Yes, it’s been quiet here, as I warned it would be after the election. There may be another post on that later.
Shutdown. Blah, blah… All the stuff from the webs. Been posting a ton of stuff on the Facebook page about this…
But this is where we may see some change in the future. Maybe things needed to get this bad in D.C. before real change in Congress was possible.
First, a little about how this happened, in my eyes, at least.
The Tea Partiers who are pushing this are concerned about jobs, this is a job retention strategy. Their jobs, yes, self-preservation, yes, but that’s what it is.
The districts that elected them want to see some action against Obama and Obama care is about the only real policy / legislation they can find true fault with. If they don’t do what they are doing, a lot of these radicals will be voted out and replaced with another round of amateurs who will flounder in futility as badly as the current crop of self proclaimed patriots.
Now, yes. Anger against the GOP over this fiasco may cost some Republicans from more balanced, moderate districts their jobs in 2014, but it won’t be the far, far right minority.
This may be enough to toss the House back to the Dems, which may actually lead to a functioning Congress for a while.
But it doesn’t fix the problem. The real problem is the procedural rules in both houses. These arcane and, often, insane rules emerged over decades as one party or the other struggled against the domination of the other.
A silver lining to come out of all of this may be that rules reform could be a real winning campaign issue in 2014. Usually, when the minority party comes into power, they, for many reasons, leave this stuff.
However, I think candidate that campaign on reform could really do well in 2014, which may or may not lead to reform actually happening, but let’s cross one bridge at a time here. For the GOP, this may be a critical strategy. Yeah, my party broke the country, but I want to fix it. Depending on how bad things get, this may be the only strategy they have.
If this comes to pass, then this current fiasco may lead to some really positive change down the road. And it really will take a disaster to make such change possible. But maybe it will be worth it, in the long run.
For there to be any hope of reform, though, things are going to have to get a lot worse first. If this stalemate is resolved soon, and if we end up not defaulting on our debts, then the electorate will have forgotten these events 13 months from now. Sad but true.
And make no mistake, this is exactly why this is happening right now.
I am not rooting for disaster. But, if it comes, then this will be my happy thought as I rummage through the dumpsters trying to keep the boys fed.
I could have slept for another hour, but laying in bed, listening to NPR, my head kept filling with sleepy thoughts about yesterday so I decided to jot them down…
Florida. You’re Fired.
Florida… You are just like every woman I’ve known from Miami. Crazy and sexy. And crazy. And, did I mention, because I want to be very clear about this, crazy.
But still damn sexy.
Good job America. Probably a wise idea not to invite Florida to the party this year. Yeah, they look way hot, but then they show up, get all sloppy, make out with the wrong guy, pass out, and stay too late.
Sometimes, at their worst, you get up the next day and find them still passed out on your carpet for the twenty plus mornings...
And she’s still sexy all down there on the floor like that. Must have something to do with all that crazy.
I think both parties now have had enough of Florida and will pretty much not playing there any more. There are other, more solid and predictable ways to win an election that getting caught in the swamp down there.
Speeches
Good speeches from everyone. Blown away by Obama's. Sure, it was more enthusiasm than content but its his night and it rocked. There will be time for nuts and bolts later. Romney seemed to come in a little later than he should have, but from what I understand, part of this might have been because he had not prepared a concession speech.
I am also sure they were taking a real close look at Florida and Ohio, but after Virginia went blue, all hope was lost.
Apparently they had ground teams of lawyers ready to go in Ohio and Florida and a third team ready to pounce on a third state, but Obama’s lead was significant enough in enough states that it was clear that there would be no legal recourse that could snatch a victory from the ashes.
For the most part, though, I think we were all surprised by how early this was called last night. I was amazed when CBS, our choice for the evening, called it around 8:30 our time. I was guessing it would be around 10 pm our time before this happened. Not the first blown call of mine about yesterday.
I think this is why it took so long for both candidates to make it to the stage last night.
Red States Vs. Blue States
From here on out in presidential elections, I am feeling like we have some new blue states. This was a partisan election and there really was little in the way of swing. The Democrats won because they ran the better campaign, especially when it came to local organization. Turn out was the deciding factor, and the Democrats won yesterday.
It is hard to tell and I am sure it will be close in these “swing” states next time around as well, but I think the blue state club is getting a little bigger.
This is going to be tough for the GOP the next time out. Earlier I wrote about not inviting Florida to the party any more, but the GOP may have little choice. It may be the only true big swing state left.
Though this is not entirely true. In an election that is less closely contested, there is some room for swing. But three out of the last four presidential elections have been partisan elections without a breakout front runner going into election day, and let’s remember, 2008 was pretty close too with McCain not completely out of the game as America headed out to the polls.
I was wrong to ever doubt you, man. Whoa. He called this one. Nailed it. Still not sure about Florida, but he only put the odds of an Obama victory there at a little over 50%, so either way, I’d say he picked 50 out of 50 this year.
On the right are his last predictions from election day morning.
Election Coverage
I stuck with CBS last night because it came in on our rabbit ears and the other option, ABC, kept cutting over to the local election coverage which, quite frankly, bored the heck out of me. Plus, the ABC team was awful. Diane Sawyer, off script? Oh my. My head hurts.
CBS seemed a little better.
But, really, what just strikes me is how so many people were surprised by the results last night.
These days everyone is looking for a narrative thread in their reporting. They are focused on telling stories, not on reporting the facts.
