Tag Archives: Democrats

May 13, 2013 · 6:00 PM

Fifteen Differences Between Democrats And Republicans

According to…

Addicting Info

I’ve noticed over the years, there are some fundamental differences in the way Republican and Democratic politicians think. Here are just 15 examples.

Republicans fear that the government has too much control over corporations.

Democrats fear that corporations have too much control over our government. 

 

Democrats believe it benefits all of us to help the weakest and the poorest among us.

Republicans believe it benefits all of us to help the wealthiest and most powerful among us.

 

Democrats believe it benefits all of us to help the weakest and the poorest among us.

Republicans believe it benefits all of us to help the wealthiest and most powerful among us.

 

Republicans believe large corporations will always do what is best for the American people if the government stays out of the way. 

Democrats believe large corporations would disembowel you and sell your organs to the highest bidder if the government didn’t stop them.

 

Democrats believe everyone is entitled to health care regardless of their ability to pay.

Republicans believe everyone is entitled to jack squat if they can’t pay for health care.

 

Democrats believe too much of our money goes to crooked corporate executives who take government subsidies and pay themselves $80 million salaries. 

Republicansbelieve too much of our money goes to teachers who make $30,000 a year.

 

Democrats believe anything that helps the American people during a recession or a time of crisis is the true essence of patriotism.

Republicans believe anything that helps the American people during a recession or a time of crisis is the true essence of communism.

 

Democrats believe that we need to set high standards for clean air and drinking water.

Republicans believe that standards for clean air and water are burdensome over-regulation.

 

Democrats believe the President and Congress need to work together to create jobs during a weak economy.

Republicans believe that Congress should do nothing to create jobs and then blame the President.

 

Democrats believe that corporate polluters should be made to pay for the cleanup of their pollution.

Republicans believe that making corporations clean up their pollution is burdensome over-regulation.

 

Democrats believe our health care system exists solely for the purpose of making people healthy.

Republicans believe our health care system exists solely for the purpose of making a healthy profit.

 

Democrats believe Congress should be of the people, by the people and for the people.

Republicans believe corporations are the people.

 

Democrats believe that corporations have too much influence over Congress due to their lobbyists and huge campaign contributions.

Republicans believe the middle class has too much influence over Congress due to their voting and paying taxes.

 

Democrats believe we need to protect victims of corporate negligence by allowing Americans to file lawsuits against corporations.

Republicans believe we need to protect large corporations from lawsuits by Americans who’ve been victimized by them.

 

Democrats believe that the rich should be taxed more than the poor and middle class.

Republicans believe that the rich should be allowed to keep all their wealth, except for the millions in campaign contributions they give to politicians.

 

Democrats believe that too much money in politics produces corruption and destroys the American way of life.

Republicans believe that money and corruption in politics arethe American way of life.

 

These are just my observations from a lifetime of watching Democratic and Republican politicians. I’m sure some Republican will come up with their own clever list.

 

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May 9, 2013 · 5:04 AM

House Republicans and extortion for the sake of extortion

Pitch perfect assessment…

The Washington Post – Post Partisan

Today’s news is about Republican leaders in the House scrambling around to find something that they can blackmail Barack Obama and the Democrats with, so that they can threaten to crash the economy with a government default unless they get it.

Kevin Drum and Brian Buetler interpret this as Republican irresponsibility on the budget. Greg Sargent points out that it’s even worse — Republican leaders in the House, including Speaker John Boehner, have already admitted that they aren’t willing to really force default, so they’re refusing to negotiate for now because they’re waiting until they can threaten to blow up the economy even though they admit they really won’t.

House Speaker John Boehner (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Well, maybe.

I say: It’s worse than that!

As I read this, it’s not really about Republicans demanding debt reduction and using the best leverage they have available to get it. Nor is it about Republicans demanding tax reform — their other possible demand — and using the best leverage they have to get it.

No, it’s the other way around. The House crazy caucus is demanding not debt reduction, not spending cuts, not budget balancing, but blackmail itself. That’s really the demand: The speaker and House Republican leaders absolutely must use the debt limit as extortion. What should they use it to get? Apparently, that’s pretty much up for grabs, as long as it seems really, really, big — which probably comes down to meaning that the Democrats really, really don’t like it.

