President Picker Posts coming soon!

As the Obama / Romney battle for the Presidency looms, slow blogging here at President Picker is partly a result of working on several other projects, namely:

Retire USA Retirement Information
Retirement Blog
Travel and History Blog
US History Website
US History Blog
History and Civil War Blog

But we'll be back soon with plenty of commentary on the upcoming US Election, where President Picker is calling the race early for Obama even as we recognize that factors could emerge that might change that likely result.   However, unless the economy shows serious signs of weakness it seems very unlikely that Romney could overturn the current popularity of President Obama given the uncertainty of a new President and the demographic forces such as young voters.

Exit Polls - Romney Wins Ohio

With a victory soon to be announced in Ohio, Mitt Romney is ever closer to wrapping up the Republican nomination.   Although Santorum appears to have a respectable showing tonight, and even Newt Gingritch and Ron Paul have shown some regional strengths, the Romney Juggernaut is very likely to prove too hard to overcome.

Prediction: Michigan for Romney, Romney wins Republican nomination

9:13 EST:  Mitt Romney has taken the lead in Michigan and the results from Detroit still pour in - Romney is very heavily favored in Detroit's Wayne County so it appears Romney is the winner in Michigan as well as Arizona, and is very likely to go on to win the nomination for the Republican party nominee.

Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul

Although here at President Picker we're still predicting a Romney victory in the Republican Primary and an Obama win in the general election, it is now clear that Romney has failed to "wrap up" the Republican Primary as many predicted he would by now.   Rick Santorum has clearly been annointed the new darling of conservative Republicans and his big wins in several states give him a real shot at the nomination.  Gingrich's campaign is probably on its last legs now, while Ron Paul's substantial showings continue to be largely ignored by many who generally argue that Paul is less likely than Santorum or Romney to "break out" with enough votes to win the nomination outright.

Things get very interesting if Santorum, Paul, and Gingrich do well enough to thwart an outright victory by Romney, leading to a brokered Republican convention.  This would be a very interesting scenario as we'd likely see mainstreamers still favor Romney while the hard liners - and often the most enthusiastic campaigners - will likely favor Santorum.

President Picker's Prediction:    Romney / Santorum Ticket in 2012 vs Obama Biden.

South Carolina to Gingrich, and we have a whole new Republican Primary new ballgame! ?

American Politics is nothing if it's not full of hyperbole and breathless discussion of the implications of the ebb and flow of votes as our incredibly lengthy process slogs on.    With Newt Gingrich's win in South Carolina and very strong polling in Florida  (Gingrich leads there in polls), it looks like Mitt Romney was not locked in to the nomination as strongly as many had thought.

Romney is facing the wrath of the conservative wings of the Republican party combined with Gingrich's clever, effective, and well funded negative campaigning.     As Gingrich gains ground look for the battlefield to bloody with even more negativity from the Romney SuperPac, the "man behind the curtain" in terms of the negative advertising that supports the Romney campaign.  

2012 is the first presidential election to fall under new campaign financing rules that are likely to make the SuperPacs even more significant as campaign mudslingers.   (PAC = "Political Action Committee").

Negative campaigning is always decried by candidates, the press, and the public but it remains the most effective way to fight a political battle, so its foolish and ridiculous to think it won't generally play a key and often decisive role in significant elections, especially for the US Presidency.  

South Carolina Primary - Negative working like a charm

Newt Gingrich is now leading Mitt Romney in most South Carolina primary polling, certainly at least in part as a result of the massive and well funded negative TV campaign against Romney.    Of course its also true that most South Carolina Republican voters are a lot more conservative than Romney, and thus the Gingrich camp can reasonably argue that they've simply been helping South Carolinians figure out who the "more  conservative candidate" is in this campaign.

It's still difficult to see how even a narrow victory by Gingrich could derail Romney's likely victory in the Republican primary, but it'll certainly make for a more interesting horse race.

Americans Elect 2012

Here at President Picker we're big fans of the new online effort to create a candidacy freer from special interests and party politics than ever before.  This non-partisan effort is growing fast and appears to be on the verge of "breaking out" as a somewhat viable 3rd party candidate (who is yet to be determined by the membership of the group which is, as well as the candidacy, open to all Americans).    Obviously 2012 won't see a 3rd party effort that is competitive with the Democrats and Republicans, but we predict that by 2016 we'll have a viable third party in some form, perhaps this one:

PURPOSE

THE GOAL OF AMERICANS ELECT is to nominate a presidential ticket that answers directly to voters—not the political system.

American voters are tired of politics as usual. They want leaders that will put their country before their party, and American interests before special interests. Leaders who will work together to develop fresh solutions to the serious challenges facing our country. We believe a secure, online nominating process will prove that America is ready for a competitive, nonpartisan ticket.

