Why Obama won

[Dieter]

When Pilgrims arrived there were no welfare of Medicare or Social Security and they had to rely on themselves. For decades after that people came to America in search of freedom and ability to build better life for themselves and their children. But nowadays there is a growing group of population that want to be freeloaders and let someone else to work hard. 

Um, if I remember the stories correctly, without training and some handouts from the locals, as well as their own hard work, the pilgrims wouldn't have survived. And who needs HUD with cheap/free land and construction materials....

[RuralEngineer]

MT hit it on the head, you can't throw a rock without hitting somebody suckling on the Government teat these days. Rich, poor, or otherwise. To be fair though, I don't know a single conservative that supported the bailouts personally. The Tea Party started in large part due to the bailouts/stimulus and was then highjacked by the social conservatives.

To PS,

I can hate government intrusion when it's not warranted and still respect the rule of law.  Without a government database, employment verification is impossible. If turning a blind eye to illegal immigration and doing nothing "intrusive" to stop it is what it takes for Hispanics to feel wanted, the GOP can kiss their vote goodbye permanently.  I could be wrong, but I give it a snowball's chance in hell.

[Storm]

There seems to be a standard narrative, on Fox News especially, that people are simply voting for more handouts.  Yet, as so many people in this thread have mentioned, Asians and Hispanics don't need handouts.  They are voting for other reasons, like the DREAM act, etc.

Here is the number that should frighten the GOP more than any other number: 50,000.  That's the number of Hispanic US Citizens turning 18 every day.  Every single day, 50,000 more voters.

So, 2012 might have been embarrassing, but 2016 could be a landslide if the GOP doesn't fundamentally change their platform.

And, to answer RuralEngineer, no you don't need to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration.  Nobody is saying that.  You do need to change your rhetoric and stop talking about self deportation, forced deportation, or deportation at all.  You have to come up with a common sense plan that recognizes that there are millions of people here illegally already and you're not going to be able to round them all up.  So, you have to give them a path to citizenship.  It's as simple as that.

Do your best to keep new illegal immigrants out, but let the ones that are here and working become citizens.  That way they integrate with society, pay taxes, own property, and are a net positive effect to the economy and society as a whole.

It's like so many things - make it illegal and black markets are created.  Labor markets that are untaxed, etc.

[MediumTex]

Here is the number that should frighten the GOP more than any other number: 50,000.  That's the number of Hispanic US Citizens turning 18 every day.  Every single day, 50,000 more voters.

So, 2012 might have been embarrassing, but 2016 could be a landslide if the GOP doesn't fundamentally change their platform.

The Republicans have some tools in the toolbox.

George P. Bush may ride to the rescue.  He will be 40 in 2016.



Marco Rubio will be 45.

[moda0306]

The things is, once you get past the social stuff, you're still with fiscal policy that's somewhere between nebulous and downright disasterous for the supply/demand equilibrium in this country.  I don't think I need to retread the nebulous side, as Romney did plenty of that trying to dance around whether or not he'd cut taxes or spending.  The other end of the spectrum is a kind of Laffer-Austerity, where somehow in a demand-side recession, spending has a negative multiplier, but the multiplier on tax cuts is amazing (in fact, when in a period of inadequate demand, the opposite is probably closer to the truth).  In terms of the electorate, I suppose this might poll pretty well, so maybe I'm wrong that people will see through this and see something just as undesirable as their Social banter.

[Pointedstick]

I can hate government intrusion when it's not warranted and still respect the rule of law.  Without a government database, employment verification is impossible. If turning a blind eye to illegal immigration and doing nothing "intrusive" to stop it is what it takes for Hispanics to feel wanted, the GOP can kiss their vote goodbye permanently.  I could be wrong, but I give it a snowball's chance in hell.

Is "the rule of law" a code for "abandoning our limited government principles whenever we find a use for government power that we like?" How does a policy of forcing employers to participate in a massive federal identity database in order to prevent ilegal immigrants who are already in the country from finding gainful employment make any sense at all to anyone? I think such a system would indeed turn off Hispanics, but frankly it turns me off too, and it should turn off any Republican who's serious about their small-government rhetoric. Mandatory government identity databases are scary things. This is an argument Republicans themselves skillfully make when it comes to gun control, and this should be no different.

[foglifter]

Amen to that. When Pilgrims arrived there were no welfare of Medicare or Social Security and they had to rely on themselves. For decades after that people came to America in search of freedom and ability to build better life for themselves and their children. But nowadays there is a growing group of population that want to be freeloaders and let someone else to work hard. 

