But this only had a limited effect on the overall voter turnout because...
Secondly, "The Disinterested" - As of this moment (updated 12/3) in the almost finalized numbers, while Romney received three quarters of a million more votes that McCain got in 2008, Obama received 4.2 million fewer votes than he did four years ago. Counting all candidates who received votes, in 2008 there were a total of 131.4 million votes cast. This year, 128.3 million.
Basically, over 3 million people who voted in 2008 were so disgusted with either candidate that they decided to just stay home (in addition, a small percentage voted for a third party candidate in both elections; approx. 1.5%, or 2 million). In 2008, 58.8% of voting-age people voted. In 2012, only 54.6% of voting-age citizens voted.
Given that with a US population of 315 million, and of those 235 million are of voting age, that means 45.4% of voting-eligible citizens never bothered to vote on Tuesday (many never even bothered to register to vote). [All numbers updated 12/3.]
Third, "The 1%" - The left and the Occupy Wall Street fanatics ranted and raged against the evil 1% (the richest 1% of the country), so they went out and voted for Obama 50.8%-47.4% (because Romney was in the backpocket of those evil 1%'ers, donchaknow).
Fact: The Top 10 richest counties in the country voted on Tuesday, and 8 of the 10 counties voted for Obama. Those eight counties combined voted for Obama by a 60%-40% margin!! All Top 10 combined voted for Obama 56%-44%! Notice that it's by a much large margin than the general population. Those who voted in those counties accounted for 1.1% of the voters on election day. In other words, those evil 1%'ers. So the lefties voted for the exact same candidate that the evil 1% wanted.
That is a dish called "Irony" prepared, cooked and served to utter perfection.
So, why did the 1% vote that way? Obvious (to some, at least). Obama will be raising taxes on the wealthiest, but they can use tax loopholes and shelters to avoid the proposed increases. Which means that the shortfall will have to be made up on the backs of the middle class. (DUH!) Romney wanted to keep or lower those tax rates, but close a bunch of those precious loopholes for the rich. Can't have that now, can we.
Passing thoughts by Gateway Pundit:
November 6, 2012 is the day America changed.
8 to 9 percent unemployment is the new normal. It’s good enough. 46 million people on food stamps is OK. It shows we care. Debt spending is good. It will get paid off some day and if not, our kids can worry about it. Trillion dollar deficits make sense.
Socialized medicine is good. It will cost more, but did you honestly believe it wouldn’t? It doesn’t matter what you were told. Catholics should pay for abortions. Sandra Fluke is a prophet. Abortions and birth control should be free. We should fund abortions overseas, too.
The First Lady should be allowed to blow millions on lavish vacations. The White House parties should cost millions, too. The president should play as much golf and basketball as he pleases. They deserve it. They work hard. They’re Democrats.
Greedy Americans should pay more taxes and millions of Americans who pay no taxes should receive more free money. It’s only fair. Businesses can afford to pay more taxes too. That’s what they teach you in school, right? We all know the Bush tax cuts that brought the deficit from $450 billion to $175 billion in four years and created millions of jobs didn’t work. Obama said so. And did you know Obama created 5 million jobs? Who cares how he came up with that number. In September he even created 600,000 part-time jobs somewhere. And, don’t you dare question his math.
Benghazi was a protest, or a terrorist attack. Obama said so from the beginning. Who cares anyway. Things like that happen all the time. And the media never covered anything up to help the president either. Right, 60 Minutes?
Al-Qaeda is dead or on the run.
We pushed the restart button with Russia. Putin is a democrat. He can be trusted. What do you mean there are Russian subs in the Gulf and off the east coast?
It’s not racist that 97% of blacks vote Democrat. It’s racist if you are white and vote Republican.
The media is your friend. The mainstream media is not biased. They would never hide anything from you.
Katrina was a national embarrassment. It was Bush’s fault. Sandy was not so bad. And Obama did a great job focusing on it from between campaign stops. The people are not suffering so much or we would have heard about it in the news.
America was once the land of the free. Now we want to be told what to do. More government is good. We want stuff.
On Tuesday America changed.
