This is a rather profound question as government at such a high level affects most people only indirectly. This is doubly true since the President is largely constrained by Congress, so the makeup of Congress matters at least as much as who is in the Oval Office.

If Obama wins, I have a friend who will be moving back to Sweden.
If Romney wins, I have a friend who will be moving to Canada.

I will miss the friend who moves.

Depends on their foreign policies.

If Romney becomes prez I will have a lot more to worry about. The state of the economy means it is not the least bit inconceivable that I will be unemployed at some point. This means no health insurance. Without universal healthcare, I am completely fucked if I ever have a lapse in my health insurance.

One of my closest friends has a pre-existing condition and cannot really afford health insurance. If Romney wins, Obamacare will probably not be implemented, and she will be fucked over. If Obama wins, she will be able to live her life.

My own family is actually pretty well-to-do, so I think we’ll be okay in either case. I think the economy will rebound in the short term no matter who wins (because the housing market is finally starting to tick up, because people have finally paid off their debts and are free to spend again, and because durable goods need replacing even after a long recession). But in the long-term, Obama and Romney have very different policies for paying down the debt. Romney wants to drastically cut social spending and Obama wants to raise rich people’s taxes. If my family has to pay a little more in taxes, that’s not going to really matter much, but I think the drastic cuts Romney is suggesting could very well destabilize the whole economy, much like austerity policies in Europe have ruined those countries’ economic recoveries.

And as @fremen_warrior points out, foreign policy is where a president’s real power lies. It’s impossible to predict what challenges will face us on that front. But I think Obama has done a very good job (though I disagree with his CIA war in Pakistan and elsewhere). And Romney’s foreign policy advisers—John Bolton and Dan Senor—are terrifying. They are the same neocons who helped Bush launch the war against Iraq, and they are absolutely unrepentant. I think Romney would be a foreign policy disaster—in many ways he is even more hawkish and ideological than Bush.

If Obama wins, millions of Americans will have health care who will not if Romney wins.

If Romney wins, he will defund Planned Parenthood meaning that millions of US women will not have access to reasonably priced contraceptives and gynocological tests and preventive care.

If Obama wins, then my personal financial situation will continue to improve, perhaps slowly, from where it was during the recession.

If Romney wins, the rich will continue to have tax breaks, causing me to have to pay more in taxes.

No matter which one wins, I don’t expect to be nominated to the Cabinet. Also, no matter which one wins, I expect things to get worse vis a vis cost vs. value of government.

If Romney wins in tomorrow’s election, he has said he wants to change Medicare to a Voucher System & this will be a disaster for me. He has also said that he intends to stop the President’s Health Care Plan from being implemented & this will impact several of my family members. He has shown that he is willing to disenfranchise women, to reduce the social services safety net of the United States. So, unless you are wealthy, his “win” will be a major loss for the average American.

My livelihood will rise or fall based on the economy and jobs. The more people earn and the more people have jobs the better I do. If Obama is elected, we have no prospects for anything better than we have seen in the past four years. The idea of government stimulus is flawed. Government spending adds to the economy but does not stimulate it. Government spending will add to the economy for the time it is being spent but when it is spent the economy drops back to where it was. The only way to stimulate the economy is with private sector investment. Romney will create the environment for private sector growth and Obama will further reduce it. Obama is continually reducing expendable income by allowing gas prices to remain high insurance premiums are escalating and real wages are declining. The fiscal cliff is looming and Obama has no plan to avoid it. I expect my personal income to drop precipitously if Obama is elected.

If Romney wins I’ll probably end up with more cash in my pocket, and I suspect, a front row seat for four years of confrontational foreign policy and regressive social and environmental policy. If Obama wins I’ll probably have a little more faith in America, better (at least potentially) health care, and if congress cooperates (and oh my that is a big “if”), a slow crawl in at least something resembling the direction I believe the country should be moving.

If Romney wins I’ll lose all the faith I have in America. That sounds dramatic, but after Bush was elected twice by these people, I don’t have much faith left to spare.

I’m not dramatic enough to pack up and move to Canada, and the fact that people actually do that astounds me, but I’m worried about what Romney might do once in office. I probably won’t be directly affected my much of it, but it still causes me great concern.

