Romney never had any remote chance to win

[GenuineRisk]

Can we stop blaming poor dead Ayn Rand for Romney and Ryan? The big villain in Atlas Shrugged is a crony capitalist, fer chrissakes.

Though I'll give you she probably would have thought Paul Ryan was cute. She had a weakness for PYTs of the male persuasion.

[GenuineRisk]

[Riot]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

Dagny would have liked that

Too bad American media - and conservative media in particular - chose to abandon "numbers" this election cycle. That's the story of this election cycle: our "objective" journalistic media barely exists any more.

I almost felt sorry for the conservatives who have been listening to the "the polls are close, but my heart says Romney will win in a landslide blowout" crap from fools like Dick Morris. But then I figured, hey, they don't "believe" in climate change or "believe" in evolution either.

All the numbers were public and available. That a vast portion of the American public was deceived - by deliberate action or sheer incompetence - by their media should be a wakeup call to them.

[Riot]

Facts are facts, whether you believe them, ignore them, or pretend they are not there. The USA has a major problem with substituting "faith" for "fact".

From the school board in Texas that chooses to rewrite history regarding slaves and battles to US Congressmen saying women cannot get pregnant from "real" rape to ignoring the realities measured by political polls.

------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON -- As Republicans search for reasons why they came up short in Tuesday's elections, anonymous Mitt Romney advisers have described what it was like to be with the former governor as he came to terms with his loss.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser told CBS News.

Another unnamed senior adviser explained that as returns came in and battleground states went into President Barack Obama's Electoral College column, they felt their paths to potential victory narrowing.

CBS reports that the campaign was unprepared for this in part because it had ignored polling that showed the races favoring Obama.

Instead, it turned to its own internal "unskewed" polls, which it believed more accurately reflected the situation on the ground. They didn't.

On the eve of the election, a number of polling aggregators, including HuffPost's Pollster and New York Times' FiveThirtyEight, showed Obama with a huge statistical advantage over Romney.

When it was clear that Romney had lost the race and had to concede, his personal assistant, Garrett Jackson, called his counterpart in the Obama campaign, Marvin Nicholson, to connect the two men.

As CBS' Jan Greenburg writes in her article:

Romney was stoic as he talked the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

The New York Times' tick-tock of the events that night at the Boston Intercontinental Hotel includes this anecdote:

Bob White, a close Romney friend and adviser, was prepared to tell the waiting crowd that Mr. Romney would not yet concede.

But then, Mr. Romney quietly decided it was over. "It's not going to happen," he said.

As Ann Romney cried softly, he headed down to deliver his speech, ending his second, and presumably last, bid for the White House.

As evidence of the Romney campaign's sincere belief that the former Massachusetts governor would emerge victorious on Tuesday night, the Boston Globe reported Thursday that it had planned to fete Romney's election with an eight-minute display of fireworks over Boston Harbor.

"It was not an intense, grand finale-type of display for eight minutes, but it certainly was a fast-paced show to cap off the evening, if it were necessary," Steve Pelkey, the CEO of Atlas Professional Fireworks Displays, told the Globe.

Romney also told reporters on his campaign plane earlier this week that while had had written a victory speech, he hadn't prepared concession remarks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2095013.html

[Rupert Pupkin]

Romney barely lost Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. All those states were close enough so that they could have gone either way. Sure the polls are pretty accurate, but they can often be off by a couple of percentage points. I'm not saying that Obama wasn't a solid favorite going into Tuesday. He was a solid favorite but his leads were very small in those 3 states and also in Colorado.

On a different subject, even though it didn't make the difference in this election, the winner take all rule of the Electoral college is absurd. For example, if Romney gets 10 million votes in Florida and Obama get 9.9 million votes there, why should Romney sweep all the electoral votes in that state? It is absurd.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

Romney barely lost Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. All those states were close enough so that they could have gone either way. Sure the polls are pretty accurate, but they can often be off by a couple of percentage points. I'm not saying that Obama wasn't a solid favorite going into Tuesday. He was a solid favorite but his leads were very small in those 3 states and also in Colorado.

On a different subject, even though it didn't make the difference in this election, the winner take all rule of the Electoral college is absurd. For example, if Romney gets 10 million votes in Florida and Obama get 9.9 million votes there, why should Romney sweep all the electoral votes in that state? It is absurd.

The popular vote and electoral college votes match (except for Gore), so I really don't have problem with that. It does keep us trapped in a two, not three or more, party system.

My point in this thread is that the Romney crowd really, honestly thought they were gonna win, and were truly devastated and shocked when they lost.

But that could have been avoided if they didn't base their hopes and dreams upon deliberately ignoring all the aggregate polling that said Romney could never win the swing states, in favor of one or two polls that were hopeful or showed Romney ahead (while seven others showed him behind)

Two or three points is huge - not "either way", depending upon what polling techniques are used. And the Romney campaign repeatedly embraced faulty technique that told them what they wanted to hear, and deliberately ignored better analysis that told the story of his probable loss months ago.