In other words: I think Greg is correct, and the speaker has decided that he doesn’t actually want to blow past the debt limit. But now he has to find some way to do it without losing his job. And that means satisfying the significant chunk of his conference who demand maximum nuttiness at all times, either because they really believe in it or because they’re terrified to allow any space at all between themselves and those true believers.

It’s the extortion that’s the point. Not the policy.

 

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May 8, 2013 · 7:49 AM

Mark Sanford South Carolina Victory Takes Him From ‘Free Fall’ To Rebirth

Mark Sanford wins…

The Huffington Post

“Americans”,  journalist David Halberstam once wrote, are “remarkably tolerant of error, particularly if it is self-confessed.”

Mark Sanford is thanking his lucky stars that’s the case. The former South Carolina governor won his old seat in Congress back on Tuesday, after voters in the state’s coastal 1st Congressional District decided to overlook his many misadventures since he first admitted an extramarital affair in 2009.

Sanford, 52, a Republican, defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a 58-year old businesswoman best known nationally as comedian Stephen Colbert’s older sister, in a special election to fill a seat vacated by former Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Scott was appointed by the state’s Republican governor to the U.S. Senate after Jim DeMint left his seat early to lead The Heritage Foundation, a D.C. think tank.

“It would be the most obvious of obviouses to say that I thought politics was forever over for me,” Sanford told The Huffington Post in an interview last week. “But something happened that never happened in our state, which is, you know, a United States senator retired early. I mean that just doesn’t happen in South Carolina.”

Two weeks ago, Sanford was in “free fall,” as he described it. His past indiscretions -– which played out in front of a national audience four years ago -– were dredged back up by news of trespassing complaints that had been lodged against him by his ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, for showing up at her home uninvited.

“I said to my guys at the time, ‘Look, this thing’s over with if people think that I’m the kind of guy that would go, you know, creeping through the hedge of my ex’s house,’” Sanford said.

Continue reading here…

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May 3, 2013 · 6:17 PM

Obama doesn’t have a ‘juice’ problem. He has a Republican problem

Running low on juice?

Running low on juice?

I saw the POTUS’  press conference earlier this week.  When the reporter asked him if he had still had “juice” with Republicans I immediately thought of the slang term: juice- respect, power.

The author’s  definition seems somewhat skewered.  However, his analysis of President Obama’s hopefulness in getting Republican leaders to see things his way and the futility of that effort seems to be spot on.

The Week

The big question in Washington this week comes from ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who asked President Obama at a press conference: “Do you still have the juice?”

Juice, in this context, means the energy and wherewithal to have your way, to get the job done. (Karl’s “still have” presumes Obama had the juice to begin with, which is increasingly debatable.)

Karl also asked about the president’s failure to end the sequester or get a gun bill through the Senate (it would have died in the House anyway), and implied that these episodes showed how powerless and ineffective Obama is just 100 days into his new term.

Obama knew he was outgunned by the NRA and its Congressional cronies from the beginning, but he stuck his neck out anyway. That he lost the gun-control fight says not so much about his power (or lack thereof) as it does about ongoing, implacable Republican resistance to his wishes. Karl didn’t ask about that. His question implied that Obama’s weakness was solely to blame for these legislative failures. That’s simply not the case.

What of this GOP stubbornness? If anything, it’s greater than ever today.

Why? Because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — whose most fervent hope was that Obama would be a one-term president — now knows with absolute certainty that Obama will be gone in three-and-a-half years.

In fact, the Kentucky senator has less incentive to deal now then ever before, because there’s a good chance that Republicans will win the Senate next year. The Senate is 54-45 in favor of Democrats now (one independent, Bernie Sanders, caucuses with Democrats). But of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs in November 2014, 21 are held by Democrats, including several long-timers who are retiring. No sitting president’s party has ever gained seats in the midterm of a second term, and if the GOP wins the Senate, and hangs onto the House (a good bet), the president would be completely shut out on Capitol Hill — and the lamest of ducks.

