The US Presidential race: It’s almost over… November 5, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, US Politics.trackback
…I have to admit to sharing some of doctorfive’s feelings about the US election campaign. We’re told it is the ‘most divisive’ ever. Hmmm… I’d have thought the 2004 one was worse by quite some factor. Or even 2000, particularly in its outcome. Then again it’s difficult to judge the situation on the ground where reports are a bit more mixed. But be that as it may, the reporting by some in this part of the world has been grim. The Irish Times has continually led with blunt statements of ‘neck and neck’ polling using just one poll from one company or another.
This is pretty poor given the nature of the US Presidential electoral system – where the national poll is if not irrelevant, certainly necessary to contextualise in state pollimg.
I’ve been watching the polls in the US carefully for the last few weeks and it’s been interesting just how tight the race is. This isn’t a 2008 where Obama came in well ahead of McCain. It’s closer, if anything to a 2000 where Gore actually shaded the popular vote and lost in the electoral college.
Now all this is prefaced by a caveat. Obama is no social democrat, let alone a socialist – I’ve argued before that sometimes he seems nothing so much as a centrist independent (with a tilt into community politics) of a type not unknown in this state, liberal (in a US context rhetoric) but pushing centre-wards (which is to say cleaving to the orthodoxy in the main) in practice. None of which is to diminish the historic importance of his arrival in the White House in 2008 but to attempt to contextualise it, particularly in relation to how his actual Presidency has appeared far less stellar than the journey to arrive there.
And I wonder how many here, if given the opportunity, would actually vote for him. That said Romney is perhaps the most unbelievably malleable politician that has presented himself to an electorate in quite some time. So-called ‘moderate’ Republican or something quite distinctly different? The party he is representing has used the crisis to push further rightwards at a rapid rate of knots. Which raises the question whether in the last thirty or forty years there’s ever been a point where the dial tipped leftwards in US politics in a tangible sense.
But even if people don’t have a horse in the race it is still a race and of interest in that it will have ramifications far beyond the borders of the United States.
Though the debates weren’t up to much and the campaign itself has been lacklustre. But with less than an handful of hours to go the question remains, who is likely to win? Nate Silver’s polling blog on the NYT site has provided a counterbalance to the Real Clear Politics poll here. His analysis – and that of other aggregators, is that in the electoral college Obama is likely to more than shade it. And what are the impacts positive and negative both in the US in terms of class politics and further afield from a victory for either of the candidates.
Any thoughts?
The Republican Party has been taken over by extreme right-wing crackpots as shown by Romney choosing the Ayn Rand disciple, Paul Ryan, as his running mate.
Obama is the clear favourite on Paddy Power and on Intrade. But tomorrow getting out the vote is what matters. The enthusiasm that was there for Obama four years ago is long gone. The choice is between the unpalatable and the catastrophic.
Romney has been captured by the neocons. And Obama…
.”.As Foreign Affairs points out, Kagan is one of the few intellectuals who has entry with both parties. He was an adviser to the McCain campaign in 2008. Now he is advising Mitt Romney while his wife, Victoria Nuland, is spokesperson for President Obama’s State Department.
After the New Republic published an essay in which Kagan disputed the “myth of American decline,” Obama cited him repeatedly.”
http://news.muckety.com/2012/08/27/robert-kagan-neocon-listened-to-by-both-presidential-candidates/38081
Whatever happens tomorrow, the Obama campaign and his army of boosters in the MSM & blogosphere will have learned a valuable lesson in expectation management.
Months of relentless attack ads on TV and near-hysterical condemnation from left-leaning commentators (with more than a shade of Mormon-baiting involved) meant that Romney just had to show up without horns, a trident and a cloud of sulphur wafting round him in order to appear as a reasonable alternative.
Either way, the arrival of Sandy in the nick of time is likely to put Obama over the line. I wouldnt hold my breath though for the freedom from re-election worries to inspire any radical turns. Expect more of the steady-as-she-goes at home, and lots more extra-judicial death-by-drone abroad.
You’re going to be really sickened by the result all the same, aren’t you?
No, why I would be?
Obama is a perfectly safe pair of hands.
If anything, he\’s a bit too establishment for my liking. The crusading outsider tag was always little more than a media invention, and even he himself hasnt bothered much with the transformative (transcendental?) rhetoric this time round. That particular penny has been a tad slow in dropping on this side of the Atlantic though.
If we’re going to judge these things purely on the basis of whether or not they annoy the right people (and I propose that we do exactly that), there will be vastly more pleasure to be taken from the misery and outrage of useless Irish liberals should Romney win. There’s practically nobody over here who likes Romney.
You’re going to be really sickened by the result all the same, aren’t you?
Yes, he really is, isn’t he?
