So, now I'm going backward. I did 2016, 2020, and 2024, ya know, the modern era elections. But what about the last sane election before the crap hit the fan? Let's look at 2012.
Hour 1
First of all, yikes, 360p, cant tell if it's the uploader, or maybe they just still did only standard def up to this point. Not a huge deal, but eh, looks horrible on my TV.
Second of all, ok, the impression I get is that America is divided here. They're not happy with either candidate. They seem to prefer Obama, but there is talk of whether Romney had a shot. Honestly? I never felt he did. My election prediction at the time had a decisive Obama win, not by 2008 margins, but still confident enough to project the winner. I know in hour 1, they discussed the map Romney and Obama would have to navigate to win, but rather discuss their stuff, I'm gonna do my own mini analysis real quick, as I made a map up in sheets in the past to discuss it.
First of all, this is not the ACTUAL prediction I made in 2012, but it's close. At the time, I used a combination of RCP polling AND looking at past trends, and all in all, I remember getting Virginia wrong, I think I got everything else right, so that means that I predicted Florida would go Obama, but Virginia to Romney. The logic was that Florida was more a bellweather that seems to vote to the left of Virginia, and I knew prior to 2008, VA was quite conservative, voting pretty consistently republican from the 1960s up to the 2000s. Of course VA was shifting left, and is now a soft blue state. It CAN go red in a very red year, I mean, Biden mightve lost it had he stayed in in 2024, but yeah, it was a tossup here.
Anyway, the video discussed the path to victory for both parties, so let's discuss it. First, Obama has the advantage. We see a quite blue rust belt here, as well as a lot of other states that were swingy at the time. THis map projects a 303-235 victory with Obama, with a 76% shot at him winning. Again, I felt quite confident in an Obama win at the time. it was closer than I remembered at the time, but yeah, we can see it's quite an advantage, this was 2008 part 2.
So let's discuss it from Romney's perspective, how does Obama win? Well, 134 electoral votes are safe safe, and then there's Missouri, Georgia, Indiana, Arizona, and South Carolina which are pretty solidly in his column. Indiana did go for Obama in 2008, but that was surprising. And of course, AZ and GA were never going to go blue. This is why in 2016 I was like wtf is clinton thinking ignoring the rust belt to win those states? but again, that's centrism on the brain. Gotta expand into the sun belt, even though it's not electorally viable yet. And yeah we got the rust belt anyway so F those guys, I wanna win over Romney voters. You mean, the voters we didn't fricking need this election? But I digress.
So, North Carolina is next, Obama won it in 2007, but it's a fundamentally red leaning state at this time. Obama had an apocalyptic blue wave in 2008 so yeah, normally? It's red. Florida, one of the big bellweathers. Romney needs this to win. He's expected to win it. It only went as red as it did under trump. It was still swingy here. Virginia, another swing state at the time, before Obama, it was pretty conservative, after Obama, it's become quite reliably blue due to suburbanization around DC. Colorado, similar story, used to be swing before Obama, but suburbanization around Denver has made it reliably blue in the years since. This is btw why the democrats are so interested in NC/GA/AZ/TX, they sense similar trends going on there, although those werent expected to go reliably blue until like the 2030s or something. Clinton was early with it, and demographic shifts would eventually bring those voters to us, we wouldnt need to go to them, as long as we keep THIS MAP or a variation of it, we dont need those kinds of states much. VA and CO are welcome, but again, the sun belt was pretty reliably red until 2020 and I still kinda consider it tilt/lean R.
New Hampshire, always a weird swingy state that leans blue. it's like new england, but also kinda rural, with a libertarian streak. Even now in 2026 it's D+3 or so, so technically in play, but no one is paying close attention there.