This whole Obama/juice flare-up is, of course, part of a broader meme that’s popular inside the Beltway: that Obama is aloof, insular. If only he was more of a people person, a back-slapper type, the meme goes, things would be different. Much more of his agenda would be getting through.

I don’t buy it. Obama drinks. He plays golf. He watches sports. He eats out a lot. He’s done all of these guy things with Republicans, and it hasn’t made a lick of difference. They simply don’t want to cross the aisle.

The problem is not that Obama lacks “juice.” What he lacks, here in his fifth year in office, is an understanding that he’s never going to get anywhere with Republicans.  At a California fundraiser last month, he said he’s going to keep trying — even though he acknowledged that it’s irritating his base — because the country needs it. He thinks that eventually, Republicans will do, as he puts it, “the right thing.” Who is he to say what’s right? Obama got 51 percent of the vote in November — not exactly a mandate. Republicans, as they see it, are doing the right thing. And unlike Obama, they’re not irritating their base. They’re playing to it.

The president still thinks he can change Washington.  He can’t. This isn’t a failure. The forces against him — deeply entrenched, heavily financed, well-organized — were here long before he came to town all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. They’ll still be around when he leaves 45 months from now.

So what can Obama do? He can stop defining his opponents in terms of who he thinks they are — stubborn men who will eventually see the brilliance of his ways — and start defining them as who they really are: implacable foes, enemies who are out to trip him, defeat him, destroy him. He can campaign against them, raise money for their opponents, unleash the grassroots database he used to destroy Mitt Romney on them. He can stop playing nice, stop hoping for the best, and start toughening up. That’s the Chicago way.

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April 28, 2013 · 6:02 PM

In 2012 Election, African American Voters Surpassed White Turnout For The First Time Ever

Post image for They Tried, But They Could Not Stop Us. We Went To Court. We Stood In Line. We Voted! And We Won!

They tried to take our voice from us, but we would not let them. We stood in line. We endured their slings and arrows. We braved their threats and insults. And then, we voted…

This is great news.  In 2012 we stood our ground and defied the many attempts at voter suppression.  ”We stood in line”…

Think Progress

Though Republican election officials in battleground states sought to dampen voter turn out of traditionally Democratic voters through by instituting identification requirements and limiting early voting hours, a new analysis of census data by the Associated Press shows that African-Americans “voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time.”

The analysis finds that had “people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly”:

The 2012 data suggest Romney was a particularly weak GOP candidate, unable to motivate white voters let alone attract significant black or Latino support. Obama’s personal appeal and the slowly improving economy helped overcome doubts and spur record levels of minority voters in a way that may not be easily replicated for Democrats soon.

Romney would have erased Obama’s nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004,according to Frey’s analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower.

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

African Americans outperformed their voter share, representing 13 percent of total votes cast in 2012 while making up 12 percent of the population — despite facing great obstacles to exercising the franchise.

A poll conducted by Hart Research poll immediately after the election reported that 22 percent of African-Americans waited 30 minutes or more to vote, compared to just 9 percent of white voters. A more thorough analysis from Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed that black and hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long to vote as whites. In Florida, home to the longest lines, at least 201,000 people may have been deterred from voting by the long waits.

Black youth was also far more likely to be asked to show ID, a study by professors at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis found, and many did not even try to vote because they lacked the required identification.

“The 2008 election was the first year when the minority vote was important to electing a U.S. president. By 2024, their vote will be essential to victory,” William H. Frey, a demographer who analyzed the 2012 elections for the AP, said. “Democrats will be looking at a landslide going into 2028 if the new Hispanic voters continue to favor Democrats.”

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April 25, 2013 · 8:01 AM

Obama: Washington Is ‘Not As Functional As It Could Be’

Obama Bush

No S**t Sherlock!

The Huffington Post

* Former presidents also due to attend dedication

* Memorial service for Texas explosion victims on the agenda

* Fundraiser will aim to help Democrats in midterm elections

U.S. President Barack Obama is in Texas to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with former President George W. Bush in what could serve as a powerful reminder of the ongoing struggle against terrorism, from the Sept. 11 attacks to the Boston Marathon bombings.

