Electric Politics

52/46

Dali exploding head What a great election! Historic, though still not completely counted. ‡ It's important to keep in mind how scary it is that even with such a huge turnout — especially with such a huge turnout — as many as 46% could vote for McCain. Those people spell trouble. So while I applaud and admire Barack Obama for his 50 state strategy and his thoughtful reaching out to those who didn't vote for him, I'd feel a lot more comfortable also having some kind of explicit containment aimed at the Deep South. And some serious investment everywhere in public education. It's either that or we risk becoming too stupid to govern ourselves.

Turnout decided the election. It seems the youth vote was up moderately although, to be honest, with so much early voting going on I don't know how anybody accurately measures that. I kept thinking all day Tuesday that some polling organization should have been sampling not only from exit polls but also from rough observations of voters' ages (so far as I can tell nobody did). And of course the black vote and the Hispanic vote both increased by a lot and went overwhelmingly for Obama. Without his high turnout ground game Obama almost certainly would have lost. It'll be interesting, to say the least, to see whether Obama can do this again in four year's time when it'll be equally necessary.

The Democrats won surprisingly few net new House seats (twenty or so, pending undecided races) but about the number of Senate seats expected (six at this point with one recount in Minnesota which could go either way, a run-off in Georgia on December 2, and one probable special election in Alaska once Ted Stevens either goes to jail or is expelled from the Senate, for a possible total of six to nine). Being shy of 60 does not augur well for bold moves. On the other hand, I expect that Senate Democrats have been restive under Harry Reid's 'get little done' leadership and, after a period of several months to see whether his effectiveness quotient improves, one or another ambitious Senators may challenge his leadership. An early indicator of how things go will be Reid's meeting Thursday with the turncoat Sen. Joe Lieberman. If Lieberman at a minimum loses his committee chairmanship then Reid's chances of survival improve but if Lieberman merely gets a dressing down the Democrats' patience with Reid won't last much longer. Remember also that Republican Senators up for re-election in 2010 (including John McCain) may have certain strong incentives to be cooperative with the Democrats, so in practice 60 may be less of a magic number...

It took until mid-afternoon Wednesday for Missouri to be called (though not called yet by every news organization). Just as I'd feared, Ralph Nader acted as a spoiler. Even if one subtracts all of Bob Barr's votes in Missouri from Nader's it seems likely that Nader's were enough to throw the state to the Republicans. In terms of winning the presidency, narrowly defined, of course it didn't matter. But Missouri's eleven electoral votes would have added nicely to Obama's total, strengthening claims of a landslide, a mandate, and I've always thought that Missouri was symbolically important well above its weight class. Not to be outdone on the independent spoiler front Bob Barr threw Indiana to the Democrats and appears to have thrown North Carolina as well, whenever they can get all the votes there counted.

I'm hopeful that Obama's good character — particularly the ethos he'd imbibed from Trinity church in Chicago, but also his training from his late grandmother, Madelyn Dunham — will prevail, making him a great president. On the other hand I worry about his cautious nature, manifest most recently in his ill-advised offer of the job of White House Chief of Staff to Rahm Emanuel, a person in my book entirely not to be trusted. Indeed, Obama's pick of associates always has been erratic: he'll have to learn a new way of doing things, fast, if he's to successfully guide new, sensible policies into practice.

We'll see soon enough what's next.

‡ As of late Wednesday it appears that North Carolina's fifteen electoral votes will go to Obama, and one more might go to him from Nebraska, one of two states to split their electoral vote allocation by congressional district. That would put Obama's final count at 365. I can't remember, btw, any national election since the rise of the internet in which it's been so difficult to find accurate numbers and complete tallies of the vote.

Posted by George Kenney on November 6, 2008 12:01 AM

Comments

George, as a native of the South and as someone who has been working in the deep South for the last few months, I agree totally that the McCain voters represent a serious threat. It is not their partisanship that is an issue, nor their preference for actual conservative or libertarian principles, it is their ignorance and incurious attitude toward the world, their intolerance for ambiguity, and their barely disguised racism.

George Monbiot calls this a triumph of ignorance and attributes it to the influence of fundamentalist religion, following Susan Jacoby. Unfortunately he has a point. The anti-intellectualism, the need for certainty in all things, and the slavish devotion to leaders all have roots in the dominant strain of American Christianity.

I would love to see "some kind of explicit containment" of the South (please elaborate!), but we may be hamstrung by Lincoln's erroneous opposition to secession.

Posted by: Democracy Lover | November 6, 2008 8:42 AM

I'm hopeful that Obama's good character

For Heaven's sake! The first thing Obama did when he got the Democratic nomination was to attend an AIPAC meeting and now that he is the President elect the first thing he does is to appoint RAHM EMANUEL as his chief of staff! Rahm Emanuel — the single worst warmongering Democrat in Congress, the guy who used the Party's money to oppose every single anti-war Democratic candidate, the guy who served as a volunteer in the Israeli army in 1991, the guy whose daddy was an Irgun terrorist. This is the person which Obama chose as his chief of staff? Let me ask you this: can you think of a single person in the entire Democratic Party that would be *worse* then Rahm Emanuel (Joe Lieberman does not count — he already left the Party)?

