Election Day Bitches!

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Lincoln wins
 
Off the Rails said:
My foreign mind is interpreting these numbers to mean President Romney by morning. BUT over here, Labour (left wing) always take an early lead because their constituencies tend to be more urban areas - which means a shorter drive, so the ballots get counted sooner. I'm guessing something similar happens with a huge number of Democrats in California, multiple timezones to account for and other national idiosyncracies. Is it still wide open? Or is Romney's early lead really an early lead?
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Still wide open. Republicans look like they are losing the Indiana Senate seat, third party Libertarian gave the race to the Democrat.
 
Rails the main difference is size. California, Washington, and Oregon will go Democratic (which, by the way, is an older party than the Republicans -- just to confuse). Where the votes come from will have a major impact on the states which is why they can call South Carolina so quickly. The populations differ drastically depending on what county has reported.

Now the electoral college. It was designed as a buffer between the people and the government where the electors, the more educated and trustworthy, would vote their conscience. Very quickly in the nineteenth century this changed with the expansion of the right to vote and most states made it so that the winner of the popular vote of that state got all the electors from that state. Today two states (I believe) appoint electors as a percentage of the popular vote (Nebraska, Colorado). The most common question is why does this make sense? This is easy: if the popular vote was all that mattered a person could be elected president without ever appealing to large swaths of the country -- you could carry major population centers and the rural and/or more culturally and socially conservative areas (the south and some western states) would not be represented in the executive branch. So what you have is that in order to be president you must make a broader appeal. This is why Bush won the presidency in 2000.

Again, why is often asked and it regards a myth of American democracy, and one that is discussed nowhere near enough. Part of the structure of the American government that is brilliant is that it has numerous safeguards from a tyranny of the majority. To protect from a tyranny of the majority things like the electoral college make sense. There are many more subtle layers, but I need to take care of my kids.
 
Thanks Chuck. I've never watched a US election before; it's a fascinating process. The BBC are doing a pretty good job of explaining matters but a lot of things that are unfamiliar are explained once, briefly before they move on. Thanks for filling in the gaps fellas.
 
Sure. Take Florida right now; Romney looks screwed. The vote totals are super close and 87% of the vote is counted, but there are a lot of outstanding votes in the most democratic areas. If Florida goes for Obama then Romney has almost no chance. The other thing to look at is the Senate and House races. Does the Republican majority grow or shrink in the House of Representatives? Do the Democrats keep their majority in the senate? These are the parts rarely discussed especially outside of the US, but a president has great latitude in matters of foreign policy but everything domestically must go through the two chambers of congress.
 
The Republican Party came about in 1860 with the election of Lincoln, the first Republican Presidential candidate. This election is looking more and more like four more years of exactly the same government we have had for the last two years, Republican house, Democrat Senate and Democrat President with absolutely zero compromise between any of them. This could be the election where the takers finally outnumber the producers, that is an irreversible metric.
 
Electoral College
Obama 163
Romney 163

Tied

National Popular Vote
Obama 26,907,527
Romney 28,314,878

Romney + 1,400,000
 
Electoral College
Obama 244
Romney 203

National Popular Vote
Obama 34,466,153
Romney 36,024,253

Romney +1,560,000

Republicans are losing their ass in the Senate races, they may actually wind up losing a seat or two in the Senate. They are possibly increasing their majority in the House. The Presidential race is tracking Obama's direction but it's still real close and a LOT of votes have not been counted.

It's starting to look like we are going to have the exact same government for the next four years in the House, Senate and White House. We are about to see gridlock taken to the next level, Obama's campaign has said he expects the House to conform to his wishes if the election plays out this way, meanwhile the Speaker of the House has already said tonight he has no intention of abandoning his positions. This is gonna be real bad, kiss our credit rating goodbye. The election isn't over yet though,
 
We have just scratched the surface, it's going to get a lot worse. Obama has already said he expects the Republicans in the house to support his plans after the election, and John Boehner speaker of the house has already said he has no intention of caving in. Yeah, it's gonna get a LOT worse. Really it might be for the best, we are in enough of a bind that a complete economic collapse might actually shake things up enough to get them fixed.
 
ruins-of-detroit-4.jpg


The future, this is modern day Detroit after 50 years of the Great Society program pumping billions of dollars into urban social engineering programs in Detroit. Despite the ruins of a once great city, there is some really amazing architecture from the cities heyday. So many pictures but it's very difficult to post pics here. That Lyndon Johnson sure was a dreamer!

Okay enough belly-aching over the election, what's done is done.
 
As soon as the GOP figures out that they will NEVER regain the White House as long as they associate themselves with people like Trump, Palin and the Tea Party the better off they will be!!
 
Romney is about as far away from Trump, Palin and the Tea Party as it gets. This is how Obama won in 2008, he lied and lied an lied about John McCain telling the simpleminded folk that he was George Bush II when in truth McCain is the second most liberal Republican in the Senate and personally despises George Bush. Same thing with Romney. Anybody who cared enough to look at the candidates would see Romney governs as a liberal. The problem isn't that the Republicans keep nominating conservatives, it's that they DON'T nominate conservatives. Republicans turned out in this election because they recognize Obama wants to change America, that he finds our country repulsive. If the Republicans were running a candidate that represents the party better this election could have been won. What scares me is that so many people voted for Obama KNOWING what he thinks of America, what he has done to our economy and the crushing debt he has piled onto the half of this country that actually pays taxes. The future is not bright, we already know he will not reach across the isle beyond public words and he's burned his bridge with the House.
 
cplmac said:
The problem isn't that the Republicans keep nominating conservatives, it's that they DON'T nominate conservatives.
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Love her or hate her, Ann Coulter called this during the Republican primary. She said, quite straight: if the Republicans don't somehow convince Chris Christie to run for president, we'll be handing the election to Obama again. While she wasn't right about the "handing to him", she called the loss.

Some how, some way, the Repubs have to convince the big guy to run in '16.
 
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