Projected Electoral College Map of United States for 2012
On the eve of the election, I am still sticking with my initial mid-May 2012 prediction that Obama will win based on an X-factor few pundits have even dared to mention less give a third-party candidate media attention. Romney has been riding a wave of enthusiasm, but contrary to what conservative pundits want you to believe, it may not be enough. If one takes the average of national polls placing the race as a dead heat and assumes that they are within their published margin of error as accurate (note: if skewed, polling data are useless for analysis and any discussion or prediction is moot), Obama may win big and here is why…
Based on Obama’s performance the last four years, I REALLY hope I am wrong, even though Romney is at best a poor choice too. Nonetheless, it is by far more important to vote for the best person in party blind, unbiased fashion than to mindlessly cast a vote telling yourself that it will be “wasted” if it isn’t for the status quo candidates hand-picked by the elites. Considering Obama’s dirty Chicago tactics and appeal to voters in swing states with big electoral college numbers, he has polled neck and neck and this means he will likely win. Obviously, Romney may indeed squeak it out if he mobilizes more people to the polls and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wins the popular vote, but all of the polls have him in a dead heat with Obama and that is very, very bad for Romney. In effect, this is actually saying Obama will win when you consider that no polls since early October have factored in the very real effect of independent party candidates. In particular, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate.
Johnson has sound rule-of-law and minimal government based policy, excellent experience, best in class support for liberty and civil rights, an unparalleled voting record, and truly has novel, good ideas for the job. As such, Johnson has been polling at or above 10 percent in most states like him or not. Johnson is on every state’s ballot and has widespread support. Less one forget that millions of Americans signed petitions to have Johnson on their state’s ballot (a herculean task for an independent without huge grassroots support) and that support was hard fought and earned from hard-core independent and free American voters. Voters that are likely to vote for an independent candidate and tend to be composed of more big R republicans than big D democrats. Further, since the dirty deal at Republican National Convention in Tampa where Ron Paul delegates from states like Virginia were all but barred and disenfranchised from voting at the convention by last-minute changes to convention rules, many of Paul’s supporters are rightfully burned and alienated by the Republican Party. Probably half of these big R, well-informed, reliable voters that the Republicans have counted for granted as supporting Romney will break ranks ands support Johnson or Obama. This IS Romney and the RNC’s fault for alienating their base. More importantly, in “must win” swing states like Ohio and Florida as well as important swing states like Virginia and Colorado, Johnson WILL win at least 2-8 percentage points that Romney may have won absent Johnson’s more attractive political platform. Considering that the guaranteed minimum of 1 percentage point Johnson will receive in a swing state like Ohio where Obama already has a very slight lead, Romney is destroyed. As a result, you could in fact see a landslide win for Obama in the electoral college.
In the event of a win for Obama, a couple of factors will be immediately present. The first will be that Gary Johnson will immediately be blamed and suddenly receive more press than he ever did before the election. Lies and twisted statements such as “Johnson” stole the votes from Romney will be rampant. The real facts will be that Romney and the Republicans did not own anyone’s vote in the first place and therefore it was not Romney’s vote to lose or Johnson’s to steal anymore than a vote for Obama was “stolen” from Romney. You may also see the loss blamed on the recent hurricane that battered the East Coast. However, the harsh reality for the Republicans could very well be that they ran a lackluster, unqualified, marginally different, anti-Constitution, big government, war mongering, economically illiterate, C-average, entitled, rich, draft dodging, Mormon, milk-toast, liberal Republican candidate against Obama and got beat fair and square. In short, it will be the people who voted for Romney, a candidate that is at best poor and unrepresentative of the people he is supposed to lead, that wasted their vote. Furthermore, it would most likely be the death-knell for the Republican Party at the Presidential level and hearken the arrival of a true third-party platform that must be taken seriously and can no longer be discounted. This rise of a legitimate third-party is a true silver lining to a Republican loss and is long overdue. The stranglehold on power by elites in the two parties must be broken to save America. Only when the power structure is broken will America stand a chance of real recovery, prosperity, and freedom.
Sadly, tomorrow’s vote will no doubt be a status quo win for Romney or Obama and nothing will change for the better as again promised. Placing a reshuffled Bush administration back into office or another four years of Obama are both horrible futures and the epitome of civic insanity when it comes to voting. We do know better and we do have better options. Hello America! You can’t believe what a politician says. You have to look at their record…or lack there-of. Ultimately, it will be the citizens of the United States that will thus justifiably suffer the most for their apathy and zombie-like bandwagon voting record for “the lesser of two evils” when good, qualified candidates are on every state’s ballot. Shame on us!