Lately, the one and only news “commentator” who doesn’t come across like a total asshole is Campbell Brown.
Now, I despise Sarah Palin as much as the next person, but Brown has a point. The savagery with which the McCain campaign staff have been scapegoating Palin for Tuesday night’s loss really only serves to make those staffers look bad. Palin does a fine enough job of looking like the total ignoramus she is without any help from these people, but all the latest “behind-the-scenes revelations” only make the McCain people look even worse for having chosen her.
I, for one, would like to forget Sarah Palin. Let her go back to Alaska, return all the expensive duds, and get back to keeping an eye out on Vladimir Putin. The Republican Party shat its own bed and needs to clean it up themselves, not blame her.
Personally, I don’t think anybody was honestly surprised at the outcome of the Presidential election yesterday. Obama’s lead solidified into a permanent situation several weeks ago, and the increasingly desperate and frankly appalling rhetoric of the McCain-Palin campaign was complete acknolwedgement that they were fully aware that they had lost. The nervousness on the part of Obama supporters was tied almost entirely to the fear that somehow the Republicans would find a way to steal a third consecutive election, not that Obama could not win of his own accord. The media did an above-average job of showing enough restraint to wait until they could legitimately project Obama’s victory once the West Coast polls had closed, even though it was clear much earlier in the evening what that 11:00 projection would be.
The three of us sat together and watched election returns and nibbled on some excellent cheeses. I drank some very nice Cote-du-Rhone wine. We let Charlotte stay up until the 9:00 projections had been made, sending her off to bed confident that Barack Obama had won. Bridget was next to fall, around 10:00. I had a little more wine to enhance the celebratory mood and stuck it out for the Big Call at 11:00, right up through McCain’s very good concession speech and then until President-Elect Obama addressed the tens of thousands of people gathered in Grant Park. Though I mostly watched NBC’s coverage, I also caught a bit of the action on CNN, CBS and ABC and have to say I think NBC did the best job (although I missed the “Obi-Wan Blitzer” holograph bit which people are buzzing about today). I got a kick out of the blue and red scaffolds on the 30 Rock building and the map on the ice rink. Between the goings on in New York and the awesome crowd in Chicago, it was really wonderful to see people turn Election Night into a national celebration.
Rather than belabor things too much, I just wanted to share a couple of maps with you, both from the New York Times:
This map is the county-by-county version of the now-typical Red State-Blue State map we’ve all come to know and love. As things turned out, at the state level, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight was 98% correct in his final prediction, only missing Indiana, which he called as “lean toward McCain” but went to Obama in a squeaker. At the county level, the map looks a lot more red than blue because of the population density issue: some states that went blue did so because the urban areas went Democratic, while the less-populated rural areas went Republican. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has looked at these maps for the last eight years.
What I found interesting, though, is THIS map:
This map shows the increase in voting for each party by county, and the map is overwhelmingly blue. Even in states that we think of as “solid red”, more people voted Democratic than they did in 2004, and did so by huge percentages in many, many places. The only places where the Republicans picked up voters are limited to a band of red in the Appalachian states and into the Ozarks.
Now…as Election Day wore on yesterday, there was a lot of coverage given to what looked like a huge increase in voter turnout — long lines for early voting, long lines all day yesterday, and a lot of praise thrown at the youth vote for being so motivated in this election. With the votes almost all counted, though, youth voter turnout was only 1 percent higher than in 2004.
Blue America stands reborn, dear friends. At last the 40-year Republican choke-hold on the national political conversation is being broken by people who are fed up with the malfeasance and misdemeanors that have laid us so low. It was thoughtful and kind and politically astute of Barack Obama to extend a message of inclusion to Republicans last night, but the path is clear and it does not meander to the right. It is time for the conservatives to stand humble, if not outright shamed, to acknowledge the intellectual and integral bankruptcy of their party, embrace their own “Country First” motto, and support the return of progressive ideals and the agenda of a leader not beholden to a small extremist group of religious zealots. The notion of “a single United States of America” that Obama hailed last night will come not from appeasing the right wing, but from those right-wingers stepping aside and delivering on their devotion to their country by supporting the new President.
