Late in the week, The Daily called with the kind of assignment that no opinion writer could turn down. Obama has a chance to be the Reagan of the left, they said. If he gets a reasonable amount of what he wants in his second term, what will America look like? Writing this longer essay was an exercise in optimism and, though I tried to be realistic, I also found it kind of a tonic for cynicism. Things can get better, with just the ideas that Obama has expressed and hinted at.
The pundits are pondering. They mention mandates and movements, margins and maneuvers and meetings in the middle. They wax wisely on who won and why they won and which way the wind will waft on Wednesday.
We love to mock them, these prattling experts and prognosticators. And yet we listen, we read, we react. We can't help ourselves. We want to know what it all means and what will happen next. We are determined to squeeze great meaning from great events. We are all pundits.
But the truth is that the great election of November 7, 2012, was all but meaningless. It represents neither a pivot point nor a portent. A poor candidate lost to a strong candidate, as as he was expected to do. A diverse majority of Democrats in the Senate will continue to play a weak hand weakly. A militant majority of Republicans in the House will continue to obstruct, ignoring calls for moderation as they have done for two decades. The federal government will hobble feebly along.
It's noon and the Dow is down over 300 points (about 2.4% in this age of big numbers) and so, if it hasn't started already, people are going to try to say that the markets are rejecting the public's choice of a second Obama term, and of a larger Democratic majority in the Senate, or both of those things.
President Obama won a second term last night and it wasn't even a squeaker. The Senate and the House stayed pretty much the same, but Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin and Tammy Duckworth are going to Washington.
Joe Walsh, Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin will wander off into an oblivion they so richly deserve.
Karl Rove was seen on Fox howling foul over Ohio with such naked grief his election night companions could only look on, astonished.
I finished up by 9 PM and was happy to get home and tired. There was only a few precincts that had lines here when the polls closed in my county and they moved along so we were able to get everyone picked up by 8 PM to go home. We kept hearing stories come out of Miami/Dade area with many hours wait. I was so thrilled that the President said "we are going to fix that." It is time for congress to add a law against making people stand in line for hours to vote to the Voters Rights Act. Enough is enough. We have to start holding officials accountable for targeting urban areas and just plain incompetency. I hope he follows through.
In a veer to reality-based elections, Nate's total prediction this time, 49 right last gives us hope that the effects of the chattering class will be diminished next time.
After chumps like Dick Morris blew all credibility (did they have any left?) proclaiming a blowout to be, when any casual glance at the ground games in needed states proved it hoo-hah?
One of the interesting things about voting is that there isn't a good reason for it, especially from the perspective of modeling human behavior that's common in fields like economics. In order to illustrate why this is true, I've put today's Presidential election into a simple game theory framework:
For those interested, I'm doing a live-blog of Fox News Election coverage all day today. I will likely be in a home for the criminally insane tomorrow, but i do it for you.
In an age where we can pull $1000 out of any ATM worldwide, it's absurd that we're stuck in an age-old tradition of going to a particular precinct on a particular day to stand in a pretty retro booth to vote.
There's no reason not to have voting places where everyone can vote if we can't just do it via our mobile phones (yes, there are considerations for voting fraud, but as new last minute software for Ohio machines shows, we have this to contend with anyway).
5 AM EST.
I'm up and already nervous about what this election night will bring. I want the Democrats to win everything. I want the Republicans to lose in numbers large enough to show them the error of their ways. I'm so biased that way there's no pretending otherwise. I know it won't happen, but if I were wishing upon a star it's what I would be wishing for.
George W. Bush, former president. War criminal it has even been asserted at times. While individual tellings may differ in detail and specific focus, the point of these assertions usually revolve around a global network of secret prisons set up by Bush's national security apparatus - and the unfortunate actions that took place in them.
To vote in Ohio on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, you will need to bring a form of identification, either your driver's license or something that has your name and current address. If you're confused about where to go to vote, you can go to GottaVote Ohio or to the Ohio Secretary of State's webpage. Those sources also have information about the kind of ID you'll need to vote.
Much has been written about the Citizens United debacle, but it’s usually either based in the abstract or focused on the huge amounts of money being dumped into the dark abyss that is campaign financing. As too often happens, the spotlight is on the big money shadow donors, seldom on how this travesty effects those of us who are middle income and below.
Today, this post is about only one of the ways it negatively impacts the largest segment of our citizenry. Some up, close and personal examples of Citizen’s United elementary truth and consequences include:
I don't read yesterday's (and this morning's polls) as that favorable. What gives? Very early Saturday morning (I'm going by east coast time throughout this post), Nate explained that the President's chance of winning was over 80% because of the 22 polls of swing states published Friday, he led in 19 and trailed in only 1. This seemed sensible. On Saturday, there were fewer published polls (at least listed at Real Clear Politics) and a couple of these were not positive for Obama. The most worrisome are a Tampa Bay Times Florida poll that shows Romney +6 and, perhaps even more troubling
Ramona asks, flabbergasted, why this guy Romney is even able to make a race out of this. Over at Slate, Tom Scocca seems to have the answer. Race. Well, and gender. It's white guys who are giving Romney a fighting chance, even though, as Daggers like DF have concluded, it's still Obama's election to lose. E
Many voices, from the hallowed blogs of Dag to the exalted table around which Mighty Joe Scarborough and his colleagues convene, have decried the lack of substance in this election (though I'm pretty sure I hear that complaint every time anyone is running for office - "This should be about the issues!"). Mika Brzezinski has called it the Seinfeld election - a race about nothing - though I'll leave up to the reader whether this reflects more accurately the election or her observational skills.
Basic belief systems, if regularly reinforced by carefully orchestrated advertising campaigns, are enormously difficult things to shift. Paradigms of thought, once established in dominance, are hard to get rid of. We have just lived through 30 years of an orchestrated consensus on the wonders of free-market capitalism. No matter that the business deregulation it served to legitimate triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Facts don’t necessarily have to get in the way, when the defense of dominant belief systems is at stake; and in vast swathes of the Republican Party, facts visibly are not doing so now.
Okay, I'm breathing again--raggedly, to be honest, but I'm seeing clearly and whatever fun writing I was so longing for last week will just have to wait. Mitt Romney is closing in on the home stretch and I can't stand it. What can I say that will change that? We all know there is nothing I can say that will change anything this monumental and incomprehensible. But I repeat: I can't stand it.
Perhaps like Katrina was a turning point for Bush's presidency, Sandy will be a turning point for Obama's.
After 4 years of 11-dimensional chess, this one's curiously a no-brainer - get help to people quick, get the power back on, get the payments in, streamline response.
I was ready to write a column about how we could get resources in *before* the storm, since we knew they'd lose power, subways would be flooded - and there's Brownie criticizing Obama for acting too quickly. Well that's a good side of the fence to be on.
Much has been written about the Citizens United debacle, but it’s usually either based in the abstract or focused on the huge amounts of money being dumped into the dark abyss that is campaign financing. As too often happens, the spotlight is on the big money shadow donors, seldom on how this travesty effects those of us who are middle income and below. 