Obama won Harris County... barely (Houston, Combine: insurance, unemployment rate, college)

[testmo]

Civil rights, for me, will always be more important than the economy and jobs. I am not willing to sacrifice certain citizens rights or equality for one party's economic plan that in reality is not that much different than the economic plans offered by the party that doesn't want to block/rescind people's rights. i am not the houston woman that was on the news giving her opinion that "I don't care about my reproductive rights, I care about the economy." If she doesn't care about her reproductive rights I say remove them, sterilize her, and her children. Thankfully I will never hold political power

Ask Houston businesses how they are doing. Oil and gas is pretty large here - we're doing pretty well to say the least. If you are in any type of engineering you wouldn't even have to ask this question. To say Obama has hurt the energy industry is ridiculous. But, I hear that a lot.

Get troops out of Iraq - Obama stuck with the timeline and says he will in the future. Romney spent half the time saying he would ignore the time line, then said he would stick by it a few weeks before election, while at the same time making comments about more intervention elsewhere in the middle east

Obamacare - You know the thing Romney kind of invented for his state (which people there apparently love)? Giving people the ability to carry their college age kids on their health insurance, not punishing people for preexisting conditions, and free prevention health checkups + birth control. Yeah once people realize they have/will soon get this they won't want to give it up. Romney eventually admitted he would "take a look" at some ACA changes, while saying he would keep most of it in place. So again Romney basically supported Obamacare in the end

The debt - austerity doesn't work. We can see that overseas. They are screaming that it doesn't work and are trying to backtrack out of it. The debt is still mostly blamed on republicans because well they put the vast majority of it there. I applaud Obama for putting the debt of the wars on paper for the first time. It isn't fair to ignore it - it was always there.

The President always has something to do with military action. He is the commander in chief. I guess President Bush had no involvement at all in the 8 years of war he initiated. The military commanders are very aware they serve the President and are very loyal to that. The mission would not have been done had Obama said not to do it. You can read how that decision came about. Obama was very much involved.

Recession has ended. Pick up a news paper, read actual studies by people that actually study the numbers. The fiscal cliff may put us in another, but we are currently out of it.

Record corporate profits - again read some papers. read some earlier reports. Yes you can look at these numbers. Publicly traded companies post their profits. You cite McDonalds taking a hit. They have been slipping for awhile. Look at overall how they are doing. McDonalds isn't some mom and pop place that a 1% decrease is running them out of business.

My unemployment numbers are better than yours! yeah yeah we have heard that kind of argument all summer. 65+ year old people being unemployed - we can't assume every single american over the age of 65 that isn't working is unemployed. There is a thing called disabled and retired. People in their late teens and early twenties are also often working part-time or not employed because they are full-time students. Also a heck of a lot of americans don't work because they are permanently disabled or they are wealthy enough to not work, or they are stay-at-home parents. It is false to blindly include all of these numbers and not take any of that into account

Yeah I voted for Obama

[westhou]

Originally Posted by testmo

Civil rights, for me, will always be more important than the economy and jobs. I am not willing to sacrifice certain citizens rights or equality for one party's economic plan that in reality is not that much different than the economic plans offered by the party that doesn't want to block/rescind people's rights. i am not the houston woman that was on the news giving her opinion that "I don't care about my reproductive rights, I care about the economy." If she doesn't care about her reproductive rights I say remove them, sterilize her, and her children. Thankfully I will never hold political power

Ask Houston businesses how they are doing. Oil and gas is pretty large here - we're doing pretty well to say the least. If you are in any type of engineering you wouldn't even have to ask this question. To say Obama has hurt the energy industry is ridiculous. But, I hear that a lot.

Get troops out of Iraq - Obama stuck with the timeline and says he will in the future. Romney spent half the time saying he would ignore the time line, then said he would stick by it a few weeks before election, while at the same time making comments about more intervention elsewhere in the middle east

Obamacare - You know the thing Romney kind of invented for his state (which people there apparently love)? Giving people the ability to carry their college age kids on their health insurance, not punishing people for preexisting conditions, and free prevention health checkups + birth control. Yeah once people realize they have/will soon get this they won't want to give it up. Romney eventually admitted he would "take a look" at some ACA changes, while saying he would keep most of it in place. So again Romney basically supported Obamacare in the end

The debt - austerity doesn't work. We can see that overseas. They are screaming that it doesn't work and are trying to backtrack out of it. The debt is still mostly blamed on republicans because well they put the vast majority of it there. I applaud Obama for putting the debt of the wars on paper for the first time. It isn't fair to ignore it - it was always there.

The President always has something to do with military action. He is the commander in chief. I guess President Bush had no involvement at all in the 8 years of war he initiated. The military commanders are very aware they serve the President and are very loyal to that. The mission would not have been done had Obama said not to do it. You can read how that decision came about. Obama was very much involved.