Bartley knows full well that there is a gulf of difference between a Democrat being in the Presidency right now and a Republican. You only have to go back four short years to see how the apparatus of the US Government is ruthlessly undermined and co-opted for partisan political gain by the modern GOP to realise that even if Romney weren’t a US version of a City Tory toff, and Ryan a raving loon, you’d still want a Democrat in there.
But I have to thank him for the classic example of concern trolling, which did give me a chuckle (and for the cutzpah of engaging in “expectations management” himself. I remember being assured that Hollande’s victory would mean nothing). Bonus points for passing on the recent GOP talking-point claiming that Romney (toast for some time) was undone by superstorm Sandy.
… even if Romney weren’t a US version of a City Tory toff, and Ryan a raving loon, you’d still want a Democrat in there.
Havent you forgotten about Ann Romney being a “known equestrian”?
(Contrast with Michelle Obama\’s vivacious sense of style, finely toned biceps, and keen interest in the promotion of healthy eating).
… +1 for nuanced, informed analysis.
… even if Romney weren’t a US version of a City Tory toff, and Ryan a raving loon, you’d still want a Democrat in there.
Havent you forgotten about Ann Romney being a “known equestrian”?
(Contrast with Michelle Obama\’s vivacious sense of style, finely toned biceps, and keen interest in the promotion of healthy eating).
… +1 for nuanced, non-superficial analysis.
It’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee in respect of probably 70% (or whatever) of the outcomes, but for the things where there is a difference it’s a case of Obama being the least worst option. There’s nothing whatsoever about Romney that stands out as being (insert any positive adjective of your choice).
Just to be a little contrarian here: I think Romney would be a better and more centrist president than either Bush or Reagan. His problem is that the Republican party is captive to a constituency that will never be a majority, but that they can’t so without. However, the tea party/ Christian right bit of the GOP means that they can never win big coastal states, so they get driven further into their pissed off white guy ghetto.
One other thing – and to echo Bartley a bit: there is a kind of lazy assumption here that because MR is a Mormon, he is therefore on the extreme edge of the Xian right: Mormons are quite distinctive and not by any means necessarily on the right – the Church of the LDS is no more ‘creationist’ that the RCC for instance, and Mormons support the right to abortion in certain circumstances to pick two examples where they differ from what we would take to be ‘fundamentalist’ positions.
Romney lists as one of his favuorite books, ‘Battlefield Earth’ by L.Ron Hubbard. A tome by Romney’s economic advisor, H. Glenn Hubbard is somewhat less realistic. With the Hubbards and Ayn Rand as intellectual influences what’s not to like in a Romney presidency?
Romney,-’corporations are people too’-has flip-flopped, and flopped back again on various social issues, but he has never deviated from his fundamentalist belief in unregulated, uncontrolled capitalism.
“he has never deviated from his fundamentalist belief in unregulated, uncontrolled capitalism.”
Which makes him a rather unremarkable US politician by the standards of either of their main parties.
Fundamentally, there is no great ideological difference between the Republicans and Democrats. However there is a difference between the views of John Maynard Keynes on capitalism and those of Ayn Rand.
CNSNews.com) – In a speech delivered at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kansas, on Tuesday, President Barack Obama argued that while a limited government that preserves free markets “speaks to our rugged individualism” as Americans, such a system “doesn’t work” and “has never worked” and that Americans must look to a more activist government that taxes more, spends more and regulates more if they want to preserve the middle class.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-limited-govt-preserves-free-markets-doesnt-work-it-has-never-worked
“Central to progress, Mr. Roosevelt said, was the conflict between “the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess.”
(Here we have Teddy Roosevelt asserting that class conflict is central to prorgress)
Mr. Obama, to laughter from those familiar with attacks against him, noted: “For this, Roosevelt was called a radical, he was called a socialist, even a communist.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/us/politics/obama-strikes-populist-chord-with-speech-in-heartland.html?_r=0
(Osawatomie was the town John Brown in 1856 tried to defend against the slavers after they had murdered one of his sons. Outnumbered, Brown and his small guerrilla band retreated and lived to fight another day. The town was burned to the ground.)
He aint wrong there, of course the rest of the world has been subsidising their standards of living, but that is all coming to an end, Obama knows that, but why stick his neck out and tell americans what they don’t want to hear and what most republicans will never admit! Maybe he thinks he can engineer a ‘soft landing’ but we all know they can be hard to come by!
I imagine that Sandy has actually done the Republicans something of a backhanded favour, as, assuming they lose, they’ll be able to claim that they were on course to win before the storm.
But would that not imply that God votes Democrat?
