but especially by people like Wilfred Burchett and Ryszard Kapuściński. I decided to go to war zones, to conflict areas, and there, listen to people, use as few quotes from the establishment as possible, and to be totally opinionated and ideological. This, I was convinced, would bring me as close as possible to the real ‘objectivity’ and the ‘truth’ as one could get.

There, in the places where the real suffering was, people did not care who was in the White House: whether Clinton or Bush or Obama. For them it was always the same: big multi-national companies cut down their forests, polluted their rivers, robbed their natural resources and bought their labor for a song. And overthrew their democratically elected governments (yes, in many countries there were attempts to establish democracy) if those were trying to serve, to prioritize the people.

Whether it was done under Democrats or Republicans is soon forgotten, but the suffering remains in the memory.

In this year – in 2012 – I traveled to the cities and through the countryside of China and Latin America, to the border between Syria and Turkey, to Rwanda/DR Congo border, to Bahrain, Uganda, to the sites of religious violence in Indonesia, to the villages built on and near the garbage dumps in and right outside Kolkata, to the ‘sinking’ nation of Kiribati, to the Kenyan/Somali border, as well as to the biggest refugee camp on earth – Dadaab.

I made films, and worked on books and reports. There was no time for watching the news. The system: the Empire, the regime, the savage capitalism was murdering all over the world. Why to waste time to study its mascots replaced once every four or eight years?

* * *

And then suddenly I was here, in Nairobi, one day before my departure for Cairo and Kuala Lumpur. I was here, struck by the revelation, that I had absolutely no clue that there were elections taking place, in the country whose citizenship I was holding: the United Sates of America. And I had no idea who the candidates were, although once I found out there was actually an election taking place, I was certain that Mr. Obama would be one of them, as he would not want to deprive us of his luminous presence at the zenith, for another four years.

I called, texted and “Whatsapped” several people who confirmed that, yes, indeed, there were Presidential elections taking place in the US. They all thought that this was a cute joke on my part. It wasn’t.

I opened the Yahoo.uk page and it was there! Yes: Obama and Romney (who the hell was he? But as Obama is a Democrat, this dude must be a Republican, by definition, right?).

While I was hibernating, those guys in Washington already managed to nominate each other, pre-select two loyalists from their ranks, run background checks (make sure that nobody is going to rock the boat) and then allow the voters of the USA to decide whether they, and much of the world, would be ‘governed’ for the next four years, by a Mickey Mouse with the pink nose or by the one with the orange one.

2+2 were suddenly gathered together: I now recalled that some Senate candidates recently wrote to me. They complimented my work, and then suggested that we ‘should work together’. There was a candidate for Governor of one of the major States, too. I mainly ignored such letters, or very politely declined the offers. I was absolutely not interested in the establishment, too busy with my books, films, reports, personal turmoil and the Latin American Revolution.

* * *

Slowly, waking up to reality, I began to realize how dangerous, and how subversive were my refusals to take an interest in the luminous, shining path of the Western ‘democratic’ election process.

I recalled one of the greatest post-war novels, “Seeing”, written by the Portuguese author, Jose Saramago. In its pages he described a ‘peaceful’ and ‘democratic’ European country, and the sudden turmoil, when its citizens began spoiling the ballots, and refusing to participate in the charade of voting for pre-selected and pre-approved corporate clients, called ‘candidates’. The state immediately reacted by imposing Martial law; it began to kidnap, murder and torture the population.

To refuse to play the game – to take these depressing and poorly choreographed tragic-comedies called ‘elections’ seriously – was probably a very dangerous undertaking, a punishable crime. The Western regimes like to be taken seriously. Or else…

I suddenly had felt so wicked, and so dangerous!

But what could I do? I really couldn’t care lesser, as those people I met felt all over the world, which candidate would be warming the chair in the White House. Obama’s foreign policy has been appalling – from the Middle East to the Gulf States, from Latin America to Africa. There is nothing positive that he has been offering to the world, as there has been nothing positive offered by any of the White House dudes since the WWII. As there would certainly be nothing positive in what Mr. Romney (whoever he is) would offer were he to become the President.

Cicero wrote:

Qua re etiamatqueetiampergetenereistamviam quam institisti , ex-celledicendo. Hoc ettenentur Romae et adliciuntur et abimpediendo ac laedendorepelluntur.

In such a chaotic world, you must stick to the path you have chosen. It is your unmatched skill as a speaker that draws the Roman people to you and keeps them on your side.

‘Unmatched skill as a speaker’, maybe, but ‘sticking to the chosen path’?

I went upstairs, and cleansed myself by listening to a couple of good revolutionary Latin American songs. And later I took a shower, defining this moment in history, under a hot stream of water, as an erotic day: “Fuck their elections!” I mumbled merrily before departing for the airport and Cairo.