Obama is due to attend the dedication on Thursday of Bush’s presidential library at Southern Methodist University, along with former presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter and hundreds of Bush administration alumni.

While Democrat Obama and Republican Bush have deep political differences, they share a common belief that the United States must defend itself against violent extremism.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks defined Bush’s eight years in the White House and last week’s Boston Marathon bombing handed Obama another challenge to homeland security.

Obama, at a Democratic fundraiser soon after he arrived in Dallas on Wednesday night, said he was looking forward to attending the Bush library dedication and that he would project a bipartisan spirit.

“One thing I will insist upon is whatever our political differences, President Bush loves his country and loves its people and…was concerned about all people in America, not just those who voted Republican. I think that’s true about him and I think that’s true about most of us,” Obama said.

Bush told ABC News that the Boston attacks reminded him of his time in the presidency.

“I was deeply concerned that there might’ve been an organized plot,” Bush told ABC News. “I don’t know all the facts… But I was deeply concerned that this could’ve been, you know, another highly organized attack on the country. And it still may be. Again, I don’t know all the facts.”

Certain issues require a common response regardless of political party, said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Center at the University of Southern Illinois.

“They may get to the office as a conservative or a liberal but there are real forces that move them to the pragmatic center on a variety of issues and national security is one of them,” Simon said.

But Obama was also looking to a time when more Democrats could be elected to Congress. His first stop in Dallas was at a fundraiser that brought in $600,000 for the Democratic National Committee at the home of major Democratic donor Naomi Aberly.

It is his third fundraiser this year for his party in the hope that Democrats can wrestle control of the House of Representatives from Republicans and add to the Democrats’ Senate majority in 2014 midterm elections.

Without adding Democratic seats, Obama may find it difficult to overcome Republican opposition to many of the priorities of his second term, such as closing tax loopholes enjoyed mostly by the wealthy and stricter gun control.

“Washington is not, how should I put this charitably, it’s not as functional as it could be,” Obama said.

Still, he told the Democratic donors, he plans to keep talking to Republicans as he has in recent weeks to try to find common ground, even though “some of you may think I’m a sap” for doing so.

Thursday’s dedication of Bush’s library and museum has put Bush, the 43rd U.S. president, back in the limelight he has largely avoided since leaving office in January 2009.

At the time, the United States was laboring under the burden of two wars and a collapsed economy. Bush’s approval rating at the time was 33 percent. A Washington Post-ABC poll this week put his approval rating at 47 percent, basically equal to Obama’s.

The museum exhibits cover major points of Bush’s presidency and offer visitors an opportunity to decide how they would have responded to those challenges.

A central feature of the museum concerns the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Obama has found himself pursuing some of the same policies that Bush began, such using drones on military targets and trying to overhaul U.S. immigration laws.

Obama is expected to speak at the dedication along with the former presidents.

“Regardless of the times when they served and their political and policy differences, there is a commonality of experience that the president believes binds them together,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

After visiting Bush in Dallas on Thursday, Obama is scheduled to attend a memorial service at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, for the 14 people killed when a fertilizer plant exploded last week in West, Texas. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Karey Van Hall, Toni Reinhold and Lisa Shumaker)

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April 15, 2013 · 2:34 PM

What country does the Tea Party represent?

What country does the Tea Party represent?

Salon

House Republicans are no longer swayed by public opinion, imperiling the GOP and grinding government to a halt

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

With an assist from some long-term demographic trends, House Republicans have redistricted, propagandized and policed themselves into another country.

As a result, they have become unmoored from the political incentives that typically drive law-makers’ decision-making process. Public opinion no longer sways them, and that is creating a potentially insurmountable problem for the party establishment’s efforts to broaden the GOP’s appeal beyond angry old white people.

House Republicans may care about the GOP’s national fortunes in the abstract, but too many are impervious to what the public at large wants because of the nature of the districts they represent. At the same time, a steady stream of spin from the conservative media provides insulation from the realities of American politics, and deep-pocketed outside groups punish Republicans for any deviation from right-wing orthodoxy.