Emanuel — about whom the Israeli press writes "our man in the White House — will be the 2nd most powerful person in the USA.

If Biden was Obama idea of "change", Emanuel is Obama's idea of "peace". Don't you regret not having voted for Nader now?

Kind regards,

The Saker

[Rahm Emanuel, "entirely not to be trusted," I wrote. So, yes, I agree with your assessment of him. But that's still not a sufficient reason to prefer a McCain administration over an Obama one and I still think Nader doesn't count. For a good discussion with Nader, that shows up his blind spots, see this election night interview, which includes excellent commentary by Bill Fletcher, Jr. g.]

Posted by: vineyardsaker | November 6, 2008 8:58 AM

"And some serious investment everywhere in public education. It's either that or we risk becoming too stupid to govern ourselves."

Too late.

Obama's presidency will be Republican lite and he is ill equipped to take on the task of any meaningful change anyway — he has a pleaser personality and will be pushed around by the Pentagon, intelligence community, and corporations. Look at his website and you can see he has NO plan for rolling back the Patriot act or any other of the myriad attacks on our rights. Zero. His foreign policy is to take some troops out of Iraq (leaving 50K) so he can fight in Afghanistan and continue the illegal attacks inside Pakistan. He wants to "defeat al Qaeda" (the Orwellian Emmanuel Goldstein of our time).

On energy he is clueless about peak oil and the problem we face right around the corner. The IEA is releasing a report next week which states that oil production will deplete at the rate of 6 to 9 percent per year — in 2010. His platform isn't even close on that front.

As for economics, no president could prevent the full blown depression that is unfolding, but again, he is already being pushed around and sending money to fatten the already fat cats on Wall Street rather than allow them to fail and help the working class to adjust.

His presidency will be a disaster and there will be no substantive change. Meanwhile what is left of the Republican Party will be form a hard core group bent on destruction. The "good" Republicans will migrate into the Democratic Party (Colin Powell?) which will serve to push that party and Obama even further to the right.

I don't see anything to celebrate here except that McCain/Palin didn't win, which is all the so-called "mandate" represents. Even racists voted for Obama just to defeat McCain.

When the balloons loose their helium and sink to the floor and the confetti is swept up, perhaps people will wake up to what just happened. When it sinks in next year, it will be a hell of a hangover.

[One thing I'm watching is how quickly he moves to close Guantanamo. g.]

