So ... Obama vs Mitt Mormoney

Indeed. Viva la revolucion!

It's just rhetorics, Tom, he didn't mean it literally. Slightly over the top, though, I agree -- but that's our D!

I have some things to say regarding this election, as I am a moderately conservative American. I like Romney. I think our country's spending has been absolutely out of control in the last four years and we need a businessman who has been very shrewd and very successful to sort this mess out. President Obama made a lot of promises when he took office four years ago and has delivered on precious few of them.

As for why our country is so evenly divided, that's a curious phenomenon. The electoral college that we have here takes whichever candidate that gets the most votes in a state and gives all the electoral votes to that candidate. This winner-take-all system naturally leads to just two parties, which we have nearly always had. Technically there are other parties (the libertarians, the green party, and the newer Independent American Party), but few vote for these parties because there's really not a chance for any of their candidates to beat the major party candidates. If we had more proportional representation, it would favor a multi-party system. Personally, I think the electoral college is out of date, and our two party system is inefficient. When you can only have two parties, they tend to move toward the extremes, and block each other on everything. This congressional gridlock resulted in our country's credit rating dropping recently.

We haven't always been 50/50, though. There have been long periods of time when we've had just one party in the presidency (over 12 years of Franklin D. Roosevelt leading up to WWII, and 12 years of Republicans with Reagan and Bush 1), but we usually alternate. That's because while there are lots of people who only identify with one party and always vote that way, there's a sizable chunk of this country who fall in between these two parties, ideologically. I'm one of them. I don't like either party. My votes always go to the person I feel will be best for the country, though I nearly never agree with all of their talking points. Because of these "independents", when people don't like the way the country is going they usually put the other party back in power.

It has usually been that the people who live in the big cities are more liberal and vote for the democrats, and the people everywhere else are more conservative and vote for the republicans. Lately it seems our demographics have evened out, and we have about as many rural citizens as urban ones. As a result, the last several elections have been really close.

Because of our rural/urban political tendencies you can already predict which states will go to which candidates. New York and California will vote for Obama. The South (with the possible exception of Florida) will vote for Romney. The Northwest and Northeast will vote for Obama. The great plains and most of the rest of the west will vote for Romney. There are really only a handful of states that are going to tip the scales for this election. The way Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, and a few other states vote will really end up determining the election, and it looks like Obama has a small lead in each state (though the lead is within the margin of error, so it could go either way).

Another curiosity of the electoral college is that because the number of electoral votes each state is given is not exactly proportional to its population, it's possible for a candidate to get more people to vote for them and still lose the election! It happened to Gore in 2000, and the last pole I saw showed that Romney had a lead in the popular votes, but was still predicted to lose the electoral votes. It's silly.

Finally (sorry for the length and rambly nature of this post), I think Romney will be better at working with the other party than Obama has. Romney was a Republican governor of a very liberal state (Massachusetts). The state legislature he worked with was over 80% democrat. In the four years he was governor he balanced the state budget and turned their deficit into a surplus. He was brought in to run the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics after those games were in major trouble and he turned them into one of (if not the) most profitable Olympic games ever. This guy knows how to take something in trouble and turn it around. He's far more moderate than most Republicans and he's shown that he can work with the other party. I hope our country will give him a chance.

I can't see Obama not win this; it's as Clinton said, when the economy is bad the middle class will turn to democrats; add to that the death of Osama, Obamacare and his recent show of leadership with Sandy, it should be a landslide victory really...

That said, I just saw a documentary on the Bible belt region that only votes for Romney because of religious beliefs and morals, they don't even know what he stands for (!). But that goes for both candidates, this whole election is nothing more but a Superbowl match, the press wants it to be a close call because that adds to the excitement.

P.S. I agree with Christopher that the election system needs a serious reform.

All a candidate needs to be to get votes in the South is republican. It seems like a lot of people in this country vote republican or democrat without caring a bit what the candidate thinks or how qualified they are. The South, for example, vote solidly republican no matter what. Religiously, there are actually a lot of people in the South that don't like Romney's beliefs. Some of the strongest anti-Mormon sentiment in the country is in the South. I imagine that their hatred for Obama outweighs their distaste for Romney's faith.

Maybe I should have too.

But he acts like one.

-Erik-

I want to also thank Christopher for his opinion, because, I'm not American, you see, but he's the only Republican voter who actually said something that wasn't offending anyone else

And you NEVER played the race card in your statements, which is a great thing, coming from a person voting for Romney.

I am amazed by how people are helping each other to vote, no matter who they vote *for*. And every person that tweets, celebrity or not, just tells others to VOTE. Just VOTE. Beautiful.

OBAMA WINS!!!!!

Good, but rather expected. I remember saying in the early republican primaries that Mitt Romney would be chosen as the guy to lose against Obama. Not a hugely risky prediction though.

Anyway, I don't think Romney would have been a disaster, despite his ridiculous behaviour during the campaign (i.e. the countless self-contradictions and scary appeals to the far right), but I think that Obama was the better choice.

Peter

True. And I was very unhappy with what Bush was doing at the end of his second term. He was just as bad at running up the debt as Obama has been. I'm just sorry that Obama continued the trend. He talked about curbing spending when he ran in 2008 and only made it worse. Here he's talked about it again, as though we're just not supposed to think about the last four years. We'll see.


He had a lot of opposition, it's true. But you have to expect that. Every opposition party plans to make an opposing party president a one term president. He worked with congress well at first, but after a year or so just started making executive orders instead of trying to work with congress. The biggest promise I recall him making in 2008 was that he would bring unemployment down to 5%, and that if he didn't do that he didn't deserve another four years. Here we are at nearly 9% and he wins again. Just about the only thing he did was his health care plan, a plan that 49% of Americans despise, and which he waited to roll into action until 2013, just after the election. Hmm.

Unlike some of the crazies in this country, I don't think Obama is an evil man, that he was born outside the U.S., or that he's a Muslim terrorist (yes, there are quite a few people that believe all those things about him). I think Obama has good intentions. He just doesn't know how to help the economy. I think Romney would have done better. I hope I'm wrong. Maybe he couldn't. A president can only do so much to affect the economy anyway.

I like some of Obama's plans. I hope he's successful in helping our country.

Was it really that predictable? Or had I been duped by the media hyping it up into a close-call race where the future of the world was at stake?

Now Obama can concentrate on saving our ash trees from this devastating disease that will change the face of our green and pleasant land.

Glad to see his victory being more unanimous this time around and let me add how refreshing it is to talk about this election in a civil manner without threads being locked down