Froth Slosh B'Gosh

FOUR MORE YEARS

The Gyrations of the Silly and the Desperate

Whenever the Democrats win, the right wing will invariably pull out a map like the one on the right to try and illustrate that most of the United States voted for the conservative, even if more people voted for the Democrat.  SEE??? LOOK AT ALL THAT RED!!! LOOK AT IT!!!!!  This is done to try and delegitimize the victor, and somehow "prove" that conservatives are the real majority (much of the "heartland" blather is based on this). 

Just to note before I go on, even though I found this map attached to a posting from yesterday on a conservative website, I'm pretty sure this reflects the 2008 election, instead of 2012, since it shows some counties as blue that I know went for Romney, and some as red that I know went for Obama, but for the purposes of this post it will do.

So where are all those blue counties located?  Generally, they're located where the bulk of the population lives.  Since I live in Pennsylvania, we'll use the Keystone State to dig a little deeper (I made my own color-coded map for PA as a reference, but its a bit messy, although it generally conforms to the above.)

Which counties went for President Obama in Pennsylvania, which as of the last census contained 12,702,379 people?  They would be Philadelphia, Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks, Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe, Luzerne, Lackawanna, Dauphin, Allegheny, and Erie.  Not surprisingly, these counties also contain the state's biggest cities; Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Harrisburg, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.  These counties contain 6,634,551 people, or over 52% of the state's population.  Not coincidentally, the President took Pennsylvania with 52% of the vote.  Those vast swaths of red are for the most part pretty sparsely populated and rural or mountainous.  Romney didn't get much help from the larger suburban counties he won either.  For example, while Chester County, with a population of nearly half a million people and one of Pennsylvania's largest counties was in Romney's column, he beat the President there by a mere 58 votes.  Centre County, another fairly large county (which not oddly at all, is in the center of the state) and home to Penn State University, went for Romney by 20 votes.  The Republicans aren't going make up ground with anemic wins like that, even if they do manage to garner 60% of the vote in Forest County (population 7,716). 

Just a little something to keep in mind when you see a similar map tossed around (and you probably will).

Population data came from the US Census Bureau website.

2012 election data for Pennsylvania came from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's website.

Math v. Gut

Math wins. The final map and percentages looks pretty much like what Nate Silver and Sam Wang said it would look like, but what do they know, compared to the guts of the pundocracy?   The most maddening thing is that the pundits who in the end turned out to be not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong, will continue to hold onto their jobs.  That sort of incompetence shouldn't be rewarded, but it is.  I like what Sarah over at Balloon Juice had to say:

In a fair and just society, political pundits who got things this fucking wrong would never be listened to again. When their names were mentioned, people would mutter embarrassedly and try to change the subject. If they ever tried again to appear on television or write a column about politics, people would point and laugh at their cluelessness until stuff came out their noses. Children would throw turds at them in the street and pin “Kick Me” signs to their backs. The sheer shame engendered by their own stupidity would trap them at home forever, dressed in the tattered rags of their reputations, wearing only one shoe and constantly revisiting the rotted ruins of a table laid with celebratory cake and Romney/Ryan How to Vote cards.

How could anyone top that??  Its a great day to be an American, not only did Obama handily win reelection, but marriage equality votes passed in Maine, Maryland and Washington while an anti-gay constitutional amendment failed in Minnesota.  Democrats retained control of the senate and those troglodytes Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost.  In Pennsylvania, Bob Casey easily beat teabagger Tom Smith, and while the Republicans continue to control the state house and senate, Democrats swept the state row office races. 

Looks like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers got a pretty poor return on the millions upon millions of dollars they spent!  I'm very happy to report that a campaign of lies and racism didn't work, and that selfish millionaires failed to purchase this election.

Election Time

We're into the final few days, and Nate Silver's 538 Blog is giving President Obama nearly an 84% chance of winning, and is likely to capture over 300 electoral votes.