But the fight is not over.
God help us in the days ahead.
Passing thoughts by PoliPundit:
The end of America
No, I’m not exaggerating.
I’m an immigrant. I felt like I was born in the wrong country – a country where free speech was optional, freedom needed to be justified against other considerations, the successful were hated and resented, government was the career of choice for smart people, and business was severely limited by burdensome regulations. In short, a country in inevitable decline.
I yearned for America, a land of limitless possibilities where the people loved freedom, and a two-hundred-year-old Constitution guaranteed it. I made my way here as soon as I could, thus correcting the mistake fate had made when I was born.
For many immigrants, America was their last best hope, the only country that matched their ambition and optimism. There was no othersanctuary for people like me.
And now there is no sanctuary left.
The choice in this election was stark, and Americans have made their choice. They have chosen liberal piety over America’s future, free condoms over freedom. They have voted for a government that, in our president’s words, believes that American exceptionalism is the same as British exceptionalism or Greek exceptionalism. Given the course Americans have chosen, he may be right.
Consider:
- Our national debt dwarfs our GDP in the same manner as, say Greece’s debt dwarfed its GDP and led to the troubles Greece faces today.
- That will only get worse as we run trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.
- Not to mention the massive cost of entitlements, including the new one called Obamacare.
- Amid all this, government ties down business with endless regulation, and wants to punish success by raising taxes on “the rich.”
- Half the American people no longer pay federal income taxes. They have an incentive to soak the rich.
- Millions more get monthly payments from Social Security disability, unemployment “insurance” and the like. In fact, one in three Americans lives in a household that gets some kind of direct government assistance. They too will want to soak the rich.
- Power-hungry politicians will continue to divide us by gender, race, ethnicity and income. Each party will vie harder than the other to win the favor of this or that group. Freedom of speech, religion, and property will suffer. The idea that we are all created equal will effectively be written out of our founding documents.
What exactly is the difference between America and Greece? I can’t tell anymore. Except that the scale of our problems dwarfs that of Greece, and has the potential to take down the entire world.
- In fact, our freedoms are already gone. Government can mandate that we purchase products and, soon, “hate speech” will doubtless be criminalized, like in Europe. Don’t believe me? Look at the official assault on Chick-Fil-A. Do you think any company will dare to oppose gay marriage again? Or look at the federal persecution of anyone who dares to make movies disparaging Mohammed. How much longer before “anti-gay” or “anti-Muslim” speech immediately gets you fined or thrown in jail, like in the UK?
Hence the title of my post, “The end of America.” America is no longer exceptional, and no longer has much of a future. It is thus no different from doomed entities like Greece, Spain, or California. We are in a state of inexorable decline. The question is just how andwhen we’ll decline, not if.
Like Greece – and its apprentice on the Pacific, California – America will grow ever broker, ever more stifling, ever faster declining, ever more self-righteous, and ever more leftwing. The worse it will get, the more voters will vote for worseness. The decline will only accelerate. We may occasionally elect “Republicans” and “conservatives” to the odd office, but they will be compromised compromisers, powerless to stop the decline.
The decline may even be comfortable. What’s left of the American spirit, and our unimaginable wealth and resources, will ensure that. But, as in Europe, by the time the consequences are fully apparent, we will be unable to undo them.
Decades hence, America will take its place among the great civilizations whose success was their eventual undoing. Our descendants will marvel at the wonders we wrought, and they’ll wonder why they can’t come close to matching our achievements. Then they’ll go vote for faster decline. If they can still vote.
That’s not just me talking. It’s 53 percent of you.
Passing thoughts by Creative Minority Report.
Hitting Bottom
I can't help but think that America is now like your brother who can't keep a job, drinks too much, is constantly asking for money, and oh, has a crazy bad addiction that's destroying his life.
You tried just lending him money every time he promised to go straight but he just ain't gonna' do it. At some point you accept that he's going to have to hit bottom. You don't know what bottom looks like but you know that he's racing towards it. It might be jail, death, brain damage. Nobody knows. But at some point he'll hear the thud and wake up face first in a pool of his own vomit and he'll have to make the decision to turn over and get back up or just die.
