Why not just give the poors 3/5 of a vote each, and call it a day?
On Nov. 6, Mitt Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters. While John McCain lost white voters under 30 by 10 points, Romney won those voters by seven points, a 17-point shift. Obama received 41 / 2 million fewer voters in 2012 than 2008, and Romney got more votes than McCain.
Yes, the Republican Party has problems, but as we go forward, let’s remember that any party that captures the majority of the middle class must be doing something right.
ruemara
Mitt lost. Get over it.
Aet
Class warfare doesn’t exist tho.
trex
But he almost didn’t lose and he won with the right kind of people so in a way, he’s the real winner!
Maude
@ruemara:
Mitt has lunch with Obama at the WH. Our prez is so classy.
Add tomorrow he has lunch.
Dan
That you can carry the majority of the middle class and still lose handily says something about growing economic disparity, eh?
John Costello (@joXn)
The obvious solution is to make it so that fewer people are poor.
schrodinger's cat
GOP: Please keep insulting potential voters, that is a great strategy going forward.
The Moar You Know
Oh, the obvious lesson left clearly stated by its absence: If Romney carried every income bracket above 50k, and he still lost…
That means the outright majority of voters are in the under 50k bracket, a truly shitty place to be.
American, Banana Republic in all but name.
Cassidy
I love how they are doing anything they can to not examine there actual policies.
YellowJournalism
Assuming that their calculations are correct, doesn’t it concern them that 1) there is a growing poor population and 2) that population overwhelmingly had no confidence in the party and its candidate to serve as their leader?
Oh, wait. This is the Republicans. Those are just lazy poors and minorities who want stuff. They don’t count, really.
catclub
“On Nov. 6, Mitt Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters.”
Median income is less than $50k/household, so this assumes facts not in evidence. Those folks with household income under but near $50k, ARE the middle class.
Punchy
I need to see the data to believe this. I dont know ANY people under 30 who even considered voting for this guy, let alone a 7 point spread. Unless there’s more unmentioned variables in there, like “uneducated, Deep-South, meth addicted” that’s not being divulged.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
I understand Hoover won the middle class against FDR. It was pity for Hoover that the middle class was so small from the policies he implemented.
Stuart Stevens shows he’s got what it takes to be a good pundit by ignoring the obvious.
Ash Can
“We must be doing something right, so let’s keep doing what we’re doing!” Awesome.
Maude
@Cassidy:
It’s all about their fee fees.
PeakVT
There was a time not so long ago when the problems of the Democratic Party revolved around being too liberal and too dependent on minorities. Obama turned those problems into advantages and rode that strategy to victory. But he was a charismatic African American president with a billion dollars, no primary and media that often felt morally conflicted about being critical. How easy is that to replicate?
Wow.
Tim
This makes it sound like they’re a clear path to victory for GOPers in the future, if they just actually do something legitimate about income inequality. You know, beyond promising ponies will rain down on all of us if we just give away more money to the job creators.
Schlemizel
If our masters had any sense at all they would read that and come to the conclusion that they don’t need to be nice to the coloreds or the vaginally impaired. What the need to do is to create more people making more than 50K a year!
They can’t tolerate the thought of giving gays, women, blacks, browns, reds, yellows, disabled equal rights but here is a path that could lead them to real domination!
Sure it would be painful for a few years. They might have to give up one of their homes (hard to make do with just 5) or the company provided gold plated shower curtain rod (yes, thats a true story) but it would be worth it in the long run! All they need to do is start paying people more money & BAM! the GOP is back in power for good!
EDIT: Tim got there first but NO FAIR – he didn’t take the time I did to include all the snark!
catclub
I read the linked article. nasty piece of work from someone who is still bitter.
Chris
As the policies that have dominated our politics since 1980 continue to shrink the middle class and force more and more of its members into the poor and working classes, it means less and less.
YellowJournalism
@Maude: That makes me think of a movie I once saw as a kid. I do not remember the name of the movie, but it was one of those raunchy 80’s comedies where the rich people were assholes. (Heh.) Anyway, this movie had a poor girl at a boarding school getting picked on by a rich snobby gal, so the poor girl’s friends replaced the rich snob’s pâté with horse shit. It’s probably a good thing our Prez is classier than those of us who would love to act out scenes from those movies on a rich bastard like Romney.
