Hard to believe this guy was responsible for the biggest security failure, two failed wars, losing a major American city to weather, and killing the economy. If he wasn’t such an underachiever he could have made even more fuck-ups.
As this unforgettable week winds to a close, I wanted to ponder what had come of the 2008 Election, not just in the Presidential race, but in the Senate and propositions. Now the pondering is done. Let’s kick it Leone Style:
The Good
(actually, scratch that).
THE EXCELLENT
Yes, We Can: The 44th President of the United States is Barack Obama. Our President’s name is Barack Obama. How cool is that? President Obama. Nothing makes me feel more like we’re finally in the 21st century than that.
Of course, now he has a monumental task ahead of him. What makes (or at least should make) progressives different than conservatives is that we’re not cheerleaders. We’re totally psyched for this occasion and couldn’t be happier about his election, but we’re going to call him on the decisions we don’t agree with. We know that patriotism is actively participating in a democracy and making sure your voice is heard, especially when you disagree with your leader.
But Obama wasn’t the only one elected on Tuesday night. Everyone who voted for him was elected. Actually, they were elected the second they donated to his campaign or put out a sign or did anything to actively help his campaign because guess what: Barack Obama is not Bagger Vance. He’s not the magical negro (contrary to what Rush Limbaugh would like to spew) who’s going to help us with our golf game and our economy. We were recruited to make this country better and that commitment didn’t end at the ballot box.
THE GOOD
The Senate: The Democrats picked up seven Senate seats with three more still at a toss-up. I pray that Al Franken wins, not just because he’s a comedian and that would be amazing, but because he’s a strong progressive and I want that kind of voice in the Senate.
Ted Stevens: Alaska will probably re-elect convicted felon Ted Stevens. Since the Democrats will probably not make it to the filibuster-proof majority anyway, I say let them and show how batshit insane their state really is. Plus, it makes all the Republicans squirm to have that smear of a person attached to their party and they’ll probably want to get rid of him as much as Democrats. Still, Alaska looks to have had some major voting irregularities this past Tuesday, as election guru Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight pointed out.
Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.com: Which leads me to my next point: Silver was one of the heroes of this election. He glided through a tidal waves of statistics and helped make sense of it all. There’s a reason he came closer than almost any pundit in predicting the outcome of this election. The only place he was wrong was Indiana.
Indiana: Talk to some from Indiana and they’ll tell you how unbelievable it is that their state went blue. This is a state that Bush won by twenty points in 2004. It’s surely to their credit that enough people in that state realized how horribly things had turned over the past four years and they didn’t make a commitment to party but to country. I hope Obama will earn their vote again 2012.
The Youth Vote: The vote? We finally rocked it. I don’t know what happened in 2004 but I think I know what happened in 2008: 1) the utilization of social networking and 2) They were excited to vote for Obama and not simply against McCain.
McCain’s Concession Speech: Perhaps the first step in returning to the man we all know he can be and not this cynical shell we saw throughout this election.
THE BAD
Georgia: First, we weren’t able to turn the state blue. Granted, the networks weren’t able to call us red the second the polls closed, but still, there was a faint glimmer of hope that we weren’t all a bunch of dumb crackers. Georgia is going to a run-off. I will vote in that run-off election because I think Saxby Chambliss is a disgusting, sorry excuse for a human being who runs the ugliest campaigns possible. However, I don’t think his opponent, Jim Martin, will win. I just don’t see everyone coming back to the polls on December 2nd and without a massive organization effort and lot more money, Chambliss will probably retain his seat.
THE UGLY
Prop 8: Californians let the Chuch of Latter-Day Saints come in and write hate into their constitution. For homosexual Democrats, this week must have been one of mixed emotions. It must have been wonderful to see Obama elected and it must be crushing to have Prop 8 pass.
What made Prop 8 worse than previous gay marriage bans is that it was the first to actually strip away rights. The election of Barack Obama is a major step forward for African-Americans but the vote of “Yes” on Prop 8 is a major step backwards for America. LGBT rights are the next great civil rights battle and while Tuesday was a dark day in that fight, it will continue and those who discriminate will lose because homosexuals aren’t going anywhere and bigots die out.
In The Event of An Obama Loss
So the polls have Barack Obama up and the pundits are predicting a victory, but let us pause to consider the consequences of Obama losing the election. It’s a scary thought, but if you stop to think about it, it’s even more horrifying. A McCain administration should be the least of your concerns. Doubtless, if he runs this country like he’s run his campaign, we’re in for another shitty four years with a guy that clearly doesn’t know dick about the economy, thinks victory is possible in Iraq (ineffible as that victory may be), and we’ll also be forced to pray on a daily basis that he doesn’t die in office otherwise we’ll have to deal with the truly nightmarish Sarah Palin.
What would truly sting about an Obama loss is that his historic campaign and the events that occurred during the campaign, would be rendered trivial. An Obama loss would mean the following:
1.) An African-American can run the better campaign, be the better speaker, be the steadier and more confident candidate, not resort to baseless smears, and still lose. I wouldn’t expect another African-American to run for President for another twenty years.
2.) The massive number of African-Americans, young voters, and newly-registered Democrats will feel like their vote didn’t matter and will quit the process. With all the polls and pundits signaling that Obama is going to win, it would be hard to blame them.
