Not sure which technicality you mean; every recount has shown that he did in fact get a majority of votes in Florida. If you mean that he didn’t take the nationwide popular vote, that’s a fair point … though its also fair to point out that if the nationwide popular vote meant anything, all kinds of other things would have changed, too: campaign strategy, voter turnout in non-competitive states, etc.
The relevant point to this thread, though, is that Clinton’s was, all in all, a successful administration handing the reins to an obvious successor … and they still lost/tied with an amiable but only moderately accomplished governor.
Obama is less successful, likely will be less popular, and the next Dem candidate will have to tapdance around how much he/she wants to be seen as a successor. Meanwhile, Mike Pence is pretty amiable.
Because as you are perfectly well aware, Presidential elections are won by appealing to moderates. There are not enough moderates on the SDMB to make up for the 80+% of yellow dog Democrats.
You are a “non-partisan” who always winds up voting Democrat. Discussions with “non-partisans” in the US electorate do not automatically resolve that way.
The other difference in discussions is that the default assumption is that someone who always votes for one political party is doing so because he agrees with their principles, whereas someone who always votes for the other is doing so out of blind, mindless partisanship.
It seems like at least half of ‘independents’ always wind up voting for a Republican. I do tend to vote Democrat (though not always), and I do support most of their goals. Other people tend to vote Republican, and they support Republican goals.
Which has exactly nothing to do with what I posted. I said that in the real world, you only have a choice of two. Voting for a third party you agree with more than you agree with the candidate from the party you support more than the opposition, is a vote for the opposition. If you ‘vote your conscience’, you are helping the other candidate win. In our system, you choose the lesser of two evils.
Well, tell us why we lost in 2012 and I’ll tell rance Priebus.
I had thought we lost because Democrats used the War on Women campaign, plus an intensely personal and negative campaign against Mitt Romney. I assume if we nominate Bobby Jindal the Democrats will break out the Indian jokes they are so well known for.
You lost because no Republican can get through a Republican primary without becoming unelectable. Everything else is gravy, not even demographics matter as much as that simple fact. Which of course means you have no chance in 2016 against basically any half decent Democrat.
That’s another fantasy. How’d we nominate John McCain and MItt Romney, and what made them unelectable?
Also, you really need to refine your definition of unelectable. Walter Mondale and George McGovern were unelectable. McCain and Romney were quite electable under the right circumstances. Maybe Romney will come back in 2016 just to prove you wrong.
You nominated McCain and Romney because they both turned against absolutely anything that made them “moderate” in order to get through the primary. Which is exactly what made them unelectable. McCain had to run against immigration, Romney against his greatest accomplishment as governor. Nobody is going to get through the Republican primaries without being anti immigration, anti gay, anti women, anti poor, etc etc etc. You’ll continue to end up with electable moderates that had to take some very stupid positions in order to become palatable to the bottom of the barrel nutjobery that is the republican base.
I’m electable under the right circumstances for crying out lout. What is that qualification supposed to mean, other than completely negating the rest of the point?
No, under the right circumstances means “if they hadn’t had to take completely idiotic positions in order to appease the troglodytes that vote in republican primaries”. Which is exactly why no Republican has a chance in 2016.
Although it is also widely acknowledged that most of the 3,047 votes for Buchanan in Palm Beach were probably actually intended to be for Gore, and so if not for a confusing ballot Gore would probably have won. In any case, the Florida results (and therefor the electoral college) was really the electoral equivalent of a coin flip, which happened to land Bush side up. For the purposes of statistical analysis based on a binary treatment of electoral results, this data point should be excluded as the result was effectively random, and only adds noise to any conclusion based on it.
McCain did not run against immigration, he ran for immigration reform, but enforcement first. That’s not an extreme position, in fact it’s what the Senate immigration bill that passed overwhelmingly is supposed to do, as written.
Romney did turn against a national plan similar to his own, but that was a flip flop, not an extreme position. Opposing ACA is not extreme, it’s mainstream, and if you don’t realize that you’ll be the one who is confused in 2016.
It means that they came close enough to be plausible. If Bush’s approval had been 50 instead of 35 in 2008, or if Romney had had two more strong debate performances(or if Todd Akin hadn’t sabotaged everyone’s campaign). Dukakis also qualifies as plausible despite his loss because it took one of the most effective negative campaigns in history to defeat him after he opened up a huge lead coming out of the DNC.
There truly is no world in which George McGovern or Walter Mondale become President.
