'Your response was something along the lines of “you can say that with a straight face?”'

I did not take your statement very seriously at the time. Anybody in a swing state with a functioning sense of fairness will tell you that the Democrats were *not* more dishonest and more negative than Republicans. I referred to one of the whoppers above, in this thread. There are many many more. You want me to post links to some of the vile stuff that those poor folks had to watch when the media blitz struck? Truly, you are that ignorant? Holy smoke did you not see any of the primary debates?

'Never mind.' indeed.

'You cheerfully voted for Obama with those economic numbers. Didn’t you?'

Of course. I hope I'm smart enough not to vote against the incumbent, just because times are bad. I hope I'm smart enough to vote against the folks who caused the problem and vote for the ones trying to fix it.

The fact remains that a significant percentage of people will turn on the incumbent, in such times. That was my point: these are such times. Obama had a huge handicap. Insurmountable, some would say. And yet he won.

Even if I were to stipulate that Obama was the most dishonest and negative campaigner in recorded history, it would not explain his victory. People lose dishonest, negative campaigns all the time.

'If a Republican president was running with those numbers you’d demand that he be flayed alive and dragged across the Utah salt flats behind a team of horses. Isn’t that true?'

Absolutely not. See paragraph #5, above.

So I guess you are sticking with "dishonest, negative, and mean". I think you could do a lot better.

I wonder if you recall the glee with which you proclaimed that Bush's victory was a triumph of the conservative message. Is it even possible that you might consider this a failure of the (current) conservative message? Nah!