ELECTION NIGHT IN AMERICA 2012 RECAP

I know it’s been about two weeks since Election Night but… What a night.

This is WHY I LOVE Election Night!

After all the polling, predictions, and punditry, we finally get hard numbers and ACTUAL projections are made.

MATH WON!

Here is the electoral map…

And here is Nate Silver’s map.

All that talk of Silver’s data was skewed or the polls oversampled Democrats was a load of bunk. I regularly was on fivethirtyeight.com to the point where I was refreshing the site hourly. Same with the Talking Points Memo and Real Clear Politics maps.

Nate Silver was correct to assume that Ohio would put Obama over the top as the networks at 10:12 PM (CT). However if you list the states in order from biggest Obama win all the way through towards biggest Romney win, Colorado was the tipping point state. Per the national popular vote, Obama won by 2.5 points. Colorado (9 EVs) went for Obama by 4.7 points; next was Virginia (13 EVs) with Obama +3.0.

When they finally called Florida for Obama days after Election Day, I was happy. Math won the 2012 Election.

Speaking of math…

THE RIGHT WING BUBBLE POPS

At 10:12 PM (CT) on 6 November 2012, all the major news networks projected Ohio to go into Barack Obama’s column thus putting him over the 270 Electoral Votes threshold to be re-elected President. There was ONE channel that had their doubts…

Just watch this 18-minute clip from Fox News that highlights Karl Rove’s breakdown as he descends into madness and disbelief…

The conservative media and conservative movement was in disbelief that Romney lost. Anyone see the pictures of the Romney Watch Party in Boston?

According to them, all of their polling showed that Romney was going to win: “The polls were skewed; let’s un-skew them. The media is biased towards Obama…”

Gallup once showed Romney +5. That should have been the first clue that something was off… If Gallup was showing Romney +5 then why were polls in individual states showing it to be a close race? That was my first tell that the Gallup poll was completely off. Candidate +5 should mean at least an Electoral College win of 350+ Electoral Votes (see 2008 Election).

Gallup is still a credible polling outfit, but I think for this election their methodology was a tad off. It wasn’t until Election Day that Gallup finally reflected the realities of the race. It was a close popular vote race that could have resulted in a split result where one candidate wins the Electoral Vote (which matters), but the other candidate wins the popular vote. It would be the second time in 12 years that a Presidential Election would produce that result.

On the Sunday before Election Day, George Will on ABC’s This Week made this prediction:

George Will (paraphrase): “Romney 321, Obama 217 with Minnesota going for Romney on the basis of Minnesota’s marriage referendum that will cause evangelicals to turn out.”

First… the last time Minnesota went for a Republican was 1972 when Nixon won in a landslide over George McGovern (520-17, MA and DC were the only areas McGovern won).

Second… maybe George Will didn’t get the memo that opinions on gays and lesbians in this country have changed in the last decade. Minnesota rejected the marriage referendum that would have super defined marriage as “one man, one woman” by a vote of 51-47.

Third… Minnesota went for Obama 54-44 in 2008. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R, MN-6) was facing her toughest re-election bid. In 2012, Obama won the state by eight points and Bachmann was re-elected… just barely, 51-49. 4,000 votes was the difference in that race.

Again, George Will: great to go to a baseball game with; terrible at political predictions.

More on this later…

AVALANCHE ON BULLSHIT MOUNTAIN!!

Just watch "The Daily Show" from 7 November 2012 to see the commentary about the Fox News freakout over Obama's win.

BREAKDOWN OF WHO VOTED

2012 ELECTION POTUS	EVs	POPULAR VOTE	POPULAR VOTE %
OBAMA-BIDEN (DEM)	332	63,994,643	50.78
ROMNEY-RYAN (GOP)	206	59,916,183	47.55
OTHERS	0	2,102,237	1.67

*99% reported at the time of publishing

Here is the breakdown of the 2012 Electorate.

2012, GENDER	% ELECTORATE	OBAMA	ROMNEY
MALE	47	45	52
FEMALE	53	55	44

I don’t get it guys… you have daughters, wives, sisters, grandmothers, and nieces and nephews… wait, not nephews. You have a MOTHER. The GOP’s positions regarding women disgusts me not just as a man, but as a human being.

I was raised by a single mother who was a nurse and many of my aunts have careers outside the home. My sister has a daughter. I served under and with women while I was in the Navy. The last two Main Propulsion Assistants (that person was in charge of the two main machinery rooms on a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, generally a lieutenant commander billet) that I served under were women. During the deployment I went on in the first half of 2005, most of the propulsion plant watch officers were women. The women that I served with, some are still in and are now Chief Petty Officers.