Beyond that, you get into the rust belt. Yes, we used to win Iowa. It's pretty deep red now, but Obama won it twice. Ohio used to be the bellweather of the country, and the news coverage I'm watching for this one really pushed Ohio as the bellweather deciding state. It's basically what Pennsylvania is now. Like....as goes Ohio, so goes the nation. It wasn't JD vance land. And yeah, Nevada, another swing state. My model has it where Nevada is the real deciding state, but to be fair if Romney could flip Ohio, and Obama keeps Iowa, he could win. Alternatively, Obama can keep Ohio but lose Nevada and Romney can win. So it's not quite the bellweather, but if we get a R+3ish overperformance for Romney, and the election actually IS close, well...yeah. That's what it would take for him to win. He'd need to take every state he needs to win, and then VA, CO, NH, IA, and either NV or OH. Again, it would take a 3 point overperformance to do it, possible, but yeah, Obama was clearly the favorite.
Beyond that, you get the blue wall. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. States that Trump was able to flip minus MN, which ALMOST flipped to trump in 2016. Again, the map was different back then, if you controlled the rust belt, you won the election, and the democrats were able to control the rust belt back then. To go back to the narrative, it's not because people in the rust belt trust the democrats, but they sure AF didnt want republican. Why? because trickle down economics doesnt work. 2008 and 2012 were Great recession elections, with jobs at the forefront of peoples' minds. And republicans wanted to cut social services to give money to rich people to create jobs, while said rich people were making record profits. So we were expected to give the rich even MORE money, more money than they've ever had, to create the jobs we had before 2008. Make sense? yeah, it doesnt to me either. Actually how I got to where I am now politically. Not that everyone is on the same page as me. But we can see the beginnings of how 2016 started. The great recession crushed peoples' faith in Reaganism, and that led to a 36 year realignment in 2016. It was either gonna be Trumpism or Sanders' politics, and because the dems rejected sanders, we got Trump.
Anyway, that's the map. I just wanted to lay that down since the 2012 map is quite foreign to us now, although we can kinda see how we got from 2012 to where we are now. Rust belt moved right to trump eroding the democrats' electoral advantage of this era, whereas states undergoing heavy suburbanization are turning blue. That's the summary of the past 14 years or so map wise.
As far as other hour 1 stuff....so many bad takes. Acting like Ohio was part of the democrats' firewall, which I guess it was at the time, but that didn't age well. Romney's campaign was out of touch, ignoring polls, trying to argue this was like 2004 again when no....it's not. The republicans were so out of touch and delusional in this campaign. It was astounding. Anyway, that's how things seemed to open.
Hour 2
A lot of discussions about demographics, and how the republican coalition is aging out, while younger populations are more diverse, leading to a demographic collapse in the GOP. This was common logic at the time, but it's also why Trump took off. Like, it wasn't just economics. Trump also tapped into a lot of white anxiety from the conservative types who fear becoming a minority in their own nation, and yeah, that's why they've become so violent and...well...fascist. They fear demographic change and they're trying to fight to preserve their preferred demographics. As I said, a lot of these guys want a world where only they can vote, and they actually are like "yeah, we shouldn't have everyone voting". They literally wanna mass disenfranchise minorities, women, and left winger so they continue to win majorities. This is something we've had to deal with in the years since. And Trumpism is still a last gasp of that conservative minority. it's kinda like when a DBZ villain loses so they try to nuke the planet. But I digress.
Most attention seems to be given to Florida and Virginia at this point. It makes sense, that's where the front lines are. As you can tell by my map, those are the most swingy states. If Obama can carry them, it's over, Romney NEEDS them to win. If Romney carries them, well, then things are probably gonna shift to like Ohio and the like. And of course, right now it's too early.
There's talk about how the democrats seem to have two conflicting coalitions. Working class whites, and suburbanites. Yeah, this is a big flashpoint for future elections. Obama was able to carry both, but as we know, at the time, the working class whites and the rust belt was more essential. The suburbanites were a nice bonus but we didn't NEED colorado, or virginia, or the sun belt. We just needed the rust belt. Again, what the democrats did was monumentally stupid in 2016 and beyond. Abandoning their bread and butter for centrists? Yeah. Pure ideological brain rot. Maybe it makes a little more sense now. Again, rust belt is becoming less important as population decline reduces its margins and the sun belt grows and becomes more purple, but even now, the rust belt a la WI/MI/PA are still more important the GA/NC/AZ/TX. Again, if we can win them, they're nice bonuses, but yeah. It's not really quite ESSENTIAL ESSENTIAL to win those states until after 2030. And even then, if we were able to keep Ohio and Iowa, I still think that the democrats could've held on up there, given VA and CO seem to be shifting left anyway. Again, I dont think we need to go to the sun belt, I believe the sun belt will eventually come to us. And as I see it, GA is likely going to become the next VA. NC and AZ might eventually follow. TX might eventually follow. But as we saw in 2024, nothing is set in stone. Right now the dems seem to be pursuing both lanes...and losing both lanes. It's monumentally dumb. We were so much better off electorally pre Trump, it's ridiculous. The dems dropped the ball HARD.