How do either of you explain the fact that Asians voted for Obama by 73-26 margin?

That's actually what puzzles me. Now, Asians are quite a diverse group - Indians are quite different from say Chinese or Vietnamese or Filipino in terms of economic background, culture, religion etc. It might be too easy (and wrong) to apply a stamp of voting for a non-white President here, although this silly reason cannot be dismissed altogether. Most Chinese and Indians I know are well-educated and earn enough to put them into "53%", although there are multitudes who work blue-collar jobs in the unionized service industry (auto repair being the biggest). Filipino and Vietnamese are strongly represented in health care industry, mostly nurses and dentists.

I can't answer this question easily because most of Asians I know share my values and voted against Obama. I think I should ask them, perhaps they can explain why large groups of their compatriots chose Obama. 

[moda0306]

25% of people in 2011 didn't think Obama was American.  Another 18% "weren't sure."

17% of voters think he's a muslim

Though I don't think using terms like "too many old white men" is anywhere near appropriate (not that I think that term is used all that often), there is definitely an attitude in a very large chunk of the country that's got attitudes that shouldn't be completely ignored.  I'd be willing to bet that as a percentage of the white population, there were just as many people who hated Obama for no good reason as there were people in the black community who "hated Romney."  I really don't see that many more unreasonable people in either community worth getting in a fuss over to try to point out differences. 

Oh, and old white people didn't simply build America... they built a life for themselves within the systems that existed around them.  African Americans had a hand as well.  I wonder how many mountains of wealth wouldn't have been able to created w/o actual and de facto slavery in the South.  On land taken from natives... and with a lot of Chinese building railroads.  It's a bit of a stretch to credit some "old white guy" who worked hard for his own gain for "building" a country that was built on 1/3 hard work, 1/3 skill, and 1/3 outright theft, slavery, and coercion with little/no reparation, to the very people you're trying to identify as the moochers.

[Pointedstick]

Hispanics are socially conservative. I don't think the GOP should just write off. Now, blacks are socially conservative too, but they're permanently with the Democrats because Republicans opposed civil rights, their litmus test issue. Who knows what might have happened had the Republicans stood on the right side of history there? I can see the same thing happening with Hispanics, whose own litmus test issue of immigration is steadily pushing them towards the Democrats. The GOP would do well to remember how they lost the black vote, and comprehend how long that cultural memory has lasted. Hispanics don't have to vote with the Democrats close to 100% of the time, but right now the Republicans seem to be doing their danrdest to make that happen.

[Pointedstick]

When I say they are "socially conservative", I don't mean "vote for Republicans." By that standard, one should conclude that black people are socially liberal! I say I say that Hispanics are socially conservative because as a culture, they have many traits that traditionally mark conservative people, such as religiosity, distaste for abortion and homosexuality, a well-developed work ethic, and a focus on families, having large numbers of children, and retaining inter-generational ties. These are by and large declining traits elsewhere, especially religiosity, distaste for homosexuality, and large families.

[melveyr]

I for one am asian and haven't built a railroad in my life.

So give it up.  Just accept the fact that people live in concentrations throughout America and that guess what, most people vote by regional proclivity and not by racial demographics.  Your black neighbor living next door is more likely to vote the same as you than she is to her ghetto compatriots of the same skin tone across the nation.

God, I hate statistics sometimes.  You can use it to fake a relationship or causality where there is none.

Yeah the racial splicing and dicing is getting really old. Maybe its because I am younger, but the medias focus on it really disgusts me.

[Pointedstick]

Why then should gay groups continue to support an immigration policy that imports people who are hostile to their interests?

That's a great question to ask the Democrats! The GOP isn't the only party with issues like that. The Democrats have built up a coalition of people whose interests are often opposed (unionized gov't workers, college-educated young white-collar workers, unionized blue-collar workers, environmentalists, gays, single mothers, Hispanics, Blacks, Asians). This uneasy tension will continue to pull them in weird directions, but it is very good at winning elections!

As for illegitimacy, you're right, but whites aren't far behind, and the trend isn't all that encouraging:

[img]http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/familyfacts/charts-web/205-FF-chart.jpg[/img]

[moda0306]

Craig,

I totally agree with you that the Republicans trying to appeal to minorities by just a few changes in verbage aren't going to do much for their numbers... they'll just lose to tea-party candidates in the Primaries instead. 