If you read this blog regularly, or even occasionally, you know that I have not been very supportive of Barack Obama myself. I was genuinely disappointed in his selection as the Democratic nominee, and further disappointed when, over the summer, he blatantly backpedaled on two major issues to placate conservative voters. And so I had publicly decided that I would instead write in Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders on my presidential ballot, since I believe they would be a better choice to run this country. And that was my intention as I walked into my local polling place yesterday morning. As I stood at the little voting stand, though, I knew that while I might be right to vote for other candidates, the time had come to take the same step I have just said the Republicans must do and support the man the majority of Americans have chosen to lead the country into a new era. So I took a deep breath and filled in the oval for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Let’s see what they can do.
Walter Cronkite and Univac tally the 1952 election results
An interesting and happy coincidence: not only is tomorrow Election Day, it’s Walter Cronkite’s 92nd birthday. Even though Cronkite continued to show up for Election Night coverage for many years after his 1981 retirement, he’s not expected to visit the CBS studios tomorrow night.
Typical McCain supporters
Søren, a Mutual Friend of Torrez, has done an absolutely bang-up job of documenting all the many and varied ways the McCain-Palin campaign has lied, smeared, baited, and otherwise spread hatred and engendered so much shame and ignominy upon themselves that neither should ever be permitted to run for public office again and that the people who have run their appalling and disgraceful campaign should be banned from doing so ever again. I also recommend Søren’s post where he talks about the three basic types of fear-mongering.
Don’t give up the ship!
Gore Vidal and others have penned an open letter to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party pleading with them not to concede the election if it is a close call for McCain until all ballot challenges have been thoroughly investigated and resolved. Both Al Gore and John Kerry conceded to George Bush well before the outcomes were finalized, giving the Bush campaigns the advantage in seeing those disputes resolved in their candidate’s favor, even though widespread fraud and tampering hampered accurate vote tallies. Since very little real election reform ever emerged from the outrage caused by these events, even such a symbolic gesture as a graceful concession takes on huge significance. (via The Seminal)
Day One: End Torture
The American Civil Liberties Union has offered this agenda for the restoration of those civil liberties which were abrogated or severely weakened by the Bush Administration. The agenda is not targeted at Barack Obama specifically, though it’s a safe assumption that it is written with a President-elect Obama in mind, since it seems highly unlikely that John McCain would reverse any of the assaults on liberty made by Bush. Their call for Day One of the next administration: close the prison at Guantanamo, discontinue the policy of extraordinary rendition of prisoners to countries that practice torture, and issue an executive order immediately ending torture and abusive interrogation by ANY U.S. government personnel. It is a shameful moment indeed when a newly-elected President must be urged to do these things, and even worse to realize that, whichever man is elected tomorrow, these recommendations might not be heeded.
Well, okay not EVERYONE…just for people who go and vote tomorrow. But come on, kiddies, with the promise of a tall oneanda stiff one, how could anyone over the legal voting age NOT take advantage of such an incredible deal?!?!?
And the sex toys come in both Republican AND Democrat flavors! There’s even a “Maverick Man Sleeve” for those of you who need a little “solitary confinement”. Unfortunately, while Obama, McCain and Palin are all memorialized in rubber, silicone and plastic for your erotic imagnings, there don’t seem to be any Joe Biden sex toys. Or maybe that’s a good thing…your call.
Or maybe you’d rather have ice cream. You sick pervert.
Only eight more shopping days until Election Day, kids! I’m going to make a sincere effort this week to post about things other than You-Know-What, but to do that I have to get all of these links out of my system.
Recently, I read someone saying somewhere that people might be surprised at what genuinely nice individuals most politicians are. That the majority of people who go into professional politics do so out of a genuine desire to be of service to other people, regardless of their ideology. Republicans AND Democrats alike — contrary to the vicious rhetoric currently employed by the Republicans. Sometimes that commitment to public service gets obscured by personal ambitions and political obligations, but not always. I think there’s no question that Barack Obama is one of those people who has held on to his personal sense of service, and I hope he is able to continue to do so after he assumes the office of President.