Speaking of the rust belt, PA and MI got called pretty early in 2012. Like, Obama had them locked down. And it was like "yeah, Romney's message of wanting to cut government services didn't resonate." Yeah, no crap. Again, look at my map. We had the rust belt LOCKED DOWN, and as long as we did, the republicans wouldnt win. They could take florida, they could take virginia and colorado, we'd still have 281 electoral votes at the time. The suburbs were a nice bonus. We didn't need them. The centrist fixation on them in 2016 was our undoing. It kinda felt like the prophets trading the elites for the brutes to make a halo reference. Like, why sell out some of your more loyal coalition for this new faction? Why treat them like royalty and us like crap? Well...again, that's what screwed the dems so bad. Losing the white working class breathed new life into that dying republican party. Stupid. So stupid. Again I know Im ranting, I keep coming back to this. But yeah. It's something that pisses me off royally, as a rust belt guy from PA who was displaced from the dem coalition to some degree myself.
Hour 3
So, like with my of the more recent races, in hour 3, the race narrows. Obama starts winning states Romney needs to win, and it seems clear that the campaign is playing out like the Obama camp predicted, not the Romney camp. While in 2016, 2020, and 2024 this might be somewhat of a surprise given the close races or even advantages that the democrats had in 2020 in particular, in 2012, it's like "yeah, no crap." Honestly, the Romney campaign came off as delusional. They were trying to play this like 2004 for some reason and the map changed. This would be like me trying to run a modern campaign on the 2012 map. Like, that crap aint viable any more given we've lost Ohio, Iowa, and Florida, and now we gotta campaign in Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona instead (I might make a separate article on this). The map changes over time. Every presidency has been a bit of a mini realignment. Reagan swept the country, Clinton reestablished the coasts and much of the south. Bush took back the south, shifting the focus to the midwest. Obama dominated the midwest, making the map look like a generational lockout for republicans. Trump broke into the midwest while the democrats started breaking into the urbanizing south. The next guy in 2028 might shift the map further. Romney was running a Bush era campaign, when the Bush era died when Obama win in 2008. Even then, the Bush maps werent exactly healthy for republicans. They BARELY won. 2000 was even more controversial than 2016, and 2004 had wider margins, but yeah, again, the recession and entrance of millennials into politics kind of killed that era of politics. Again, the Romney campaign was delusional.
Still, the coalition of the ascendant rhetoric being pushed here hasnt aged well. The republicans didnt quite get choked out of the electoral college, mainly because Clinton herself choked in 2016. She took an easily winnable situation and due to sheer hubris threw away that Obama era map, because she wanted to win the sun belt 20 years early. It was monumentally stupid, and I'll discuss this in detail in the second article I'm thinking of writing. While much of the trump realignment was due to economic anxiety, a lot of it (among conservatives themselves) was due to demographic anxiety and them fighting like a cornered animal. Like, they knew they were in trouble, so they decided to do something about it, which is how we got this terrifying fascist turn. And it really goes to show, the republicans will fight to the last breath for their ideals, while the democrats dont seem to have any, at least none with mentioning. It's a really depressing fact of modern politics. I truly believe if we took a different path in 2016, the world would be so different now. But I digress.
