Congratulations to Obama and his supportersFollow

ALCON:
I am in an undisclosed location where adjusting my sig is not possible. Just loading the Asylum page is an exercise in frustration where HTML is the law, internet connectivity and loading times are used as alternatives to waterboarding, and censors/interweb watchdogs monitor all webbiness. On my honor, as soon as I get to where I can put Omega's doohickey in my sig, it'll happen.


Totem

IMO, this election result shows that identity politics has become the norm for US politics now. Obama didn't win because he had better policies and Romney didn't lose because he had worse ideas. Quite the opposite, in fact. What's happened is that a large enough percentage of the population now votes based on whatever group they identify with and which party promises to do the most for that group that a president with one of the worst records in US history can win re-election purely because he was better able to convince those groups that he was "for them". In the identity politics game, the Left will always have an advantage over the Right simply because it's much harder to convince people that a small government platform benefits their group more than a big government platform will. Let's face it, it's pretty hard to convince a group of people that the government *not* giving them stuff is really better for them.


The ironic thing is that unless this trend can be reversed, the claims of the left about the republicans will become truth instead of just rhetoric. Right now you've got a political Right that believes in and strives for small government, and a political Left which characterizes that within the framework of their own identity based political viewpoint (ie: Republicans aren't really for small government at all, but use that as an excuse to push a pro-white/male/rich/religious agenda). But if a party can't win on small government and must pander to identity groups to have a chance, you will see the Republican party change. Which groups it may choose to pander too may not be quite what the current Left expects, but it's reasonable to expect that our politics will become more partisan, more dividing, and more expensive. And along the wayside will go any hope of a system which keeps government small in order to prevent it from playing favorites in favor of one in which each party attempts to pander to enough groups of people to reach 51% of the population.


I think that'll be a tragedy, but by all means you all go ahead and clap yourselves on the back for your victory. But ask yourselves what you really won.

Welcome back.

Doesn't help that case when your last president's policies were more aligned to the social conservative side than the fiscal conservative side of the party.

Pfftt... weak sauce. Limbaugh was shoveling the "Santa Claus!" schtick days ago.

Solidifying the first real steps towards universal health care, couple Supreme Court justices, forcing comprehensive immigration reform... Ooohh! Big Bird!

Edited, Nov 13th 2012 1:37pm by Jophiel

Haha. No. I didn't not put a bullet in my brain, or spend a week crying under my bed. I'm interested in politics, but despite the impression given from my participation on this site, I hardly spend any time thinking about it in the rest of my day to day life. This just happens to be where I engage in political discussions, mainly because I don't play any of the games this site has forums for anymore and that's just what we tend to gravitate towards in that absence.

I had a couple major projects I was working on early last week. While I had time for some shortish posts Tuesday, Wednesday was far too busy for me to spend time framing any sort of post (kinda crunch time for the work I was doing). Then Thursday we had sort of a disaster occur at work, and I've been involved in recovery and conference calls since then (yes through the entire weekend). Yesterday afternoon was the first time I had at all to do any posting, but that didn't last long either (got some other bizarre request tossed at me which I, er google, dispatched with only a couple hours work).

This week I get to catch up on all the work that got blown out of the water last week too. So ugh...


But you guys are still all wrong. Obama will be even more of a disaster in his second term. Um... Recession. Depression. Dogs and cats sleeping together. More partisanship. Fiscal cliffs. Etc, etc, etc... There. Happy?

Someone's getting a calendar for Christmas...

And that's exactly what I was talking about. In what possible way can you argue that Romney was more aligned to the social conservative side than the fiscal side? Romney was as non-threatening in terms of social conservative position as possible.

That you could say that shows how successful the Left has been in framing such things, just as I said. The only way to make such a statement is if you are measuring "social conservative" based on an assumption that the Right engages in the same sorts of identity politics that the Left does.

That you could say that shows how successful the Left has been in framing such things, just as I said. The only way to make such a statement is if you are measuring "social conservative" based on an assumption that the Right engages in the same sorts of identity politics that the Left does.

So just full denial then? How boring.

Leave me alone I haven't had any coffee yet.

Also, Ryan blames their loss on an unexpected urban turnout.

News flash: Dems always win metropolitan areas. Oh wait, he meant black people.

I read that as "unexpected turban turnout"

By the way, I'm not avoiding this. I just don't see much gained from you using a series of posts to try and slowly prod me into saying universal health care and Big Bird are the harbingers of a desolate communist wasteland, stripped of liberty and light.

I read it as "unexpected turban burnout". Really, checkered face-scarves are the new turban.