This isn’t just a serious problem for establishment Republicans. It’s ground our government to a halt, as Congress is virtually incapable of action, even on issues where there is something approaching a consensus among the public at large — like universal background checks for firearm purchases, for example. They’re supported by 80-90 percent of voters, but face a steep uphill climb in the House.

How did this happen?

The Great Gerrymander of 2010

In 2012, Democratic House candidates got 1.4 million more votes than Republicans, but came away 33 seats short of the majority – only the second time since World War Two that such a reversal has taken place. That was the fruit of a well-funded, multi-year plan by the Republican State Leadership Committee to take over state houses before the 2010 Census, and control the redistricting process that followed.

And they gerrymandered with a vengeance. As Princeton University scholar Sam Wang noted, “although gerrymandering is usually thought of as a bipartisan offense… partisan redistricting is not symmetrical between the political parties.”

By my seat-discrepancy criterion, 10 states are out of whack: [Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin] plus Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Arizona was redistricted by an independent commission, Texas was a combination of Republican and federal court efforts, and Illinois was controlled by Democrats. Republicans designed the other seven maps. Both sides may do it, but one side does it more often.

Surprisingly absent from the guilty list is California, where 62 percent of the two-party vote went to Democrats [which] exactly matched the [proportion of the] newly elected delegation.

Democrats Are “Inefficiently Distributed”

But, as a number of observers pointed out after the mid-terms, even this aggressive effort to redraw districts in their favor wasn’t quite enough to lock in Republicans’ control of the House. This is where the organic trend comes in. Political scientists Jowei Chen of the University of Michigan and Jonathan Rodden of Stamford explain (PDF) that as a result of migration and urbanization, Democrats tend to be “highly clustered in dense central city areas, while Republicans are scattered more evenly through the suburban, exurban, and rural periphery.” This results in what the authors call “unintentional redistricting,” with “a skew in the distribution of partisanship across districts such that with 50 percent of the votes, Democrats can expect fewer than 50 percent of the seats.”

Hyper-Partisan Districts

Those two trends have resulted in a dwindling number of competitive districts. As the New York Times’ numbers-guru Nate Silver pointed out, the number of “landslide districts” – which he defined as those that went for one party by 20 or more percentage points than the electorate as a whole – has doubled since 1992, while the number of swing districts has fallen from 155 to just 64 over the same period.

When you look at the racial composition of districts, the trend becomes even more pronounced. According to the Census Bureau, 111 House republicans represent districts that are at least 80 percent white.

Continue below the chart, here…

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December 16, 2012 · 6:55 PM

Michigan GOP official: Detroit voters bussed to ‘vote multiple times’

weisermich

Here is an example of how stereo-types are re-enforced.  There is the person who spreads the lie and the receptive audience who seem to believe the lies based on past demonstrations by some tea party members.

This particular “politician” should not be allowed to continue in public service…

The Raw Story

A Michigan Republican and finance chair of the Republican National Committee said at a tea party meeting — caught on video — before the presidential election that Detroit voters are bussed around and vote multiple times after being picked up from barbershops and pool halls, reported the Detroit Free Press. The comments have been called racist and classist.

On Aug. 9 in Milford, Mich., Ron Weiser said, “If Obama loses Michigan, his paths to the White House reduce substantially. It’s very hard to see a path to the White House for him again. If we lose Virginia or Ohio, it saves us the election and we will still win. That’s how important Michigan is.”

“Now,” he went on, “I’m going to tell you my own theories in Michigan because it’s one of the reasons the RNC is sending as much money as they are here and why you will see some of our friends spending money here.”

He then discussed the number of votes the GOP needs to surmount Democrats in the state and referred to the shrunk population of Detroit. He also said that there were no Republican “machines” in the state.

“There’s no machine to go to the pool halls and the barbershops and put those people on buses and then bus them from precinct to precinct where they vote multiple times. And there’s no machine to get ’em to stop playing pool and drinking beer in the pool hall. And it does make a difference,” he said.

He later said in the video, “Obama has hired a lot of people to go help him get that vote out. But if you’re not from Detroit, the places where those pool halls and barbershops are, you’re not going to be going at 6:30 in November. Not without a side arm.”