I realize other countries have or had slavery.  However, I wasn't the one trying to give credit to the economic status of our country to old white men (kudos on the mag cover, though I think it was very tongue in cheek).  Our country, like many others, involved certain classes of people completely plundering the personal and emotional wealth of millions of "lesser" people.  It's been happening for centuries all over the world.  I'm not going on some melodramatic tyrade or ask for apologies so much as trying to paint the reality of where we are today with the clearest brush possible.

Slotine,

I was simply showing that the US was built on the labor of a lot of people besides angry, old white men.  I wasn't drawing any other conclusion about races.  Craig was trying to paint what I believed to be an inaccurate demographic commentary.  I really don't think many Asians today build railroads, blacks pick cotton, nor do native Americans ride around on horses shooting arrows.  I was stating what hand non-whites had in this country being what it is today.

So please inform me what it is I should "give up."

[moda0306]

Gay groups probably tend to support immigration policy that treats people like human beings, not invasive species of fish.

[Xan]

There was a caller on the Limbaugh show today who immigrated from Mexico some 25 years ago.  He said that the people who come across illegally are typically at the bottom of Mexican society, and they've been conditioned to believe that all wealth is generated and distributed by the government.  So...  They vote for whoever gives them the most stuff.

We've been down this amnesty road before.  In the '80s, a one-time amnesty was granted, in exchange for shoring up border security for sure.  This was to solve the problem.  If we keep going back to this well and granting amnesty all the time, then we may as well just have completely open borders.  You can't have open borders and a welfare state.  It simply does not work.  You have to pick one (at most).

[Xan]

I say I say that Hispanics are socially conservative because as a culture...

Foghorn Leghorn, is that you??  :-)

[Pointedstick]

[Storm]

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:

In light of your immediate failure to financially manage yourselves and also in recent years your tendency to elect incompetent Presidents of the USA and therefore not able to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up ‘revocation’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour,’ ‘favour,’ ‘labour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘-ise.’Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’).

2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ”?like’ and ‘you know’ is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter ‘u' and the elimination of ‘-ize.’

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can’t sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you’re not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.)

8.You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. New Zealand beer is also acceptable, as New Zealand is pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth – see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

God Save the Queen.

[foglifter]

Storm, you forgot to include the second part of the proclamation:

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys.  Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters.  Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football.  There are only two kinds of proper football; one you call soccer, and rugby (dominated by the New Zealanders).  Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball.  It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America.  Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.  You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians (World dominators) first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK.  It’s been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream)  when in season.
God Save the Queen!

PS:  Only share this with friends who have a good sense of humour (NOT humor)!

PPS: With a spot of luck, she might also decide to recolonise Africa!

PPPS: We will install the NHS as the single payer Health Provider. All you medical facilities belong to the crown (Look Up Eminent Domain), and all your Doctors, Nurses and others are now state employees.

[MachineGhost]

Maybe the best outcome is for the GOP to become the splinter group that gets kicked out of the debates, and the Libertarians to become the 2nd major party.  That would be great.

Ohhhhhh!  2016 here we come!

[RuralEngineer]

And, to answer RuralEngineer, no you don't need to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration.  Nobody is saying that.  You do need to change your rhetoric and stop talking about self deportation, forced deportation, or deportation at all.  You have to come up with a common sense plan that recognizes that there are millions of people here illegally already and you're not going to be able to round them all up.  So, you have to give them a path to citizenship.  It's as simple as that.

Do your best to keep new illegal immigrants out, but let the ones that are here and working become citizens.  That way they integrate with society, pay taxes, own property, and are a net positive effect to the economy and society as a whole.

It's like so many things - make it illegal and black markets are created.  Labor markets that are untaxed, etc.

It's not my rhetoric, I'm not a Republican.  I agree with all of your points.  However, many people are saying EXACTLY that we should turn a blind eye to illegal immigration by only fixing the symptom and not the cause of the issue.  As for the Republican's changing their tune, I think there is a segment of the party that have a racial motivation for wanting all the illegals currently here deported, regardless of how difficult and disruptive that would be.

I fully support a path to citizenship for all illegals currently in the country (excluding anyone with a criminal record) similar to what Obama proposed.  However, fixing today's problem does nothing to solve tomorrow's.  That's why I want to turn off all the magnets that draw people to this country illegally.  If they don't have access to social programs or jobs without having gone through our system (which needs MAJOR overhaul), then they'll stop coming. 

The "compromise" made in the 80's of amnesty for increased border security was stupid.  Short of a militarized border like the one between North/South Korea, nothing is going to keep sufficiently motivated people out.  You have to remove their motivation for breaking the law.  It's simple and it works.  People won't engage in risky behavior without a chance to profit.