? Martin
No he didn’t. Median personal income (full time workers) in this country is $39K. 75% of the tax-filing population (retirees, part time workers, homemakers, etc.) earns less than $50K.
dan
@The Moar You Know: That is the first thing that I thought of as well. If Romney lost the popular vote, that would indicate that the majority of people in this country earn below $50,000. No?
SatanicPanic
Republicans should continue doing what they’re doing, I can’t see why they wouldn’t.
Percysowner
This would lead an intelligent party to start pushing for better wages and a growth of people earning over $50,000. I doubt the Republicans will show such intelligence. Besides, next election they can look at the percentage of the vote Republican won with people making over $250,000 or even $1 million.
Schlemizel
@Chris:
Something tells me if you asked the writer of this for a list of signs of a middle class life nobody making less than 50k would have many, if any, of them. And for the record, since median is currently less than 40k, 50k would be above middle class.
The world these clowns talk about does not exist
Gex
This is closely related to the thread on Asian voters. Minorities clearly hear the difference between them trying to get our votes and them saying our votes shouldn’t count. They really don’t see that aspect to their worldview. They cannot understand how that sounds. They just keep repeating these arguments because to them, it is self-evident that they should rule. Clap harder!
Origuy
Why I Didn’t Fuck Up, by Stewie Stevens
Anya
That calculations sounds really suspect. A reputable source needs to check that.
schrodinger's cat
Your guy lost, now go home, sore loser.
Maude
@YellowJournalism:
I so badly want to make a joke about mushrooms.
Maude
@? Martin:
The country is in trouble. Fewer people to spend money and ages going flat or down.
KG
just hopped over to wikipedia to see what they show the vote counts at. McCain won 59.948 million votes. Romney won 60.525 million votes. That’s about 577,000 extra votes. We had 125.513 million people vote this year. That’s a difference of .45% of the electorate. Mitt Romney convinced less than one half of one percent of people to vote for him that didn’t vote for McCain.
Yes, Obama lost a lot of votes but it really looks like the GOP has hit its ceiling at basically 60 million voters, give or take a half million. The Democrats’ ceiling is probably closer to 70 million (which is just above what Obama won in 2008).
I’m not sure how “keep doing what we’ve been doing” is a good strategy for the Republicans.
ET
I’m on LinkedIn and just got a pieces of Romney junk mail via LinkedIn that I think is part of LinkedIn’s “Don’t miss out on updates from thought leaders” program.
Mitt Romney
Believe in America
Real Change From Day One
President Obama promised change, but he could not deliver it. I promise change, and I have a record of achieving it.This is why I am..
trollhattan
This tool is defending his fat, unearned paycheck and angling for his next gig.
“Stuart Stevens was the chief strategist for the Romney presidential campaign.”
Love the list of column titles on the page footer from the WaPo opinonators. They has a konfoozed over the memo, especially George and Chucky.
Alex S.
He probably defined the middle class by the mean income, not the median income.
aimai
@Chris:
Its an interesting assumption–the party that captures the majority of any subset of voters “must be doing something right” from the perspective of its voters, must’nt it? So this is kind of a weird place to leave off thinking.
I also want to point out that they are really, really, hurt by the landslide of EVs, the 4.4 million differential in votes between Obama and Romney, and the “he only won 47 percent of the vote total” thing because Schmidt goes out of his way to think up a new metric which is the bizarre (and for all I know totally false) “only 320,000 votes separated Romney and Obama from victory in the swing states.” It makes it sound like Romney was within 320,000 votes of winning–the long for “fifty fifty chance” that they were touting before the election.
aimai
different-church-lady
@John Costello (@joXn):
You really don’t get how the modern conservative mind works, do you?
schrodinger's cat
OT but some what related. Whatever happened to those fire breathing abolitionist radical Republicans, that you see in the movie Lincoln? Where did they go?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@trollhattan:
WaPo’s editorial page isn’t even trying to hide it’s love affair with the GOP. Giving Romney’s chief strategist a platform to eulogize and explain why Obama is still a shitty shit shit who Real ‘Murica hates is par for the course.
Comrade Dread
Yeah, champ, I make more than 50,000 a year, but I’m still human enough to realize that I’m one bad day away (via a bad diagnosis, a car accident, layoffs, whatever) from being in a position where all of my security goes out the window and suddenly unemployment, disability, and Medicaid become life saving programs and not ‘entitlements’ or ‘giveaways’.
I’ve seen that happen to friends.
So when you’re gung-ho for tax cuts, more defense spending at the expense of spreading real human misery, I’m not voting for you.
