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Some passing thoughts the morning after: The Shakespeare/Faulkner quote "A tale told by an Idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing" seems to sum the past year up.
Here we are, twelve years later, waiting again on Miami-Dade County to get its act together.
About 1980 I realized that every four years the US holds a national IQ test, disguised as a Presidential election, and every four years most of the population flunks.
Will the last person exiting The American Century please turn out the lights. [personal communication]
Since I rode a motorcycle three hours to Virginia (in 40-degree temps...brrrr) to vote in person in my old hometown one last time before changing my official residence, I did not take a computer with me. Therefore I was free to twist the radio dial and listen to all the reporting I could from all the angles I could find instead of worrying about commenting on various blogs or calling in to shows all night. A nice change of pace from being on call 48 hours straight in the Wilder years in Virginia and 72 straight in the Clinton era in DC, I must add.
At this point I don't know who is more out of touch with reality, the left for thinking it has a lock for eternity, or the right for thinking it just needs to get more conservative. I grew up in one of those areas of Southwest Virginia that fits Obama's description as a place where people hang onto their Bibles and their guns. He could have added "...and get drunk and spend Saturday nights with their mistresses or their daughters," but I guess he was being kind. When the first returns came in from the small backwoods towns and Romney and former senator, now Senate candidate George Allen jumped out to double-digit leads, listening to our local Fox affiliate was more ridiculous than a ShamWow commercial. Then when the tide turned and Obama and Tim Kaine edged into small leads before Norfolk and northern Virginia even began reporting, our local NPR hacks were almost as absurd going the other direction. Bottom line on what we found out in Virginia is that out in the boonies there are still just as many racists and people who vote gun rights only as there were when Wilder was running for governor two decades ago; mercifully they are still slightly outvoted by more modern thinkers in the urban centers, just like two decades ago. What we found out in North Carolina is we still need a lot more modern thinkers. I'm not involved with Alabama, but it sounds as if they have a similar problem.
Before the last person exiting the American Century turns out the lights, they are welcome to drop by and pick up the flag I took when I left Miami in 1981. [personal communication]
Paul Krugman explains it all: "The Real Real America," from his blog on The New York Times website, November 7 [personal communication; excerpt:]
One big thing that just happened was that the real America trumped the “real America”....Reality therapy: "Obama and progressives: what will liberals do with their big election victory?," by Glenn Greewald, in The Guardian, November 7 [personal communication; excerpt:]
For a long time, right-wingers—and some pundits—have peddled the notion that the “real America,” all that really counted, was the land of non-urban white people, to which both parties must abase themselves. Meanwhile, the actual electorate was getting racially and ethnically diverse, and increasingly tolerant too. The 2008 Obama coalition wasn’t a fluke; it was the country we are becoming.
And sure enough that more diverse and, if you ask me, better nation just won big.
Notice too that to the extent that social issues played in this election, they played in favor of Democrats. Gods, guns, and gays didn’t swing voters into supporting corporate interests; instead, human dignity for women swung votes the other way.
A huge night for truth, justice, and the real American way.
The greatest and most enduring significance of Tuesday night's election results will likely not be the re-election of Barack Obama, but rather what the outcome reflects about the American electorate. It was not merely Democrats, but liberalism, which was triumphant.From Der Spiegel: "Destroyed by Total Capitalism: America Has Already Lost Tuesday's Election," a commentary by Jakob Augstein, November 5 [personal communication; excerpt:]
To begin with, it is hard to overstate just how crippled America's right-wing is. Although it was masked by their aberrational win in 2010, the GOP has now been not merely defeated, but crushed, in three out of the last four elections: in 2006 (when they lost control of the House and Senate), 2008 (when Obama won easily and Democrats expanded their margins of control), and now 2012....
Meanwhile, new laws to legalize both same-sex marriage and marijuana use were enacted in multiple states with little controversy, an unthinkable result even a few years ago, while Obama's late-term embrace of same-sex marriage seems to have resulted only in political benefit with no political harm.....
With last night's results, one can choose to see things two ways: (1) emboldened by their success and the obvious movement of the electorate in their direction, liberals will resolve that this time things will be different, that their willingness to be Good Partisan Soldiers depends upon their core values not being ignored and stomped on, or (2) inebriated with love and gratitude for Obama for having vanquished the evil Republican villains, they will follow their beloved superhero wherever he goes with even more loyalty than before. One does not need to be Nate Silver ["FiveThirtyEight" blog on The New York Times website] to be able to use the available historical data to see which of those two courses is the far more likely one.
The United States Army is developing a weapon that can reach—and destroy—any location on Earth within an hour. At the same time, power lines held up by wooden poles dangle over the streets of Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. Hurricane Sandy ripped them apart there and in communities across the East Coast last week, and many places remain without electricity. That's America, where high-tech options are available only to the elite, and the rest live under conditions comparable to a those of a developing nation....Romney was so ill-informed [about the likelihood that he would lose] or ill prepared, I don't think he could believe it [when he lost]. He should have prepared a concession speech as a matter of course, but the speech he eventually gave was gracious if uninspired. But then, in general, the guy is uninspired. Probably a great husband, father, friend. But he just never got it. On NPR's political junkie [?], two pollsters were commenting what a weak candidate he was. Duh. On the other hand, he almost unseated a president. He wasn't that weak! [personal communication]
Anyone who sees this as a contradiction has failed to grasp the fact that America is a country of total capitalism. Its functionaries have no need of public hospitals or of a reliable power supply to private homes. The elite have their own infrastructure....
Obama couldn't change this, and Romney wouldn't be able to either. Europe is mistaken if it views the election as a choice between the forces of good and evil. And it certainly doesn't amount to a potential change in political direction as some newspapers on the Continent would have us believe....