And that's where America is heading. This country is going to have to go absolutely bankrupt and hit bottom before it starts getting better. This country is borrowing money from children that they're killing in the womb in record numbers. That, is not a recipe for success.
And of the children that we do have, many of them are being born into single parent homes where their chances of spending some time in jail are increased while their economic outlook is severely diminished.
For too many years we slept. Maybe we saw it coming, maybe we just suspected that everything was going to hell.
Leftists have taken over our education establishment, giving them firm control over what our children learn (unless you homeschool or have a great Catholic or private school). The left has long controlled the media and therefore control what people hear about current events. So think about it, they have control over the teaching of history and the present.
And why didn't we think we were going to be routed? And what did we do to prevent this? We talked about school choice but got weak kneed when the fight got bloody. We snarked about the media and congratulated ourselves on how many interesting and funny ways we tweeted that Chris Matthews was stupid. Here's the thing, pretty much everyone in the media agrees with him. It's an MSNBC media. Some just hide it a little better.
If you want to understand the true power of the media, this election is a prime example. The media propped up a corrupt and egotistical ideologue throughout this entire campaign. They ignored Solyndra. They ignored Benghazi. They covered up the economic ruin we were inviting on ourselves. Sure, FoxNews and the new media have hurt the media establishment but what the MSM showed in this election is that we can snark it up all we want, they've got one hand firmly on the levers of power and the other around our throats.
But here's the thing. I've gotten to the point now where I'm thinking about the fact that I have five kids, a wonderful wife, and a good parish. My life is good and full of love. We try to give to charity and work with a home for unwed mothers. We'll continue with these things. I'm focusing on what I can do in my life. I'll continue to write and work but I know where this country is heading.
I know where the country is going. I'm not going there and neither is my family. The Church will continue to exist whatever happens to this country. The country's barreling downwards and when it hits bottom it's going to explode like shrapnel. My job is to protect my family from the flying pieces. And then we'll start gathering the pieces.
The only good news in all this is that I think that we'll hit bottom awfully quick because we're heading there awfully fast.
You should read Erick Erickson's post-election post here.
Another important one by Erick here.
In the end, Romney was a poor candidate. Even though Obama was disliked and no longer trusted by a large portion of the public, Romney made those "not-Obama" potential voters go, "Meh."
Consider this.
Reagan won re-election in 1984 in a landslide with 59% of the popular vote, and all electoral votes except for Minnesota (which Mondale won by less than 0.2% of his home state's popular vote) and D.C.
Bush Sr. won election in 1988 by 53.3% (with the assumption that it would be Reagan 3.0) against Dukakis. After breaking his "no new taxes" pledge, the country going into a recession, and voters realizing that he wasn't Reagan… here is a list of the "winners'" popular vote percentages of the following presidential elections:
Clinton in '92 (ugh) with 43.0% [against Bush Sr (ugh) and Ross Perot (ugh)]
Clinton in '96 (ugh) with 49.2% [against Dole (ugh) and Ross Perot (ugh)]
Bush W. (ugh) in '00 with 47.9% [against Gore (ugh)]
Bush W. (ugh) in '04 with 50.7% [against Kerry (ugh)]
Obama (ugh) in '08 with 52.8% [even with the hopey-changey rhetoric, against McCain (ugh)]
Obama (ugh) in '12 with 50.9% [against Romney (ugh)]
Notice that the first three didn't even get a majority of votes, and two of the remaining three barely got above 50%. This is and has been a deeply divided and disillusioned country since approx. 1990, in desperate need of a true Reagan-like, common sense, constitutional conservative leader. None of the candidates on either side since 1988 have measured up to that standard, and thus we are where we are.
Erick Erickson of RedState has one more must-read post here.
Michelle Malkin lists 21 things that went well on election day for conservatives.
Daniel Horowitz at RedState has 21 observations.
UPDATED with added text and links.
UPDATE #2: Erick at RedState has much more to say about Romney, Conservatism and the Republican Party. Please read not only his three posts (which I linked above here, here and here), but also his "No" and "I Told You So" posts.
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