U.S. 2012 Election

[Fiver]

:rofl:

I guess this is US reaction to last night's election results:

And: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/video/video-markets-tumble-after-us-election/article5045683/

Market trading was positive until around 7 a.m. EDT. Then Mario Draghi announced that the economy is stagnating in Germany, where the data is worse than predicted. That's when FTSE and STX 50 crashed.

Hell, intrade.com had Obama winning at 80%, his win isn't a surprise to investors. While a dip in high dividend stocks might be able to be blamed on the election results, which would cause the market to go down some, to try to blame the velocity in the market on the election is a joke, it's primarily Europe.

Pointing to short-term fluctuations as a result of this election sounds eerily like something that would come out of the Fox News scare machine. Correlation isn't causation, yada yada yada, etc.

 

[dapaterson]

If the outcome still interests you, look at the US markets ~ in less than one hour the DJIA has lost nearly 2% of its value.

Yes, we can look at the outcome.

Obama elected in 2008:  Dow Jones at: 9139.27

Obama re-elected in 2012:  Dow Jones at: 12932.73

After the "slump" the DJIA is still up over 41% in the past 4 years.


Bush elected in 2000:  Dow Jones at: 10712.91

Bush retires in 2008: Dow Jones at: 9625.28

Loss of over 10%.


So, if you're an investor and part of the 1% (or even the 53%), which president better served your economic interests?

 

[Edward Campbell]

Market trading was positive until around 7 a.m. EDT. Then Mario Draghi announced that the economy is stagnating in Germany, where the data is worse than predicted. That's when FTSE and STX 50 crashed.

Hell, intrade.com had Obama winning at 80%, his win isn't a surprise to investors. While a dip in high dividend stocks might be able to be blamed on the election results, which would cause the market to go down some, to try to blame the velocity in the market on the election is a joke, it's primarily Europe.

Pointing to short-term fluctuations as a result of this election sounds eerily like something that would come out of the Fox News scare machine. Correlation isn't causation, yada yada yada, etc.

Investor were not surprised, or, at least, they should not have been, but there seems, to me, to be broad agreement that both the bad news from Germany and the fear of the impact of the Fiscal Cliff on, especially, bank stocks caused the dip and the Fiscal Cliff fears are directly related to the "bad news" of election night: the division in American politics persists.

See Reuters, for example:

HONG KONG, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Hong Kong shares could start lower on Thursday, tracking steep losses on Wall Street as investors shift their focus to the looming "fiscal cliff" that confronts the U.S. economy and to Europe's economic problems.

The Dow industrials lost more than 300 points in a sell-off on Wednesday that drove all major U.S. stock indexes down more than 2 percent in the wake of the presidential election.

Now some reports say that there are ways to avoid the Fiscal Cliff, and I suspect, maybe just hope, that is the case, but the US Congress, still facing this President, scares me because I am not convinced that members will do what's needed.

 

[Kat Stevens]

4 more years of trench warfare.

 

[ModlrMike]

I know it's the electoral college votes that count most, and wins in Calif, Ohio, and Pennsylvania really put Obama over the top, but the popular vote numbers are interesting. Obama managed a bare majority with 50.4% of the vote. Obama might yet take Florida as well, but the margin there is 0.6%. Not the ringing endorsement that some might suggest his victory illustrates. In fact you see a 2.5% slip over the last go in 2008. It will be interesting to see how he manages the next 4 years, and how this plays out in 2016.

 

[cupper]

I know it's the electoral college votes that count most, and wins in Calif, Ohio, and Pennsylvania really put Obama over the top, but the popular vote numbers are interesting. Obama managed a bare majority with 50.4% of the vote. Obama might yet take Florida as well, but the margin there is 0.6%. Not the ringing endorsement that some might suggest his victory illustrates. In fact you see a 2.5% slip over the last go in 2008. It will be interesting to see how he manages the next 4 years, and how this plays out in 2016.

You have to put it into perspective. By all accounts the GOP should have had a cakewalk because of the state of the economy and the perceived failure of the Obama Administration. Instead, Obama lost only two states compared to the 2008 map. Because of that fact alone, this win is (to paraphrase Joe Biden) a bigger f'n deal than 2008.

The GOP failed to understand the demographics of 2012 America, with the reduction of the white vote from 87% in 2008 to 72% in 2012, along with an increase in the Hispanic vote from 2% to 10%. The overall electorate is getting darker, younger, more secular, and more moderate. Until the GOP addresses the change in demographics, which is only going to continue to move in a direction favorable to the Dems, they will have difficult times ahead.

