Obamateam’s Plot to Win in 2012 Illustrates Wisdom of Electoral College over Direct Vote

Team Obama’s Pathway to 270

by Josh Kraushaar at the National Journal:

“Make sure to read The New York Times‘s Jim Rutenberg’s excellent overview of Team Obama’s 2012 strategy, which involves a healthy heaping of negative attacks on the Republican nominee sprinkled with helpful reminders about the president’s counterterrorism successes.

But one nugget about the electoral map caught my eye. Rutenberg writes:

Obama’s team acknowledges that it is not likely that the stars will align as well for them in 2012. But, having won in 2008 with 365 electoral votes when 270 are needed, they believe they have 95 to spare next year. That buys a lot of breathing room. Mr. Obama could lose Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and Indiana and still win re-election — though that would mean having to win just about every other state he won last time...

Mr. Messina also said the campaign would focus on holding on to the “New South” states of Virginia and North Carolina that Mr. Obama won last time. It has gone all-out with its plan to have the Democratic convention in Charlotte in September.

That’s a roundabout way of saying that Obama’s team is focusing on winning Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado (and Michigan/Wisconsin in the Democratic-leaning column) as its most logical pathway to 270 electoral votes.  It means that, despite the spin they’re focused at winning every state, they feel that their best chance of securing 270 electoral votes is through the upscale, white-collar coalition that propelled Obama to victory in 2008 – one I outlined in my column earlier this month.   It explains the administration’s decision to punt on the Keystone XL pipeline, for fear of alienating environmentalists that make up an important constituency in many of these states.

It also means Obama’s pathway to victory is awfully narrow.  Under this map, Obama could win with 270 electoral votes, to the Republican’s 268. And it would include carrying North Carolina, the home of the Democratic convention next year, which Obama only won by 14,000 votes in 2008.

The spin shows that while Obama’s team is putting an optimistic face on its prospects, its path to victory is getting narrower.

UPDATE: Also note, from Julie Pace’s AP dispatch, that the White House is emphasizing VP Joe Biden’s campaign role in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Floirda over Obama’s.Those three traditional battleground states were included on the list of states Obama could lose and still win 270 electoral votes”.

Comment:   For those of you who might be thinking ill of our American  ”Electoral College” system, let me remind you of a few of the more  important of the wisdom’s offered by  those  male, God-fearing, Bible reading  Christian white geniuses of the  late 18th Century who concocted the personality  of our Republic, magnificent and great, but not perfect.

Our Christian Founders did not favor mob rule.   Democracy did not mean a dictatorship of  majority rule, but majority rule with minority rights, a clause seldom uttered these days since the rise of American Progressivism on its way to establishing its Marxist State.    To help allay this threat from democracy gone “Obama”, that is, gone alloofly autocrat, it protected the rule of  Constitutional Law by   electing the nation’s president by state rather than by direct national vote count. 

It was a brilliant move by these  “racist, sexist, white old-boys’ club”, as the American  black racist groups and the feminist movement hysterics  have  been describing them now for two generations……

The “racist, sexist,  white-old-boys’ club”  goal then, unlike today’s  saboteurs of the American experiment, the Obama Marxists at university and  its school satelites who  preach ‘diversity’, atheism, and state authority,  was to create a NEW, God-fearing, Liberty oriented, ONE NATION  United  experiment.   

“God willing”, they prayed,  the nation will succeed.  and therefore be able to  proclaim to the entire world a better way of  governance to preserve human dignity, encourage  intellectual growth, and improve  human understanding  and therefore secure  a world of Peace.

It takes 270 Electoral College votes for an eligible American to win the nation’s presidency.   Each state, under the Law of the Land, is guaranteed an elector vote  per representative each state  sends to Congress,  plus three allowed for the District of Columbia.   The  candidate winning the largest number of votes in each state will secure the ‘electoral’ vote of the slate of the political party to which the winning candidate belongs.  

In presidential elections in which there are several candidates winning state majority vote and none reach the 270 magic marker, the electiion is then to be determined by the House of Representatives with one vote per state……each state  being  given equal value.

