Regarding defense contractor cuts. Most of the people will not know until the day they are let go. That is a standard security policy for any that are working on or using computerized system. This is to prevent those being let go from sabotaging the systems.
Also, contractors (the companies) do not let the workers know any earlier than they have to because as soon as it is confirmed that a specific team is taking cuts, the bestest-and-brightest hit the streets for a new job and they’re left with the slow witted to work out the balance of the deliverables.
SO, for pink slips to start flying in November, that would mean that workers were being let go at that time. I don’t see any contractors walking away from even an hour’s worth of billable work (let alone nearly two months), no matter who they want to win the election.
So, in October, it will kick off discussion about how Medicare Advantage (very similar to Romney/Ryan’s proposed solution) was a failure and ended up costing more?
The WARN Act requires 60 day notice before mass layoffs.
But at least some major defense contractors will go ahead with the layoff notices which must be sent out a few days before the election if Congress has not fixed this mess first.
Lockheed Martin may still be on track. Some states apparently have 90 day notice requirements so we may see in early October which contractors are likely to send out notices.
Honestly either way I’m surprised if this would have that much of an effect on the election. Probably no one is going to literally change their mind as a result of recieving a layoff notice, so it will only affect undecideds within the defense industry and those close to them who are also undecided. Moreover, surely these guys already know all about this?
Not really. Some poll likely voters and some poll registered voters. Obama consistently does much better in polls for registered voters but he leads by smaller margins in likely voter polls.
So it would be more accurate to summarize this election by saying that a poll of registered voters shows a large Obama advantage, but the results of the election may be a smaller Obama win. Meanwhile the Likely voter polls showing a modest Obama advantage may be correct.
Nate Silver’s methods take all that into account. On Sept 6, his model predicted a 68.1% chance of an Obama victory among likely voters, but a 90.6% victory if all registered voters showed up.
As a defense contractor, I can most assuredly say yes. Nobody except the very dimwitted are going to be caught by surprise that their division is getting downsized, or that their contract isn’t getting renewed. And nobody is going to switch political parties over it. Unlike a private company which can keep its inner workings secret, most matters of DoD contracts and budgeting are public record, and we’re all pretty good at figure this stuff out.
I had to tolerate overhearing a conversation about this very subject this weekend. Two conservatives prattling on about how the election would be a landslide Romney victory if only the public were educated enough. Followed by much speculation on how the election will probably be a Romney win anyway even though all polls show otherwise. I really wanted to bring up the In-Trade suggestion stolen from this thread, but I thought better of sticking my nose into that hornet’s nest.
If Romney loses, I’m curious, is the conventional wisdom still that Rick Santorum will wind up as the GOP nominee in 2016?
I mean, as per the OP, I really only see two ways in which the Pubbies could respond in the wake of a decisive Romney loss: (1) they could do some soul-searching and realize that they strayed way too far to the right in this election and try to purge the Tea Party crazies from their ranks, or (2) they could argue that their candidate wasn’t conservative enough and that’s why they lost.
Frankly, I just think the first option won’t happen, and that the second scenario is infinitely more likely. With that in mind, that would pave the way for Santorum next time around, assuming that people still recognize that the GOP operates under an “it’s your turn” philosophy when it comes to presidential nominations.
If the Republicans are lucky, Obama will trounce the hell out of them in a way that makes it impossible for them to reconcile it…and give the REAL Republicans in the party an opportunity to take control and bring back the people who have left the party over the past few years.
The worst result for the Republicans is to lose but only by 60 EV or so.
But Romney is a pretty moderate Republican - formerly pro-choice, author of a universal health care law, etc. The whole beef against him in his party was that he was too moderate, not too extreme.
I’m just curious: Do you feel like Democrats did an appropriate amount of soul-searching and realized they strayed way too far to the left after their 2010 ass-whipping?
I’m assuming you’re too new to have read this the forty million times it was posted before, so I’ll repeat it yet again.
The 2010 election was an anomaly. Usually turnouts go down by about half in non-presidential years. In 2010 Republicans got more of their right-wing base to turn out than in 2008 but the Democratic vote went down as usual. That’s a superb achievement, but one that has never happened before, is not likely to again, and has no predictive power.
We know this because the effect did not even last until the Republican primaries, in which all the base candidates lost and the establishment candidate won as predicted by everyone who understood what happened in 2010.
It’s completely unclear what the party will do after the election. The right wing of the party has shown that it has no national future, although they may continue to be a force in local and state races. I’ve been predicting all year that the election would be close but Romney had to swing too many states to make him a likely winner. Unless something amazing happens in the next two months an Obama win is nearly inevitable. The only thing I’m sure of is that Rick Santorum has no future in the national party and that nobody in America thinks he will be the nominee.
You have to really delude yourself to think otherwise at this point. The last couple weeks were the candidate’s chances to introduce themselves to the slim portion of voters who really weren’t paying attention already. The polls are very clear that Obama came out of that process better - the only question to see from polling in the coming weeks will be how big an advantage he got.
But Obama has been ahead the entire campaign - the only thing that has changed since the conventions is that he’s further ahead.
There were even some Romney campaign officials admitting privately over the weekend that they’re losing at this point.