Hour 4
Early on in hour 4, Obama won Ohio, and thus the election. I remember at the time on Fox News, Karl Rove had a melt down over that call, but yeah ABC made no mention of drama, focusing only on their coverage. And I'm not gonna lie, their coverage is very dry and relatively objective, but sometimes too much so. I appreciate trying to give both sides their air time, but the republican party was just so delusional this election, and this grand theory Romney and the republicans had ended up imploding. Because it literally ignored reality. And while it was easy to dunk on the republicans in 2012 for this kind of delusion, quite frankly, it reminds me of the Biden 2024 people who went all in with the theory of Allen Lichtman's keys even though the polling data was wrong. But the polling data was right. That's a lesson I've learned from observing multiple campaigns, dont ignore polling. Im not saying there can't be error involved, and I guess if youre on the losing side, you kinda gotta delude yourself a little to keep morale up and stay motivated, but holy crap the GOP was delusional here. Obama was gonna win, he was always gonna win, I'm actually surprised in retrospect it was as close as it was, as it seemed the republican coalition was still quite robust, he only lost by a few points, this wasn't like a 1936 or 1984 style loss, but let's face it, it was a romp, and the polling was darned near dead on.
There was talk about the future of the republicans after this. The talking heads pointed out there's no leader of the republicans now and that this is gonna create a vacuum for 2016. And we all know what happened next. Funnily enough, they seemed to be touting Marco Rubio as the leader of the republicans in 2016, while he was a player, he lost. Still, we clearly havent heard the end of him and him and Vance are looking to be the successors of the Trump movement in 2028. In that one, I would have to cheer on Rubio as he's more establishment, sane, and not quite fascist. He's working for Trump, I dont think he's happy there, he's just tolerating it, hoping it will elevate his future political career, but yeah. In the future republican party civil war of who succeeds trump, I'd rather see Rubio than Vance. Of course, knowing the republicans, they'll either choose vance or go full young republicans group chat at this rate. I have no faith in them whatsoever. Whatever can get worse DOES get worse.
There was also talk of the democrats and Obama, and how this might end up being bad for the democrats as they have nowhere to go. Often times, second terms go worse than the first, and while Obama's second term wasn't bad, he certainly didnt accomplish anything, given the stuff republican opposition he faced, and he was a lame duck. And this is what gave rise to Sanders style populism. People want democrats to DO THINGS, not to just sit there making excuses about why they cant and virtue signalling compromise and incrementalism. Clinton tried to run as an Obama third term no one wanted, and got trounced because of it.
Speaking of which, why did Obama win? There was talk of Bain capital (a financial firm Romney was in charge of at the time), the 47% comments, you saw union people not liking he was for right to work, you saw people who wanted universal healthcare. But it seemed like the media here was just ho hum on it. They even seemed to be encouraging clinton to run in 2016, saying she's not too old for the job. Really, I know I'm biased, but I kinda dislike the enlightened centrism of ABC sometimes. It makes them more dry and "objective" i guess, but sometimes that just leads to giving credibility to narratives that dont deserve it.
Conclusion
There was like another 1.5 hours including Romney and Obama's speeches, but I kinda saw what I want to see and I want to wrap it up. Basically, this was a romp. Obama came in like a wrecking ball and cleaned the republicans' clocks. And while the coverage was drier and more nonpartisan than I would be, yeah, republicans were delusional on this one. Romney was trying to run on a political map that no longer existed, and he just couldnt pull it off. While the news leaned into coalition of the ascendant more than the economics, and if anything giving romney credit for his economics (his economics were a joke tbqh), yeah....he had a terrible campaign strategy IMO. I really wish people would stop glazing this guy. Just because he's moderate in the current political environment doesnt mean he was a good candidate. Honestly, this is how us normies saw him at the time.
Either way, yeah, one thing I want to visit separately, to avoid making the same mistake he did, is designing a political strategy for the modern era. It's clear the 2012 electoral map is done. And sadly, a lot of my political knowledge is based off of that thing. I'm a rust belt guy, I believe we should pander to the rust belt, and as you guys can tell I got REALLY strong views on that. But...the map is different, and the strategy might be different too. So I wanna look at whether a rust belt strategy will be viable in the 2030s.
No comments:
Post a Comment