Most of the threads in this forum discuss individual issues and events around the election. I thought it would be nice to have a “big picture” thread on the election as a whole to discuss the broad trends which will determine the outcome. If there is enough interest, I would like this thread to continue till the election after which it should make an interesting read. Here is my assessment:
The broad fundamentals point to a small Obama advantage. Obama is an incumbent president who has avoided any massive scandals or foreign policy disasters. The mediocre economy hurts him but not enough to full erase that advantage. There is a small possibility of a Euro-related financial meltdown which seriously damages him but it’s getting increasingly unlikely. The arithmetic of the electoral college suggests he has more paths to victory through some fairly diverse states like Colorado, Ohio, Virginia and Florida.
Romney may gain a big money advantage. Obama is spending more and raising less and will have less money from outside groups. This is probably the biggest worry for Obama though I suspect that as the campaign heats up he will be able to raise enough from small donations to get by.
For a high-level politician Romney is unusually prone to unforced errors and he is generally stiff and awkward. As the campaign heats up and voters start paying more attention there is a bigger chance that he starts making gaffes which seriously hurt him.
Romney will build a good ground game but Obama’s will be significantly better. I am sure Romney will use his Bain-fu and money to build an excellent ground operation but Obama has a big advantage: his team has done it before and have been planning this for more than four years. There is probably a steep learning curve in the new data-centric campaign techniques that have emerged in the last few years and a big advantage to having a rich data set from the last general election.
The Ryan pick has pushed the election into territory which doesn’t fit Romney’s strengths. His earlier strategy was " The economy isn’t working and I know how to fix". He wasn’t executing the strategy very well but broadly it fit Romney’s experience and strengths. The new strategy, which is still muddy, seems to be about transforming Medicare and the broad role of the government. I am not sure these are good issues for anyone but Romney, in particular, isn’t the kind of conviction politician who can pull this off. On the plus side Ryan is a personable and appealing politician.
Both the bases will be high energized. Perhaps the Ryan pick may energize the GOP a tad more but not by much.
Most of the above points to an Obama win. I would give him a 65-70% chance of winning.
I agree- and I think Obama’s chances are even higher. There’s really only a few states that matter- OH, VA, and FL (maybe a few more like CO and IA)- and if Obama wins just one of those big three, he’s almost certain to win… and he’s ahead by a good margin in OH and VA. The media plays up MI, WI, and PA as swing states, but I don’t think there’s more than a very slight chance that Romney can win any of those.
I think that Romney is the worst major-party nominee that I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’m not saying that because of the gaffes, which happen to everybody and which tend to get forgotten soon. Rather, he simply doesn’t have a good narrative for his campaign, doesn’t communicate with ordinary voters, and doesn’t have answers to important questions.
His basic tactic on all questions related to taxes, economic policy, or his personal wealth is to insist that the wealthy are “job creators” and thus further tax cuts and deregulation will produce jobs. It’s plain that the majority of the American people don’t buy this, so repeating it endlessly isn’t going to bring him to victory. All of the other issues that he’s been hammered with, such as the tax returns, are things that he should have seen coming. He ought to have released the tax returns years ago.
Even worse is his attitude. In The Avengers there’s a scene where Loki complains about the fact that he’s a god and he doesn’t understand why he should bother fighting against mere mortals. Romney gives off a similar vibe, even if he doesn’t say so directly. In his mind, he’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars and thus he just deserves to be President. He doesn’t understand why he should bother grubbing for votes among the middle class or getting interviewed by people whose salaries barely crack seven figures.
I don’t think Romney’s a uniquely terrible nominee in general. He isn’t particularly good either, but he joins the ranks of Kerry and Gore as kind of stiff, boring technocrats. Its a “type” that for whatever reason seems to get nominated a lot.
I think he is a uniquely terrible nominee for this cycle in particular though. In a cycle where so much of the GOP is focused on Obamacare, Romney’s signature legislative accomplishment is basically a state-level version of the same thing, and he was touting it as a national model as late as 2010.
In a cycle where the Recession has turned popular mood into a strong suspicion of wealthy financiers, Romney made a fortune in various financial wheelings and dealings. And he looks the part to. Unlike Bush Jr, who despite his privaleged background managed to sell an image of having just come off a cattle drive, Romney acts like someone who spends his weekends swimming around in a giant vault of money.
In a cycle where the looming experation of the Bush tax-cuts have put tax policy front and center, Romney himself serves as posterchild for the kinds of people the Dems think should have their taxes increased.
And finally, I think the recent experience of the Bush admin have made people suspicious of tax-cutting and regulation repeal as a economic strategy. A candidate with a history of conservative bonifides could react to this by tacking to the center in the general election, but because Romney has such a moderate governing history, he seems to feel that he needs to be endlessly shoring up his base.
There’s still a chance that we’ll have some really horrible economic news between now and November. That’s about the only thing I can see that might clinch it for Romney. It’s still the economy, stupid.
This will be an issues election like 1996. The question is: Will there be a Daisy ad like in 1964?
At the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney will likely invoke Ronald Reagan; however, George W. Bush is now the “patriach” of the GOP, his father, George H.W. Bush notwithstanding.
Not much is different with 2012 compared to 2008, except the Iraq War is no longer an issue.
Americans must realize before Election Day that Mitt Romney IS George W. Bush.
Or they could schism; there are pretty much three Democratic parties anyway: Labor, Civil Rights, and Environment. They get along…mostly. It’s been a pretty good coalition. But is acts like a coalition now and then, by splitting.
So: the Republicans bite the wax tadpole, and the Democrats form into two or three special issue parties… Is this a gain, or a loss? Does it give more power to the Rump Republicans, the Tea Party extremists? Or less?
Be careful what you wish for. That would only work if the Republican Party disappeared. In Canada, we have what you suggested, with the result that the left wing and centrist parties are splitting the liberal vote and the right wing Conservatives are sailing into power. This has led to talk about the two liberal parties joining forces, but so far, neither one is giving an inch. For the foreseeable future, the Conservatives will be able to phone in their
election campaigns and still win.
No, no, no. There is no good or value to America in conservatism as such. None whatsoever. Let it wither and die. Let the Dems be the centrists/liberals and let the Socialist Party arise, or at least a progressive/social-democratic party like the Working Families Party. That would be a two-party system worth having!
This thread is getting derailed. Just to be clear, it’s about who wins the election and why. If you want to discuss your preferred ideological orientation for the Democratic party please start another thread.
Nate Silver puts Obama’s chances at around 70%, and I think that’s an underestimate.
Why? Because that’s mostly based on the possibility of a major game-changer cropping up, the proverbial “October Surprise”. And the sort of October Surprise that would be most likely to hurt Obama would be a sudden economic change for the worse. But I think that the economy is actually doing pretty well at recovering, so I think that such a sudden change for the worse is unlikely.
And, in fact, we already know what one of the October Surprises is going to be. Romney promised he’d release his current tax return by Oct. 15, and whether he does or not, that means it’s going to be in the news then. Either we’ll have a fresh round of folks talking about why he’s not releasing it, or we’ll have the contents of the return itself. And there’s really no possible upside to Romney there.
I still marvel at the logic of releasing his tax return three weeks before the election. Even if there’s nothing interesting in it, it’ll put the focus back on his low tax rate in the closing weeks of the election. And if there is something in it, its better to release it now and make it “old news” then surprise everyone with it just before they go to the polls.
And by the same token if he plans to renege and not release his tax returns, better to announce that now and take the damage now then have it be a fresh issue just before people go vote.