Also, when you’re policies ensure that all of the gains go to the wealthy, and inflation continues to go up, you’re slowly impoverishing the middle class, and you’re increasing the likelihood that enough people will get fed up, say “Fuck it” and vote for soshalism.
jibeaux
Ah, a new variation on the argument that some voters are more equaler than others.
Steeplejack
@catclub:
Thanks, I was about to make that point. Only in the alternate GOP world where $50,000 is the bottom of the middle class does this guy’s theory hold water.
Also, what Cassidy said: they are grasping at straws to avoid having to face making changes to their actual policies.
different-church-lady
We’ve clearly reached a new, uncharted stage of wingnut reality denial: not only were Romney’s people convinced he was going to win, they are now convinced he actually did win.
Turgidson
@Punchy:
Romney’s lead among white voters in general was almost entirely on account of white voters in Southern/Appalachian and Plains states – so his margin among the demographic you mention probably accounts for a lead among the white-under-30 set.
rikyrah
they lost..
they can’t handle it..
I wont even get into my tinfoil musings that they thought they were gonna cheat their way into the White HOuse. I’ll let that alone…
but, yet…
THEY LOST
Brian
AH yes draw the line well above the median income and use that as an argument… fun with statistics.
David in NY
@Steeplejack: Really, the point you and catclub make — that lots of people making below $50,000 are in the “middle class” — really ought to call this guy’s competence into question. If he doesn’t understand that a lot more votes come from people with incomes below that than above, no wonder Romney lost. That’s gross electoral malpractice.
Nina
If Romney had somehow won, this guy was very likely a contender for chief of staff or some subcabinet position.
We didn’t just dodge a bullet with this election, we dodged a planetary extinction event asteroid.
Turgidson
@aimai:
It’s the same group of morans (or their heirs) who thought Goldwater’s epic humiliation in 1964 was a great success because after all, 27 million people can’t be wrong! Nevermind the 43 million who knew in their guts that he was nuts and voted LBJ. They were the anomaly.
Same idea, with a little more cowbell.
LGRooney
@catclub: Per the 2010 census median income was right about 50K. Now, whether that is the median income for the voting population, I can’t say. Anyone know what the mean is? In any event, 50K isn’t going to afford you much in an increasingly sub/urbanized population, although I think median household income was a bit higher (I want to say 65K).
low-tech cyclist
@catclub:
Close. In 2011, the median household income in the U.S. was $50,054, according to the Census Bureau.
Stuart Stevens is still wrong, of course.
Schlemizel
@David in NY:
REmember, it was his guy who said middle class was 250k a year.
if yuo want actual middle class income in America today you need to look at the life of a family making 40k THATS THE MIDDLE!
these assclowns don’t get that – even 1 standard deviation either side of that number isn’t Rmoney territory.
Turgidson
@schrodinger’s cat:
They have moved on from wanting to abolish slavery to wanting to abolish voting rights for people who might not vote for them. And health rights for women. And the right to retire in some amount of dignity and comfort for the elderly. And so on.
Still abolitionists though.
Schlemizel
@low-tech cyclist:
You are correct, I am not sure where I got the 40k number from but I assumed it was correct. I will still stand by everything I said with this new correct number in place of my old number
mai naem
I don’t believe the numbers. I would like to see Nate Silver handle this. I don’t see how this can work out statistically. Can he be so stupid as to mean white voters making <50k and not the general population. Pew has some exit poll data but I'm too lazy to go look it up.
Steeplejack
@? Martin:
He did say household income rather than personal income, but the drift of your point holds.
The Other Bob
@aimai:
The fact that this guys math is so fucked up kinda explains why they were shocked by the loss. Man they are really that stupid. Any R candidate who hires this guy in the future is equally a moron.
David in NY
@Steeplejack:
I think median household income is about $50,000 (probably a little above, now).
I think a lot of people making several times that just can’t believe anyone lives on so little.
ETA: It’s Stevens, not Schmidt. Schmidt, who worked for McCain, strikes me as far brighter than this, though his pick of Palin calls that into question.
nellcote
His crappy math continues to confirm why they were so “shellshocked” when Rmoney lost.
opie jeanne
@Punchy: You haven’t met my niece and some of her friends. They tend to belong to evangelical churches and are young enough that they have not really noticed the world around them, not yet.
To her credit, before the election my niece told me she was considering not voting for Romney. I haven’t pushed the issue because she is coming around.
Oh, and she has a BA in journalism, most of her friends have degrees, and this is in Southern California.
nemesis
But, but ORCA….
