This is an interesting way to view the enthusiasm gap....
"In 2008, total early votes cast in Ohio totaled 1,023,330. 34% of those were Democrats, 20% were Republicans, and the rest were independents or other parties. Democrats had a 14-point advantage.
So far this year, there have been 528,197 applications sent in for absentee ballots. The party break down at this point is 29% Democrats and 23% Repulicans. The difference is down to 6 points. For the Ohio Democratic Party who was counting on matching their early voting performance from 4 years ago, that's very bad news."
We have an electoral college/popular vote pool at work. I think Obama will lose Florida, and probably Iowa or Colorado, but take Ohio. For one important reason, there's a lot of auto and auto supplier folk in Ohio, and the difference between Obama and Romney on the bailout does resonate. No doubt the enthusiasm for Obama is lower. Mine is lower. But, unless something crazy happens in the debates or in the next month, I can't see Romney pulling it off. Romney has his own enthusiasm issues, and his sell to the independents has been very inconsistent. I think it will be closer than polls suggest, however.
The polls are pretty much all using 2008 turnout to get their result, so I'm sure it'll be a lot closer than +7 or whatever they are today. -XC PS - Don't forget, thousands of small suppliers got screwed when the Obama administration over-rode the bankruptcy process to "save" GM. That includes good job losses b/c of the economic impact.
My uncle owns a GM supplier. The Bush bailout/Obama bankruptcy saved his retirement. Thousands of suppliers were saved.PS - Don't forget, thousands of small suppliers got screwed when the Obama administration over-rode the bankruptcy process to "save" GM. That includes good job losses b/c of the economic impact.
Not saying that isn't so. And congrats to your uncle. Much better than being one of the people stiffed when the Obama administration spent billions of taxpayer dollars and circumvented a working bankruptcy system. -XC PS - That the jobs saved were primarily Democrat voting was undoubtedly a primary mover for them, but irrelevant to my point.
That and national security. It's not as if Facebook is going to build bombers in war time. That manufacturing base is pretty vital stuff, and the world is not a free market affair. Also, private capital was not there, not in those quantities. It simply wasn't. That's why even Bush bailed them out.
LOL, we love to think that the manufacturing base will be important in 'time of war' but, really, it takes 15-20 years to ramp up a major new weapons system nowadays. I'd highly recommend Herman's book "Freedom's Forge" about how the US armed up for WWII. I can also point you to some good economics textbooks about how WWII was financed. What this will convince you of is that it doesn't work that way. I have an emotional involvement in small family farming, but it doesn't blind me to the fact that agribusiness extracts tens of billions of tax dollars every year via crony insider deals. I'd sunset that as soon as I could if I were in charge. And while I sympathize with retired autoworkers I don't know why they got to raid taxpayer dollars to preserve their pensions while former Nortel and Comcast workers got thrown to the pension board. -XC
Not new major weapon systems. Increased production of current ones, also logistical, and munitions. The US and Great Britain got roaring in WWII in 3-4 years. Example. I live by Willow Run. Ford built the plant and reached mass production in 3 years. Of course you could argue the likelihood or necessity to need this capability, but Defense tends to err on the side of caution. Also, GM retires lost their retirement medical benefits, even the ones that had been paying for them for decades.LOL, we love to think that the manufacturing base will be important in 'time of war' but, really, it takes 15-20 years to ramp up a major new weapons system nowadays.
Is this an adequate description of what happened/is-happening? http://askville.amazon.com/GM-retirees-lose-benefits-due-ban...
More or less, from what I gather. My brother's father-in-law lost his retirement medical benefits just before he retired. IMO this should really piss off taxpayers more than the actual bailout. When it comes to the bailout, there is much reason to believe it will be mostly paid back, if not fully, and possibly with interest. But picking up all those retires on Medicare/Medicaid is a cost that GM was able to just drop in our laps. That was probably the biggest bailout. A great uncle of mine was a test driver for Cadillac. He raised 4 kids, had a house and a cottage, etc. Test driving Cadillacs! And he knew just how good things had been for him... -he referred to GM as "Generous Motors".