[RuralEngineer]

Is "the rule of law" a code for "abandoning our limited government principles whenever we find a use for government power that we like?" How does a policy of forcing employers to participate in a massive federal identity database in order to prevent ilegal immigrants who are already in the country from finding gainful employment make any sense at all to anyone? I think such a system would indeed turn off Hispanics, but frankly it turns me off too, and it should turn off any Republican who's serious about their small-government rhetoric. Mandatory government identity databases are scary things. This is an argument Republicans themselves skillfully make when it comes to gun control, and this should be no different.

I'm not an Anarchist.  I'm for limited government, much like the Constitution tried to establish before it was "interpreted" to death.  The ability and responsibility to control immigration is a requirement for any sovereign nation.

I think you're missing the point of my suggestion.  It isn't to target the people here today.  We have to implement E-Verify to make sure that after we grant amnesty to the illegals already here, that we don't have to grant amnesty again every 10 years.  Anything short of that is simply an expensive open-borders policy.  I really don't understand your objection.  Particularly considering that we require social security numbers in order to gain employment in this country.  Illegals practicing identity theft to gain employment has grown enormously in recent years, which is devastating to the legal victims.

I'd appreciate it if you could explain a bit more why exactly you think a federal database that only keeps track of people's legal status is dangerous.  For one thing, there's no way to get rid of it.  It's called social security numbers, and every legal citizen is already in a database and has been for a very long time.  We require such databases to establish who is eligible for certain benefits, or who can vote.  Expanding this to include legal immigrants and then using it to filter out future law breakers doesn't strike me as particularly dangerous.

Gun control is considerably different.  For one thing, the right to bear arms is one of the most explicitly protected freedoms in the Constitution.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The case against a database of gun owners is much stronger since such lists have been used to target gun owners for confiscation or worse.  There is a historical case against a database of gun registration and ownership, I'm not aware of such a case for a citizenship and legal status database.

[Pointedstick]

RuralEngineer, I'm against mandatory E-Verify on the general grounds that government databases of citizens are dangerous. To my knowledge, no government has ever kept lists of its citizens' whereabouts, assets, property, or status for a reason that turned out to benefit the people on the list. If you're active in the gun rights movement, you may have heard of Joe Huffman's "Jews in the attic test." In my mind, E-Verify doesn't pass it. Now, lots of other extant laws don't either, but I don't see that as any reason to add to what I see as the problem. E-Verify is not dramatically more awful than anything else, but in my mind it represents a step in the wrong direction--that of attempting to correct government-created problems with more government intrusion. This seems backwards, and it rankles the engineer in me who wants to correct the original issue rather than potentially creating a new one in attempting to address its side effects.

I agree with you that our generous welfare programs, free primary education, and free emergency room treatment are some of the things that draw illegal immigrants. As a compromise, if it's impossible to abolish these programs, I would be willing to meet E-Verify supporters halfway and say that use of these free services could be conditionalized on citizenship. But I view the right to work as a right that should not be abrogated. By contrast, there is no right to free government programs.

[RuralEngineer]

PS,

We might agree on this more than we disagree.  My problem is that I try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  To my knowledge the E-verify database doesn't track (or shouldn't if it does) assets or whereabouts, just status.  I 100% agree that anything tracking our location or assets is to be avoided and dangerous.  The problem is whatever you want to call it, there's already a database tracking our status as citizens because of social security numbers.

I'm with you on the social programs, I want them abolished but limiting them to individuals with legal status is a huge step forward.  However, how do you suggest we go about limiting these services to legal residents without a database containing that information?  I'm 100% open to other ideas which I will then shamelessly steal and propagate.

However, while the social programs and undoubtedly a large draw, I believe that the #1 magnet for illegal immigration is jobs.  Unless we find a way to limit employment to legal residents we'll never solve this issue.  A robust guest worker program should allow us to make sure that the businesses that rely on labor currently provided by illegal immigrants don't suffer.

[MachineGhost]

Honestly, this narrative of moochers voting themselves other peoples' money points uncomfortably toward the elderly, who are squarely in the Republican camp nowadays! 

Plus there are no federal benefits available to illegal aliens.  If a state decides to extend certain welfare benefits to illegal aliens, that is the state's choice.  So the backlash against open borders is just latent bigotry and racism.  With the poor economy of recent years, there hasn't beeen a "massive immigration of millions of illegal aliens"; if anything, they've slowed to a trickle.  So it wasn't about "welfare magnets".

If Republicans really wanted to do something about the so-called problem, they would strongly pressure Mexico to reform economically and institutionally instead of using it as an excuse to pump up their neo-KKK ideaology.