Who are those wacky undecided voters anyway? - Page 3 - Politics and Economics

valenzuela · 08-01-2012, 01:19 AM

The fate of USA doesnt depend on the undecided voters, it depends on the big corporations that buy the politicians.

Country Roads · 08-01-2012, 06:11 PM

Shocking that most people don't care about which hood ornament sits upon the car that is about to run them over.

74Offsuit · 08-01-2012, 06:12 PM

DVaut on the 'mythical middles' is worth quoting here imo.

Quote:

The way the American electorate gets covered is like this: there's two groups of partisans, who are mostly brain dead idiots and can't help drooling on themselves, but these are a very small number of people, and then there's the glorious middle, who are deserving of the utmost reverence and respect, because they sit around and watch these political maneuvers with a keen and unbiased eye, waiting to adjudicate and make sure neither party gets too partisan, lest they punish them at the ballot box in two years.

The empirical reality is obviously just the opposite, but it won't ever stop the media from venerating Mom and Pop Independent, who claims to have voted for Perot once 15 years ago and are mad as hell that Obama passed this health care reform that is too much government because it raises taxes on their Beanie Baby ebay business to 250%, doesn't have a public option, cuts Medicare, institutes death panels, and fails cover meth addiction rehab for their wayward son, and who Obama must do everything to appease, lest he fail terribly and have American hate him, which we'll know if he has a 48% approval rating.

Thomas Friedman, Candy Crowley, David Gregory, Lil' Russ Jr., Sally Quinn, and the entire WaPo editorial team, from Bill Kristol all the way to Charles Krauthammer to DEAN David Broder, King Moderate Himself, are the Great Middle spokespeople, and will dependably tell us exactly what the Great Middle is thinking. When they pronounce what the Great Middle has settled on, you go on CNN or FNC and repeat it, or run it through the spell checker and post it on your blog at RealClearPolitics and call it a day.

Quote:

There is a group of people you can be almost certain will vote for the Democrat, a group that will almost almost certainly vote for the Republican, and that elections are decided by which side wins the necessary number of votes from the people who don't fall into either group, but those people aren't necessarily "independent" at all. More succinctly, there are people who will almost certainly vote for the Democrat or the Republican, IF THEY SHOW UP TO VOTE, and elections hinge on which side gets these people to show up.

The GOP is more static and dependable than the Democrats (but not totally), so this is pretty crude, and I'm too lazy to dredge up the stats right now, but contemporary American national elections are *mostly* a function of voters sympathetic to Democrats turning out. The GOP's largely older, whiter, wealthier base dependably votes, and Democratic leaning cohorts that are poorer and younger are far less harder to activate. When the poorer, younger, people without a college education, & racial minorities show up to vote at the polls, Democrats win. When they don't, the GOP does.

The GOP does have less dependable cohorts, mostly middle to lower middle class religiously conservative whites that the GOP often needs, but their fortunes are less wedded to this crowd than the Democrats are to racial minorities, the poor, the young, the less educated, etc.

Very very crude, but still far more accurate than thinking there's this group of mythical "middles" who sit around changing their mind every couple of years and do so by interrogating policy or gauging which side is too partisan and voting the other way, which is the image Rather tries to conjure up.

valenzuela · 08-01-2012, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Country Roads

Shocking that most people don't care about which hood ornament sits upon the car that is about to run them over.

lol, nice one Im going to use it on the future.

Low Key · 08-01-2012, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 74Offsuit

DVaut on the 'mythical middles' is worth quoting here imo.

Not a bad post at all.

This does give me an idea though. Would it be possible to convince the GOP that they need to back a move to put elections on the weekends? See, what you have to show is that it would help middle class, white voters get to the polls, and convince them that minorities would have to work weekends and thus not be able to show up.

Remind them that unemployed liberals can vote during the week but hate to miss getting high on the weekend with their employed feminist friends, and maybe, just maybe, you could get them to act.

Just a thought.

DVaut1 · 08-01-2012, 07:26 PM

The GOP is trying hard to get every state to pass a law requiring an iris scan and at least 8 documents notarized with fountain pens dipped in ink stored in a Faberge egg to vote, because all Americans should be able to do that, it's just common sense. So I find it hard to believe they'll back any measure that would make it easier to vote unless the results were so obviously to their political benefit. I doubt Saturday votes meets that criteria. Far less risky to just keep voting on a workday and make sure blacks have to produce their great-grandfathers birth certificate and a Dodo egg or whatever the new tactic is.

**MrWookie** · 08-01-2012, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Low Key

Not a bad post at all.

This does give me an idea though. Would it be possible to convince the GOP that they need to back a move to put elections on the weekends? See, what you have to show is that it would help middle class, white voters get to the polls, and convince them that minorities would have to work weekends and thus not be able to show up.

Remind them that unemployed liberals can vote during the week but hate to miss getting high on the weekend with their employed feminist friends, and maybe, just maybe, you could get them to act.

Just a thought.

The GOP is actively trying to remove early voting on Sundays.

Low Key · 08-01-2012, 09:21 PM

Well yeah, that's when all their supporters are at church!

suzzer99 · 08-02-2012, 03:43 AM

That's when black churches bus their whole congregation to the polls. Can't have that ****.

Low Key · 08-02-2012, 03:48 AM

You mean that's when Racist Obama racistly racists all his racist black racists to the ... racist?

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm quite loopy aorn. But I think I should get a cookie for that.

Boonedude · 08-02-2012, 03:52 AM

Makes no sense to say u wouldnt vote Republican because they control the house. This is what you want. Then laws will be passed instead compromising back and forth. Unity between house and president is key to getting things done. Lord knows it gonna take a while to fix Obama's mistakes.

Low Key · 08-02-2012, 03:55 AM

if the lord knew that, why did he make obama president?

TomCollins · 08-02-2012, 06:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boonedude

Makes no sense to say u wouldnt vote Republican because they control the house. This is what you want. Then laws will be passed instead compromising back and forth. Unity between house and president is key to getting things done. Lord knows it gonna take a while to fix Obama's mistakes.

LOL, yes, what I want done is the nutty Republican agenda. Worked so well when Bush was in power. Government shrank tremendously.

suzzer99 · 08-02-2012, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boonedude

Makes no sense to say u wouldnt vote Republican because they control the house. This is what you want. Then laws will be passed instead compromising back and forth. Unity between house and president is key to getting things done. Lord knows it gonna take a while to fix Obama's mistakes.

Which specific mistakes do you have in mind?

JimmyS1985 · 08-02-2012, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boonedude

Makes no sense to say u wouldnt vote Republican because they control the house. This is what you want. Then laws will be passed instead compromising back and forth. Unity between house and president is key to getting things done. Lord knows it gonna take a while to fix Obama's mistakes.

Dude your last President ranks in the bottom 10 of US presidents, in all of its 236 year history (actually the first President didn't come about until well aftrt 1776). I mean you guys can't govern effectively. Republicans are good at getting elected but, when it comes to governing, they appear to be entirely incapable of it, or they make bad situations worse because of what they think is their infallible ideology.

A common thing I will hear from an undecided voter is "Well socially Im a liberal, but fiscally Im a conservative..." This proves to me that the person who makes that statement has done no research on the national debt over the last 30 years. The Republicans when they get in office, they pass tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy, ever since Reagan. The debt balloons and the economic growth from their tax cuts is minimal. Its been the same theme for the last 30 years in every 4 year election.

If Republicans are so great at balancing the budget, how come between 2003-2007 we had a Republican House, Senate and White House, and a decent economy, and the debt STILL rose. It appears to me that they are incapable of governing, especially when it comes to balancing a budget.