#2012 elections

Remember when general election debates were mature and professional?

Paige Skinner at HuffPost:

Former President Donald Trump told people attending a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Florida on Saturday that 40% of Americans will automatically vote Democrat because they are on welfare, echoing a remark Mitt Romney made when he ran for president in 2012. “When you are Democrat, you start off essentially at 40% because you have civil service, you have the unions and you have welfare,” Trump said at the retreat, according to The New York Times. “And don’t underestimate welfare. They get welfare to vote, and then they cheat on top of that — they cheat.”

Trump’s comments are similar to something Romney was caught on tape telling wealthy donors at a private fundraiser in 2012. The then-Republican presidential nominee said that because 47% of Americans don’t pay income tax, they would automatically vote for then-Democratic President Barack Obama. “There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney said at the time in a video obtained by Mother Jones. “All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it — that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax.”

Donald Trump took a page out of Mitt Romney's infamous "47%" comments and his plutocratic playbook by baselessly implying that welfare recipients are part of the 40% that automatically vote Democratic and cheat, along with unions and the civil service.

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Right-wing media figures are displaying irrational levels of confidence in Donald Trump’s chances of winning the presidential election. While poll aggregators and models suggest the race is a toss-up, MAGA pundits are deluging their supporters with the message that Trump’s victory is inevitable.  Whether or not this is a deliberate strategy, the result is that right-wing audiences — which generally trust information only when it comes from right-wing sources — are not being prepared for the possibility of Trump’s defeat. That makes it more likely that they will disbelieve such an outcome and rally to a Trumpian effort to overturn it.  [...]

Right-wing commentators aren't preparing their audiences for the possibility of defeat

Polls currently show a tight race for president that could go either way. “In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast,” Nate Silver wrote in an October 23 op-ed. “Since the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, that is more or less exactly where my model has had it.” But it often seems that the U.S. commentariat has sorted itself such that the nation’s most hubristic optimists are all supporting the GOP while its most anxious pessimists are loyal Democrats. The result is that right-wing pundits spend every election cycle predicting victory, while left-wing pundits worry over the prospect of defeat. This election is no different. In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, right-wing media figures embraced poll trutherism and told their audiences that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was going to defeat then-President Barack Obama in a “landslide.” The right was so primed for victory that Fox political analyst Karl Rove, who had predicted a sizable Romney win, ended up arguing with his own network’s decision desk over the state of the race as results rolled in on election night showing Obama had been reelected.

Trump epitomizes the right’s irrational confidence — but with the added twist that only fraud could explain any Republican defeat. 

“We should have a revolution in this country!" he tweeted on election night 2012, calling the results “a total sham and a travesty.”  After eking out a narrow electoral vote victory in 2016, he falsely claimed that he had lost the popular vote only due to “millions of people who voted illegally.” And he asserts to this day that he won the 2020 election but it was robbed from him by fraud, a lie that has permeated his party.  The 2022 midterms brought more predictions of an impending “red wave” of Republican victories. Tucker Carlson, for example, told Fox viewers in the leadup to Election Day that only fraud could explain Democratic victories in races like the Pennsylvania campaign for U.S. Senate and the Arizona gubernatorial race.  Following the GOP’s lackluster showing that year, Carlson seemed chastened. 

[...]

All this has happened before

By way of preparing my own audience: It is possible none of this will ultimately matter. With numerous swing states polling within the margin of error, and the chance of a systemic poll error in play, Trump could very well win legitimately in November. But if the election returns show that Harris has triumphed, Trump has a backup plan ready to go: He can attempt to subvert the election, as he did in 2020. While elements of that plan could be different, the broad strokes of declaring victory, presenting himself as the victim of election fraud, filing pretextual lawsuits, and ultimately leaning on Republican officials at the local, state, and federal levels to hand him the presidency remain unchanged. This strategy rests on Trump being able to convince the Republican base that he won the election. In 2020, he had the support of a vast right-wing media ecosystem that, with few exceptions, had already prepped its audience to disbelieve the results of the election if Trump won. The result was a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol that threatened American democracy. Since then, the right has purged media figures and Republican politicians who had stood in the way of the plot. And now, in 2024, the same players are again laying the groundwork for a Trumpian subversion effort. In a few weeks, the country could once more be positioned on the edge of the abyss.