Recession has ended. Pick up a news paper, read actual studies by people that actually study the numbers. The fiscal cliff may put us in another, but we are currently out of it.

Record corporate profits - again read some papers. read some earlier reports. Yes you can look at these numbers. Publicly traded companies post their profits. You cite McDonalds taking a hit. They have been slipping for awhile. Look at overall how they are doing. McDonalds isn't some mom and pop place that a 1% decrease is running them out of business.

My unemployment numbers are better than yours! yeah yeah we have heard that kind of argument all summer. 65+ year old people being unemployed - we can't assume every single american over the age of 65 that isn't working is unemployed. There is a thing called disabled and retired. People in their late teens and early twenties are also often working part-time or not employed because they are full-time students. Also a heck of a lot of americans don't work because they are permanently disabled or they are wealthy enough to not work, or they are stay-at-home parents. It is false to blindly include all of these numbers and not take any of that into account

Yeah I voted for Obama

I agree. I work in the healthcare industry and we haven't suffered a bit. Hiring has been non stop and everyone has been getting annual raises and bonuses. If our economy is so bad than what's with all the cranes popping up around town. On my way to work and home from work I see cars with paper license plates more than I've ever seen before which means there are a lot of people out there that can afford brand new cars. I get that unemployment is high but how many of those people are actively looking for work. If I lost my job today I can assure you that I'd find a new one within days or weeks. My career is in demand and I have the experience and education to make it happen for me. Where I work there a several positions open at all skill levels. If Obama has ruined the economy than I haven't noticed because from where I'm looking everything seems to be moving in the right direction. Getting a good job and maintaining that job takes a lot of hard work and sadly a lot of people aren't willing to put in that work and effort and will remain unemployed or lose their jobs. Electing Romney wouldn't have changed a thing. Romney wasn't going to come in and get everyone a job because honestly everyone doesn't want a job.

Let's not pretend like the president is a wizard that can wave his wand and fix all our problems.

[blkgiraffe]

Did people really expect Obama to get anything done in his first term??? Even in this term people have failed to realize that the republicans still have the house.

[Trae713]

Originally Posted by blkgiraffe

Did people really expect Obama to get anything done in his first term??? Even in this term people have failed to realize that the republicans still have the house.

He got a ton of things done in his first two years before the 2010 elections.

[55degrees]

Originally Posted by LostInHouston

Something like 1.2 millions ballots in Harris County and Obama won by 585. Similar voter turnout to 2008, where Obama won Harris Country by around 20,000 votes. Not really surprising as it fits the national trend of a much tighter race than '08. I just thought it was interesting that the vote was within a few hundredths of a percent.

Harris Votes - Harris County Clerk's Office Election Division

To me, this supports the fact that, not only is Houston not a liberal city (like some claim), it is not really that moderate either. The fact that almost as many people voted for Romney (a guy whose party holds some very extreme views on women, minorities and other things) as Obama shows that there are a lot of people here who are fine with his party's extreme views.

[Topaz]

Originally Posted by testmo

Yeah I voted for Obama

Me, too! Doing my part to turn Fort Bend County blue (yes, I'm an optimist).

[Trae713]

Originally Posted by 55degrees

To me, this supports the fact that, not only is Houston not a liberal city (like some claim), it is not really that moderate either. The fact that almost as many people voted for Romney (a guy whose party holds some very extreme views on women, minorities and other things) as Obama shows that there are a lot of people here who are fine with his party's extreme views.

Go educate yourself on why the votes were so close.

[Nightman_Cometh]

I live here in Brevard County FL, home of NASA. Everybody here blames Obama for everything, especially the space program going down. People forget Bush cancelled the Shuttle program, not Obama.

Also, what are the chances that Texas goes blue in 2016 or 2020? More and More moderate democrats (like myself) are moving to Texas, and of course the minority and young vote will only grow.

[jeremy2788]

My 2 cents on the energy industry, since I happen to work in it, is that Obama has yet to hurt our business. We are expected to be so busy in the near future that our current employees can't even keep up with the workload, thus we will be soon hiring a 100+ people in the near future.

[LostInHouston]

Originally Posted by Nightman_Cometh

Also, what are the chances that Texas goes blue in 2016 or 2020? More and More moderate democrats (like myself) are moving to Texas, and of course the minority and young vote will only grow.

Well, I think if you look at the trend from 2008 to 2012, the democratic party is not growing fast enough in Texas to turn it blue in 2016/2020. But it may shift enough that the National Dem Party starts putting money into Texas... I was looking at the Senate race numbers the other day, and I think Cruz (R) spent somewhere around $12 mil, which Sadler (D) spent around $500k.