This brief article in the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine lets Dennis Kucinich explain his mission in his own words, and here again you can grasp the sincere desire to help other people, especially people who otherwise have no one to help them. That, friends, is the heart of liberalism (or “progressivism”, if you’re a wimp). Kucinich was practically alone among the Democratic candidates in staking his claim firmly in progressive soil, while Clinton and Obama wrestled over who could be the most like the Republicans. This was and is my biggest qualm with Obama — that while he is a decent person, he is too easily swayed by the political wind. I do not have that sense at all about Dennis Kucinich, and that is why he’ll get my vote next week and why I will continue to support him in the future. The now-embryonic Obama Administration would do well indeed to find a place for Dennis Kucinich and foster his political future so that he might have a realistic chance at the White House eight years hence.
This is Bernie Sanders, the independent Senator from Vermont. Bernie (he prefers to be called “Bernie”) has been in the Senate since the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, but he had been Vermont’s single representative in the House for 16 years before that. Bernie’s political affiliation is one of the most interesting ones in modern American politics. He’s listed as an “independent”, caucuses with (and votes with) the Democrats, and describes himself as a Socialist. Indeed, in his earlier days prior to being elected mayor of the city of Burlington, VT, he was a member of an anti-war fringe party, the very sort that William Ayers was involved with (minus the bombs, I guess).
During the years of Alan Greenspan’s chairmanship of the Federal Reserve, Bernie was a vocal critic of Greenspan. At the time, Greenspan was widely considered as a near-magical figure by Washington leaders, able to keep the long boom of the Clinton years rolling along with a single well-directed word in his oracular statements to Congress. Last week, Greenspan, now retired, returned to Congress, hat in hand, to admit that he had “made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms”. This is what Bernie had to say about that.
Bernie Sanders has also been among the few progressive voices (along with Kucinich) speaking out agains the Wall Street bailout, and calling quite vocally for the sort of reforms and public service programs that Franklin Roosevelt enacted at the beginning of his administration. Give ‘em hell, Bernie!
The only part of this summer’s Democratic National Convention that I watched was the night that Ted Kennedy spoke. The man pulled himself out of a hospital bed, was wheeled into the arena, and lifted himself from a wheelchair to walk to the podium to make that speech. The reports from his family continue to be positive, but there could not have been anyone who heard that speech who did not know in their hearts that it would be the last convention speech he’ll make.
Ted Kennedy still plans to return to the floor of the Senate when it reconvenes in January, and it does seem that he will make good on his pledge. The Washington Times (you know, the one run by the Moonies) ran this story last week that describes how Teddy is spending his recuperation time: by crafting a vast piece of legislation to bring his life-long goal of universal health care to the floor of the Senate. While both Barack Obama and John McCain have health care proposals in their platforms, both are fundamentally flawed in many ways. I think there’s more than a little reason to be afraid that President Obama would try to move quickly on his program, putting the issue to bed with a lackluster approach that will haunt us for decades. People who have met with Kennedy to discuss his plan call it a much better alternative to Obama’s plan; it has buy-in from all the assorted interests, and an Obama representative has been kept in the loop as a way to entice Obama to embrace this plan over his own.
This is the most important cause of Kennedy’s long political career, and perhaps the single greatest domestic issue facing this country other than the Wall Street meltdown. The sense is that many in Washington are willing to take this on seriously. One of the executives who runs the AARP says that the prevailing feeling is “Let’s do it for Ted.”
Okay, I can *almost* understand the rationalization for providing Sarah Palin with a campaign wardrobe. ALMOST because while she and her husband are millionaires and have plenty of money to buy their own clothing, this before-and-after collage certainly shows that money does not buy taste.
But I’m just dying to hear how a $3000 Louis Vuitton handbag for her six-year-old daughter is spun by her handlers as another sign of what a down-to-earth, “Joe Sixpack” family they are. And…I also want the name, address and telephone number of the charity said bag gets donated to at the end of the campaign so that someone can verify that it did in fact get handed down to someone who really “needed” a $3000 purse.
And while we’re on the subject…today the New York Times reported that the highest-paid person inside the McCain-Palin campaign is not one of McCain’s closest and most-trusted political advisers, it’s Sarah Palin’s makeup artist.