I still didn’t know, and had no interest of knowing, who that guy called Romney really was.

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific – Oceania – is published by Lulu . His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear” (Pluto). After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website.

[8bitagent]

Republicans are gonna be pissed now. These losers can't see that the world doesn't revolve around hate. Domestically, things look great at least as far as social issues and signals that the religious right is losing its hold. Perhaps Obama will use this mandate to do what our multi-cultural majority wants. Washington State looks like it took care of business of all the things we care about -- save possibly the charter schools issue. I applaud all souls in the majority. Dubya fucked the right, because they doubled down time and time again. You give the keys to an idiot and bank on the hatred, it eventually comes back to bite you -- being the party of the "rule of law".

All in all, the best possible outcome given what we are given.

I'm gonna go buy me some weed at Target now. Well, I guess in December or something.

Im greatly satisfied. I mean three more states in our union will now allow gay marriage. Progressives won against a number of R incumbents including some really progressive women.
Huge winfall, even if Dems dont control the house. Tonight was worth it to see people elated(and not because some puppet in an ISI safehouse was executed by Seals teams)
I'd never want to take that away, even though I maintain my Greenwald-esque criticism. NONE of us wanted Romney and the slimefucks to win. (I cynically joked that Romney should win
for a civic lesson) Only that people need to be aware of things Obama has done and hold Washington accountable when they lean toward bad policies.
Also, just seeing the bewildered looks on the face of Rove and O'reilly was priceless.

All this said, what 82_28 said...were going to see an even more crazed right wing. There are normal Republicans. They were on tv saying they lost partly because of the crazy stuff the GOP espouses lately, so very very out of touch. Yet, for a lot of people it's become an obsession. It's not even a prediction to say you're going to see the Rove/Koch/Rush side really go nuts, and the Tea Party/patriot/fringe right wing get downright scary dangerous.

Tonight was a clear message that only, ONLY the most hardliner southern right wing strongholds still sway to the far right and that a lot of America is not happy at all with the GOP even if they despise Obama.

[8bitagent]

naw, this is when it all starts to get better, the corner has been turned.

Well we learned America is getting more progressive, lightning speed. The swing state county results proved that. The passing of several more gay marriage measures proved that.
The GOP has been identified as a cancer. We know the strongholds, and they're being squeezed. Leftists can identify issues with Obama, feel that somehow the game still has to be rigged
yet be more than happy to see a renewed enthusiasm. Obama's hope may be somewhat fake, but the people who believe in him or a better America certainly is genuine.

However, as an ardent Seinfeld rerun fanatic, I often look to the show for signs or adages. Often George Costanza or others will say "what could possibly go wrong?" or "barring any unforeseen incidents"
after feeling euphoric about a turn of good news.

You know, it's very possible Obama could become more progressive, and turn away from things we as leftists critique. Which, in a way could be all the more dangerous.

[82_28]

You just have to be forceful and allow them their space. Never back down to a winger ever. But give them their space or in other words, their rope. If they are at their core good peeps, they will come around to the very same reason we're stoked that Obama won. We must remain vigilant! We must remain kind. With a fuck you thrown in here and there. There is no authority.

[seemslikeadream]

LOSERS



The republican party is dead old white man walking

[2012 Countdown]

Woweee!

Check out these Romney voters... fucking hateful, ignorant, sheep led dumbasses-

[seemslikeadream]

10 Right-Wingers Who Got Election 2012 Hilariously Wrong
Faith-based analysis doesn't cut it. Maybe in 2016, they'll read Nate Silver like normal people.
November 6, 2012 |


We really had a contest between the reality-based community, and a conservative movement that had convinced itself that Obama was so heinous that there was simply no way the American people could possibly re-elect him. Progressives read the polling averages, and read Nate Silver to stave off the anxiety created by a beltway media intent on making the race appear to be a toss-up. As conservatives slept, they dreamed of Ronald Reagan's electoral maps, all painted red, and a defeated, weak Democrat limping off the field of battle, chastened by Real America.

They say the only poll that counts is the final one. And it has revealed a number of conservative pundits – people who make their living gauging the state of the race – to be utterly clueless. So join us, as we take a tour of their wild swings-and-misses. Enjoy the Schadenfreude!

1. Michael Barone

You almost get the sense that Michael Barone, a relatively fact-based analyst, drew the short straw for this one.

Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That's bad news for Barack Obama....

Both national and target state polls show that independents, voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans, break for Romney.

That might not matter if Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 39 to 32 percent, as they did in the 2008 exit poll. But just about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so.