Yeah, pay disparity between the genders piss me off and I have two different chromosomes.

In fact… watch this tape of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal ceremony again. Look at the person who is standing in between Vice President Biden and President Obama during the signature process. Red curly hair.

I had the honor and pleasure of meeting her when she came to Dallas in November 2011. Her name is Zoe Dunning, retired Navy Commander and one of the many advocates for DADT Repeal.

I may have been a blue shirt (enlisted sailor E-6 and below) and she was khaki (sailor E-7 and above) but do you notice the common thread? We were both sailors and we care about this country.

Simply put, I give a crap about women’s issues because they are my issues too because I know quite a few women in my life. Carol Hansich was right… “The Personal is POLITICAL.”

Anyways, back to the number crunching…

If you look at the swing states where Obama won:

STATE WOMEN VOTERS	OBAMA – ROMNEY = DIFFERENCE
FLORIDA	Obama +7
OHIO	Obama +11
VIRGINIA	Obama +9
PENNSYLVANIA	Obama +13
IOWA	Obama +19
NEW HAMPSHIRE	Obama +16
WISCONSIN	Obama +15
NEVADA	Obama +16
COLORADO	Obama +3

Women were one of many groups that won this election for Obama.

When it comes to the ladies, to frankly put it GOP, they just aren’t that into you.

Here is another telling statistic about the 2012 Electorate when broken down by race.

2012, RACE	% ELECTORATE	OBAMA	ROMNEY
WHITE	72	39	59
BLACK	13	93	6
HISPANIC	10	71	27

In 2008, the White Vote made up 74% of the electorate and McCain won that vote 55-43. In 2012, it dropped two points but Romney won the White Vote 59-39. One observation I caught from Election Night was Steve Schmidt who was the strategist for the McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign and a current contributor to MSNBC. It was seconds after the 10 PM (CT) poll closings (CA, WA, OR, HI, ID) and he made a statement about the demographics of the 2012 Electorate.

One of things that Chuck Todd talked about earlier, demographically, I think that if the polls are accurate, it’s highly likely that Mitt Romney is going to come in when the night is done with 60… 61% of the white vote. The last candidate who got 60, 61% of the white vote was George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988, 24 years ago, and that got him over 400 Electoral Votes.

And you look at the closeness of the race tonight, Mitt Romney can eke out a victory or if Mitt Romney loses it speaks just in stunning detail how the country has changed demographically and the catastrophe for Republicans with the Latino vote which was over 40% for George W. Bush just eight short years ago.

And now tonight it is going to be in the 20s and even if Mitt Romney is able to win this election tonight, this will be the last election that a Republican can possibly win as a national candidate with these types of numbers in the Latino community, with Women voters, and it’s really going to lead to some important moments of soul searching, I think, within the Republican Party if we’re to be a national party.

When Schmidt made this observation the current Electoral Vote count was Obama 243-188 with Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado in the “Too Close To Call” category. The Electoral Vote count started with Romney taking an early lead, then Obama picked up the likely blue states, then it was tied, and then Romney had a 184-172 lead before 10 PM (CT) poll closings (which strangely sounds like a scenario foretold by Michael Tomasky for “The Daily Beast” in August). Those poll closings gave Obama the lead once and for all.

Later on Schmidt points out that California was a reliably Republican state. From 1948-1988, California sent its Electoral Votes for a Democratic candidate twice: Truman in 1948 and LBJ in 1964. They liked Ike twice (1952 and 1956) and you had the native son factor in Nixon, who was a Senator from the Golden State before being added to the ticket with Eisenhower in 1952.

In Nixon’s presidential runs (1960, 1968, 1972), he won California each of those times. So did Ford in 1976 and former California governor Ronald Reagan in his 1980 and 1984 landslide victories. The last Republican to win California was George H.W. Bush. Since then Democrats have equaled the Republican winning streak from 1968-1988 with a Blue Streak of their own from 1992-2012.

Why has California become a reliable Blue State? Proposition 187 which passed in California in 1994 to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibited undocumented persons from using health care, public education, and other social services provided by the government in the state. The law was later to be found unconstitutional, but the damage had been done as it was viewed by the immigrant community as an attack on them.

