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

[GMantis]

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."

How is that relevant? The Japanese understood well that this and all other military tactics were obsolete against nuclear weapons, so the question is still why it was necessary to destroy a whole city to show it to them?

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You probably mean Asia? And really the only territory they could further advance into was Korea. But the division of Korea led to the Korean war which caused far more casualties than even the bombings. So even with this (rather unsatisfactory) argument it's not clear that the nuclear bombings were beneficial.

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In the condition Japan was at the time, they hardly had time even to evaluate the results of the first bomb.

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Not dropping the bomb on Tokyo was hardly done out of mercy but rather to have some to surrender Japan to them. Also, Tokyo was already leveled, so it wouldn't be very interesting as an experiment.

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German espionage in the US was non-existent, they had chased away most of their best scientists and as I said before, didn't have the ability to amass enough enriched Uranium. There are probably scenarios under which they could surmount  these difficulties but it's not as close as you make it out.

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I'm not saying that the Allies were better than the Axis. But by excusing the atomic bombings by saying that the Nazis would have used them as well you're making a very good argument for exactly that.

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This presumes that whoever invented would use and would use them in sufficient quantities to destroy the world. Both are subject to speculation. But even it were true, considering your country came closest to using them on several occasions, it's hardly something to be overly proud of.

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Yes, I understand that this was partly revenge for Pearl Harbor, but it kind of invalidates the claim that the US treated Japan nicely.
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...

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If you want to play that game. Remember though who was planing an attack on Cuba (Kennedy did decide against that eventually, but you probably hold against him) or who was doing his best to escalate the Cold War in the 80s.
Also, you might not know it but the Soviet Union was vastly outnumbered in deliverable nuclear weapons in the 60s, so the idea of them wanting a nuclear was is preposterous. And by the 80s it was only the US under pushing for means to carry out a nuclear war (for eg the Star Wars program).
And before insulting Stevenson, you might like upon who was US ambassador to the UN at the time.

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The supplies of course was very important, but it wasn't the supplies who destroyed most of the German troops. And most Soviet planes,  tanks and artillery was produced by the Soviet Union itself (they produced more tanks and artillery than the United States).
There is an enormous difference between celebrating the Great Purge and acknowledging the enormous role played by the Soviet Union in winning world war but I suppose you consider straw-man accusations an adequate substitute for arguments. And while Stalin was a monster he did kill less people in thirty years than Hitler in six, so he's hardly worse than him.

[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.

[GMantis]

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.

Hyperinflation ended in 1923, after which Hitler's support declined. It did not rise again until 1930 during the Great Depression. One would think you would check this out before making this post but if you were so concerned about accuracy you wouldn't be making all those laughable posts.

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As opposed to speaking English as a satellite state of the USA? Joking aside, it was Soviet troops who occupied Bulgaria during WWII and there is little indication that this wouldn't have happened without the US as well. And knowing a bit more about me than you do, that probably played a greater role in me existing.  We can be "thankful" to you for the US bombing of the country, though.
But I have to congratulate for your originality. This "argument" is usually used for occupied countries in the West, not for German allies in Eastern Europe (apart from anything else, Germany was not trying to Germanize its satellites).
If you feel that Bulgaria owes the US gratitude, try MacGahan or WWI. I'm certainly not ungrateful for that, but the whole "America saved you" routine is really absurd in this case.

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This is a forum about US elections (which have a substantial effect outside the US), not about  praising the greatness of the US is or how bad their enemies are. And one can be interested in US elections without having to swallow the kind of propaganda you're spreading (which actually made me respond).
Also, telling someone only what he wants to hear is generally far more harmful than pointing out what's wrong with them.

[bore]

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.

Have you actually looked at the number of Nazi seats in the reichstag? because if you had they spiked in 1930 at 107, while they were only at 12 (and in fact going down) in 1928. That doesn't suggest a party that became important due to the Ruhr crisis.