Posted by: 8isis8 | November 7, 2008 1:42 AM



Home FAQ Contact Archive EP Store EP Alerts © 2012 ElectricPolitics	52/46 What a great election! Historic, though still not completely counted. ‡ It's important to keep in mind how scary it is that even with such a huge turnout — especially with such a huge turnout — as many as 46% could vote for McCain. Those people spell trouble. So while I applaud and admire Barack Obama for his 50 state strategy and his thoughtful reaching out to those who didn't vote for him, I'd feel a lot more comfortable also having some kind of explicit containment aimed at the Deep South. And some serious investment everywhere in public education. It's either that or we risk becoming too stupid to govern ourselves. Turnout decided the election. It seems the youth vote was up moderately although, to be honest, with so much early voting going on I don't know how anybody accurately measures that. I kept thinking all day Tuesday that some polling organization should have been sampling not only from exit polls but also from rough observations of voters' ages (so far as I can tell nobody did). And of course the black vote and the Hispanic vote both increased by a lot and went overwhelmingly for Obama. Without his high turnout ground game Obama almost certainly would have lost. It'll be interesting, to say the least, to see whether Obama can do this again in four year's time when it'll be equally necessary. The Democrats won surprisingly few net new House seats (twenty or so, pending undecided races) but about the number of Senate seats expected (six at this point with one recount in Minnesota which could go either way, a run-off in Georgia on December 2, and one probable special election in Alaska once Ted Stevens either goes to jail or is expelled from the Senate, for a possible total of six to nine). Being shy of 60 does not augur well for bold moves. On the other hand, I expect that Senate Democrats have been restive under Harry Reid's 'get little done' leadership and, after a period of several months to see whether his effectiveness quotient improves, one or another ambitious Senators may challenge his leadership. An early indicator of how things go will be Reid's meeting Thursday with the turncoat Sen. Joe Lieberman. If Lieberman at a minimum loses his committee chairmanship then Reid's chances of survival improve but if Lieberman merely gets a dressing down the Democrats' patience with Reid won't last much longer. Remember also that Republican Senators up for re-election in 2010 (including John McCain) may have certain strong incentives to be cooperative with the Democrats, so in practice 60 may be less of a magic number... It took until mid-afternoon Wednesday for Missouri to be called (though not called yet by every news organization). Just as I'd feared, Ralph Nader acted as a spoiler. Even if one subtracts all of Bob Barr's votes in Missouri from Nader's it seems likely that Nader's were enough to throw the state to the Republicans. In terms of winning the presidency, narrowly defined, of course it didn't matter. But Missouri's eleven electoral votes would have added nicely to Obama's total, strengthening claims of a landslide, a mandate, and I've always thought that Missouri was symbolically important well above its weight class. Not to be outdone on the independent spoiler front Bob Barr threw Indiana to the Democrats and appears to have thrown North Carolina as well, whenever they can get all the votes there counted. I'm hopeful that Obama's good character — particularly the ethos he'd imbibed from Trinity church in Chicago, but also his training from his late grandmother, Madelyn Dunham — will prevail, making him a great president. On the other hand I worry about his cautious nature, manifest most recently in his ill-advised offer of the job of White House Chief of Staff to Rahm Emanuel, a person in my book entirely not to be trusted. Indeed, Obama's pick of associates always has been erratic: he'll have to learn a new way of doing things, fast, if he's to successfully guide new, sensible policies into practice. We'll see soon enough what's next. ‡ As of late Wednesday it appears that North Carolina's fifteen electoral votes will go to Obama, and one more might go to him from Nebraska, one of two states to split their electoral vote allocation by congressional district. That would put Obama's final count at 365. I can't remember, btw, any national election since the rise of the internet in which it's been so difficult to find accurate numbers and complete tallies of the vote. Posted by George Kenney on November 6, 2008 12:01 AM « Phooey On Early Voting \| Main \| Fair Game » Share this post: Comments George, as a native of the South and as someone who has been working in the deep South for the last few months, I agree totally that the McCain voters represent a serious threat. It is not their partisanship that is an issue, nor their preference for actual conservative or libertarian principles, it is their ignorance and incurious attitude toward the world, their intolerance for ambiguity, and their barely disguised racism. George Monbiot calls this a triumph of ignorance and attributes it to the influence of fundamentalist religion, following Susan Jacoby. Unfortunately he has a point. The anti-intellectualism, the need for certainty in all things, and the slavish devotion to leaders all have roots in the dominant strain of American Christianity. I would love to see "some kind of explicit containment" of the South (please elaborate!), but we may be hamstrung by Lincoln's erroneous opposition to secession. Posted by: Democracy Lover \| November 6, 2008 8:42 AM I'm hopeful that Obama's good character For Heaven's sake! The first thing Obama did when he got the Democratic nomination was to attend an AIPAC meeting and now that he is the President elect the first thing he does is to appoint RAHM EMANUEL as his chief of staff! Rahm Emanuel — the single worst warmongering Democrat in Congress, the guy who used the Party's money to oppose every single anti-war Democratic candidate, the guy who served as a volunteer in the Israeli army in 1991, the guy whose daddy was an Irgun terrorist. This is the person which Obama chose as his chief of staff? Let me ask you this: can you think of a single person in the entire Democratic Party that would be worse then Rahm Emanuel (Joe Lieberman does not count — he already left the Party)? Emanuel — about whom the Israeli press writes "our man in the White House — will be the 2nd most powerful person in the USA. If Biden was Obama idea of "change", Emanuel is Obama's idea of "peace". Don't you regret not having voted for Nader now? Kind regards, The Saker [Rahm Emanuel, "entirely not to be trusted," I wrote. So, yes, I agree with your assessment of him. But that's still not a sufficient reason to prefer a McCain administration over an Obama one and I still think Nader doesn't count. For a good discussion with Nader, that shows up his blind spots, see this election night interview, which includes excellent commentary by Bill Fletcher, Jr. g.] Posted by: vineyardsaker \| November 6, 2008 8:58 AM "And some serious investment everywhere in public education. It's either that or we risk becoming too stupid to govern ourselves." Too late. Obama's presidency will be Republican lite and he is ill equipped to take on the task of any meaningful change anyway — he has a pleaser personality and will be pushed around by the Pentagon, intelligence community, and corporations. Look at his website and you can see he has NO plan for rolling back the Patriot act or any other of the myriad attacks on our rights. Zero. His foreign policy is to take some troops out of Iraq (leaving 50K) so he can fight in Afghanistan and continue the illegal attacks inside Pakistan. He wants to "defeat al Qaeda" (the Orwellian Emmanuel Goldstein of our time). On energy he is clueless about peak oil and the problem we face right around the corner. The IEA is releasing a report next week which states that oil production will deplete at the rate of 6 to 9 percent per year — in 2010. His platform isn't even close on that front. As for economics, no president could prevent the full blown depression that is unfolding, but again, he is already being pushed around and sending money to fatten the already fat cats on Wall Street rather than allow them to fail and help the working class to adjust. His presidency will be a disaster and there will be no substantive change. Meanwhile what is left of the Republican Party will be form a hard core group bent on destruction. The "good" Republicans will migrate into the Democratic Party (Colin Powell?) which will serve to push that party and Obama even further to the right. I don't see anything to celebrate here except that McCain/Palin didn't win, which is all the so-called "mandate" represents. Even racists voted for Obama just to defeat McCain. When the balloons loose their helium and sink to the floor and the confetti is swept up, perhaps people will wake up to what just happened. When it sinks in next year, it will be a hell of a hangover. [One thing I'm watching is how quickly he moves to close Guantanamo. g.] Posted by: 8isis8 \| November 7, 2008 1:42 AM Leave a comment Name Email Address URL Remember personal info? Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

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