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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (682857)	11/4/2012 1:20:32 AM
From: i-node	2 Recommendations Respond to of 1575930

>> love to see your face late tuesday....you and dick morris will have egg on them It really isn't about personal pride. It would be sad if Obama won, but it does seem unlikely. Well, except to you and Nate Silver.

To: puborectalis who wrote (682857)	11/4/2012 1:22:59 AM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1575930

The homemade sign for Mitt Romney in the yard of a well-manicured but modest home in Leadville, Colo., forlornly signals the fracture of another onetime supporter of Barack Obama. If Romney wins the presidency on Tuesday, the national media, the Washington establishment and the bulk of academia will have missed something huge that happened in “flyover” America under their watch. It is a story that few have told. It reminds one of the famous quip by New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael following Richard Nixon’s landslide 1972 victory: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” Two years after suffering a historic shellacking in the 2010 midterm election, Democrats astonishingly have ignored Main Street Americans’ unhappiness. That 2010 ejection from the U.S. House, and from state legislatures and governors’ offices across the country, didn’t happen inside the Washington Beltway world. It didn’t reflect the Democrats’ or the media’s conventional wisdom or voter-turnout models. So it just wasn’t part of their reality. In Democrats’ minds, it was never a question of “How did we lose Main Street?” Instead, it was the fault of the “tea party” or of crazy right-wing Republicans. Yet in interview after interview — in Colorado, along Nebraska’s plains, in small Iowa towns or Wisconsin shops, outside closed Ohio steel plants and elsewhere — many Democrats have told me they are furious with the president. Not in a frothing-at-the-mouth or racist way, as many elites suggest. They just have legitimate concerns affecting their lives. These Main Street Democrats in seven battleground states supported Obama in 2008. Now they are disappointed by his broken pledges: Where is the promised bipartisanship? How could health-care reform become such a mess? What direction is the country going in? Their overriding sentiment is uncertainty over where the president is taking the country. They have no idea but get the feeling it isn’t the direction that traditional Democrats want. They certainly haven’t gotten guidance from the president’s re-election slogans: class warfare, a hyphenated America, spreading the wealth around. Over and over, these folks expressed unhappiness that fixing the economy doesn’t seem to be Obama’s focus; they have noticed that those in charge have high opinions of themselves but aren’t taking responsibility for the lack of progress. It took Romney just 90 minutes, in a debate hall just a three-hour drive from that Leadville home’s sign, to convince many Americans (including many Democrats) that he passed their threshold test. He came across as a qualified alternative to Obama who believes in their vision of an exceptional America and convinced them he can win. And, just like that, “flyover” America was ready to vote its conscience. What a shame that those from Kael’s “special world” don’t grasp the vicious cycle of their growing disdain for those alienated by their own actions. They create dangerous narratives through Twitter and on TV that polarize and promote the rigidity of their ideology rather than introspection. Never once have Main Street Americans heard Washington elites ponder, “What did we Democrats do to lose the confidence of so many voters?” Plenty of traditional Democrats have voiced such concerns but are not being heard. Conversely, Romney seems largely to have figured out what he did wrong in 2008 and what George W. Bush did wrong previously. Obama’s progressivism no longer seems universal, upbeat and forward-looking; instead, it appears divisive, shrill and based on the worst kind of shortsighted power calculations. Yesterday’s “special world” liberals, such as Kael, could be gently chided for their heart-in-the-right-place, head-in-the-clouds idealism. Yet it is something else altogether to have today’s arbiters of political correctness order you to march “Forward” to a future with less promise, fewer choices, more intrusive government — and to justify it by telling you to accept that the new normal of high employment, low growth and diminished world influence is good for you. Is it any wonder that Main Street America is in revolt, since no one is telling its story? Perhaps election night will tell it, at long last. Salena Zito is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial page columnist. E-mail her at szito@tribweb.com

To: puborectalis who wrote (682857)	11/4/2012 5:48:57 AM
From: Taro	Respond to of 1575930

...and you promise to grow a Hitler style moustache when Romney wins, right? /Taro

To: puborectalis who wrote (682857)	11/4/2012 9:38:17 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575930

Harry Reid: The idea that Democrats would work with Romney is laughable “All I ask is for Republicans to understand what legislation is all about. It’s the art of compromise and building a consensus.” –Harry “Lead By Example” Reid, January 2012 In actuality, Harry Reid’s definition of “bipartisanship” is “Republicans doing what Democrats want but not the other way around.” If Mitt Romney is elected on Tuesday, Reid will continue to be true to form: Five days before the election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has ruled out trying to work with Mitt Romney should he win next week. “Mitt Romney’s fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his ‘severely conservative’ agenda is laughable,” Mr. Reid said in a statement on Friday, trying to puncture Mr. Romney’s closing election argument that he’ll be able to deliver on the bipartisanship President Obama promised in 2008 but has struggled to live up to. [...] Mr. Reid flatly ruled out following Mr. Romney’s agenda, saying he and his colleagues have already voted down many of those proposals, including House Republicans’ budget, written by Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan. “Mitt Romney has demonstrated that he lacks the courage to stand up to the tea party, kowtowing to their demands time and again. There is nothing in Mitt Romney’s record to suggest he would act any differently as president,” Mr. Reid said. It’s almost like Harry Reid senses a Romney win and is trying to preempt premature panic among the base. However, Reid did go on to say that he’s confident of an Obama victory on Tuesday — but I think he got that information from the same sources who told him Romney didn’t pay any taxes for a decade, so that information is dubious at best. There’s a possibility that, if the stars align mightily for the Republicans next Tuesday, Harry Reid will end up losing control of the Senate. It falls in the “unlikely” category, but the possibility does exist: Of those 12 senate races, five are projected to be won by the Republican nominees and seven are projected to be won by the Democrats. This leads to 52 Democratic senators and 48 Republican senators. For the Republicans to win the senate majority, assuming a tie-breaking vote of the vice president if Romney and Ryan win, they will need to win any two of the of the following close seats: Massachusetts, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The odds of a 50 seat Republican senate comes down to looking for two upset possibilities among the close races. Democrats are likely to maintain a majority in the senate.