He told the Detroit Free Press that the comments were not meant to be racist and apologized if anyone was offended. He also said in a statement that he was referring to “past Democrat Party political machines.”

Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer told the paper that the video speaks to “the worst possible stereotypes about African-American voters that you can imagine.”

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November 30, 2012 · 2:28 PM

Social Security and its role in the nation’s debt

This information is vital when debating right-wingers who blame a large part of the deficit on Social Security…

The Washington Post Fact Checker

“Social Security has not added one penny to the deficit.”

— Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Nov. 27, 2012

In 2011, we evaluated a similar statement about Social Security and gave it a relatively rare rating — “true but false” — which seemed to please no one. Yet as the “fiscal cliff” negotiations have heated up, Democrats have once again been using this talking point to shield Social Security from the chopping block.

Durbin, to his credit, in a speech to the Center for American Progress this week, acknowledged that Social Security’s long-term financing is an important issue that cannot be deferred. He advocates creating a commission that would separately address how to ensure 75 years of solvency to the program.  So we don’t mean to pick on Durbin since plenty of Democrats in recent days have made similar comments.

But we remain troubled by the reemergence of this talking point, especially given the further decline in Social Security’s finances in the past year. We do not think this line is a slamdunk falsehood, as some believe, but it is certainly worth revisiting.

 

The Facts

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits. So Social Security loaned the money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things, which in effect masked the overall size of the federal budget deficit.  In exchange, Social Security received interest-bearing Treasury securities, which now total more than $2.7 trillion.As we have repeatedly explained, the bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. The bonds are a real asset to Social Security, but — here’s where it gets complicated — they also represent an obligation by the rest of the government. Like any entity that issues debt, such as a corporation, the government will have to make good on its obligations, generally by taking the money out of revenue, reducing expenses or issuing new debt.

So what is happening today? The Congressional Budget Office tracks the flow of money in and out of the Social Security fund, and below is a summary of the data for fiscal 2013. To keep things simple, we will include transfers made for the payroll tax holiday as part of “other income.”

Continue reading here…

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November 10, 2012 · 9:27 AM

Why John Boehner Has Gerrymandering to Thank for His Majority

Many uninformed voters and political pundits believe that the GOP led Congress had a mandate this election, hence their retention of a majority inin the United States Congress.  Not so…

Mother Jones

In November 2010, I reported that GOP control of all elements of state government in key swing states—including but not limited to Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania—could ensure a “Republican decade” in control of the House of Representatives. The Democrats’ massive 2010 losses couldn’t have come at a worse time for the party. Because the census was taken in 2010, GOP control of state legislatures and governors mansions around the country gave Republicans the power to draw congressional district lines largely as they chose. They seized that chance, aggressively gerrymandering so as to protect Republican incumbents and endanger any remaining Democrats. The Dems would have done the same thing, of course, had they won control of these crucial states in 2010. But they didn’t.

On Tuesday, the GOP cartographers’ hard work paid off. Despite sweeping wins for Democrats in US Senate races and a broad Electoral College victory for President Barack Obama, it was clear early in the night that Republicans would hold on to the House. As Slate‘s Dave Weigelnoted, “ridiculous gerrymanders saved the House Republican majority.” In many states the president won convincingly, Democrats elected a minority of the House delegation. Here are the numbers for states that Obama won or came close and where Republicans drew the congressional map:

  • North Carolina, which Obama lost by around 2 percentage points: 9-4 GOP
  • Florida, which Obama won by around half a percentage point: 17-10 GOP
  • Ohio, which Obama won by nearly 2 percentage points: 12-4 GOP
  • Virginia, which Obama won by around 3 percentage points: 8-3 GOP
  • Pennsylvania, which Obama won by more than 5 percentage points: 13-5 GOP*
  • Wisconsin, which Obama won by 6 percentage points: 5-3 GOP
  • Michigan, which Obama won by 8 percentage points: 9-5 GOP

It goes to show that when you get to choose the ground on which electoral battles are fought, you’re very likely to win them.

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