The city of Biddeford is a lot of things; among them it is a college town that is home to the University of New England, a liberal arts college nestled along the banks of the Saco River. In numerous conversations this evening with city election clerks and poll workers, I heard repeated stories about record voter turnout and incredible same-day voter registration statistics among UNE…

Jonathan Martin at NYT (10.05.2021): WASHINGTON — The share of the Democratic presidential vote in the Midwest declined most precipitously between 2012 and 2020 in counties that experienced the steepest losses in manufacturing and union jobs and saw declines in health care, according to a new report to be released this month.

The party’s worsening performance in the region’s midsize communities — often overlooked places like Chippewa Falls, Wis., and Bay City, Mich. — poses a dire threat to Democrats, the report warns.

Nationally and in the Midwest, Democratic gains in large metropolitan areas have offset their losses in rural areas. And while the party’s struggles in the industrial Midwest have been well-chronicled, the 82-page report explicitly links Democratic decline in the region that elected Donald J. Trump in 2016 to the sort of deindustrialization that has weakened liberal parties around the world.

“We cannot elect Democrats up and down the ballot, let alone protect our governing majorities, if we don’t address those losses,” wrote Richard J. Martin, an Iowa-based market researcher and Democratic campaign veteran, in the report titled “Factory Towns.”

Mr. Martin wrote the report in conjunction with Mike Lux and David Wilhelm, fellow Democratic strategists who, like him, also have roots in the region and worked together on President Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign.

For all the arresting data, vivid graphs and deepening red maps presented, Mr. Martin offers little guidance on how to reverse the trends. He does, however, offer a warning, one that Midwestern Democrats have been issuing since Mr. Trump’s victory five years ago.

“If things continue to get worse for us in small and midsize, working-class counties, we can give up any hope of winning the battleground states of the industrial heartland,” writes Mr. Martin.

Surveying ten states — the Great Lakes region as well as Missouri and Iowa — Mr. Martin laid out a set of stark figures.

Comparing Barack Obama’s re-election to President Biden’s election last year, he notes that Democrats gained about 1.55 million votes in the big cities and suburbs of the region surveyed. In the same period, they lost about 557,000 votes in heavily rural counties.

But in midsize and small counties, Democrats lost over 2.63 million votes between the two elections. Dubbing these communities “factory towns,” Mr. Martin separates them by midsize counties anchored around cities with a population of 35,000 or more and smaller counties that lean on manufacturing but do not have such sizable cities.

Taken together, the changes illustrate the degree to which Mr. Obama relied upon the votes of working-class white voters to propel his re-election — and how much Mr. Biden leaned on suburbanites to offset his losses in working-class communities that had once been a pillar of the Democratic coalition.

What alarms Mr. Martin, and many Democratic officials, is whether the party can sustain those gains in metropolitan areas. It’s uncertain, as he puts it, “if moderate suburban Republicans will continue to vote for Democrats when Trump is not on the ballot.”

Democratic gains up and down the ballot in fast-growing Sun Belt states like Arizona and Georgia garnered significant attention last year. Yet Mr. Biden wouldn’t have won the presidency and Democrats couldn’t have flipped the Senate without victories in 2020 across the Great Lakes region.

However, those wins proved more difficult than many pre-election polls concluded because of the G.O.P.’s continued strength in manufacturing communities. And, the report noted, these communities made up a significant portion of the region’s vote share. In Wisconsin, midsize and small manufacturing counties make up 58 percent of the statewide vote. In Michigan, half of the voting population is in these communities.

This is where the decline in manufacturing has been most damaging to Democrats. The ten states included in the survey have lost 1.3 million manufacturing jobs since the beginning of this century.