 

[dapaterson]

The irony is that many immigrants are culturally and fiscally conservative.  That a party which claims to embrace that same conservatism is unable to reach out to growing communities with shared interests should lead to some fundamental questions.

I'm not holding my breath, though; it was the same story in Canada until the reborn Conservatives made deliberate, concentrated efforts to appeal to immigrant communities.

 

[FJAG]

Until the GOP addresses the change in demographics, which is only going to continue to move in a direction favorable to the Dems, they will have difficult times ahead.

Couldn't agree more.

The GOP is presently advocating on behalf of only a part of American society (albeit a very large but shrinking number). Until and unless they become more inclusive and develop a more secular viewpoint they will remain the voice of special interest groups and not that of the nation as a whole.

Good luck sorting that out. 

 

[muskrat89]

Pointing to short-term fluctuations as a result of this election sounds eerily like something that would come out of the Fox News scare machine.

Pardon me, I'm one of the unwashed masses who must defer to your analytic prowess. Are you saying that the activity in the markets today was unrelated to the election results??

 

[muskrat89]

The GOP is presently advocating on behalf of only a part of American society

Yes - about 48-49% apparently. I believe one of the main reasons President Obama won this campaign (there were many) was that he was more successful strategically than Romney. He won every battleground state; heck, nearly every battleground county. His campaign was extremely effective in identifying areas crucial for a victory, and then winning in those areas.

 

[Infanteer]

Yup - he won because he carried Arlington County Virginia, the suburbs of Denver (Adams county, IIRC) and Cincinnati and Miami-Dade County in Florida.  Take away these four counties and those states likely go the other way, and that is 69 electoral college votes that go and make the other guy the President.

I'm not disputing the legitimacy of President Obama's victory, only that muskrat is right on the razor thin margin of that victory.

 

[Kat Stevens]

I've spoken to a lot of friends in the US over the past few days, most voted Democrat, and most did that because of his response to the monster storm.  Obama got out there and made promises, Romney did not.  That storm was a rainmaker for Obama too.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The irony is that many immigrants are culturally and fiscally conservative.  That a party which claims to embrace that same conservatism is unable to reach out to growing communities with shared interests should lead to some fundamental questions.

I'm not holding my breath, though; it was the same story in Canada until the reborn Conservatives made deliberate, concentrated efforts to appeal to immigrant communities.

That's it: but you must, first, understand what conservatism is. Many American conservatives have morphed into an intellectually impossible form of big government and moral conservatism which is self defeating.

In my, limited, experience, many East and South Asians are very socially conservative, but they are also very pro-abortion, in fact they are very supportive of all individual rights, including e.g. gay marriage even when they disapprove of homosexuality, per se, and they are, generally, highly suspicious (even afraid) of the "religious right."

Some of the micro-policy initiatives that Prime Minister Harper, at the behest of Jason Kenney, has taken here in Canada are aimed at offering e.g. Asian Canadians a conservative policy "rose" that does not have many of the "thorns" which Asian-Canadians, especially, find so troubling.

During the Republican primaries we saw Governor Romney twist himself totally out of the shape his own record suggested he held so that he could defeat e.g. Rick Santorum. In the primary process, I suspect, he ended up defining himself in ways that cost him the votes of real social and fiscal conservatives who are not part of the religious right.

The kind of conservatism that the GOP has embraced alienates too many groups, even as it appeals, mainly, to some fundamentalist Christians and, somewhat ironically, to their kissing cousins, the Wahabite Muslims.

 

[a_majoor]

The irony is that many immigrants are culturally and fiscally conservative.  That a party which claims to embrace that same conservatism is unable to reach out to growing communities with shared interests should lead to some fundamental questions.

I'm not holding my breath, though; it was the same story in Canada until the reborn Conservatives made deliberate, concentrated efforts to appeal to immigrant communities.

This is exactly the case, and look how long it took for the education and outreach to penetrate. I would suggest that it was at least a decade of very low key, almost "stealth" work by the CPC to gain that demographic, especially against the constant drumbeat of "hidden agenda" by the legacy media and the ability of the Liberals to direct a shower of "Free Stuff"  to their supporters.

Since the Democrats turned the shower of Free Stuff into a river, and the legacy media is even more partisan and rabid, Republican efforts to court various demographics need to be much more sustained and effective. I might also argue that they also have to be different; things like flirting with immigration amnesties is just Free Stuff under a different name. Why would anyone vote for Democrat lite and get a little Free Stuff when the real Democrats openly offer everything from phones, foodstamps and "free" healthcare as well as an amnesty?

