While diversity has been a key to Democratic success in recent presidential elections, it can also make coalition management difficult. The Democratic coalition is made up of the least religious Americans (17 percent of Democrats are religiously unaffiliated) and the most religious Americans (African-Americans). This is reflected in the religious and theological orientation of the parties. The relative homogeneity of the Republican Party means there are fewer tensions but points to long-term challenges, since younger voters are less religiously affiliated and more progressive on many social issues, particularly marriage equality.The reports points out that there are advantages and disadvantages to the religious diversity found in both coalitions. As an atheist, I am happy that the Democrats are orienting themselves towards the least religious Americans.
Becker makes it clear that both Obama and his team were deeply conflicted about whether he should announce his support for gay marriage before the 2012 election, to the point where its unresolved, internal debate had resulted in a kind of paralysis. “His political advisers were worried that his endorsement could splinter the coalition needed to win a second term,” Becker writes. In the excerpt, Chad Griffin, the head of a group fighting Prop. 8, recounts a conversation that he had with First Lady Michelle Obama, during the summer of 2011: “Her message, he told his team, was clear: ‘Hang in there with us, and we’ll be with you after the election.’”
Even though Axelrod says that Obama “has never been comfortable” opposing same-sex marriage, it was not until Biden made some unscripted remarks in support of gay marriage on “Meet the Press,” in early May, 2012, that the President decided that he could no longer stay quiet, no longer occupy a permanent middle ground. His perpetual state of evolution on the issue was an untenable construct that he had maintained perhaps longer than was politically prudent. Biden’s surprise TV remarks were inspired by an emotional question-and-answer exchange that Biden had at an event in Los Angeles, at the home of a gay couple with two children, several days before the interview. Afterward, according to Becker, Valerie Jarrett was furious—even though she supported the President’s new position—and accused Biden of being disloyal for upstaging the President.
But for Michelle Obama, Becker writes, the whole Biden incident was a “blessing in disguise”: she recounts to aides that she told her husband, “Enjoy the day,” just before his interview with Roberts. “You are free.”
The President didn’t see it exactly that way, and was careful to couch his views in personal terms—as he has been advised to do by none other than Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee Chairman and President George W. Bush’s political director, who was also working on the Prop. 8 case after having come out as gay. Obama ended up giving what Becker calls a “carefully calibrated and incremental endorsement,” saying in the interview: “I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going to be worked out at the local level, because historically this has not been a federal issue, what’s recognized as a marriage.” While the President’s statement proved hugely beneficial to the marriage-equality movement generally, his caveat ended up being a central element in the brief filed by the supporters of Prop. 8: their point was that even the President of the United States believed that people of good will could feel differently about same-sex marriage—that is, that it was not a simple matter of anti-gay discrimination—and that it was a state question, rather than a federal one.The piece notes that when the President endorsed marriage equality back in May 2012 there were only 6 states where marriage equality was legal at the time and now there are 17 with 5 states with marriage equality bans that have been struck down by federal judges on hold bending appeals.
The values that underpin these governing strategies reflect contrasting political visions, and the differences can be seen in stark terms in the states. In a red state such as Texas, government exists mostly to get out of the way of the private sector while holding to traditional social values. In blue states such as California and Maryland, government takes more from taxpayers, particularly the wealthy, to spend on domestic priorities while advancing a cultural agenda that reflects the country’s growing diversity.
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Control in the states today is more closely aligned with voting patterns in presidential elections than in the days when conservative Democrats dominated state and local elections in the South and moderate Republicans held greater sway in the North.
Karl Kurtz, a political scientist at the National Conference of State Legislatures, noted in an article published this year that Republicans control both houses of the legislatures in 22 of the 24 states carried by Mitt Romney in 2012 and that Democrats hold majorities in 18 of the 26 states won by Obama.
The eight Obama states that have full or partial Republican control are or recently have been presidential battlegrounds. These are Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.It's an interesting article. It will be very easy to take stock of the partisanship tally at the end of the 2014 midterm elections.
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| Rufus Gifford | James Costos |
Huntsman makes the case for marriage equality from a conservative point of view, and is an important marker in the journey of this issue moving to a bipartisan cause, as the Respect for Marriage Coalition espouses.While serving as governor of Utah, I pushed for civil unions and expanded reciprocal benefits for gay citizens. I did so not because of political pressure—indeed, at the time 70 percent of Utahns were opposed—but because as governor my role was to work for everybody, even those who didn’t have access to a powerful lobby. Civil unions, I believed, were a practical step that would bring all citizens more fully into the fabric of a state they already were—and always had been—a part of.That was four years ago. Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry. I’ve been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life. There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.All Americans should be treated equally by the law, whether they marry in a church, another religious institution, or a town hall. This does not mean that any religious group would be forced by the state to recognize relationships that run counter to their conscience. Civil equality is compatible with, and indeed promotes, freedom of conscience.Marriage is not an issue that people rationalize through the abstract lens of the law; rather it is something understood emotionally through one’s own experience with family, neighbors, and friends. The party of Lincoln should stand with our best tradition of equality and support full civil marriage for all Americans.
The article notes that winning the presidency in 2016 will be difficult for Republicans because there are 18 states (plus DC) that have 242 electoral votes that have voted for the Democratic candidate for 6 consecutive presidential elections, while 22 states with 180 electoral votes have voted for the Republicans. So, just like in 2012, the 2016 presidential election will most likely be decided by the usual suspects: Ohio (18), Virginia (13), Florida (25), North Carolina (15) and Colorado (9).The president won the popular vote in 26 states and the District of Columbia, totaling 332 electoral votes, or 62 more than the 270 needed to win the presidency. Romney won 24 states with 206 electoral votes. Obama won 365 electoral votes in 2008.[...]Turnout in this year’s presidential race was about 129.1 million, down from the record 131.3 million four years ago.Obama’s national vote total fell by about 3.6 million votes from his record 69.5 million in 2008, when he was elected the nation’s first black president. In that race, he won 52.9 percent -- with a victory margin of more than 9.5 million votes over Republican John McCain -- amid a financial crisis that took hold at the end of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.