In the small to midsize “factory town” counties in those states, where support for the Republican presidential nominee grew between 2012 and 2020, the losses were acute: More than 70 percent suffered declines in manufacturing jobs.

The elimination of those jobs also led to declines in health care, according to data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

In the counties that suffered manufacturing losses and health care declines, Republicans surged between 2012 and 2020. Nearly half of the party’s gains in these states came in communities where there were both manufacturing cuts and worsening health care.

Republicans also prospered in communities hit hard by the decline in manufacturing that were predominantly white. With fewer well-paying industry jobs, the power of local unions declined as well, silencing what was always the beating heart of Democratic political organizing in these areas. In 154 such counties, Democrats suffered a net loss of over 613,000 votes between the elections in 2016 and 2020.

Perhaps most striking was the decline in union membership across the region.

Nine of the 10 states included in the survey have accounted for 93 percent of the loss of union members nationwide in the last two decades. And just in the last 10 years, these states have lost 10 percent of their union membership — an average that is three times greater than nationally.

According to a report from Richard J. Martin, Democrats fell the worst between 2012 and 2020 in small to midsized Midwestern factory towns like Granite City, IL.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/09/20/the-most-popular-tumblr-post-of-all-time/amp/

Addy Baird at ThinkProgress:

Mitt Romney is more conservative than President Trump on immigration, the 2012 Republican nominee for president and current candidate for Senate in Utah said at a forum Monday.

“I’m also more of a hawk on immigration than even the president,” Romney said Monday when he was asked about his conservative credentials at the event at the Provo Library. “My view was these DACA kids shouldn’t all be allowed to stay in the country legally.”

The DACA program — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — is an Obama-era program that gives temporary deportation relief and work permits to nearly 800,000 immigrants who came to the United States as young people. Trump rescinded the program with a three month delay last year and attempted to make a deal in February that would have created a path to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants including DACA recipients in exchange for funding for the border wall. The deal ultimately failed, and there has not been any permanent fix for DACA recipients.

Romney said Monday that he did not support giving legal residence to the 1.8 immigrants that would have had a path to citizenship through the deal.

“That was not my posture,” Romney said, according to The Daily Herald. “So I was more conservative than others in my party. Now I will accept the president’s view on this, but for me, I draw the line and say, those who’ve come illegally should not be given a special path to citizenship.”

Romney also reportedly said he believed DACA recipients “need to do more” to justify permanent residency, like attending college or serving in the military or other public service occupations.

Romney’s comments about the DACA program Monday are consistent with his hardline views during previous runs for office. When he ran for president in 2012, Romney said he would honor existing DACA permits but would not issue new ones and vowed to ultimately dismantle the DREAMer program. He also famously called for undocumented immigrants to “self-deport.”

During the 2012 Republican primary, Romney criticized former Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his state-based DREAM act, saying, “My friend Gov. Perry said if you don’t agree with his position on giving that in-state tuition to illegals, that you don’t have a heart. I think if you’re opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a heart. It means that you have a heart and a brain.”

Romney also claimed that Perry’s DREAM act, which allowed the children of undocumented immigrants access to in-state tuition, “makes no sense” and “cannot be sustained.”

But in the years since, Romney has tried to fashion himself as a more compassionate conservative, saying in his campaign announcement video, “Utah welcomes legal immigrants from around the world. Washington sends immigrants a message of exclusion.”

But trying to distance himself from Trump by fashioning himself as the true hardliner is new for Romney, who hit Trump as a  “fraud” and a “phony” in a speech during the 2016 election. Despite that, Trump has endorsed Romney’s campaign, something the former Massachusetts governor touted Monday.

Divided We Fall. As a nation we’re divided between those who want to strive to achieve and those who thrive because they receive. 

Divided We Fall United we stand has long been part of the inner strength that enabled America to rise from thirteen disjointed colonies on the edge of lonely sea to the pinnacle of power. Some people believe in the Six Degrees of Separation Theory: that everyone in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other and that a direct line such as “a friend of a friend” can be drawn to connect…