The truth is that we simply no longer understand America. Looking at the country from Germany and Europe, we see a foreign culture. The political system is in the hands of big business and its lobbyists. The checks and balances have failed. And a perverse mix of irresponsibility, greed, and religious zealotry dominate public opinion....
One of my s/heros: Arundhati Roy [personal communication]:
Limerick of the Week:
Romney borrowed righteousness to win the nomination,
Then spun toward the middle to try to plumb the nation.
Not enough voters bought it,
They positively fought it,
Left him self-contorting, and chose an Obama nation.
Is the message of the limerick that the voters chose an "abomination"?
ReplyDeleteOoh, no, just the opposite. Were you reading into it your own misguided preference for Romney?
DeleteIn fact, my original idea was to use "abomination" as the final word, but in a line like "Found Romney's self-contorting a real abomination." But when the jubilant phrase "Obama nation" came to me, I realized I could actually make the "Romney was abominable" point more strongly by making it indirectly.
What I see in the limerick is ambivalence toward Obama.
DeleteGeorge, as I said about the act of reading....
DeleteHowever, I'm not trying to argue that the limerick is perfect. In fact, writing it was much more difficult than I usually find limerick-writing, and I finished working on it only because I was very tired last night and midnight was approaching. (My wife was in the hospital three nights this week and came home yesterday, in need of my nursing assistance—even as unskilled as it is.)
Thanks for your close attention to the limerick. I take my verse-writing seriously.
In fact, tomorrow's post will be a triptina (a brief form of sestina that I devised recently) about my wife's being in the hospital, and Monday's will be another triptina, thanking our daughter for coming to help this week.
It may be "hard to overstate just how crippled America's right-wing is," but Glenn Greewald has done it. How on earth does he figure that the GOP got crushed? Obama lost two of the states he won in '08, Indiana and North Carolina. None of McCain's states flipped to blue. The Democrats had a majority in the House in '08 and a larger majority in the Senate than it has now. So things are better for liberals now?
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats have an excellent chance of getting an immigration bill passed, and they have some "fiscal cliff" leverage because of the expiration of tax cuts and the sequestration agreements. Otherwise, we can expect the same old, same old.
Ted, Greenwald provides more evidence for his position than I included in the excerpt. The ellipsis in the second paragraph hid the statement:
DeleteThe horrendous political legacy of George Bush and Dick Cheney continues to sink the GOP, and demographic realities—how toxic the American Right is to the very groups that are now becoming America's majority—makes it difficult to envision how this will change any time soon.
And, in the third paragraph:
Democrats were sent to the Senate by deeply red states such as Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, along with genuinely progressive candidates on domestic issues, including Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, who became the first openly gay person elected to the Senate. As a cherry on the liberal cake, two of the most loathed right-wing House members—Rep Joe Walsh of Illinois and Allen West of Florida—were removed from office.
But the central thrust of Greenwald's piece was—however triumphant the Democrats are justified in being—whether the Democrats are going to exploit it or, in motomynd's memorable phrase, be "over-understanding" of the Republican opposition and allow their core values to be diluted.
Doesn't the Democrat's ability to exploit their triumph depend on how big or little the triumph is? A substantial decline in power from 2009 levels would seem to argue that there is little to exploit, even with a changed attitude.
DeleteAlso, the fuller context does not recognize that in Missouri and Indiana, the Democrats running for the Senate were politically unattractive but won when their opponents committed suicide. All the other candidates named, except for Elizabeth Warren, won the same way—their opponents were revolting in the extreme.
Ted, I admit that when I read the Greenwald piece, I was surprised to learn how great a victory the election had been! The size of this "greatness" is certainly debatable, and you're doing a good job debating it.
DeleteWhatever its size, I and a very many other people, are hoping that the Democrats, "emboldened by their success and the...movement of the electorate in their direction [whether 'obvious' or not],...will resolve that this time things will be different" [from the way they were during President Obama's first term].
Again, the main thrust of Greenwald's piece is to emphasize that we shouldn't get our hopes up higher than history and Mr. Obama's temperament justify.
Maybe it's time for some of us otherwise passive members of "the majority" to do some marches on the Mall?—I'm referring to motomynd's reply to a comment by a reader named Amygdahlia on his piece Tuesday.
It seems to me that the capacity to accomplish anything after this election depends upon the Democrats ability to think beyond the "Beltway", i.e. recognize that their base expects them to act as if they had ideas not hatched in D.C. Thinktanks or Wall Street. Amy Goodwin had a piece yesterday invoking FDR's comment after the 1936 election: "That's an excellent idea, now make me do it!" I've been making the same point to activist friends who have been celebrating Obama's victory- the election is just the beginning, now comes the effort to make it mean something. "Power concedes nothing without a struggle." -Fredrick Douglass
DeleteThe reactionary power that holds the House and makes up nearly half of the Senate will make concessions, but only if that power faces a greater loss without the concessions than with them. That's why Obama can expect success when he brings an immigration reform proposal to Congress. On the matter of resolving "fiscal cliff" issues, what do Republicans have to lose by rejecting a balanced proposal of tax increases and spending cuts? They have done so for a couple of years now and, as Ted points out, they've lost relatively little.
ReplyDeleteSo far all that has been accomplished is Romney, and possibly the Republicans in the House, have been prevented from undoing what many see as the "four weeks of progress" Obama achieved in his first term.
ReplyDeletePeople who think Obama's re-election is going to usher in a new era, or change anything without a fight, should remember that Bill Clinton's re-election was also supposedly going to launch a wave of Democratic domination of the electoral process. For those people we give you two words to remember: George Bush.