Steeplejack
@David in NY:
Yeah, they are the ones who refer to themselves as “just an average guy scraping by on $250,000 a year. You know, middle-class.”
Supernumerary Charioteer
@schrodinger’s cat: This is mostly guesswork based off of half-remembered and shallowly studied history, but:
Once the Civil War ended, the main political issue of the day was how to reintegrate the Confederate states. The Republicans who most stridently called for abolition started calling to punish the South and economically and educationally building up the freed slave population; they were called the Radical Republicans. They sparred with the Moderate or ‘look, we’ve been fighting these asshats for 80, 90 years now, we’ve got our shit to deal with, let’s just get on with it’ Republicans. Support for the Radicals declined as economic issues trumped post-Civil War issues; the Reconstruction framework that they had triumphed collapsed as part of a deal to allow Rutherford B. Hayes to take up the Presidency in an election that he probably didn’t win.
After that point, I would assume that they were a rump portion of the coalition and unsuccessfully fought the newly-acceeded Big Money Republicans until they died out and passed their mantle on to the Progressives.
ed_finnerty
“We must be doing something right, so let’s keep doing what we’re doing!” Awesome.
or
“Other than the fact that we lost, we had a successful campaign — Silver Medal !”
keep defining success down – it’s really working !
opie jeanne
@Alex S.: You know, I suspect his math is off even if he figured on people making between $50k and $250k.
I would also question how they determined who voted for Mitt, because we sure as hell didn’t and we are well above that $50k mark and so are our liberal-voting friends.
The prophet Nostradumbass
That’s a somewhat obscure Clash reference, you Manichean Monster, you.
Heliopause
There is a simple solution to his problem; don’t consign 41% of the voting population to waiting tables and unpacking crates of Chinese consumer goods.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Oh, give me a break.
“Stuart Stevens was the chief strategist for the Romney presidential campaign.”
Mitt didn’t win shit, and Stuart is just another liar from the lyingest campaign in modern history.
cursorial
@The Other Bob: I made the mistake of reading the linked article too, and tried to work out where that 320,000 number came from. Adding up just the margins of victory in enough close states to flip the Electoral College result?
I give up. Usually when I kill that many brain cells it’s for something that tastes better.
Valdivia
I call false premise. I wouldn’t trust that data as far as I can throw it.
Suffern ACE
He won every demographic except the one that makes up 1/2 the population? O.K. then. I’m sure that you could slice that up further. Obama one the under $50Ks, but lost the $50.0001 – 55.0, the 55.001 – 56.00 The 56.001 – 73.443. There might be 1000 demographic groups he won based on income alone and Obama only won a single one.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@The Other Bob:
Failing, then explaining it away is as good as success if you’re a Republican.
TooManyJens
Um, what were Romney’s scores on the “cares about people like me” poll question again?
jl
Median household income (Edit: in 2011) in the US was $49 K and change, so this august gentlemen is cutting it kind of close.
With stagnant labor compensation in the US, he had better enjoy his majority status while it lasts.
I for one hope his side keeps on with the same ‘doing something right’ attitude. I hope they do not listen to that old vaudeville adage, get a new audience or get a new act. Looks like quite a few GOPer besides M_tt see good reason to do neither. I am glad they cannot think things through.
Joel
Stuart Stevens is just goddamn pathetic.
Joel
Since you cant delete duplicate posts, I’ll just edit this one and call it a day.
burnspbesq
320,000 votes away from winning the Electoral College? That’s some fancy-pants arithmetic there. Show your work, jackass.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
GOP Feedback Loop:
(1) Use cultural/wedge issues to secure the votes of the white middle class.
(2) Support policies that shrink the middle class as a whole.
(3) Act surprised when you have fewer voters 30 years later.
TooManyJens
@Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches:
(4) Profit!
(Which, sadly, they and their cronies still do, which is all they ever wanted anyway.)
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Conservatism cannot ever fail. Its policies are whole and sancrosanct. It is humans who fail conservatism.
cursorial
@jl: If the anti-science party lost by not quite grasping the distinction between mean income and median income when they were slicing up demographic groups, I think that’s only just.
kay
Stevens was the creative genius in the Romney campaign.