Why did our Founders construct this formula?   Well,  to reduce the influence of corruption to begin with.   Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis lead the list of areas where urban political bosses, nearly all of them of the Democrat Partypersuasion,  regularly corruptly add to  their  vote.   While  both the living and the dead voted often in Chicago to help elect JFK in 1960, the chances of one state  corrupting the  entire  national vote is  much reduced

Also much reduced if electing the  president was  based on national vote count, would be the number of visits candidates  would make to all  ”57 ” states   by Obama count.    Our nation’s founders were determined to keep the United States ‘united’.    By the article above, all of Obama’s vast fortunes for reelection could be spent in 20 states or less to get better value dollar for dollar of each vote bought…….as seems to be the strategy suggested.  

This  new country was meant to be a nation of States.    The power of goverrnance  was NOT to be concentrated in the hands of a few.   Liberty, Trust in God, and E Pluribus Unum were to be the pillars upon which the peoples’ government  was to be based.

Of course in the eyes and ears of many in Obamaville and its universities, only the urban racists and college ‘educated’ should be allowed to vote in the 2012 presidential election.

The Electoral College system broadens the election of president  from coast to coast……and then some when one remembers both Alaska and Hawaii.

Thomas Sowell….on the LaLa Land of Obama Economics

Alice in Liberal Land

by   Thomas Sowell   at Townhall.com

“Alice in Wonderland” was written by a professor who also wrote a book on symbolic logic. So it is not surprising that Alice encountered not only strange behavior in Wonderland, but also strange and illogical reasoning — of a sort too often found in the real world, and which a logician would be very much aware of.

If Alice could visit the world of liberal rhetoric and assumptions today, she might find similarly illogical and bizarre thinking. But people suffering in the current economy might not find it nearly as entertaining as “Alice in Wonderland.”

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the world envisioned by today’s liberals is that it is a world where other people just passively accept whatever “change” liberals impose. In the world of Liberal Land, you can just take for granted all the benefits of the existing society, and then simply tack on your new, wonderful ideas that will make things better.

For example, if the economy is going along well and you happen to take a notion that there ought to be more home ownership, especially among the poor and minorities, then you simply have the government decree that lenders have to lend to more low-income people and minorities who want mortgages, ending finicky mortgage standards about down payments, income and credit histories.

That sounds like a fine idea in the world of Liberal Land. Unfortunately, in the ugly world of reality, it turned out to be a financial disaster, from which the economy has still not yet recovered. Nor have the poor and minorities.

Apparently you cannot just tack on your pet notions to whatever already exists, without repercussions spreading throughout the whole economy. That’s what happens in the ugly world of reality, as distinguished from the beautiful world of Liberal Land.

The strange and bizarre characters found in “Alice in Wonderland” have counterparts in the political vision of Liberal Land today. Among the most interesting of these characters are those elites who are convinced that they are so much smarter than the rest of us that they feel both a right and a duty to take all sorts of decisions out of our incompetent hands — for our own good.

In San Francisco, which is Liberal Land personified, there have been attempts to ban the circumcision of newborn baby boys. Fortunately, that was nipped in the bud. But it shows how widely the self-anointed saviors of Liberal Land feel entitled to take decisions out of the hands of mere ordinary citizens.

Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner says, “We’re facing a very consequential debate about some fundamental choices as a country.” People talk that way in Liberal Land. Moreover, such statements pass muster with those who simply take in the words, decide whether they sound nice to them, and then move on.

But, if you take words seriously, the more fundamental question is whether individuals are to remain free to make their own choices, as distinguished from having collectivized choices, “as a country” — which is to say, having choices made by government officials and imposed on the rest of us.

The history of the 20th century is a painful lesson on what happens when collective choices replace individual choices. Even leaving aside the chilling history of totalitarianism in the 20th century, the history of economic central planning shows it to have been such a widely recognized disaster that even communist and socialist governments were abandoning it as the century ended.

Making choices “as a country” cannot be avoided in some cases, such as elections or referenda. But that is very different from saying that decisions in general should be made “as a country” — which boils down to having people like Timothy Geithner taking more and more decisions out of our own hands and imposing their will on the rest of us. That way lies madness exceeding anything done by the Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland.”

That way lie unfunded mandates, nanny state interventions in people’s lives, such as banning circumcision — and the ultimate nanny state monstrosity, ObamaCare.

The world of reality has its problems, so it is understandable that some people want to escape to a different world, where you can talk lofty talk and forget about ugly realities like costs and repercussions. The world of reality is not nearly as lovely as the world of Liberal Land. No wonder so many people want to go there.