Can someone explain to me in simple terms. USA elections

Really enjoying this thread - so interesting.

I'd like to think Europe preferred Obama - the tea party nutters are plain scary!
Just horrid they are allowed out and about smiling through their hateful ideas.

Good o Obama he ha smade a small move forward on health care

Romney Marsh and Ryan are bigger liars than our idiotic right. F'rinstance Romney mentioned in his speech about creating jobs for Americans, conveniently forgetting that Bain Capital, the venture capital company he was paid by until about three years ago, arranged leveraged buyouts of American manufacturing companies, bled them till they were dry then exported the jobs to the Far East, keeping the brand alive but upping profit margin.

Ryan mentioned in his speech a car factory closed by O'Bama. It actually shut when the shaved monkey Bush was president.

The Republicans make our Toryscum look like socialists. Which is probably why people like IBS and Grayling got ministerial posts. For added crazy.

Ponders
My Dad (lives in NY) sends me links to what he thinks are left of centre articles - they are BEYOND the Daily Mail.

NONE of the UK press is much to the right of Obama let alone as far right as much of the GOP including Romney

And thats not anti-romney? pro-obama?

I still doubt that, Hmm. not pro-Obama as such - just anti completely-loony-right-wing (cf Clint Eastwood )

Of the mainstream UK media, the BBC is probably most left-of-centre

Of the rest, they lean to the right (apart from the Guardian & Mirror) but even so, the Republicans clearly scare them rigid on "gun laws, abortion, religion, social security, legislation and involvement of government to foreign policy and diplomacy"

God help the rest of the world if Romney gets in

I mean ALL of our media Ponders. From the BBC to the Times and Torygraph. Republican ideas are, for the most part, very very alien concepts to most Europeans, its not just the British - the Tea Party really hasn't helped matters. It scares us, so the press and politicians automatically look to what we feel closer to. Its everything from gun laws, abortion, religion, social security, legislation and involvement of government to foreign policy and diplomacy.

Definitely a pro-Obama leaning across the whole of europe.

"The Democrats are often tagged as 'socialist' but they make even New Labour look like a bunch of hard left radicals."

Think the Democrats make even the Tory party look like hard left radicals. I mean really, the 'right' to be insured ... as that's all the 'Obamacare' really amounts to, is that people cannot be refused medical insurance...

Ponders, also worth remembering that if the democrats are doing the same we are less likely to hear about it, as our media is overwhelmingly pro-Obama

um - not sure they could be doing the same at this point, Hmm

by "our media" do you mean eg the Telegraph??? the Times??? "overwhelmingly pro-Obama"? really?

I haven't paid as much attention this time around as I did in the last election (largely because of despair that the race to the bottom is given so much validity), but in the last election Nat Silver at 538 provided some much needed intellectual rigour in the analysis. I don't know how the move to the NYT has affected his coverage, but his stats and commentary certainly used to be worth checking out.

Some of the best analysis at the moment is here
www.economist.com/world/us-elections-2012
as the Economist by instinct leans to a pro business right - but is also VERY anti protectionism and excessive inequality as it tends to jump up and bite the rich later ....

Ponders, also worth remembering that if the democrats are doing the same we are less likely to hear about it, as our media is overwhelmingly pro-Obama.

Ponders, it's really not fair to judge a whole party based on the statements of one person

Fair enough, nightlurker

I am waiting (without bated breath) for the Official Republican Party to distance itself from Ryan's speech

The trouble is Ponders the televsion is too biased to question that. We are used to having biased newspapers but we have (relatively) unbiased television.

In the US television is more like our newspapers and have an editorial biased - eg Fox is pro-republican. Its a more powerful media than newspapers.

The only saving grace and counter to that is the rise of the internet, but that relies on people seeking alternative news sources; people who are by that very nature more likely to be liberal...

Ponders Yep, we are living in a post-truth political world. You can say anything you like and it will be true!

Crossposted with ThinkingAboutIt - I forgot about Ron Paul and Ross Perot. Perot has got the biggest share of the popular vote as a 3rd choice, but other independents have gotten electoral college votes without as big a share of the vote. George Wallace in 1968 carried five states in the South.

\link{http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/30/paul-ryans-speech-audacious-untruths\this analysis of Paul Ryan's speech made me FURIOUS!!!!}

The Republicans are such fucking hypocrites

(excuse me)

US spends eyewatering amounts on Military spending

Apparently the USA's military spending accounted for 41 per cent of the world total in 2011, followed by China with 8.2 per cent, Russia with 4.1% and the UK and France with 3.6 per cent each.

THe other surreal thing about US elections is the fact that candidates cover all bases on the ballot form
when I voted for Obama there were over 20 parties on the ballot paper but only five actual names
and they all have little pictures to help the illiterate

There are other political parties - there's a Green Party and a Libertarian Party, and a lot of smaller parties that perhaps only exist at state or smaller regional levels. I have a friend in the Socialist Workers Party. They maybe win some seats in state legislatures and mayoral offices, and there are two independents in the Senate, who caucus with the Democrats (but one is a prominent former Democrat, Joe Lieberman). There have been independent state governors too.

You can run for the presidency in a number of ways - as a member of a particular party, as an independent candidate, or as a write-in candidate (someone who is not named on a ballot paper, but who can be elected if enough people write their name down in place of voting for one of the named candidates). A guy called Ralph Nader has run for the presidency 6 times using all these methods and is the best 3rd party performer so far. He was widely blamed in 2000 for splitting the vote and taking votes away from Gore, who might have narrowly won otherwise. There are always other tiny parties who go on the ballot for presidential elections too. But there is no realistic third party candidate for president short of Abraham Lincoln rising from the grave and running for office again ...

THe other problem with this election is that certain states like Florida (Goveronor one Jeb Bush) have made voter registration much harder for certain groups - who just happen to be traditional democrat voters.

Everybody wants small goverment -
and yet the US spends eyewatering amounts on Military spending,
locks up nearly 1 in 100 men under draconian three strikes laws
and the government underwrite all mortgages against default (no PPI needed there)

state schools are firmly secular - so the religious home educate and the two never cross paths
even up to University level - there are private Bible Universities

the agriculture of California is totally reliant on illegal immigrants - who Arizona would like shot on sight ....

and the news on TV radio and the printed press is so divided and narow minded that the problem is just getting worse

on telly this morning, they raced two piglets, so that's how they decide who is president i think