He sat on his ass, smirking, while Obama was methodically and ploddingly burying Mitt Romney all summer in the Midwest.
mai naem
NY Times has the data. The data’s correct but from what I can see, I think there was a higher turnout in the 50k and under group. BTW, I saw a number in one of the exit polls that says that a little over half of eligible latinos voted in 2012. Just off the top of my head, I figure that means if you can get even 20 percent more Latinos to vote(assuming they say heavily D) you could possibly turn Texas blue for federal elections before redistricting and turn Colorado, Arizona and Nevada solidly blue. From what I’ve heard southern states have had a hike in Latino populations too, so maybe turn GA and LA into purple states.
cosima
I have to agree with Percy up above. The first thing I thought when reading was “guess they’re going to have to come up with a way to increase wages in the deep south so that they can get a sh#t-ton more middle-class-over-$50k-voters and win the he!! out of the next election.”
Yea, I crack myself up. Like that’s ever going to happen.
Perhaps he added the red-state poor incomes to the red-state-doing-well incomes and averaged them? All of the 1% dragging that number over the $50k goal line?
Or borrowed McMegan’s calculator?
Barney
@? Martin:
It’s household income, so the under $50K figure is 41% of voters:
http://www.cbsnews.com/election-results-2012/exit.shtml?state=US&race=P&jurisdiction=0&party=G&tag=contentBody;exitLink
But the next chunk is $50K-$100K, which is another 31% of voters. So, given the figures made available, Romney won the richer half, and Obama the poorer – but Obama was closer to winning the richer half (he got 45% of over $50K; Romney only got 38% of under $50K; even for the over $250K category, Obama got $42K).
cosima
@mai nem —
When I lived in Texas I had this sweet sweet dream where the state would turn blue if only the Latino & other minorities would turn out for the Dems. I also had nightmares about trying to convince them via door-to-door efforts… That possible, yet will be overwhelming to attempt to put into practice.
I was so glad to move to Colorado before the election, and to do GOTV efforts here. But it was hard work. Though not even close to what it would be in Texas.
On the other hand, perhaps if one of the Castro brothers decides to run for Governor of Texas that will make a huge difference. Crossing fingers.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@trex:
But he almost didn’t lose and he won with the right kind of people so in a way, he’s the real winner!
Yup – if only women hadn’t had the vote and blacks only counted as 3/5s of a voter, he’d be the clear winner – so he’s the winner according to the REAL Constitution (before the liberals mucked it up)
LosGatosCA
You people are ignoring the fact that while Romney finished in the top two, right behind the leader, Obama was next to last in the election.
Mike in NC
Does this mean that poor Stu will be getting a new weekly gig penning op-eds for the WaPo?
BC
The first debate, Romney changed his stance on the issues and moved to the center. In second debate, Obama trounced Romney (remember “Please proceed, Governor”?) In foreign policy debate, Romney was reduced to echoing whatever Obama said. So how did he trounce Obama in debate?
Villago Delenda Est
@Origuy:
The headline read “a good man, the right fight”.
No.
Mitt Romney is not a good man. He is a parasite. He should be dealt with like a parasite.
And this Stewart Stevens guy should be publically vivisected.
jl
@kay:
” Stevens was the creative genius in the Romney campaign. ”
Get the F outta here, kay, that can’t be true. Get outta here with that malarky. You’re pulling my lag. This guy? No way.
Was M_tt that out of it and dumb?
And, I apologize for using a naughty world like ‘malarky’. I was upset. Didn’t mean it.
El Cid
If you eliminate all the people who didn’t vote for Mitt Romney, then Romney actually won a crushing victory.
Kilkee
@Turgidson: So when you’re tempted to root for Alabama against Notre Dame on January 7, just rememebr that the Crimson Tide side of the field is full of those punks.
different-church-lady
@El Cid:
I don’t doubt that somewhere in a back room of the RNC there’s a group of people trying to come up with a way of doing just that.
dww44
@Punchy: I’ve not read on down this thread, but I’m with you on this. That number just doesn’t ring as true with me.
SiubhanDuinne
@LosGatosCA:
I want to marry this line and have its babies.
pseudonymous in nc
The bait and switch here is to appeal to people on a median income ($50k) as if they’re one tax cut away from being what Stephens actually considers middle-class ($250k). And it’s been something the GOP has been able to sell before.
Except that there are 48 percentiles between $50k and $250k.
SoINeedAName48
@ruemara:
No way!
Hell, we got the First Class and Business Class vote locked up.
We just didn’t know so many Americans travel in Coach.
(Nor did we realize that in the voting booth, a Millionaire’s vote and a homeless person’s vote count EXACTLY THE SAME. Then again, we’re repubicans.)