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Lucille
10-25-2012, 04:28 PM
Maybe progs will finally stop trying to kill the electoral college now.

Romney Is (Just Barely) Leading the National Polls, But Obama Is Still the Favorite to Win
http://reason.com/blog/2012/10/25/romney-is-just-barely-leading-the-nation


Mitt Romney has a had a great month. On September 30th, the RealClearPolitics presidential polling average showed him losing to President Obama by 4 points. Now it shows him ahead. At just 0.7 points, it’s not a big lead. But he’s led the president in RCP’s average for the last two weeks. And his rise is confirmed by other polling analyses: Pollster.com’s aggregate poll number shows a similar rise over the past several weeks, and also currently has him in the lead, albeit by just a single tenth of a point.

Yet despite the tight race, Obama remains the slight favorite to win on election day. That’s because even though Romney seems to be holding a very small lead in the national polls, Obama has a solid Electoral College advantage. This has obvious implications for the race. It’s also going to shape the way the next president governs.
[...]
Polling in battleground states, as well as various election-prediction models, all suggest that President Obama will have a somewhat easier path to Electoral College victory than Mitt Romney. Most analyses suggest that there is a very strong chance that the election will hinge on Ohio. If Mitt Romney loses Ohio, he’ll have to come very close to sweeping the table in the rest of the swing states. And right now, most polls show that Obama has a narrow but consistent lead in the Buckeye state. Of the three Ohio presidential polls published yesterday, Obama led in two (Time and SurveyUSA) and was tied with Romney in one (Rasmussen).

The closeness of the race suggests some intriguing possibilities. It’s possible, for example, that we’ll end up with an Electoral College tie. It’s also possible that, as in 2000, the candidate who wins the popular vote will not win the Electoral College vote. Both of these would inevitably complicate the next administration's ability to pursue its own agenda.

Why? Both presidents will do whatever the hell they want. Congress has already abdicated its most important powers to the executive branch.

"...a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society."
--John T. Flynn (http://wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.4833)

RickyJ
10-25-2012, 04:47 PM
I will be happy when this race is over and the chicken littles from both sides stop screaming the sky is going to fall if we don't elect their candidate. Advertising dollars have got the general populace to notice politics on a superficial level. If it weren't for the advertising dollars turn out would be sparse and most people wouldn't give a crap who they elect as president.

RickyJ
10-25-2012, 04:51 PM
Oh, and because turnout is expected to be high in swing states, I see Obama winning since more people are Democrats than Republicans.

Lucille
10-25-2012, 04:55 PM
If it weren't for the advertising dollars turn out would be sparse and most people wouldn't give a crap who they elect as president.

Wouldn't that be great?

The Tale That Might Be Told
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/02/tale-that-might-be-told.html


Perhaps they will recount the tale many years from now. Perhaps an old man or woman will tell the grandchildren the story once more, as they try to speed the descent of peaceful rest. It's one of the children's favorite stories.

Decades earlier, the two major political parties in the United States had torn themselves apart in what turned out to be the last presidential campaign. The nominee of one party was determined fairly early, but he was viewed as unacceptable by a very vocal segment of that party. Many individuals tried to reconcile the disputing groups, but such efforts only made the problems worse. By the time of the fall election, the disagreements had deepened beyond repair. Everyone was very bitter and angry. Many people threatened not to vote for president at all.

The struggle for the other party's nomination went on for months. There were fights about technicalities, about which rules should be followed and which should be disregarded or revised; supporters of the two major candidates traded criticisms, smears and finally vicious rumors. When the party's nominee was finally selected, everyone was disgusted. Everyone agreed that the nomination wasn't worth a damn. Many people threatened not to vote for president at all.

When election day finally arrived, no one knew what to expect. The answer quickly became clear. Voter turnout was the lowest it had ever been in memory. Almost no one went to the polls. When all the results were finally counted, a total of slightly less than five million votes had been cast for president. Very few votes were cast for other offices. One candidate for president had clearly won, although the popular vote totals for the two major nominees were within 10,000 votes of each other. With less than a 10,000 vote margin, and with a total of only about two and a half million votes, what was such a victory worth?

Could any individual claim to represent an entire nation of over 300 million people in such circumstances? There was no victory speech. Commentators struggled to find something to say about what it all meant, but no one listened to them any longer. No one knew what would happen.

Click the link for the happy ending.