Similarly, don't bother with the american triumphalism, 90% of German losses were on the eastern front and by the time of d day, the war was already over. What america probably did do is limit the extent of soviet influence in post war europe, but to claim that without america the germans would have won is just wrong.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I ask this question sincerely, because I'm baffled that Romney still has any chance at winning this election and I feel like I'll go crazy if I don't get this off my chest. This isn't even a political thing, it's all about how Romney's been running his campaign and the sheer amount of missteps his campaign has been making for the last three months.

Throughout the primary, Romney made a series of stupid remarks in the debates that displayed poorly on his character, but even setting aside the primary, his general election campaign has been a series of campaign "reboots" and stupid decisions. Spending very little time campaigning versus fundraising, his ground game (in terms of GOTV effort and field offices) are dwarfed by the Obama campaign. He has had perhaps more gaffes than any major American Presidential candidate in recent political history. His campaign has dodged specificity on virtually every single issue to the point that even Fox News has been calling him out on it. (This is especially mind blowing to me, Romney has absolutely no specific policies he's been running on whatsoever, aside from wanting to cut all tax rates by 20%, but there's no explanation of how it's paid for beyond telling everyone that it's paid for.)

His response to the embassy crises was self-evidently craven and opportunistic; but even setting aside all of that he had nothing of substance to contribute to the issue even if you agree with Romney politically. His choice of Ryan for a running made was utterly terrible politics, as it gives a ton of ammunition to Democrats on sensitive policy issues and Ryan has been completely muzzled while being just as vague about his policy goals as Romney and establishing himself as a serial liar. The Republican convention was a mismanaged and sad state of affairs that did basically nothing to improve the standing of Republican candidates and was immediately forgotten. Romney is one of the most negatively personally viewed Presidential candidates since polling began on the subject. And on top of all of that and more, Romney literally insulted half of the American population by calling them lazy freeloaders in a video that was not only insane to say when you're running for office, but also factually wrong.

This has nothing to do with my own personal views of Romney or the Republican Party more broadly. This isn't a political attack informed by my own ideological opposition to him. It doesn't even have to do with the fact that Romney has been running what is perhaps the most cynical campaign ever, just openly saying different things to different people in the hope that he can fool moderate voters watching more mainstream news outlets, preparing "zingers" for the debates because he seems to acknowledge even to himself that he couldn't win a debate on his own terms or on the basis of his policies and wants to trick the media by falling for it's tendency to obsessively play one-liners on a loop, or far more of his ads (such as the semi-racist "taking work out of welfare" commercial) haven't just been misleading, they've been completely fictitious and the reaction to that fact from the campaign was just "yeah, we basically don't care if what we say is true or not." This is about his campaign being filled with insane and insulting missteps that, were they all done by Obama, he'd been running in the low 40s in national polls right now.

I get that the economy isn't perfect and that it's not raining twenty-dollar bills and the rivers haven't turned into milk chocolate. I get that Obama is an incumbent President so there's naturally more settled opposition to him. I get that he's a black. But more and more I cannot understand why this man still remains competitive in most polls. A piece of cardboard with Romney's name on it would have as much or more policy specificity than Romney's entire campaign all without bluntly insulting half of the electorate.

So I ask this question and I ask it seriously: What more does a candidate have to do to lose an election? Short of looking straight into the camera at the debate tonight and saying "I hate all of you. Seriously, f**k off." I seriously cannot think of anything more that would ordinarily lose an election just on their own. It's as if the American public has become impervious to being negatively affected by Republican stupidity.

This is so true. That's what I've been thinking all along (and honestly, I was even surprised at Romney's lost ground in the past weeks: I thought his supporters were going to back him no matter what). I think we just have to conclude there is something fundamentally wrong with modern politics.

But still, the fact Obama is a clear favorite at this point proves there is some hope, and that when things get to far, a sufficient amount of people is able to wake up.

[k-onmmunist]

i want to see politico come back and respond to the brutal pwning he got in this thread.

that aside, it's important to recognize how little a lot of people follow politics other than going to the ballot box - even when george bush was at his least popular, there were always over 25% of people who approved of him, who thought he was just f[inks]ing awesome. most people in america, and in britain have a tribalistic mentality towards political parties even when those two parties are essentially two flavours of the same drink as they have been at least since the mid 70s.