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pbwalker wrote:Sadly, I still am standing by my original statement I made several months back. Obama will win this election. Doesn't mean I'm not going to go out there and vote for Romney, but my gut tells me this is 1996 all over again.

I want to be wrong! I really do...

pbwalker wrote:Sadly, I still am standing by my original statement I made several months back. Obama will win this election. Doesn't mean I'm not going to go out there and vote for Romney, but my gut tells me this is 1996 all over again.

I want to be wrong! I really do...

AEA wrote:The problem with barely........

Ties up the election and takes time to sort it out. Gives more advantage to the Cheater in Chief to complete the rigging.

While all this confusion is going on, the middle east continues to erupt and the US must step in with both feet. The incumbent "President" could "postpone" or otherwise nullify the election to keep power????

I would not put it past him, based on his previous various actions.

Most Americans instinctively assume the President will cruise to reelection in November. This notion has been bolstered by the Obama campaign's relentless efforts to portray the president as unbeatable and to characterize Mitt Romney as a hapless loser.

THE ODDS AGAINST OBAMA provides the tools to shatter that impression, and to put the campaign in proper perspective based on the iron rules of history and logic.

Based on columns that appeared originally in The Daily Beast, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and on Townhall.com, with annotated new election tables that highlight the key differences between past presidential winners and losers, these essays show that the patterns of our politics strongly favor conservatives in the crucial election of 2012.

This eBook never argues that Mitt Romney can’t lose. But the notion that Romney can’t win is illogical and unsupportable, when history and common sense argue powerfully to the contrary. The president admits that this election will prove closer than the last one -- which means he plans to become the first incumbent in all of American history to win a second term after four years of losing, not gaining, support.

If most people believe our nation is headed in the wrong direction then why wouldn’t they choose to change drivers? THE ODDS AGAINST OBAMA offer a stimulating road map for taking the right turns to make that change.

Includes a special Appendix describing why Paul Ryan is an excellent choice for Vice President. Also contains election data from 24 historical Presidential elections.

1. Any candidate wants to build a sense of inevitability. In 1996, Bill Clinton was successful in portraying Bob Dole as a "dead man walking," but Clinton had a roaring economy to point to and for which to claim (false) credit. The Obama campaign has tried to build the same aura of inevitability, portraying Romney as a loser, but they do not have a record of economic success to run on, so the myth is easily challenged. (Ditto the "gift" of Obama's appalling recent foreign policy failures which provides Romney with a another easily disassembled myth to burn down.) Obama's supporters would naturally rather spend their energy convincing the pubic that Obama will win than debate the important issues of whether or not he deserves to win.
2. If most of the nation is convinced that the nation is headed in the wrong direction (and they are, by about 70%), then shouldn't they want to change administrations? It makes no sense to keep the same folks in charge when they are a miserable failure.
3. If the state of the country is not his fault as Obama says, then he admits being weak and impotent; and if he tries to push the electorate's desire for change, then he admits that his policies for the last four years did not work as intended.
4. It is therefore no wonder that democrats want to talk about the mechanics of policy and the cherry-picked stats which show Obama strong in Ohio or Virginia rather than wanting to talk about enormous and growing deficits, incredibly high unemployment, and a faltered economy.
5. Most campaigns try to use issues to influence opinion about the race, but the Obama camp tries to use public perceptions about the race to sway the public on the issues. They argue that their record on spending and jobs can’t possibly be as bad as it looks since the president somehow maintains his competitive position in the polls and sustains the impression that he’s a prohibitive favorite for reelection.
6. The typical voter often blithely assumes that an incumbent has a huge advantage because "conventional wisdom" dictates that you don't switch horses in mid-stream. But actual consideration of the historical record and the relevant campaign statistics shows just the opposite:
   
   • Since the ratification of the Constitution, there have been 51 presidential elections in which the incumbent was eligible to run again, and in 32 of those cases—63%—the challenger actually won. In other words, there is no clear advantage to the incumbent.
   • Some of those incumbents who failed to capture another term actually chose not to run—either for previously made promises to not run again, or such bad popularity that they recognized the futility of trying. However, of the 34 who actively sought reelection, 19 succeeded and 15 failed....not exactly a guarantee of success.
   • Of the last six who ran as incumbents, three were successful (Reagan, Clinton, GW Bush) and three failed (Ford, Carter, GHW Bush). Both the current circumstances AND Obama's temperament make him look far more like Ford, Carter and Bush the elder than they make him look like genial people pleasers like Reagan Clinton and George W.
   • There are two iron rules of campaigning which have special relevance to the current Obama campaign:
     
     1. Every president who has ever won two consecutive terms has drawn MORE support in his second campaign than he did in his first one.
     2. All reelected presidents enjoy far less success, and experienced far more trouble in their first term than in their second. This has been true even for the truly great presidents as well as the mediocre ones, including Washington, Jefferson, FDR, and Reagan. The point is that even for Obama's supporters, if he were reelected, they would be far less satisfied with his second term than with his first.
   • The great majority of "undecideds" in current polling are likely to turn against Obama in November.
   • If Mitt Romney stays close to Obama in major polls of likely voters, and he has done exactly that, then Romney may very well win by a landslide.
7. NEVER BEFORE has an incumbent president whose popular appeal declined during his first term of office ever managed to eke out a re-election victory, as Barack Obama is trying to do.
8. Among the 24 elected-presidents who won re-nomination and sought second terms, all 15 who succeeded had more support in their re-election bids than they did in their previous election wins.  In other words, ALL presidents who ever won in back-to-back presidential elections (including George W. Bush whom the left loves to beat up on) gained new supporters rather than new opponents during their first term.

AEA wrote:The problem with barely........

Ties up the election and takes time to sort it out. Gives more advantage to the Cheater in Chief to complete the rigging.

While all this confusion is going on, the middle east continues to erupt and the US must step in with both feet. The incumbent "President" could "postpone" or otherwise nullify the election to keep power????

I would not put it past him, based on his previous various actions.