Thursday, October 11, 2012

I dream of Obama v. Romney, like Gore v. Bush

In an email to my friend, a few days ago, as a follow-up to his guest-post and my own post, I wrote:
Just for the heck of it, I want Romney to win the popular vote and for Obama to win the electoral votes including Florida, and have the entire country replay 2000 all over again--only that this time those who argued one way the last time will take up their opponents' arguments from then.  That will make it a political theatre that we will never ever forget .... I can dream, can't I?
Looks like President "I was napping" Obama is working hard to make my dream come true; for once, it warms the cockles of my heart that my President is working for me!

The swingers are certainly charmed by Willard "snake oil salesman" Romney's aggressive pitch to get all of us our own unicorns:
In one set of polls, conducted by The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and Marist College, President Obama and Mr. Romney are in a dead heat among likely voters in Florida (Obama 48 percent, Romney 47 percent) and in Virginia (Romney 48, Obama 47). In Ohio, Obama leads 51 percent to 45 percent.
Earlier this month, before the debate, Romney trailed in Ohio by eight percentage points, 51-43, according to the same poll. In Virginia, he trailed 48-46, and in Florida, it was Obama 47, Romney 46.
The swingers have made elections to be about the presidency of the Discontiguous States of Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

I hope that both Romney and Obama will do their part over the remaining weeks to get us to the point where we can re-live 2000 all over again, because, it is not merely about popular votes but about electoral college votes.  And that is a tough job, which, I am not sure both Obama and Romney are capable of!  They need to work harder than what they are doing now to make real my dream because the electoral vote situation looks like this:
The more troubling sign for Mr. Romney, however, is that although he’s made gains, he does not seem to have taken the lead in very many state polls. That trend, if anything, has become more entrenched. Of the half-dozen or so polls of battleground states published on Wednesday, none showed Mr. Romney ahead; the best result he managed was a 48-48 tie in a Rasmussen Reports poll of New Hampshire. ...
Our forecast model does infer that Mr. Obama has a very slight Electoral College advantage. (As of Wednesday, it gave him a 67.9 percent chance of winning the Electoral College against a 66.7 percent chance of winning the popular vote.)

Won't it be awesome if once again we have the electoral vote versus popular vote controversy?  All the more because since the Gore v. Bush controversy, the Supreme Court itself has been coming across as a political body instead of a sober, neutral, judicial arbiter!  As Jeffrey Toobin noted:
Even at the time, Bush v. Gore was treated as a kind of novelty item, a one-off decision that applied only to the peculiar facts then before the Justices. The majority itself seemed to want it that way. In the most famous sentence from the decision, the Justices wrote, “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.”
We can call their political bluff by presenting the court with a second attempt.  They can always claim that Gore V. Bush was not precedent setting ;)

Yes, I am having fun ... because ... well, I wrote about it already!


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