Terrifying election thoughts

[raptorck]

- Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida were thought to be key states for Obama.  If he won any one of them, he'd have the election in the bag.  As usual, this makes me question the effectiveness of the popular vote beyond the occasional spoiler or justification for third-party funding

Comments

[picard42]

Just to play devil's advocate, it's not like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida's electoral votes count more than the others. They just happen to have populations that are more evenly proportioned than most states. Any state can become a swing state. If Texas and California traded half of their populations, they'd be HUGE swing states. Those three states just happen to be those with the path of least resistance in flipping.

To use a strained analogy, it's like when someone gets the winning run in a baseball game because someone made an error at the last minute. It's no more that guy's fault than it is the rest of the team's for not getting more runs during the rest of the game.

Also, I'll second that WTF on Prop 8. That's insane. What happens to all of the people already married? Are they grandfathered in, at least?

And PLEASE don't let anyone assassinate Obama. The last thing we need is that windbag Biden as our president. You thought the rest of the world hated us before? Wait until Biden tells the president of Germany she's ugly and flips off the premier of China.

[raptorck]

While you're correct, the omission here is that CNN and others were completely marginalizing the *other* swing states, and that Obama had more appeal (or less apathy) to centrists in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. It's not that the big three are swing states, it's that the media painted them as the *only* swing states.

As for Prop 8, all I know is that the odds are good that George Takei is about to move to Massachusetts. I'll also do all I can to keep people from assassinating Obama, but I'm pretty sure that's going to be a job best performed by the Secret Service.

(Now, mind you, the German president is pretty ugly, for a woman, and we've all clearly established my Fuck China policy.)