noonan

The president has won reelection. Barack Obama, against amazing odds, has been reelected as president of the United States. Let’s think about this just for a second. Barack Obama had to stand up against the most withering criticism; not just during this election cycle, but over the last four years. Fox News was constant and consistent. Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which allowed unlimited money to be spent by mysterious shadow billionaires, allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent in negative ads against the president. Additional stimulus packages, which would’ve added up to millions of jobs for Americans, died in the Republican-held House. So, instead of the economy, which with additional stimulus would have come slowly but surely roaring back is limping along, gaining steam month after month.

I’m sorry to say that many Republicans were completely duped. Over the last couple weeks I had many Republicans telling me not only that they were optimistic and supremely confident but they KNEW that Mitt Romney was going to win. They were listening to the lies of Fox News:

Dick Morris: “This is going to be a landslide.” The former Clinton adviser predicted a dominant Romney win, calling it “the biggest surprise in recent American political history.” Claiming that polls were oversampling Democrats, Morris wondered if “it will rekindle the whole question on why the media played this race as a nailbiter.”

Karl Rove: “At least 279 electoral votes.” “It comes down to numbers. And in the final days of this presidential race, from polling data to early voting, they favor Mitt Romney,” Rove wrote in a WSJ op-ed, ignoring the fact that most polls showed growing momentum for the president. He predicted that Romney would win 51 percent of the popular vote and “at least 279 electoral votes.”

Peggy Noonan: “There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now.” Noonan is one of the most respected political columnists in the country, despite her penchant for deciding things based on her gut rather than actual data. But her Romney prediction wasn’t exactly well thought out, even by her own standard. According to Noonan, “all the vibrations [were] right” for a Romney win because “something old was roaring back.” While this might be the right way to open an H.P. Lovecraft novel, it probably isn’t the best way to think about presidential elections.

Newt Gingrich: “A Romney landslide.” The former House Speaker predicted that Romney would take 53 percent of the popular vote and at least 300 electoral college votes. “My personal guess is you’ll see a Romney landslide, 53 percent-plus . . . in the popular vote, 300 electoral votes-plus,” Gingrich said. He also predicted that Republicans “may come very close to capturing control of the Senate.” He apologized for the faulty call the morning after the election.

Obama’s Victory Speech

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