More contrarianism: There is a strand of GOP thinking that is a little isolationist. Advocating less US govt interference out foreign and more concentration on looking after things on the home front. So, a Romney win might, just might, mean it’s a teeny bit of a safer world for children and people going to weddings in Afghanistan?
Any isolationism thats left in the Republican Party is confined to the likes of Buchanan (a supporter of Franco) or Ron Paul, neither of whom can be said are dominant within the party. Historically up until WW2, it was pretty strong especially with the likes of Dewey and Taft. It faded with the advent of the Cold War, although Taft never regarded the Soviet Union as a threat.
It is funny though. Both Democrats and Republicans were certainly more heterogenous ideologically. You had progressives such as Robert M LaFollete in the Republican party and the archtypical southern democrat.
Must admit I ve been interested in it, kind of used it to learn more about american politics and even americans!! It will be interesting to see how the pollsters fare, I believe I have seen terrible abuse of opinion polls , on both sides? Wonder also if the population breakdown of america today is beginning to take effect, remembering that it is forecast that whites will soon(2050 even!) be in the minority .If Obama wins, it will probably be 2016 when the real test will come, failure by the republicans to elect their guy could spell big trouble for USA,…………… any comment?
p.s watched some fox news too, can see where marc pee and the rest of the pee down at the sindo get their bullshit!
Obama will win…unless all the polls are for some unspecified reason completely wrong.
Silver is the authority on this and provides some compelling stats:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
A Romney presidency, hostage to the extreme-right Republican and Likud parties, would be an absolute disaster. Thank God it’s not going to happen though it did appear close there for a while.
Obama is a decent man, the first to hold the office in many decades, who is hampered by the fact that he does not have many firm convictions aside from a gauzy desire to see everyone get along. If the circumstances were a little different, he might well have tried to push the country in a social democratic direction (i.e single-payer healthcare, which he has said he supports), but he has always shown himself to be too eager to split the difference with his opponents who just wanted to destroy him from the get-go. The results have been a series of awkward compromises which recall nothing so much as the tenure of “Moderate Mitt” in Massachusetts or indeed the centrist Rockefeller Republicanism espoused by his father George Romney. Then again, Obama has to deal with the grotesquely flawed structure of American government so his own power is extremely limited. One thing for which he bears full responsibility is his awful record on civil liberties, failure to close Guantanamo and go after any of the thugs who were in charge during the Bush years. The triumphalist “hit” on Bin Laden constituted the nadir in my opinion — the point where a constitutional law professor decided to break the law and assassinate a terrorist on foreign soil in order to avoid the messy implications of a trial in Lower Manhattan.
He deserves credit for reviving (moderate) Keynesian economics and the contrast with German-dominated Europe is instructive.
A second term will bring more of the same due to Republican control of the house and the Democrats’ tenuous majority in the Senate. Obama will win a few battles of attrition on taxes and maybe immigration but there will be no fundamental change in US politics. Global warming and gun control will continue to be entirely ignored; schools and infrastructure will remain dire. He might even wind up bombing Iran.
One satisfying thing will be to see the way the Republicans implode. After running two losing “moderate” candidates in a row, they’ll take an even more decisive, self-destructive turn to the right (though may continue to dominate the House due to gerrymandering). The Democrats will continue their evolution into 1950s Republicans, albeit ones with more gay friends. The Left, such as it is, shall remain moribund.
“Obama is a decent man, the first to hold the office in many decades, who is hampered by the fact that he does not have many firm convictions aside from a gauzy desire to see everyone get along.”
That seems to me to be a very good description of the situation (it also reminds me yet further of some community based independents closer to home). It’s very problematic in practice, meanign that he could tilt Wall St. wards when the pressure was on him.
@gfmurphy, there’s no doubt that demographic changes will weigh heavily in 2016 on. I wonder though will the Republicans shift a bit back to the ‘centre’ (such as it is in US terms) in order to co-opt more voters from various demographics.
I never had any illusions in Obama but his decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in the early stages of his administration showed a hubris that was absolutely astonishing. Politics in America seems to have become more like supporting a football team.
Look at the reception Bill Clinton got at the Democratic convention. If he had carried out exactly the same policies during his time in office but had been a Republican instead of a Democrat the same ‘liberals’ cheering him to the rafters would have been condeming him as a war criminal and a heartless right wing idealogue who relentlessly attacked the American working class.
There is a great documentary called ‘As Ohio Goes’ about the 2004 election. It follows the campaigns in Ohio and it is incredible how inept and incompetent the Kerry campaign was.
Finance Times endorses Obama:
.” Four years on from the financial crisis, with extreme inequality an affront to the American dream, there remains a need for intelligent, reformist governance. Mr Obama, his presidency defined by the economic crisis, looks the better choice.”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f11742fa-2501-11e2-8924-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2BOHXxv4q