That doesn't mean that Romney cannot win, but it does mean that nearly everything has to go right for the Republicans on Tuesday to manage a win, and that seems, to quote Ralph Wiggum, "unpossible."  Frankly, things haven't gone well lately for Mittens.  The President's response to Hurricane Sandy has been positive, while highlighting Romney's pledge to do away with FEMA and privatize disaster relief.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the Republican convention's keynote speaker praising Obama, coupled with Romney's bungled "relief" campaign rally didn't help either.  Couple that with the disaster that was the Bush Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, and you have encapsulated something that I've been saying for a long time.  Elected officials who believe that government can be a positive good tend to be able to deliver when the chips are down.  Elected officials who have a fundamental belief that government is the "problem" and cannot work, deliver governments that fail to work when a working system is necessary.  The disgraced and disgraceful Michael "heckuvajob Brownie" Brown getting on TV and complaining that Obama responded "too quickly" was the icing on the cake.

Perhaps the last "best" hope for Willard was Friday's jobs report, which turned out to be not bad at all. 

Romney could indeed win, but if the projections hold, an Obama win seems increasingly likely. 

Now, if we wind up with another situation where the winner in the electoral college winds up with fewer popular votes than the loser, regardless of party, can we start having a serious discussion about getting rid of the EC? 

Endorsement

California's Sacramento Bee has endorsed President Obama for reelection.  Papers endorse candidates for a variety of reasons, but the Bee's editorial clearly lays out the President's accomplishments, while highlighting the Republican party's near treasonous obstructionism and Romney's habitiual lying.

Obama not only inherited wars, he inherited a mortgage meltdown and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. He had to act quickly to prevent two automakers from going bankrupt and forestall a larger Wall Street catastrophe, and he did.

While some critics on the left say he should have gone further, by breaking up banks and launching an ambitious New Deal-style jobs program, it should be remembered that even Obama's modest "stimulus" package was fought tooth and nail by Republicans in Congress. As has been well documented, the Republican strategy was to block all of the president's efforts at economic recovery, even if it kept unemployment high for an extended period. As a coldblooded political strategy, it has worked, and millions of Americans have paid the price.

The last four years are instructive, but the next four years could well determine whether the United State repowers its economic engine and rebuilds its middle class, or whether it lapses back to the unequal and deficit-created policies of the Bush era. Although his positions seem to change on a weekly basis, Obama's challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, clearly would pursue tax cuts for the rich, on the discredited theory the wealthy would invest their savings in U.S. jobs. These "trickle down" theories haven't worked before and won't work now. Romney has also pledged to repeal health care reform, a transfer of wealth away from people who would receive subsidies to businesses and the wealthy who would be taxed under Obama-care...

Obama – unruffled by Looney Tunes claims that he is a "socialist" and a "Marxist" – has pursued a consistent, moderate path that has pulled this country back from the brink and put it on a path toward recovery. In a second term, with just a little help from Congress, he could finish the job and pursue other priorities, including upgrading transportation infrastructure, reinvesting in higher education and making the United States a leader in clean energy technologies.

By contrast, Romney has been all over the map on climate change, health care reform and fiscal policy, and he seems determined to lead us into a costly war in Iran, regardless of the consequences.

We've seen this script before. We don't want it again.

The entire thing is worth a read.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/14/4907756/barack-obama-for-president.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/14/4907756/barack-obama-for-president.html#storylink=cpy

Romnesia

The President steals the only page from Jeff Foxworthy's routine.

Binders Full Of Women

Could be the title of a porno, but no, that was Willard stumbling all over himself last night.  I didn't watch, these debates are on too late at night for me, but I caught some of the clips today online, and it looked like the President cleaned Mitten's clock.  Hard to believe as well, but Candy Crowley committed an act of actual journalism, rather than the national media's usual lazy stenography.  Oh, and Fox "News" attempted to edit out one of Romney's more embarrassing moments in their transcript and got caught.

Your impressions?