What more does a candidate need to do to lose a Presidential election?

[Politico]

The campaign itself has been badly run, but not as terribly as the McCain/Palin campaign.

Romney has the following things going for him:

1) He's obviously very intelligent, unlike the last GOP president.

2) He looks like a stereotypical US president. This gives him a subliminal cognitive advantage.

3) He's got business credentials. Not bad in an economic crisis.

4) The economy is bad. Bad news for any incumbent.

5) The electorate is incredibly divided. 2008 was in effect a landslide election, yet Obama still only won by 7 points. We are unlikely to see anybody win by larger margins than that in this political climate. The GOP could run a reincarnation of Adolph Hitler and he would probably still crack at least 43% just because he isn't a "liberal, socialist, muslim".

So unless Romney tonight reveals that his fiscal plan is to sell America to China for 18 trillion dollars (he gets to keep 10%), then he won't lose by more than 7 points tops and he'll keep all the states McCain won as well as Indiana.

This is a good post. There is no way Romney will not secure all of the McCain states along with Indiana. Add FL, NC, VA, OH and NH to the list, and Romney is president-elect.

Team Romney has a secret plan to win the election. Hint: It involved being beyond underwhelming in September.

[Politico]

Add FL, NC, VA, OH and NH to the list, and Romney is president-elect.

Easier said than done.

Half a decade ago, almost nobody foresaw NC/VA going Democratic. Kerry probably won NH because of the neighborhood effect. OH went to Bush twice. FL was close in 2000/2004.

You guys are acting like Romney has to summon God to win. Getting to 270 is tough, but extremely doable. Only a handful of states, and we can lose NH if we win CO or WI or NV or IA. It certainly will not take an act of God to win.

[Politico]

From his bitter campaign with Hillary Clinton which he promptly began losing even though he had all but achieved the nomination already, he has had nothing but negatives. Think of every single thing this President has done that has made even his fan base scratch their heads.

Obama was losing the primary? Are you sure you're talking about 2008?

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His first statement was rather foolish, of course, but the "Beer Summit" managed to smooth things over nicely, so it was far from ridiculous.

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What exactly is sufficient gravitas in this context?

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"War on Terror" is indeed a stupid slogan, as you can't be in war with a tactic, especially one you're using yourself (see drone bombings and Libya). And I'm certain that all the Muslims (fundamentalist or not) he's killed with these drones were happy that he's no longer referring to Islamic fundamentalists...

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That presumes that the economy wouldn't have gotten worse without the stimulus, which is a rather dubious assumption.

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I understand your partisan attitude to this, but you're greatly overestimating their effect on the voting public. Regarding gay marriage, he has the same position as the majority of Americans. As for Treyvon Martin, it's true that non-blacks were dubious that his death was murder, but then again blacks, which were far more interested in the case were certain. He doesn't gain about 100% of the black vote (and more importantly, high turnout) just by being black.

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Almost is the key word here - he didn't, so a non-issue again. And I don't how it's contemptible, ignominious or dastardly to feel regret at such terrible and unnecessary mass murder (and it's not cowardly either, considering what the popular opinion of this is in the US). Also, since under no interpretation of Christian Theology could Truman be anywhere but in Hell, it should be "looking up with disdain"

The projections showed that it would take 1,000,000 casualties for us to defeat Japan using a traditional approach (e.g., similar to D-Day and so on). Undoubtedly, a few of us would have never existed had the nation gone in that direction (since one or more of our ancestors would have died on the beaches of Japan). Obviously Japan would have never surrendered any other way. Maybe Truman should not have dropped the second bomb on a populated area, but he had to drop it on at least one big city to get the message across. A second bomb on an isolated island may have showed we had more than one bomb. That said, he could have chose Tokyo, but he allowed the Japanese to "save face" to some degree.

I can assure you that Germany/Japan would have dropped atomic bombs on New York and Washington had they developed the weapon first. Hell, probably the only reason that humanity still exists today is because we developed the first atomic bomb.

[Politico]

The projections showed that it would take 1,000,000 casualties for us to defeat Japan using a traditional approach (e.g., similar to D-Day and so on). Undoubtedly, a few of us would have never existed had we gone in that direction. Obviously Japan would have never surrendered any other way. Maybe Truman should not have dropped the second bomb on a populated area, but he had to drop it on at least one big city to get the message across. A second bomb on an isolated island may have showed we had more than one bomb. That said, he could have chose Tokyo, but he allowed the Japanese to "save face" to some degree.

Ignoring whether Japan would have surrendered anyway, you haven't explained why the bomb could not have first used in a demonstration attack, for example on a military base. Of course, dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a convenient way to see the effect of the bombing on cities and was a more effective warning to the Soviets, but that's probably not an argument supporters of the bombings would really like...

You're not informed about the Imperial Japanese military if you think they would have surrendered. These people were brainwashed into believing their emperor was God. The only way they could be shown otherwise, and the only way the emperor would give in, was with a bomb dropped on a major city, and all that entails. And they didn't even surrender after Hiroshima. It was only after Nagasaki that they relented, and even that took almost another week after the fact. We had to start talking about dropping the next one on Tokyo in order to get them to finally surrender. Would you have preferred sending 1,000,000 Americans to their graves? Because that was the next best alternative to ending the war.

