Post Election Reflections and The Voters That Stayed Home.. America Still Snoozing and Loosing

"About 11 million fewer Americans voted for the two major-party candidates in 2012 — 119 million, down from 130 million in 2008. In fact, even though our population has steadily increased in the last eight years (adding 16 million to the 2004 estimate of 293 million Americans), about 2 million fewer Americans pulled the lever for Obama and Romney than for George W. Bush and John Kerry."

-Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/333135/voters-who-stayed-home-andrew-c-mccarthy#

According to McCarthy, "the key to understanding the 2012 election is simple: A huge slice of the electorate stayed home."

QUOTE:

"Obama lost an incredible 9 million voters from his 2008 haul. If told on Monday that fully 13 percent of the president’s support would vanish, the GOP establishment would have stocked up on champagne and confetti. To be sure, some of the Obama slide is attributable to “super-storm” Sandy. Its chaotic aftermath reduced turnout in a couple of big blue states: New York, where about 6 million people voted, and New Jersey, where 3.5 million did. That is down from 2008 by 15 and 12 percent, respectively. Yet, given that these solidly Obama states were not in play, and that — thanks to Chris Christie’s exuberance — our hyper-partisan president was made to look like a bipartisan healer, Sandy has to be considered a big net plus on Obama’s ledger. Put aside the fact that, as the election played out, Sandy was a critical boost for the president. Let’s pretend that it was just a vote drain — one that explains at least some of the slight drop in young voters. What did it really cost Obama? Maybe a million votes? It doesn’t come close to accounting for the cratering of his support. Even if he had lost only 8 million votes, that would still have been 11 percent of his 2008 vote haul gone poof. Romney should have won going away...For Americans who think elections can make a real difference, Tuesday pitted proud progressives against reticent progressives; slightly more preferred the true-believers. For Americans who don’t see much daylight between the two parties — one led by the president who keeps spending money we don’t have and the other by congressional Republicans who keep writing the checks and extending the credit line — voting wasn’t worth the effort. Those millions of Americans need a new choice. We all do."

I believe that Mr. McCarthy is off the mark here. I believe that the real key to the election results was culture, language and communication barriers, not whether or not people stayed home.

I still believe that Romeny was a very good candidate, far more reliable and qualified than Barack Obama. More people should have gone out to vote for Romney, but nevertheless that didn't happen and the rest is history.

Apparently the Hispanic vote increased for Obama while the White vote went down very significantly while the Black vote stayed about the same, more or less. Therefore the English language barrier may have played a role in this election as well due to the fact that the Republican party cannot communicate very effectively in Spanish and Ebonics. COMMUNICATION: Culture and language is probably the real key here.
 

And then of course there was the big Republican get-out-the-vote fail on the technological side of things.. See:

When the Nerds Go Marching In -ALEXIS MADRIGAL for The Atlantic: How a dream team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google built the software that drove Barack Obama's reelection [and how the Republican Orca get-out-the-vote program failed and crashed on election day] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/


See also

Inside Orca: How the Romney Campaign Suppressed Its Own Vote
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/08/Orca-How-the-Romney-Campaign-Suppressed-Its-Own-Vote


And then of course, how do you account for those who DID vote for Obama in 2012 ????

Economic Ignorance. Some quotes from NoPasaran!

http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2012/11/in-their-urban-cocoons-city-dwellers.html

"Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been too much babied. While he [urban man] battles [politically], other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are [...] fighting the land, fighting diseases and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security in it some pagan God–Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this in human Earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is."

"Affluent denizens of our metropolises see no inconsistency in supporting the Democratic jihad against “greedy corporations” and “the rich” while also expecting their every whim to be supplied, often by those same corporations and successful entrepreneurs. This is because they are removed from some of the harsher daily realities of life that confront those who are on the front lines of mankind’s ongoing economic struggle. They have forgotten that mankind’s natural state is poverty and that strenuous, heroic efforts are required to produce the astounding affluence and abundant paraphernalia of our modern, affluent lifestyles... Like the ivory-tower academics who enthuse about socialism because they have never experienced the harsh realities of socialism, so today, many denizens of our big cities are afflicted with a “metropolitan blind spot” that causes them to support irrational, ultimately self-destructive policies. In their urban cocoons, city-dwellers take for granted the abundance and availability of the economic goods that they consume..."