If the election were decided on the popular vote, both parties would have campainged much differently. Instead, they focus almost exclusively on certain counties within the swing states to tip the electoral count in their favor. The corallary to that is that many people who don't live in swing states don't vote because the outcome is pre-determined. Therefore, you cannot assume that the popular vote would be anything close to the same if it the popular vote were the basis.
I think the largest cost of this election may be the death of the GOP, much like the election of 1852 sealed the fate of the Whigs. The GOP has shifted itself so far to the right to pander to its aging conservative Christian base that it flung open the door for an inclusive Democratic party. The GOP also, in large part, chose its direction and set up this race (or another very much like it) when it essentially forced J.C. Watts out of Congress in 2000. He favored moderating the party's message, favored removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state flag and voiced support for including single mothers in the Republican definition of "traditional" family values. He got into a show-down with Tom DeLay, lost and the GOP moved steadily to the right. He was talked into running again in 2000 and won his seat handily but retired at the end of that term despite a plea from Rosa Parks that he run again. Imagine this race (or 2008) if the opposition was a Watts-Rubio (or Rubio-Watts) ticket.
This is exactly the direction the Republican party would go if it was smart (which, as I stated earlier, it is not). The social/family values rhetoric is too alienating.
In this election, I felt that the Heartland and the South were incredibly marginalized, and as such, the candidates did even have to bother with any of us. There you have Obama and Romney neck-and-neck in popular votes, then California's polls close, and Obama immediately has 244 electoral votes, based largely off of winning the counties along the Pacific coast. Is that what we want? A handful of counties in each state determining our national leaders?
the CEO's endorsed and signed their names to a plan which would reduce the debt and deficit by spending cuts and raising taxes. whose plan does that sound like to you? you do not have to use the term "endorse" for the writing to be on the wall. this is not a reach, it's fact. who do you work for? tell me what it is that they do not like about Obama.
You talk to small business owners in the Deep South, Kyle. It would be different if you spoke with small business owners in the North East or the West Coast.
There is a very simple -- and utterly unlikely -- fix for that. The Electoral College does not specify how each state has to allocate its electors. Two states -- Nebraska and, I think, Maine -- allocate on the basis of Congressional districts. That is, the candidate with most votes in a particular Congressional district gets that electoral vote with (again, I think but am not entirely sure) the two statewide votes going to the candidate winning the popular election in that state. EVERY OTHER STATE is a winner take all state. It's up to the states to decide how the votes are allocated and the two parties much prefer the winner take all model because that means they don't have to campaign Congressional district by Congressional district in national elections. Instead, all they have to do is work to get one more vote than the other party, especially in the "swing" states. I strongly suspect that any state legislator proposing or supporting legislation to change the allocation of Electoral College votes would suddenly find party money to his/her next campaign mysteriously drying up.
Religion poisons everything. Women just are not gonna vote en masse for a social values conservative. They should if hs economic policies are sound but they wont.