The same thing is happening as groups are viewing the Republican Party has come to embrace some radical positions concerning Immigration, Women’s Issues, and LGBT Issues. For instance during the Republican Primary debates that took place several political cycles ago, Romney ran to the (emphasis) RIGHT OF RICK PERRY on Immigration. I am sure that various communities have economic concerns that they agree with the Republican Party on… HOWEVER COMMA… the positions the GOP have taken when it comes to social issues is absolutely offensive to common and decent people.

If the Republican Party is be competitive at the national level again, they need to undergo a serious rebranding and purging of the extreme elements that have infiltrated their party over the last 30 years.

THE LOSING STREAK ENDS

Speaking of social issues…

Gay marriage initiatives were on the ballot in four states: Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington. Legislatures in Maryland and Washington already passed marriage equality bills, but voters launched a petition drive to put it onto the ballot for the November election. In 2009, Maine put it to a vote and it failed. So there was an effort to try again in 2012. Minnesota’s marriage initiative was aimed at defining marriage as “one man, one woman.” Minnesota already has it stated that marriage between two people of the same gender is not allowed; this initiative would have super banned it.

What happened?

Maryland, Maine, and Washington said YES. Minnesota said NO… and NO is a good thing.

Maryland, Maine, and Washington joined the growing list of states where there are marriage equality laws in place.

This is a reversal of Proposition 8 from four years ago and what happened eight years ago when the Republican Party used this as a boogey man.

Look, I don’t like having the rights of people put up to a popular vote. I think it is an asinine process to do it this way, but whatever… It is part of a multi-pronged attack the way I see it. Proposition 8 might get heard before the Supreme Court. An announcement will be made sometime later this month. Daily Kos has a list of states where Marriage Equality might happen next, so stay tuned to this topic.

IN THE END…

2012 ELECTION POTUS	EVs
OBAMA-BIDEN (DEM)	332
ROMNEY-RYAN (GOP)	206

2012 ELECTION SENATE 113TH CONGRESS	SEATS
DEM	53
IND	2
GOP	45

* Both Independents are caucusing with the Democrats

2012 ELECTION HOUSE 113TH CONGRESS	SEATS
GOP	234
DEM	201

“House of Representatives, Republicans. Senate, Democrats. Presidency, Barack Obama. 2 years, 3 billion dollars… and we are clearly in the same (expletive deleted) place we were when it started.”

– Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, 6 November 2012

Jon Stewart put it bluntly after Obama was re-elected. In the end after all the campaigning and truckloads upon truckloads of money spent... this was a status quo election. We’re probably going to be headed towards more obstruction with a House controlled by the Republicans over the next two years. If there is some relief, yes the Republicans control more seats… but Democratic candidates in all 435 US House races got more votes. In part it is due to redistricting that took place after the 2010 mid-terms and several state legislatures turned more Republican.

I wish the Democrats could have pulled off the upset in the House, but it didn’t happen. Oh well. I’d rather have this political makeup than President-elect Mitt Romney and a Republican controlled Senate (shudders…).

This should be a lesson to Democratic-Progressive-Liberal minded people. When we show up, we win! We need to remember this in 2014 when all 435 seats in the House are up for re-election. We got rid of Tea Baggers Joe “Deadbeat Dad” Walsh and Alan “should’ve gotten a bad conduct discharge from the Army” West. Michele Bachmann was barely re-elected, but she is vulnerable and all the crazy stuff that she said in her failed Presidential run and other times… they are still on youtube.

We also have quite a few Senate seats to defend in 2014. Oh and guess what else happens in 2014, Texas has several statewide elections. We have a gubernatorial AND a US Senate race. I will write up something about the 2014 Texas elections and the upcoming legislative session here shortly. After this post I am taking a brief break from commenting directly about politics. There will be some political posts, but probably not written by me; it’ll probably be a video I find that I think is important.

In closing, there is this about what the re-election of PRESIDENT Barack Obama means. Remember my post Rachel Maddow Mic Drop from the day after the election. Well consider this an addendum. Here is what she said before her speech. This election was about the status quo and we preserved it in the progress that was made under this President and his administration over what will be the last four years this coming 20 January.

We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.

We’re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance. We are not going to do that.

We are not going to give a 20 percent tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid’s insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.

We’re not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you’re on.

We are not going to redefine rape.

We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo.

We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or housing at the federal level.

We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.

We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country’s new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents.

We are not vetoing the DREAM Act. We are not self-deporting.

We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.

We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever.

We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it.

We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country. 

And we said no, last night, loudly.