I’m worried that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will be re-instated and, on the same note, any progress we’ve made toward allowing same-sex marriage may be thwarted.

I’m worried about what he’ll do to Planned Parenthood, and his views on contraception really scare me.

Considering he hasn’t been very open about his plans, I’m not sure what to expect. I’m glad I’ll be out of college before he raises student loan interest rates or screws with the Pell Grant or other forms of aid. But considering I’m planning to be a state probation agent, I’m worried about him possibly cutting public service jobs or salaries.

I’m also worried about what will happen to the middle class, a group I am a member of. Taxes and decreased opportunities for deductions, etc.

I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping Obama is re-elected. It’s just plain stupid that people think the damage caused by Bush could be fixed in 4 years. I think we’re headed in the right direction with Obama, and I don’t want Romney to screw that up.

Here’s to hoping Americans are smarter than we look. :)

Well….I’ll have to withdraw my goose from the election.
The world just isn’t ready for a wise gander that looks like Ross Perot.
Too bad, he’d take healthcare reform even furthur with free ranch vet visits for all the needy farm animals that can’t afford to have their colic treated, their feet shod and their teeth floated. lol

If Obama wins, and it the EC can stabilize its currency (they have no good option but to do so) then I expect gridlock in congress will continue to keep any recovery sluggish, but moving ahead. Eventually, some new technology bubble will come along and we’ll see another decade of demand like Clinton got from the Internet Bubble and Bush II got in the early days of his presidency from the Housing Bubble.

I don’t know what Romney would actually try to do once in power. He has vigorously articulated opposing views on virtually every issue we face. But the Romney 2.0 that’s currently running for president claims to support doubling down on the same policies George W. Bush embraced from supply-side tax cuts for the rich to Neocon driven foreign policy. The fact that Romney 2.0 has surrounded himself with Bush advisers and staff suggests to me that we can probably believe that Romney 2.0 is closer to the real Romney than the 1.0 who botched job creation as Governor of Massachusetts.

We know that Bush’s policy initiatives led to us loosing nearly 800,000 jobs per month, the imminent failure of the US financial system requiring an $800 billion bail out, the stock market loosing half its value, and unemployment eventually reaching above 10%. I can’t fathom why anyone would think that replaying George W. Bush’s failed policies, only doing it all on steroids this time, will lead to something better than it did when we did it without the steroids.

@Jaxk I am somewhat surprised by your answer, as I was under the impression that has prices were set not by the government, but by oil companies, both those who refine out, and those who supply the crude, which in turn depends on foreign relations, and the only role government really plays is the per-gallon tax, which hasn’t increased nearly as much as fuel prices. Seems like that is a private sector problem,.not a government-caused one.

@jerv

If we increase the supply of oil, if we increase our refining capacity, we lower the price of gas. It’s really that simple. The oil companies do not set the price of gas, the primary driver for gas prices is the price of oil. Oil prices are manipulated by OPEC. We need to get out from under thier control and the only way to do so is with energy independence. That means using our own resources.

@Jaxk – I honestly don’t know much about the price of oil, but I caught a portion of this on NPR last week. It talks about energy independence and the effects it has had on Canada. They are essentially paying what we are paying per gallon right now. The segment talked about how the market for oil is global, so it doesn’t matter if you are a net importer or net exporter.

I’m not all that concerned about the cost of oil, to be honest. If dropping environmental protections and giving money to oil companies is the Republican path to energy independence, I don’t want any part of it. I’d rather invest in programs that will reduce demand for oil.

If Romney wins, my partner will be moving to Canada sooner than she thought that she would.

@Jaxk We lack the reserves to meet our needs for more than a couple of years. It’s either the Middle East or Canada. I agree about the need to boost refinery capacity though, at least until we can wrest the patents on large-format NiMH batteries from Chevron.
Anyways, enough of that for here/now. Lets let this thread continue as scheduled.

My dad will probably start hurting himself if Romney wins.~

But, really, yes, mentally, he will. He’ll just be this sack of depression slouched in his office chair all day for a week or two.

Increasing the supply of local oil might effect gas prices in the five or ten years it will take to actually ramp up production, as @Jaxk well knows. Demand-side solutions, like mandating increasing fuel efficiency, have had much more of an effect on people’s bottom lines.