Barone then called all of the contested states except for Nevada for Mitt Romney.

Bottom line: Romney 315, Obama 223. That sounds high for Romney. But he could drop Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still win the election. Fundamentals.

2. Peggy Noonan's Good Vibrations

Noonan, who appeared to be fighting back tears when Fox News called Ohio, brought her own unique brand of navel-gazing to this WSJ column:

While everyone is looking at the polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency. He’s quietly rising, and he’s been rising for a while...

Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.

I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.

Romney’s crowds are building—28,000 in Morrisville, Pa., last night; 30,000 in West Chester, Ohio, Friday It isn’t only a triumph of advance planning: People came, they got through security and waited for hours in the cold. His rallies look like rallies now, not enactments. In some new way he’s caught his stride. He looks happy and grateful. His closing speech has been positive, future-looking, sweetly patriotic. His closing ads are sharp—the one about what’s going on at the rallies is moving.

All the vibrations are right.

Oh, Peggy.

3. Karl Rove: Party ID

In the Wall Street Journal, Bush's Brain wrote, “It comes down to numbers. And in the final days of this presidential race, from polling data to early voting, they favor Mitt Romney.”

Desperate Democrats are now hanging their hopes on a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll showing the president with a five-point Ohio lead. But that survey gives Democrats a +8 advantage in turnout, the same advantage Democrats had in 2008. That assumption is, to put it gently, absurd.
Yup, Democrats only had a 6-point turn-out advantage according to the exit polls.

4. Joel Pollack: Feel the Christiementum!

Moving down the food chain, we get to Joel Pollack, the “editor-in-chief and in-house council” for Breitbart's Big Government. Pollack decided that Chris Christie's decision to snub Mitt Romney and sing Barack Obama's praise is rock-solid proof that Romney's going to clean Obama's clock next Tuesday. “The truth about Christie’s outreach to Obama is blindingly obvious,” he wrote. “Mitt Romney is now running away with this election, freeing Christie to praise the president without fear that doing so will tip the scales.”

5. Jeff Anderson: It's All About the Approval Rating

At the Weekly Standard, Jeff Anderson sneered at the LIEbrul media for not giving us the real scoop.

For all of the wishful thinking in the mainstream press about President Obama’s positioning 40 days before this election, Obama’s approval rating looks remarkably similar to what it was on this date in 2010 — shortly before his party lost a historic 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats....

So, two years after the biggest Republican gains in the House since before World War II, Americans remain every bit as unimpressed with the way Obama is handling his job as president as they were then.

This stands to reason. Obamacare remains an unprecedented threat to Americans’ liberty, this “recovery” still feels like a recession, the debt continues to explode, and Obama still ducks responsibility for anything that happens during his presidency, at least to some degree. The American people are noticing.

6. Emmett Tyrell: Liberalism Is Dead

Syndicated columnist Emmett Tyrell certainly bought into the Obama-as-Jimmy Carter meme.

Obama has come across as an amazingly close approximation of Jimmy Carter, complete with a slow-growth economy and a foreign policy disaster, though one of Obama's empty boasts was he understood the Arab world especially well. His backup team of David Axelrod and David Plouffé serve as second-rate Jody Powells and Ham Jordans. Frankly, I preferred Jody and Ham.

On February 5, 2009, I said in this space that Obama's presidency was doomed. I pronounced him a dud, unlikely to be reelected president. Said I, "…with the economy in crisis and American national security in the hands of a starry-eyed novice, one can argue that we are in for a reprise of the Carter years complete with the self-righteous pout." Well, I argued this for almost four years and today I rest my case.

Next week President Obama goes into retirement. I hope he will consider Hawaii.

Given my perspective, it was an easy case to call. A few months back I published my findings in The Death of Liberalism. In that book I noted that in the conservative deluge of 2010 independents combined with conservatives to turn the Liberals out. The independents do not always share the conservatives' social values, but they are very ardent for prudent economic policies. The growing debt and unbalanced budgets (both state and federal) had roused the independent vote. I said they would vote with the conservatives for years to come, because Obama and his cohorts in Congress were going to pile up trillion dollar deficits for years to come. Along with the conservatives and independents, next week will come the "uncommitted" voter. The uncommitted always goes with the challenger.

7. Drive-by Pundit: Blacks Hate Obama!

Perhaps we're scraping the bottom of the barrel – no, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel – by quoting a guy called “drive-by pundit” writing at the American Thinker. But, hey, this is just too funny.

As a former journalist, I've learned that most polls commissioned by news outlets are done not to reflect reality, but to distort it. In the same way Hollywood has discovered it can cheaply fill airtime with so-called "reality shows," news outlets have found they can fill their pages with polls.

