Monday, October 29, 2012

Sunday Globe Specials: Political Knock-Knock Joke

Don't ask who is there. 

Related: Sunday Globe Special: Political Sell-Outs

No wonder the calls won't stop coming.

"New tools aid door-to-door push for votes; There is an extraordinary calculus behind the work of door-knockers for President Obama and Mitt Romney, backed by millions of dollars of scientific research" by Michael Kranish, Alan Wirzbicki and Brian MacQuarrie  |  Globe Staff, October 28, 2012

BEDFORD, N.H. — It is the fruit of an extraordinary and very modern calculus, one backed by millions of dollars of political science research — and one that could well determine who becomes president....

Enormous databases that include everything from car ownership to church membership, providing clues about which houses the door-knockers should target.

I knew all that spying was good for something, 'murkn. 

Globe reporters followed the ground forces of both candidates in two battleground states, New Hampshire and Ohio....

What once seemed revolutionary — setting up countless phone banks to reach every potential voter, blitzing mailboxes with fliers and the airwaves with commercials — now is viewed as seriously flawed. The noise is so great, the telephone calls so often ignored, and the commercials so frequent, that no one can be sure the message is getting out, or sinking in.

I'll clear it up for them. It isn't. They have been tuned out. 

So....

New Hampshire, on paper at least, may not look like fertile ground for Obama. The president’s strongest supporters include African-Americans and Hispanics, but blacks make up only 1.3 percent of the state’s population, compared with 13 percent nationally, and Hispanics account for 3 percent, compared with nearly 17 percent nationally. Romney has a summer home in Wolfeboro and easily won the Republican primary in January.

RelatedSununu backs off remarks on Powell

Of course, it's okay for the elitist and supremacist media to divide us all into subgroups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc, etc.

Yet a few weeks ago, Obama was up by 15 points in a University of New Hampshire poll. Then, after Obama’s poor showing in the first debate, the margin eroded. The Romney campaign, which had been heavily outspent on television commercials, began buying airtime. A University of New Hampshire poll released last week found that Obama’s lead had been cut to 8 points, while an American Research Group poll surprised many by finding Romney ahead by 2 points.

See: Sunday Globe Special: Romney's Recalibration

Maybe the rig really is in for Mitt. 

Such a surge might be too late to carry the day in states with heavy early voting, but New Hampshire does not have early voting.

Moreover, New Hampshire encourages voters to show up on Election Day by allowing registration at the polls, whereas many other states shut down registration weeks ahead of Nov. 6. As many as 100,000 voters are expected to take advantage of the law allowing last-minute registration, which would set a state record. The result is that the old-fashioned business of getting out voters on Election Day is vital in New Hampshire.

In Ohio, meanwhile, the rules and demographics are different. It has nearly nine times the population of New Hampshire, with a black population close to the national average and a Hispanic population of 3.2 percent.

New Hampshire is the second-least churchgoing state in the nation and is socially libertarian, while parts of Ohio are more socially and religiously conservative. Early voting is crucial in Ohio, where at least 35 percent of voters are expected to cast ballots before Election Day.

And yet they didn't vote for Ron Paul. 

Yet in both states, as in every battleground, it is widely believed that the race will be won by the campaign that can get out its voters. That truism is buttressed by some national polls that have shown Obama leads Romney among registered voters but is statistically deadlocked among “likely voters.”

In 2008, Obama’s victory was all but assured by what was widely acknowledged to be his superior ground game, in which many new voters, particularly younger ones, padded his lead. Republicans said they have learned their lesson and have spent much of the last year trying to build the infrastructure for a record turnout. Democrats said they have redoubled their efforts.

The feeling here is the machines have already been programmed. We will all find out who the masters have selected as their next administrator the night of November 6. 

And so, in the leafy neighborhoods and cities in New Hampshire and Ohio, the race is on to ferret out not just undecided or wavering voters, but those who might not follow through on their preferences and cast a ballot.

Focus on crucial counties

Of all the once-Republican counties that swung to support President Obama in 2008, perhaps none was more symbolic of the sweep of his victory than Ohio’s Hamilton County, long a fabled GOP stronghold.

“I was shellshocked’’ in 2008, said Deb Voss, 54, a homemaker who also runs a home decor business. She was knocking on doors in Madeira, a suburb of Cincinnati, last Wednesday, part of the GOP’s extensive get-out-the-vote effort to reclaim the county. Voss said she had never been involved with politics — until now.

The work is laborious. In two hours, Voss and Karen Schreckenhofer, 46, a homemaker who volunteers for the GOP four days a week, reached households with a total of only 17 voters. But the GOP says that as fewer people answer their phones, staffers have reemphasized face-to-face contact to reach voters.

The next day, a starkly different side of Hamilton County emerges, one that underscores Romney’s challenges. On an unseasonably hot afternoon downtown, voters fanned themselves with campaign fliers as they waited in lines for 45 minutes to an hour to cast ballots. Almost all were from Cincinnati rather than the GOP-leaning suburbs. Many of them were African-American. Virtually all of them were Obama supporters.

The Obama campaign has pushed voters to take advantage of in-person early voting, an option added after the state’s disastrous election in 2004, when hours-long lines at many precincts proved a national embarrassment. Yet for all the campaign’s efforts, many voters Thursday said they had come on their own....

It was the one and only time (or so we are told) the exit polls were wrong.

See: Stolen Elections (Part 2)

Not that it really mattered. Kerry would have simply carried forward the same policies with a neo-liberal bent, just as Obama has. 

A similar scene played out in Dayton, where a stream of early voters, about two-thirds of them African-American, flowed into the Montgomery County Administration Building from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, peaking at 350 an hour in late afternoon. They came with canes, with spouses, and with children.