He’s being dishonest. It’s not a serious plan for economic recovery and he knows it. He does own a gas station, though, so it will probably help his bottom line in the long-term at least.

If Obama wins, things will just continue along as they have been doing.
If Romney wins, well, we can always hope that the Dec.21, 2012 doomsayers are correct.

If Romney wins, I won’t be able to retire. There will be no health care and no social security for the elderly. We’ll all be forced to slave for minimum wage jobs for a few super rich people who will essentially become our slave masters.

All of us will lose our freedoms. Women will become forced baby making machines. Men will have slightly more power, but not much. They’ll still be forced into slave wage labor. Unions will be disenfranchised.

And of course, only rich people will have health insurance. The health industry will go bankrupt because no one will be able to afford health care any more. We’ll be forced to use witch doctors and illegal health care practitioners who we can afford.

Businesses will gain more and more power. They will be given the right to vote. People will lose the right to vote, except insofar as they are a member of a corporation. Their vote will be determined by the corporation, or the board of directors of that corporation. Or maybe by the CEO.

Romney is anti-democratic and anti-American.

We will probably survive if he is elected, unless he declares war on Iran. Or Russia. But we will become the America of the Hunger Games.

@wundayatta, now now. There is such a thing as the congress. And filibuster. I detect that you’re not serious to begin with, but still…

We’re all going to die…
… no matter who wins.

The sad thing about any election is that no matter who wins, very little is actually going to change. We will still pay more taxes, have fewer services and see our tax money wasted.

@jerv

You’re misinformed. We have enough oil to last several hundred years at our current consumption rate. Electric cars aren’t going to replace or solve our transportation problem, they simply don’t have the range. Not to mention that it takes more than 20 years just to turn over the fleet of cars on the road. I could go on about all this but you’re not interested in details only ideology.

@Qingu – I’m breaking my standing rule of not responding to you only because your comment is so far fetched. Obama has increased the mileage standard for cars 10 years out and the time to turnover the fleet of cars on the road is 20 years out from that.

@Jaxk I’m interested in what you’re using as support for us having “several hundred years” of oil supply, domestic or otherwise.

@Jaxk, turnover time? What the fuck are you talking about; cars have higher fuel efficiencies now. It’s not as if the fuel standards get passed and then nothing happens for 20 years and then, presto, all the sudden cars get double fuel efficiency.

@Jaxk Many EVs have ranges far in excess of what the average American drives in a day, so there is one piece of bad info. The vast majority of oil reserves lie well outside of the US, mostly within other sovereign nations. And how long will those “for sale to any paying customer” reserves last when you take into account the demands of the rest of the world, especially China? I refute your claim that we have centuries worth of oil unless cars MPG ratings improve by at least two orders of magnitude.
You are correct that EVs are not the ultimate solution, but they are an improvement, as are the newer cars that get >50 MPG.

And @Qingu is correct; I am one of the few people that drives a car >15 years old (Bonnie is an ‘85; 27 years old) while most people drive something far newer than the numbers you lay out. Turning over the entire fleet will never happen, but turning over a majority takes far less time than you claim.

This isn’t the 1950’s where everything is limitlessly plentiful.

Nowt, unless laughing until I develop a stitch counts, in the unlikely event of a Romney win that is…..not going to happen though, never mind, i’m sure i’ll pick up some laughs via another source.

If Romney wins, I will lose my health insurance, which I was able to obtain for the first time in years thanks to ‘Obamacare’. (Under the pre-existing conditions plan.) Without a full-time job (which is very difficult for me to manage, because of my health), I may never have health insurance again.

We will have to wait to see how congress shapes up. The president only signs bill into law that are provided him. That’s why I don’t take much of what any of them say or threaten seriously .

Smoke them.

If Romney wins, my best friend will lose crucial social service benefits.

Ah, I actually have change of my own: If Romney wins and really does go after Obamacare regardless of the court’s decision, I don’t stay on my parent’s insurance ‘till I’m 25 and will have trouble finding new insurance with my pre-existing condition: Diabetes. ⊙▃⊙ That would be bad.