Dude, current estimate is that the taxpayers are going to take a $20B+ haircut. ABC (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/06/how-much-did-th...) said in June/2011 that it was $14B for GM and $1.3B for Chrysler. And don't forget that this was when GM stock was at $30, it's fallen a lot. "Friday, the Treasury Department announced that expected losses to taxpayers from the bailout would increase more than $3.3 billion to $25.1 billion -- up from $21.7 billion last quarter." That's some dang expensive jobs "created or saved." And I'm sorry that the retirees from GM are having to do what most people at that age have to do - use government mandated healthcare. I just wish we'd have gotten to that point about $25M earlier. -XC
We have no disagreement with the amount it sucks, or the fact that it was a plain problem brewing, but so was the whole subprime debacle. GM shouldn't have been able to get into the corner it did as much as AIG. But, interests, interests, interests... (on both sides of the aisle) just not ours.
You should read Freedom's Forge. I've read a ton on the history of Lend Lease and this is simultaneously the least academic and best written. I can give you some more highly regarded writers who are much less enjoyable to read, they all say the same thing. Which is not what the popular press shows. -XC PS - FYI, ammo is produced Olin, Alliant, L3, and a host of small subcontractors. Most military small arms ammo is actually of lower average quality than civilian ammo (for a host of reasons). Most military tactical ammo is stockpiled for 18-24 months of war-rate usage. The USAF seems to be the exception on that one - I understand that we were almost bingo on some JDAM's during the height of the Iraq war. Otherwise our major material losses are so very slight, relative, it's not exactly like we're having Barbarossa style problems in resupply.
I'll check out Freedom's Forge. I just finished Churchill's The Gathering Storm last week actually, and it impressed upon me the cost to Great Britian from not only taking a passive political role, but a passive armament role leading up to WWII. I have real doubts that we will have to go into a full mobilization in the next couple of decades, but, who knows with that crazy Euro... Even so, the Big 3 infrastructure was a massive advantage to the War effort. I'm sure Boeing is "Too strategic to Fail" as well.
Interesting note in the google doc where this post gets its ballot numbers from: For these reasons, I do not think the absentee ballot stats are particularly informative at this early stage as to what will happen in Ohio, much like I do not think the wildly pro-Democratic Iowa statistics are informative as to what will happen in that state. I suppose if you want to do a better apples to apples comparison for Ohio, you might run the 2008 numbers for the same point in time prior to the 2008 election. That might give us some sense of the overall level of early voting to be expected in the state. But I would again caution about drawing inferences about "party" as I have seen some do with your numbers. I do not think these numbers tell us the Ohio polling is incorrect. We need more information before we can draw that conclusion. Also I'm kinda confused about the whole over-sampling of dems kerfuffle. From the looks of it, the complaint is that when polling a random sample of likely voters 48% said they were D and 42% said they were R?If you are not aware, Ohio does not truly have party registration, it is simply a record of the last party primary a voter participated in. For a number of reasons then, a comparison of 2008 and 2012 "party" is not particularly informative. Another important change is that all registered voters have been mailed an absentee ballot request form - something I applaud SoS Husted for doing since the larger Democratic counties were the ones that tended to do this in 2010. As a result of that change from 2008, I expect mail ballot requests to increase. Finally, Ohio considered in-person early voting to be a form of mail balloting in their reported statistics.The numbers are going to change considerably once in-person early voting starts, particularly closer to Election Day when more people (particularly Democrats) tend to vote in-person early.
The weekend prior to the 2008 election I was in Cleveland knocking on doors for Obama. The enthusiasm for him then was unparalleled. I had never witnessed anything like it. There is no way that he has even half of that passion working in his favor this time. It's going to be tight, no doubt about it. I am very much looking forward to Wed nights debate.
Good call. Looking forward to WED! My boss is in town though and I have a feeling he will want to go out to dinner that night. May have to lay down the law or at the least invite him over to watch it with me.