Look at the angry donors, who were told Romney was a lock by the Romney campaign - based upon bad, bad polling analysis. I'd be angry too. They were not lied to deliberately - they were given bad, bad information from a woefully factually uninformed and amateur campaign crew.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Riot

The popular vote and electoral college votes match (except for Gore), so I really don't have problem with that. It does keep us trapped in a two, not three or more, party system.

My point in this thread is that the Romney crowd really, honestly thought they were gonna win, and were truly devastated and shocked when they lost.

But that could have been avoided if they didn't base their hopes and dreams upon deliberately ignoring all the aggregate polling that said Romney could never win the swing states, in favor of one or two polls that were hopeful or showed Romney ahead (while seven others showed him behind)

Two or three points is huge - not "either way", depending upon what polling techniques are used. And the Romney campaign repeatedly embraced faulty technique that told them what they wanted to hear, and deliberately ignored better analysis that told the story of his probable loss months ago.

Look at the angry donors, who were told Romney was a lock by the Romney campaign - based upon bad, bad polling analysis. I'd be angry too. They were not lied to deliberately - they were given bad, bad information from a woefully factually uninformed and amateur campaign crew.

It wasn't as if there weren't credible polls showing Romney tied or ahead in many of the swing states. Polls like Pew, Rasmussen, and Gallup gave Romney a great chance. I knew there were polls that weren't as favorable but I figured Romney had a decent chance. When the economy is not good and the unemployment rate is this high, you would think that many of the undecideds would end up voting for change.

[hi_im_god]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

Romney barely lost Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. All those states were close enough so that they could have gone either way. Sure the polls are pretty accurate, but they can often be off by a couple of percentage points. I'm not saying that Obama wasn't a solid favorite going into Tuesday. He was a solid favorite but his leads were very small in those 3 states and also in Colorado.

On a different subject, even though it didn't make the difference in this election, the winner take all rule of the Electoral college is absurd. For example, if Romney gets 10 million votes in Florida and Obama get 9.9 million votes there, why should Romney sweep all the electoral votes in that state? It is absurd.

rupert-

how a state assigns it's electors is up to each state. most have set up a winner take all system but both nebraska and maine have races in each congressional district for a single elector with the remaining 2 electors based on the statewide vote. romney targeted maine's 2nd district and Obama the district including omaha although neither made a big push and both went with the rest of the state for their opponent.

solid red and blue states aren't going to change the winner take all system because the party in charge doesn't want to up even 1 or 2 electors to the other side. and swing states get a lot less important if there isn't a large basket of electors to play for so they don't want to change.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by hi_im_god

rupert-

how a state assigns it's electors is up to each state. most have set up a winner take all system but both nebraska and maine have races in each congressional district for a single elector with the remaining 2 electors based on the statewide vote. romney targeted maine's 2nd district and Obama the district including omaha although neither made a big push and both went with the rest of the state for their opponent.

solid red and blue states aren't going to change the winner take all system because the party in charge doesn't want to up even 1 or 2 electors to the other side. and swing states get a lot less important if there isn't a large basket of electors to play for so they don't want to change.

I don't think the winner take all rule is fair. If the election ended up coming down to Florida, and the democrat won Florida by 10,000 votes, that would mean that if 12,000 republicans from California moved to Florida and voted there, then the republican would win the election. That makes no sense. A person's vote should count equally, no matter what state they are voting from.

The present system is completely ridiculous. Think about how absurd this is. Republicans know that their vote doesn't count in California. So if a group of 1 million republicans in California got organized and decided that 3 groups of 300,000 would become residents of Virginia, Florida, and Ohio, and give up their status as California residents, then Romney would win the election. How ridiculous is that? It make no sense. Their votes have no value in California but would have tremendous value in other states. It shouldn't be like that. One votes should count as one vote, no matter where you live.

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by hi_im_god

rupert-

how a state assigns it's electors is up to each state. most have set up a winner take all system but both nebraska and maine have races in each congressional district for a single elector with the remaining 2 electors based on the statewide vote. romney targeted maine's 2nd district and Obama the district including omaha although neither made a big push and both went with the rest of the state for their opponent.

solid red and blue states aren't going to change the winner take all system because the party in charge doesn't want to up even 1 or 2 electors to the other side. and swing states get a lot less important if there isn't a large basket of electors to play for so they don't want to change.

http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/20...reat-idea.html

the link is to an excellent explanation of why the electoral college is a good thing.

it seems every four years, the loser and his supporters rail at the electoral college as being some sinister creation. it's not. of course, when a republican wins the presidency (and it'll happen, not too many years ago the demise of the democratic party was projected to come any day-and look at them now) than the dems will have their turn to bash the system.
it's a good system, it works. read the article and you will see why i have asserted, and will continue to assert that the electoral college is the best way to elect our nations leader.