PROCESS

• DEFINE YOUR "TRUE COLORS"

  Define the crucial issues facing our nation—beyond just red and blue.

  RANK YOUR PRIORITIES FOR OUR NEXT PRESIDENT

  ANSWER QUESTIONS THAT DETERMINE YOUR INDIVIDUAL VIEWS

  SEE HOW YOU COMPARE TO OTHER DELEGATES AND CANDIDATES

  

PROGRESS

Americans Elect is already well on the way to putting the first directly-nominated nonpartisan ticket on the 2012 ballot in all 50 states.

2,107,742

Romney or Bachman or ? for the Republican Nomination

As the debt ceiling / US budget theatrics continue in Washington (prediction - compromises coming in a few days to avert an S&P downgrade) , the race for the Republican presidential nomination continues in a somewhat lackluster fashion with several potential candidates on the sidelines waiting to see if they can muster enough support to throw their hat into the ring.

However Republicans must be concerned that none of the current crop appear likely to defeat Obama unless the economy suffers significantly greater setbacks in the next year. It's alarming to think that some radical Republicans may have this scenario in mind as they continue to stall on budget compromises and raising the debt ceiling, hoping to harm the economy enough to defeat Obama but not enough to send us into a tailspin. That calculation would not only be unpatriotic, it would be potentially disastrous for the country.

The current best bet appears to be that Mitt Romney will sort of plod into the Republican nomination with Michelle Bachmann pulling in the Tea Party folks, leaving moderate Republicans a choice between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney who are polling about equally in scenarios where Perry's in the ring (he has not announced yet but is very likely to do so if his numbers stay as high as now. RealClearPolitics has Romney at 18%, Perry at 17% in a race where all the strong potential candidates are placed in the ring. With only *announced* candidates, Romney's in a strong lead at 27% with Bachmann second with 18% , Ron Paul third with 11%.

Look for Palin to stay out of the race and hope for a VP spot on the likely Romney or Perry ticket. Look for Bachmann to *get* the VP spot on the Romney or Perry ticket, giving the Republicans a similar strategy to McCain / Palin but with much stronger candidates on the ticket.

In our view Obama's still in the driver's seat with respect to the 2012 election. Barring a serious economic setback, Americans are unlikely to want yet another major "change" in the White House so soon. Obama's kept his core constituency happy with only modest levels of alienation of those on the far left who naively felt Obama as President would act very consistently with Obama as young Chicago organizer. We're likely to see more liberal "progressive" politics from Obama in a second term, but it's clear that President Obama will continue to keep moderate democrats fairly happy while he continues to alienate the far left and right. It's a great political strategy and it won't change for the 2012 election.

History of the Democratic Party and the Birth Certificate

Over at Travel and History I've written a short "History of the Democratic Party", focusing mostly on presidents and briefly tracing the history of the democratic party from inception in the late 1700s to modern times with the election of our latest Democratic President, Barack Obama, who coincidentally just released a better copy of his birth certificate ... today.

Although the "birther"arguments have always been pretty dumb, it was also been odd that the Obama camp worked so hard to avoid releasing the "vault copy" or original certificate. My working hypothesis about that was that the original birth certificate probably was lost or defaced or contained something compromising which might have made greater trouble than simply stonewalling, but the release of this latest long form birth certificate official copy from Hawaii suggests that was wrong and there was nothing at all to hide. One would think the Obama election team would have waited until closer to the election to let the frothy nonsense continue, so perhaps they have decided this was eating into his popularity enough that waiting any longer was unwise.

In any case, it looks like the 2012 Presidential Election will now be pretty much in full swing, though as David Brooks suggested recently it's very hard to imagine anybody in the current field of candidates giving Obama much of a run. I think Romney is the most likely nominee and arguably has a shot, but a lot can happen in the coming months as Republicans work the dreary Iowa farms and fields to line up early support, effectively copying the brilliant strategy of the Obama 2008 early campaign juggernaut.

Obama v. Romney in 2012 ?

As the Republican presidential primary contenders start to shake out from the field of many to a few, two names seem to stand out conspicuously: Donald Trump and Mitt Romney. Readers of President Picker will note that we thought Romney would win last election's Republican Primary, and we'll stick with that prediction for this one. McCain's nomination and predictably weak candidacy was a surprise to us though the outcome was not. Romney is a far more formidable opponent to Obama, and we'll see a close 2012 race if he's the nominee, a race that will reflect the increasing level of political polarization in the USA.

The other conspicuous Republican is Donald Trump, the bombastic star of real estate and TV. It's remarkable to see how well Trump's doing right now in polling, though most likely this simply reflects the growing frustration with America's arguably obsolete two party focus - a system that largely requires a tribal approach to thinking and politics rather than the flexible and compromising strategies that would serve us better.