3.) There is no situation, no matter how horrible and threatening to the future of America, that Republicans cannot overcome through racism, lies, and treating the American people like they’re a bunch of stupid children. There’s talk about the Republicans having to go into the wilderness and search for their souls, but if they win the Presidency on Tuesday, then they won’t need to look for their soul because clearly and absence of one means they get to stay in power.
So today, go vote. If you have already voted, good for you. Make sure everyone you know is voting, knows where to vote, and knows their rights as a voter.
And, hopefully, in less than 24 hours, we’ll have elected our first African-American President, can begin to repair the damage done by Bush, and whole-heartedly reject the campaign tactics of the GOP.
The Obama Effect
Polls are snapshots. That’s what I have to keep telling myself so that I won’t start gloating that Obama has already won. My reserve isn’t because I’m afraid I’ll be crushed if I acknowledge that Obama has won and then come Tuesday night, McCain gets his picture put in the dictionary next to the word “Upset”. I know I’ll be crushed if Obama loses and no amount of cautious optimism is going to lessen that blow.
But over these past few weeks, as Obama’s poll numbers have climbed, we’ve heard mention of “The Bradley Effect”. For those that haven’t decided to devote every spare second browsing political coverage, the Bradley Effect is the notion that white people will tell pollsters that they’re voting for a black candidate and then will secretly vote for the white candidate. The historical reference is that African-American Tom Bradley was ahead in the polls for the 1982 California Gubernatorial race but lost the election. There’s a concern that the Bradley Effect will happen on November 4th and we’ll see how racist our nation truly is.
If that does happen, I submit that from henceforth, “The Bradley Effect” be known as “The Obama Effect”, because there’s no way that so many polls, pundits, and journalists could get this prediction wrong without racist white people lying to pollsters. But even if you don’t take heart in polls, take heart in Obama’s massive fund-raising, the voter-turnout during the primaries, and that he draws crowds of tens of thousands of people.
Credit to Stephanie for sending this my way:
As this long election season winds down, I’ve been having various thoughts about the political climate and how this will all shake out. These will be brief thoughts that are too long for a Twitter post but won’t be in depth blog entries. But on these posts I do encourage comments so feel free to do so below or through Facebook.
The Double-Edged Sword of Joe Lieberman
There’s a drawback to the Dems getting close to the filibuster-proof majority. The closer they are to sixty votes, the more they need Joe Lieberman. This is a guy that should be a pariah of the Democratic caucus but because he’s an independent, he’s been crucial these past two years in keeping the balance of power 51-49 (which has clearly been a meaningless majority since the Dems have let major pieces of Republican legislation sail on through while getting little accomplished other than an energy bill that was jam-packed with pork). However, the 60-vote majority does mean something and even in the “best case” scenario where the Democrats need to pick up nine seats, this rests on the assumption of keeping Joe Lieberman. If they only pick up two or three seats this election, then screw him because there’s no way they’ll get six Republicans to jump on board to a piece of legislation unless it’s something like stem-cell research which would pass easily anyway (and the only reason it hasn’t passed yet is because Bush has vetoed it, one of the few cases where the Christian right has made their presence known in a substantive piece of legislation as opposed to just being an easily manipulated block of voters that Republicans have exploited).
So while I’ll swallow my pride and accept him as a necessary evil of a filibuster-proof majority, I hope that either the Dems will pick up even more seats in 2010 or that Holy Joe gets his ass kicked to the curb in 2012.
Since the McCain campaign and the Republican Party are in decline and don’t take losing very well, they’ve decided to go back to that time-tested strategy of deciding who’s a “real” American and who’s a “fake” American. I was worried that in all this talk about whether or not Obama was a terrorist and the possibility of a complete economic meltdown, we wouldn’t discuss who really loves their country and what loving that country means.
Thankfully, the GOP went there this past weekend and two of TV’s best editorialists have responded as only they could. First, the eloquent Keith Olbermann asks, “What is ‘pro-America’, Senator?”
Jon Stewart then has a follow-up question, “What the pfuck?”
There are 28 days left until Election Day. In that time, a horrible virus could ravage the Earth rendering its inhabitants fast-moving, blood-thirsty zombies; Sandra Bullock could do a stint in rehab; or John McCain could come back from the political brink and win this election on nothing more than vile attacks and broad smears. I think back to 2004 and recall the shock and horror of Bush winning a second term. I picture John McCain crossing the threshold of 270 votes on November 4th…I see him dying in office because he’s fucking old…I see Sarah Palin as President…My blood runs cold but my heart is beating out of my chest. I curl up into the fetal position and begin to sob. And then I look at this picture and everything is okay again:
It reminds me that Obama has run the best campaign possible. It wasn’t without its stumbles but it was hard-fought and it didn’t fall into the trap that got Al Gore and John Kerry of ignoring the smears and hoping the American people would be smart enough to see through it (they’re not). Obama has a smart, well-disciplined campaign and this little image reminds me of that. So whenever I read horror stories about John McCain or Sarah Palin, I just look at this photo and it calms my nerves and I put away my passport and stop looking for jobs overseas and return to hoping that our long, national nightmare will finally be over on January 20th, 2009.