I do disagree with dropping the second bomb on a major city. Then again, it would not have happened had Japan surrendered right after Hiroshima (or, for that matter, if they had never attacked Pearl Harbor).

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Germany could have had they played their cards right and/or we played ours badly.

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Yes, we were better than the Axis. Much better. Even if the Soviet Union had developed the bomb first, I am not sure mankind would still exist (if the world were still around, it would probably resemble Orwell's 1984 by now).

Sometimes you need to do bad things to prevent bad people from doing worse things. We did what needed to be done to end the war; no more or less. It's not like we leveled the whole country with nuclear bombs, or forced reparation payments that crippled their national economy (which is what created the monster that was Nazi Germany following WW I). No, we accepted their apology, and helped them rebuild their economy.

The only reason the world exists today is because of great Americans like Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan.

[Politico]

Looking at the national polls, Romney's ceiling in this election is ironically 47 percent. If you look at RCP, Romney hasn't exceeded that number (and he needs 48% to even have a chance) in any snapshot poll since the conventions

Yeah, kind of like Reagan's "ceiling" of 45-47%, right?

[Politico]

Looking at the national polls, Romney's ceiling in this election is ironically 47 percent. If you look at RCP, Romney hasn't exceeded that number (and he needs 48% to even have a chance) in any snapshot poll since the conventions

Yeah, kind of like Reagan's "ceiling" of 45-47%, right?

Typical Republicans, turning back to the past for false hope...Reagan was a superior candidate with natural charisma and was EXTREMELY popular with his base; Romney is the worst GOP candidate to lead his party since at least Dole, and maybe Goldwater

Romney isn't a pimple on Reagan's ass as a candidate

Obviously things seem different nowadays, but Reagan was considered a "risky" "also-ran" at this point in 1980. He had run for the nomination twice previously, losing both times. Carter was successfully painting a picture of Reagan as this sort of "risky" candidate who was unfit to be in charge of our nuclear arsenal. These attacks largely worked until the debate with Anderson and, of course, the following debate with Carter. Hindsight is 20/20, and future successes can muddle memories of what things were like before the successes (e.g., Reagan did not become immensely popular until after the attempt on his life).

[Politico]

You're not informed about the Imperial Japanese military if you think they would have surrendered. These people were brainwashed into believing their emperor was God. The only way they could be shown otherwise, and the only way the emperor would give in, was with a bomb dropped on a major city, and all that entails. And they didn't even surrender after Hiroshima. It was only after Nagasaki that they relented, and even that took almost another week after the fact. We had to start talking about dropping the next one on Tokyo in order to get them to finally surrender. Would you have preferred sending 1,000,000 Americans to their graves? Because that was the next best alternative to ending the war.

I doubt the allies knew any of this, so that is still not an excuse for the nuclear bombings.

Uh...ever hear of the term "Kamikaze"?

The American military was well aware of what Japan was willing to do to march "forward."

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And would you have preferred if the Soviets had ended up with more control over Europe?

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They had well over 48 hours. Unlike their attack on Pearl Harbor, we warned them that we had another bomb. Apparently they did not believe us.

The only thing that got them to surrender was threatening to drop a third bomb on Tokyo. It says a lot about Truman that he did not just drop the first bomb on Tokyo. Japan/Germany would not have hesitated to use such a weapon on Washington without warning.

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All it would have taken was better spying and better science on their part, and worse spying and worse science on our part.

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Maybe you should go visit a nearby Holocaust museum and ask this question again? You're out of line, buddy.

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It was only a matter of time before somebody invented them. Better us than anybody else. The world would likely not exist had things turned out differently.

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I guess they should not have attacked Pearl Harbor, huh? And I guess, when you get down to it, WW II altogether would not have happened if certain people in Europe had not forced crippling reparation payments upon Germany following WW I.

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Fixed. It is a good thing we wound up with men of courage and conviction in the White House rather than cowards like Adlai Stevenson.

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Yes, because nobody supplied the Soviets with necessary capital. Are you going to celebrate the Great Purge next? Stalin was arguably a worse monster than Hitler. Probably the two worst individuals of the 20th Century.

[Politico]

And Hitler came to power mainly due to the Great Depression which was caused largely by the foolish policies of certain people in the US...

Obviously the rest of your post is not worth responding to after reading this.

The only reason a maniac like Hitler came into power is because of the economic side effects of the reparation payments forced upon Germany following the Treaty of Versailles. Without the reparation demands, there would have been no hyperinflation; without hyperinflation, there would have been little support for extremists like Hitler, and certainly no amount of support to get him into a position of power.

I can't believe you're trying to blame Nazi Germany on anybody in the United States. If not for the United States' entrance into WW II, you'd probably be speaking German as a citizen of a satellite state of the Third Reich (if you even existed).

Why are you on this board, anyway? All I've seen you do is blame America and defend American enemies.