If you’ve got 10 minutes or so to spare today, you could do worse than to watch this portion of an interview with Noam Chomsky from a site called The Real News.com:
If you don’t have the time or the inclination to sit through the video (10 minutes seems like an ETERNITY in Internet Time), you can read the transcript instead here on their website (scroll down through all the mostly-inane comments and you’ll find the transcript)
Chomsky and the interviewer use a clip of George Will making what they call a “rather candid” statement:
George Will: Surely in a democracy it’s time for us to stop being sentimental and say the question we settle in an election is not whether elites shall rule but which elites shall rule. (emphasis mine — BK)
This particular observation certainly isn’t new, though it might be the first time a conservative media figure like Will has ever said as much publicly. Indeed, Chomsky has been making this basic point for decades: the American political establishment is not really made up of two differing ideologies, but one single ideology with two warring factions who differ only slightly in their affiliation with external politico-economic powers in American society. Despite the populist rhetoric of today’s Republicans and yesteryear’s Democrats, neither party is particularly interested in the plight of the average citizen except as an electoral strategy. At this stage in our history, I think you’d have to be utterly stupid, deliberately ignorant, or totally disengaged from reality to argue this point, whether it comes from the mouth of Noam Chomsky or George Will.
What Chomsky says that seems a bit less characteristic of his usual rhetoric, though, is that even though our current presidential election is really nothing more than a choice between two very similar and generally disappointing candidates, there is merit in voting for the “lesser of two evils” (meaning, in this case, Barack Obama) because in the long-term the average citizen fares better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones.
That’s about as close to an endorsement as any presidential candidate is likely to get from a figure like Chomsky. He does undercut his own remark by explaining the all-too-close similarities between McCain’s stated policies and Obama’s stated policies, and at one point he comes right out and says that he thinks that Barack Obama will not live up to his own rhetoric:
Well, I would suggest voting against McCain, which means voting for Obama without illusions, because all the elevated rhetoric about change and hope and so on will dissolve into standard centrist Democratic policies if he takes office.
Personally, I am not comfortable voting for the lesser of two evils. John McCain is simply unacceptable as a potential President of the United States, and his running mate is unacceptable in ANY elected office. But despite the bandwagon parade of newspaper endorsements and the eloquent-but-questionable endorsement from Colin Powell, Barack Obama represents nothing more than the same status quo that brought us to this lowly state of affairs. Choosing between these two candidates is like choosing between being mauled by a man-eating tiger, or being slowly digested by a python; picking the python means it might hurt a little less, but it’s going to last a whole lot longer.
One underlying problem is that our electoral system and our limited view of politics leave most people with the feeling that elections must be an either-or proposition, and create all sorts of rationalizations for voting for a candidate people would really do better to vote against but feel they have no choice if they oppose the other guy even more. It doesn’t really have to work that way. Though Canada uses a parliamentary government, they do, in fact, have FOUR national political parties (well, okay, maybe the Bloc Quebecois isn’t all that national, but they hold a lot of seats in Parliament), and most European nations have proportional voting systems that make for far more diverse political choices than the de facto binary system we have.
So even at this late date, it is my resolve to write in Dennis Kucinich’s name on my presidential ballot. It’s not a “protest vote”, it’s my sincere consideration that he would make a better President than either John McCain or Barack Obama. Kucinich continues to champion the genuine cause of progressive government where Obama and McCain simply pay lip-service to the serious issues facing the American public regarding health care, foreign policy and civil liberties. Kucinich was one of the few members of the House to vote against the $700-billion bailout, was one of the few to propose an alternative to the Paulson plan, and last week called for a probe to be launched into the $70 billion in bonuses being paid out to Wall Street executives even as their companies fail. He continues to fight for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, consistently opposed the PATRIOT Act, and has proposed a universal health care bill that is superior to anything offered by McCain or Obama. As I’ve said here before, the media portrayals of Kucinich as a “loony” are unfair to his record and have cost him serious consideration during the Democratic primaries in two election cycles. Since I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstance and cannot in good conscience vote for Barack Obama at this critical juncture in American history, this is my honest and sincere choice.
