Bad News For Democrats

[LastPoet]

Free world? There is no such thing, and definately the US isn't thye one nearest to that ideal.

[A Theist]

A number of months back, a statistic was floated that all presidents who have been up for re-election during a time when, if I recall correctly, the rate of unemployment was as high as it was at that time, had gone on to defeat at the end of their first term. Regardless of the causes, the economy, housing and unemployment situation hasn't seen a compelling resurrection under Obama. Right or wrong, when people are suffering, have suffered, and don't see things turning around, they blame the present administration, and notably its head, the president. I find it quite believable that there may be a lot of disaffected Democrats out there. If so, the question is not so much "whether," but rather, "how much." I don't personally believe there's enough swing from, and enough strength on the Republican ticket, to cash that out in terms of a win, but it quite possibly could make the race more interesting than it would be otherwise.

Obama's going to be blamed because he's the guy who promised he was going to bring hope and change. He promised to cut the deficit, calling George Bush unpatriotic for adding $4 trillion to the national debt, "all by his lonsome", in his two terms as president. That promise didn't pan out. Instead, Obama added nearly $5 trillion to the national debt in just three and a half years. Candidate Obama also promised shovel ready jobs, then later, President Obama said there were no shovel ready jobs. Obama promised to reduce the national unemployment rate to 6% by the end of his term, or his would be "a one term proposition". The national unemployment rate still remains above 8% (8.3%). Of course he's going to be blamed. He's the guy who made promises that didn't pan out.

[DeistPaladin]

Obama can deflect any criticism on the economy with one simple question:

Would you trade the economy we have now for the one we had in December of 2008?

The Romney/Ryan plan involves more tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation that created the whole mess back then but now they're going to gut Medicare to boot. Yes, Obama is a wimp and a disappointment but Republicans are hopefully going to scare the shit out of people.

[Erinome]

I personally know several die hard republicans who will be voting for Obama this time. They say they don't particularly care for him, but they absolutely hate Mitt Romney. He's apparently not very popular. I also know some republicans who have told me they're not even voting at all this year.

My political views don't fit in with any American party, in specific, but I am voting for Barack Obama because he's done some great liberal things for this country. I think republicans like A Theist are absolutely desperate, and I find it immensely amusing.

[Ryantology]

I think republicans like A Theist are absolutely desperate, and I find it immensely amusing.

This is what I think, too. Christian fundamentalism is on the rise in America because this is one of its last true strongholds in the western world. Republicans feel threatened because their 14th century social ideals are dying out with the baby boomers.

You might say it was a brilliant gambit for the Republicans to drive us into debt over the last decade because it created the only issue (financial solvency) which gives their party platform any hint of legitimacy to the mainstream. It may even explain why all their ideas to solve it sound so terrible: if they actually solve the problem, what use are Republicans at all?

[Minimalist]

I think republicans like A Theist are absolutely desperate, and I find it immensely amusing.

Merely typical of the racist wing of the party...also known as "the base."

[DeistPaladin]

I think republicans like A Theist are absolutely desperate, and I find it immensely amusing.

I find them deeply curious but maybe this is my mother-the-psychologist's influence on me. I'd like to understand the delusional architecture better. That they're constantly pumped full of fear and hate by various propaganda sources here in America (hate-talk radio, Fox Propaganda, etc.) so that's certainly a factor but isn't enough to explain all the layers of double think and special pleading.

To give you an example of the kind of double-think we're discussing, A Theist reminds me of a guy I once knew who was also a mindless Republican drone. Any time Hillary Clinton's name was mentioned within earshot, you could just feel the hate emanating from him. When asked why he hated her with such intensity, he offered that she was a woman of no principles, as demonstrated by her reaction to her husbands affair. If she had any decency, he contended, she "would have led the charge against him with a noose in her hand."

Why he felt so strongly that her marriage was any of his business or how this decision to stand by her philandering husband warranted such intense hatred would be a mystery enough but what really made this thought process interesting was how he positively worshiped "Emperor Rudy" as he called him. To hear him talk of Rudy Giuliani, you'd think the man was the second coming of Jesus (and yes, this guy was also a devout Christian). The fact that Giuliani was a known adulterer apparently didn't bother him in the least.

The inability of the American conservative brain to remember fairly recent events or learn from past failures is also perplexing to me. Failed conservative plans will be dusted off and proposed as solutions to current problems with no sense of irony.

To give a few examples of conservative short term memory failures, they continue proposing tax cuts for the rich as a means of economic stimulus despite how its proven not to work. They continue to express fears that raising taxes on the rich will crash the economy despite how Clinton managed to have a nice economy during the 90s, thank you for your concern.

I once had a conversation with my sister about how we barely get any snowfall here anymore (none at all last winter, in fact). She lives in Dallas now but she grew up here in this town. She actually asked, "isn't that normal?" My jaw dropped. And I know my memory of what winter used to be like is accurate because I have a snowsuit in my closet that I used to wear all the time but it hasn't seen the light of day for 15 years. Winter used to mean "bundle up". Now it means "put on a sweater".

[A Theist]

I think republicans like A Theist are absolutely desperate, and I find it immensely amusing.

Merely typical of the racist wing of the party...also known as "the base."

....then I guess you have no problem with folks like Condalezza Rice, Rep. Col. Allen West, Clarence Thomas, Rep. Tim Scott, Thomas Sowell.....

[Brian37]

In a diverse world of 7 billion, I don't like either. The flaws that lead to Ayn Rand's thinking is the same thing that lead to the credulous thinking that virgin births happen and a man magically survived rigor mortis. Worship of an idea is stupid, especially when we project that idea on other humans.

Simple labels and one word ideologies in an evolution that has never been monochromatic, and has always been complex, and a range, both Rand's thinking and that of all political and religious labels is absurd.

Our species, being the people we like and our "enemies" have always had the same core drive, to find resources and to survive. Once our species gets a collective wider grip on that fact of nature, what makes Ayn full of shit, and what makes worship of ideas based on politics and religion, moot and out dated. Christians support Jesus for the same reason Muslims support Allah, and others support Ayn, making the same stupid mistake, "It works for me",

Where humans can maximize civility and minimize violence, will never be focusing on "us vs them", but our collective willingness to test data beyond our personal clubs, and the fortitude to be willing to accept when we are wrong.

One of our biggest hurdles as a species is that we default to our "desires" not understanding that our perceptions are notoriously flawed, and the only common resource to settle disputes of reality is our common scientific method that we benefit every day from without realizing it. Computers work not because someone worshiped Ayn's Libertarianism. They do not work because someone prayed to Allah, or Jesus. They work because of decades of people making observations about machine language.

It is why we have gone as a species from the Model T ford, to hybrids. It is why we have gone from the Write Brothers to 787s.

We have always been tribal as a species, but we forget constantly, that no matter what tribe we ascribe to, our goal has always been the same, survival.

[Ryantology]

Merely typical of the racist wing of the party...also known as "the base."

....then I guess you have no problem with folks like Condalezza Rice, Rep. Col. Allen West, Clarence Thomas, Rep. Tim Scott, Thomas Sowell.....

They confuse me too much for me to think of them as problematic, the same way I feel about the Log Cabin Republicans. Also, you forgot Herman Cain.

All I can assume is that they are either deluded or they hold other Republican issues in high enough regard that they consider the baggage worthwhile. If you're not a wealthy white Christian male, voting Republican demands a sacrifice of your self-interest in one way or another.