Thoughts On The President's Re-Election

Some thoughts on the President's re-election as contained in e-mail correspondence with a client:

Dear ____________ ,

I was intrigued by your comment this afternoon that Michael Barone is predicting a Romney win – mainly because it is so contrary to everything that I have read or seen elsewhere.  Apparently, it's true; Barone has made that prediction.  I don’t watch Fox News very much any more but this is what is on their website:

Last night On the Record, Greta Van Susteren and a panel of political pundits sat down to discuss the Election Day prediction of Washington Examiner columnist and Fox News contributor Michael Barone.

Barone is forecasting that Romney will defeat President Obama by a wide margin, 315 electoral votes to 223. He predicts that Romney will win nearly every swing state, including Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado and Virginia. Barone admitted, however, that he is going out on a limb with some of his calls.

So it looks like Barone admits he is “going out on a limb.”  I would say so.  No one expects Romney to win PA or WI.  I will personally be shocked if he does.  I note that Barone’s forecast of only 223 electoral votes for Obama is about 20 fewer than what most pollsters have calculated as his “safe” or “guaranteed” minimum.  It looks totally crazy to me – like so much of what is on Fox News.

I guess we will all see tomorrow night.  I will eat crow if Obama gets 223 or fewer electoral votes.

__________________________

Post-election follow-up:

Dear _________ ,

Not to pile on, but you might find this link interesting.  Or just aggravating and infuriating:

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/08/ten_right_wingers_who_got_the_election_hilariously_wrong/

You may have assumed that I’m some kind of liberal Democrat.  Not true.  I lean to the right – sharply on some issues.  But in recent years the Republican Party has been taken over by crazy people.  Worse, Fox News and talk radio have created an alternative reality that too many people are getting sucked into.  All those pundits being “certain” that Romney was going to win a landslide – when the hard math was projecting the opposite – is just one example. 

Nate Silver nailed it.  He called all 50 states correctly, and even more amazingly, the margins of victory he was predicting in the swing states, pre-election, were very close to what actually happened.  He is not a psychic and he doesn’t have a crystal ball.  What he has is a solid mathematical model that works despite his liberal views.

You probably think MSNBC's in-house liberal lesbian Rachel Maddow represents everything that is wrong with this country.  I don’t agree with her on very much but I really like her style of commentary and she is absolutely right in this clip:

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/08/must_see_monologue/

If Republicans and conservatives take her advice, I will enthusiastically start voting for their candidates again.  But as long as the Republican Party is the party of people who believe the universe is 6,000 years old, I refuse to pull the lever for them.  (It didn’t help that they nominated a robotic plutocrat with no discernible core values.)

I am not a fan of the President.  But although he had an extremely liberal voting record during his brief stint as a U.S. Senator, and although he probably is very liberal in his core values, he has governed – as President – as a fairly conventional, slightly left-of-center Democrat.  He is not a secret Muslim.  He is not a communist.  He is not the devil.  He looks like a decent family man with some good ideas and a lot of bad ones.

I would like to think conservatives in Congress will work with the President over the next four years – now that his re-election has deprived them of the option of devoting all their energies to making him a one-term President.  The deficit has to be brought under control.  That’s going to take both spending cuts, favored by Republicans, and tax increases on the top 1% to 5%, favored by everyone (excepting rigid ideologues). 

The immediate reactions of right-wing outlets to the election results, however, do not leave me with much hope:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/alex-massie/2012/11/the-view-from-the-cocoon-of-denial-and-epistemic-closure/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-view-from-the-cocoon-of-denial-and-epistemic-closure

For the record, Michael Barone, who is actually a fairly serious and credible pundit, wrote a heart-felt and classy mea culpa for his terrible call of a Romney landslide.  No word yet from that venal dough-boy Karl Rove or that sleazy buffoon Dick Morris.

Cheers,