The president's campaign, Obama for America, filed its final campaign finance report on Thursday covering the last two and a half weeks of the 2012 election. The report revealed that from Oct. 18 until the Election Day on Nov. 6 the president raised $88 million and spent $176 million. That far exceeded the $66 million raised by his rival Mitt Romney and the $107 million spent by the Republican presidential nominee during the same period.In fact, the Obama campaign's fundraising power allowed it to crush the Romney camp in spending -- at least in terms of individual campaign spending. Obama's campaign spent $723 million from April 4 up to Election Day, way ahead of the total $460 million spent by Romney's campaign. Half of the Obama campaign's spending between Oct. 18 and the election -- $83 million -- went just to television advertising.[...]When including the types of spending that the Obama campaign warned about in its emails, such as super PACs and other outside groups, the Republicans did outspend Democrats. The full suite of Romney committees including the Republican National Committee and Romney Victory along with various outside groups spent a combined $1.51 billion. Democratic outside groups and the full Obama group of committees including the Democratic National Committee and Obama Victory Fund spent $1.43 billion. Still, the gap is far smaller than the one the Obama camp warned supporters about.
For the Nate-haters, here’s the 538 prediction and actual results side by side twitter.com/cosentino/stat…
— Michael Cosentino (@cosentino) November 7, 2012
The FiveThirtyEight forecast accounts for this possibility. Its estimates of the uncertainty in the race are based on how accurate the polls have been under real-world conditions since 1968, and not the idealized assumption that random sampling error alone accounts for entire reason for doubt.
To be exceptionally clear: I do not mean to imply that the polls are biased in Mr. Obama’s favor. But there is the chance that they could be biased in either direction. If they are biased in Mr. Obama’s favor, then Mr. Romney could still win; the race is close enough. If they are biased in Mr. Romney’s favor, then Mr. Obama will win by a wider-than-expected margin, but since Mr. Obama is the favorite anyway, this will not change who sleeps in the White House on Jan. 20.
My argument, rather, is this: we’ve about reached the point where if Mr. Romney wins, it can only be because the polls have been biased against him. Almost all of the chance that Mr. Romney has in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, about 16 percent to win the Electoral College, reflects this possibility.
Yes, of course: most of the arguments that the polls are necessarily biased against Mr. Romney reflect little more than wishful thinking.
Nevertheless, these arguments are potentially more intellectually coherent than the ones that propose that the race is “too close to call.” It isn’t. If the state polls are right, then Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College. If you can’t acknowledge that after a day when Mr. Obama leads 19 out of 20 swing-state polls, then you should abandon the pretense that your goal is to inform rather than entertain the public.And this last paragraph is precisely the point. Election coverage happens in media channels which are part of corporate conglomerates that are out to make a profit. They have a financial incentive in promoting the notion that the election result is a 50-50 proposition and that either team has an equal likelihood of winning, but just because there are only two possible outcomes on Tuesday does NOT mean they are equally likely! (If you understand this concept then you are on your way to understanding probability. That being said, it is still then a very difficult question to estimate the probabilities of the two possible outcomes, and this is what Silver succeeds at.)
The anonymous texts, which may be a violation of federal law, have prompted HRC to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.
"It's unsurprising that our opponents are employing such underhanded tactics and trying to attack equality from behind shrouds of secrecy," said HRC Vice President of Communications Fred Sainz in a statement announcing that the nation's largest LGBT-rights organization would ask the FCC to investigate the incident.
"HRC is filing a complaint with the FCC so that these types of organizations know there are consequences for their actions," Sainz added. "It's unacceptable to launch these types of despicable attacks from dark corners, and it’s incredibly irresponsible to send out unsolicited messages to people who have no desire to receive this type of vitriol."
From the beginning of 2011 through Oct. 17, Mr. Obama and the Democrats raised about $1.06 billion, and Mr. Romney and the Republicans collected $954 million, including some money for the party’s Congressional efforts, setting up 2012 to be the most expensive presidential campaign in history.Earlier in the year the Republicans were claiming that Obama-Biden would raise $1 billion dollars and the Blue team, demurred, not wanting to get caught up in an expectations game. They responded by saying that if you count Super-Pacs then the Red team would spend more money on the 2012 elections than the Democrats. It looks like both sides exceeded their expectations for how much they could raise.
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Mr. Romney and the Republicans raised about $21.3 million more than Mr. Obama and the Democrats during the first 17 days of October, according to the disclosures filed on Thursday, as Mr. Romney rose in the polls and performed well in debates, emboldening his supporters.Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee took in $92.4 million during that period, after surpassing Mr. Romney in August and September.Mr. Romney and the R.N.C. raised $113.7 million over the same period, the final days for which the campaigns are required to report their fund-raising before the election on Nov. 6. Mr. Romney and his party also spent about $146.2 million during the first 17 days in October, slightly less than the $149.7 million spent by Mr. Obama and the Democrats.While Mr. Obama’s team invested tens of millions of dollars early in the campaign to identify, contact and raise money from grass-roots voters, those expenditures have left the Republicans with more cash in the final weeks of the election that could finance a late surge of advertising. Mr. Romney and the G.O.P. ended the final filing period with $169 million in cash on hand, significantly more than the $123.8 million held by Mr. Obama and the Democrats.