Book it: Romney's going to win this election in a romp come November. I'm certain of this because there is a key factor that's being overlooked this time around -- blacks have lost their passion for Obama.

I see that loss reflected in the faces of my fellow blacks, who at the mention of Obama's name no longer beam with rapturous joy -- something we blacks normally reserve for winning lottery tickets and intimate getaways with persons not our spouses. As the saying went in the 'hood where I grew up: "If he looks happy, he's either hit the number or he's cheating."

By the way, we're kind of doubtful this anonymous "former journalist" was a journalist or is actually black. But you never know!

8. John Hinderaker: It's Over

That was actually the title of his post. And he wrote it just after the first debate – too bad for the folks at Powerline that we didn't hold an election that day.

I’ve been watching presidential debates for quite a few years, but I have never seen one like this. It wasn’t a TKO, it was a knockout. Mitt Romney was in control from the beginning. He was the alpha male, while Barack Obama was weak, hesitant, stuttering, often apologetic. The visuals were great for Romney and awful for Obama. Obama looked small, tired, defeated after four years of failure, out of ammo. One small point among many: Obama doesn’t even know how to stand at a podium, as he continually lifted up one leg. He would be below average as a high school debater.

I don’t know how the Democrats will try to spin this one, but it just doesn’t matter. There was only one credible leader on the stage tonight, and it wasn’t our failed president. This was a huge night for the cause of freedom, one from which, one hopes, Obama can’t recover. The pitiful figure that we saw tonight was the real Obama, the loser behind the curtain who is finally revealed as an utter hoax.

Turns out Democrats didn't spin it. They fell into a deep funk, wrung their hands for a while, and then they won. The end.

9. Dick Morris: The Pollsters in My Head Say...

Morris is arguably the wrongest person in the universe with a mainstream platform, and he didn't dissapoint in 2012.

What was remarkable about Morris' “analysis” is that is was based on just inventing poll numbers. Compare and contrast Morris' universe with that compiled by Real Clear Politics' average of state polls at the time.

Morris:

“In October, Obama lost the Southern swing states of Florida (29) and Virginia (13). He also lost Colorado (10), bringing his total to 255 votes.”

Romney was up by 1 point in Florida, which was listed as a toss-up. Virginia was tied. Obama was up by a point in Colorado. Anyway, Obama won Colorado and Virginia. As of this writing, Florida's too close to call.

“And now, he faces the erosion of the northern swing states: Ohio (18), New Hampshire (4) and Iowa (6). Only in the union-anchored state of Nevada (9) does Obama still cling to a lead.”

Obama was up 2+ points in Ohio and Nevada at the time, and by 2 points in New Hampshire and Iowa. He won all these states.

“In the next few days, the battle will move to Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and Minnesota (16). Ahead in Pennsylvania, tied in Michigan and Wisconsin, and slightly behind in Minnesota, these new swing states look to be the battleground.”

Remember, this guy gets paid for his “analysis.” Obama was ahead in all these polls and swept all these states easily.

5: Dean Chambers: Unskewed Polls and Nat Silver Trutherism

Having seen Dick Morris' imaginary polling data, consider this gem of a sentence: “While many conservatives look to former Clinton political consultant Dick Morris to understand the polls and political surveys on the elections, or even a site like UnSkewedPolls.com, those on the left look to New York Times blogger Nate Silver.”

That was written by Dean Chambers, who runs UnSkewedPolls.com. And Chambers does not like the New York Times' numbers-cruncher. Mostly because Chambers thinks he's dumb, but also girly.

Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound.
OK, obviously someone has issues. But Chambers then betrays his complete ignorance of how modeling works.

Apparently, Nate Silver has his own way of “skewing” the polls. He appears to look at the polls available and decide which ones to put more “weighting” on in compiling his own average, as opposed to the Real Clear Politics average, and then uses the average he calculates to determine that percentages a candidate has of winning that state. He labels some polling firms as favoring Republicans, even if they over sample Democrats in their surveys, apparently because he doesn’t agree with their results.
No, Nate Silver doesn't “decide” anything. His computer model gives different weight to different pollsters based on their past track records. The more accurate a polling firm has shown itself to e in the past, the more weight its results get in the FiveThirtyEight model.

Dean Chamber, on the other hand, is “unskewing” the polls based on the wholly erroneous belief that partisan ID is an immutable characteristic, like race or gender. His final projection only had Romney winning by a handful of Electoral College votes, but this was his projection when he wrote that post on October 25

[DrVolin]

LOSERS

Uh, I think some gloves might be coming off soon.

[semiconscious]

yep. cue 4 years of 'bad? you think this's bad? well, imagine what it'd be like if romney'd won!'...

ad nauseum. amen...