The Obama campaign’s emphasis on early voting played a major role in its 2008 victory....

A Time magazine poll released Wednesday showed Obama leading 60 percent to 30 percent among Ohio voters who already had cast ballots. However, the president and Romney were tied at 45 percent among people who said they intend to vote but had not yet done so.

Then Obama should win Ohio. 

Both campaigns are relying on surrogates in Ohio to deliver their message among union members and evangelical voters.

In 2008, 58 percent of union voters in Ohio voted for Obama, according to exit polls. But this year, the Obama campaign is hoping that the auto industry bailout, which benefited union members in Ohio, will lead to greater support.

Unions are being aided in canvassing by Working America, a national group with 3 million members, including 1 million in Ohio, who do not belong to organized labor but would like its benefits.

White evangelicals also have the potential to play a key role for Romney in Ohio, where they made up about 30 percent of the electorate in 2008 and broke 72 percent to 28 percent for John McCain. Throughout the state, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition is contacting Christian conservatives.

Related: Sunday Globe Special: Ralph Reed's Redemption

Also see: Other Ohio Items

Looks like Ohio will be stolen, I mean, going red again.

Microtargeting voters

In New Hampshire, meanwhile, so much rides on turnout that the two campaigns are relying heavily on their computer databases to identify every potential vote.

The databases are part of what is known as “microtargeting,” a collection of information from public records and consumer lists that is entered into spreadsheets....

They know you better than you know yourself. 

Indeed, Tom Rath, a senior Romney adviser, said the use of microtargeting innately appeals to the data-driven Romney. “If you are an organizational type like Mitt Romney, the idea that there is a process that can be measured and calibrated and tracked is very soothing,” Rath said....

Meaning Mitt is a control freak. 

Michael Cote, a Teamster and UPS driver, said he has been inundated with union literature urging him to vote for Obama. The Teamsters have their own microtargeting effort; the union president, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., who supports Obama, can be heard in a message on Cote’s answering machine.

Cote is sympathetic to concerns that union interests could be undermined by a Romney presidency but he is undecided because of the tough economy.

“The only thing that is preventing me from voting for Romney is the fact that I’m a Teamster,” he said. “I like Mitt Romney more than I like Oba­ma but I’m still kind of torn.’’

Richard Christie, a retired federal employee, tried to close the sale, but Cote said he won’t decide until a day or two before Election Day, one of the last of the undecided. “I’ll be voting, trust me,” Cote said. “That’s a sacred right.”

He's one of the Ohio's one percent

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Related(?):

"Despite the upbeat rally, several supporters said they are worried about the outcome on Election Day. “I’m really scared. I see more Romney signs than Obama signs, and that makes me nervous,” said Meg Maroni, 58, a school psychologist from Plymouth, N.H.

Me, too, even here in Massachusetts.  Of course, signs mean nothing; otherwise, Ron Paul would be the Republican nominee. 

After a warm-up concert by James Taylor, the president was introduced by US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, former governor of New Hampshire, who spoke of the small state’s outsized importance in the election: “The next 10 days will clearly determine the future of our state and our country.”

Already has been. Romney agrees on foreign policy, and I am no longer falling for the s*** fooleys when it comes to domestic politics. 

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Also seeObama making 6th visit to N.H.

"Poll finds majority in US hold racist views; Prejudice has risen since 2008 Obama victory" by Jennifer Agiesta and Sonya Ross  |  Associated Press,  October 28, 2012

WASHINGTON — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the nation elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward black people whether they recognize those feelings or not.

(Blog editor notes the irony of the supremacist Jew media hollering racism at us ignorant slobs)

Those views could cost President Obama votes as he tries for reelection, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people’s more favorable views of black people.

Oh, I LOVE CONTRADICTORY HORSE SHIT served up to DIVIDE as the RIGGED ELECTION NARRATIVE is WRITTEN!!

Racial prejudice has risen slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

Mind-reading or agenda-pushing pollsters. 

In all, 51 percent of those surveyed expressed explicit racist attitudes toward black people, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the share with racist sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing positive attitudes toward black people fell....

I am SO TIRED of being DIVIDED by the ELITIST PRESS when WE ALL -- black, white, yellow, red, green, purple, and blue -- WANT an END to the WARS, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, and OUR SOCIAL NEEDS MET!

Obama has tread cautiously on the subject of race, but many blacks have talked openly about perceived antagonism toward them since he took office. As evidence, they point to events involving police brutality or cite bumper stickers, cartoons, and protest posters that mock the president as a lion or a monkey, or lynch him in effigy.

‘‘Part of it is growing polarization within American society,’’ said Fredrick Harris, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University.

Overall, the survey found that by virtue of racial prejudice, Obama could lose 5 percentage points off his share of the popular vote in his Nov. 6 contest against Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

But Obama also stands to benefit from a 3 percentage point gain because of nonracist sentiment, the researchers said. Overall, that means an estimated net loss of 2 percentage points because of racist attitudes....

Enough to throw the election to Romney. 

Most Americans also expressed racist attitudes toward Hispanics....

But they rarely express alleged anti-Semitism due to the decades of Zionist inculcation and indoctrination in the educational institutions and mass media. 

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And when I answered the door no one was there. 

And I would like to state for the LAST TIME that it is ACTIONS and POLICIES that I disagree with. I don't see race or gender when I read a paper; all I see is black and white ink with a name. 

Where I DO NOTE the DIFFERENCE is that it is PREDOMINATELY BROWN PEOPLE standing under the DRONE MISSILES approved by the "Peace Prize" president, and who are the predominate victims of EUSraeli imperialism across the planet.