 

[Edward Campbell]

While "Republican efforts to court various demographics" may, indeed, be "sustained," I would argue that they are woefully ineffective, even inept.

The US census is not a SECRET document, anyone can befriend and study immigrants and their attitudes. That the GOP remains in thrall of the religious right, the Rush Limbaugh buffoon faction and Grover Norquist's insanity tells me that it is doomed to shrivel and die.

Real Republicans must regain the respect and trust of the small business class who want a chance to succeed on their own merits and by their own efforts. The Democrats have cast that large 'demographic' adrift but the GOP has not professed values that appeal to it. If you can get that small business class onside then much of the middle class will follow. The Real Republicans are: moderate, honest, inclusive, responsible, fiscally prudent and sensible. Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist are none of those things and they need to be disowned and denounced before the GOP can be Grand or even a politically useful Party again.

The GOP held the HoR (and the Democrats held the Senate) because of a combination of gerrymandering and the power of incumbency being so very strong in the USA, not because they offered anything much that most Americans wanted. But: 58 Million Americans voted against Barack Obama - there is 'room' to retake America and turn it back to a more moderate course.

 

[Kirkhill]

Real Republicans must regain the respect and trust of the small business class who want a chance to succeed on their own merits and by their own efforts.

That sounds astonishingly like the nation of "liberal" shopkeepers that Napoleon derided.  Anything that affronted that chap and his white horse can't be all bad.

Napoleon's nation of shopkeepers weren't all Brits either. Nor were all Brits shopkeeper.  Many Brits longed for men on white horses.

Fortunately, in my view, they were overpowered, if not outnumbered by native shopkeepers together with refugee shopkeepers from Flanders, the Baltic, the Rhineland, the Rhone, the Alps, France south of the Loire, Normandy, Brittany and various points in Spain.  (In fact the only places not represented  (probably) were the Ile de France and Madrid).

The same people that populated the US and were described by David Hackett Fisher as the "Seeds of Albion"

 

[Edward Campbell]

I suspect that America may have to endure, in its own more complex manner, what we did from 1993 - the electoral destruction of the PC Party and the rise of Reform - until 2003 - the union of the Canadian Alliance and PC Party into the Conservative Party of Canada.

My guess is that the Real Republicans will abandon the GOP and for a new party with socially moderate, fiscally conservative, resoundingly secular and inclusive values. The current GOP will wither and die on the vine because angry, white, poorly educated, Christian fundamentalist men are simply too small a base upon which to build or sustain a national party. The new party - let's call it the Reform Party, just for fun - will, eventually merge with the few Republicans that are left and, in the process, will drive out the "religious right" and other assorted fruitcakes.

I think this may take them the same full decade it took us and it, too, will require two leaders who are fed up with the Liberals' Democrats stranglehold on power.

 

[GAP]

And then the Democrats will discover the same thing, because they have a similar problem.

 

[a_majoor]

Some interesting infographics lifted from the Althouse blog; there is some movement towards the GOP among various groups, although in terms of the electoral calculus there wasn't enough. This suggests some of the groups that should be targeted, and (to me anyway) what sort of messaging that needs to be done among the various groups.

ERC, Kirkhill etc. are quite right, and I have alluded to this as well; the messaging needs to be different as well as sustained and delivered via non traditional means (letting the Legacy Media deliver distorted, misleading or outright lies like "War on Women" while constantly playing a "happy tunes" narrative for the Democrat party certainly has an effect, which one commentator estimated to be adding  5% (?, can't find reference right now) to the vote as far back as 2000).

http://www.althouse.blogspot.ca/2012/11/look-how-many-groups-moved-toward-gop.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-exit-polls/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-exit-polls/national-breakdown/?hpid=z3

 

[Edward Campbell]

The country, broadly, actually shifted, slightly, towards the Republicans according to a couple of county-by-county total vote (President + Senator (where applicable) + Governor (where applicable) + Representative) summaries I have seen. But the popular vote eluded the GOP in several key, mainly urban, areas. Several identifiable groups voted by large majorities for Obama and, to a lesser degree, for the whole Democratic ticket: women, young voters, Jews, Hispanics and Blacks. There is, as Thucydides says, a message problem but I do not believe there is a major media problem ~ I believe the GOP message is wrong no matter what media are used to propagate it. It is wrong because it alienates women, young voters, Jews, Hispanics and Blacks. Change the message and the voters the GOP needs will follow. Change the message and the GOP may lose some of the angry, while, ill educated, Christian and male demographic but ... who cares? Where else are they going?