So we had the narrative of Romney’s “momentum.” This was fueled by the GOP talking heads trying to sell the story, which was never really backed up in the polls, and the media buying it.
Looking for facts to maintain this narrative arc, too much attention was put on the national polls, which have been worthless since the 2000 election.
Sure, those polls are an interesting piece of the puzzle, but they are a small piece. But it was the piece that supported the narrative so they were given too much weight by the press going in.
Yesterday, glancing around most of the national news websites, the screaming headlines were that the race was too close to call and that anything could happen on election night. Of course, if you drilled down a bit- quite a bit- it became clear that Obama pretty much wrapped this one up about ten days ago and had only been increasing his lead since then, around the time I made my first prediction.
So the media narrative last night concluded with Obama smashing through with an unexpectedly large victory in the electoral college, either coming from behind for a decisive 4th quarter victory, or breaking away from a tied game in the final seconds.
However, the facts never supported these narratives. And, once upon a time, it was the press’ job to tell us the facts to the best of their ability, not to construct narrative arcs for us.
So 2012 is a big media fail in my book. Not quite “Dewey Defeats Truman”, but close.
The real story of this election is the validation of modeling systems such as Nate Silver’s. There were a number of intangibles heading into this election day and those of us following this part of the story through the last days of the campaign were all second guessing whether these models really considered and accounted for all of the “intangibles”.
I, myself, tried to “correct” Nate’s numbers with my own assumptions about over and under polling and turn out. I did call that the GOP would have a harder time getting out their base, but I missed that the Democrats would do even better than they did in 2008 in getting the blue base out.
In the raw polls, in most states, there was an underperforming candidate, and it was Obama.
This the big story and surprise this morning. Not that the President won the states he won, but the margins by which he won them.
Now, the right wing media… Wow. If the mainstream media failed to mention that Obama pretty much had the election locked up, well, the right was going not only with a Romney win but some were even going all the way to Romney landslide.
Were these people stupid? No. Well, some of them, but not all of them. I’ve said it before, this was the only play left in the game book. 1% or 2% will just vote for who they think will win. Those are votes you want. If Obama lost, I would be bashing them this morning for NOT playing this card. They might have been able to run the numbers up a little more if they had.
It is also about the base. If our guy is going down, it is hard to get the motivation to go stand in line for minutes to hours to vote. Hell, if you’re like me, sometimes its even hard to get the ballot in the mailbox, even when you are fired up! But when you are already demoralized?
So this was pretty much a calculated move to get their base up out of their lazy boys. Be a part of something big!
What shocks me is that it looks like a lot of people who should have known better fell for it. Including, it appears, Romney himself. I think he really expected to win last night. Maybe not by a lot, but by enough.
I know not everyone at the top level of his campaign felt this way or else he wouldn’t have been wasting time and treasure in Pennsylvania the last few days. That was a pure desperation move, born from irretrievably losing Ohio in the final days.
A lot of his supporters drank the kool-aid. The buzz I’ve seen from the other side is not, shucks, we lost a close one but, rather, “What the hell happened? We were supposed to win.”
The word Mandate is as meaningless as the word Momentum
Kudos, so far, to the Dems for not going here, but I am hearing a lot of talking heads trying to use the word mandate this morning. In 2004, the GOP was using this word after winning one of the narrowest presidential victories of the last 50 years, but since it was a larger margin than they had in 2000, they took a swing at claiming a mandate and got a little traction in the press for their efforts.
This year, since Obama won by a narrower margin than 2008, every one is saying that there is no mandate… Okay. I won’t argue.
Because it is a meaningless word.
There are many factors that will determine the level of bipartisanship through the next congressional term. The president’s margin of victory was never going to be one of them. Mostly, because of historical patterns, the GOP should know that they do not have the luxury of being a do nothing congress heading into 2014.
It will be a repeat of 2010 unless they do something. Anything. And since they are stuck with Obama for two years past 2014, they should be aware enough to know that he holds all the cards now.
And it has nothing to do with 2012 margins.
Zombie Parties
During the 1980s, the Democratic Party was declared dead. In the 1990s, the Republican party was declared dead. In the aughts, the Democratic Party was declared dead. In the teens, starting last night, I’ve been hearing, guess it, guess it…
No party is dead. Yes, the Democrats have figured out how to win presidential elections, I will give them this. This is the first knock down, drag out, get your base to the polls or you are going to lose partisan election that they have won in a very long time, perhaps in my lifetime, and it is good to see. It is healthy.
And I think the GOP needs to solve it’s little Tea Party problem before it can get back in that game.
But they are not dead. Like I said, I think we’ve got a couple new blue states in the presidential elections. This is a story really told when you look at the county by county red v. blue maps. But it does not mean that the GOP is out “for a generation” as people are always saying about one party or another.
The House
The flip side is the House. A true sign of how close this election really was is the House races. It took everything, EVERYTHING, the Dems had to hang onto the presidency and there was not much left for the House.
I really think if more effort had been put into it, they could have taken the House this year. But it took so much effort to keep Obama in office that there was nothing left.
I know, myself, I barely paid any attention to the Congressional races this year. Partly that is due to the fact that I live in a solidly blue district where our incumbent usually only has token competition from year to year, but it is also because everyone was working so hard on the presidential campaign that we just didn’t have much left for the House this year.
2014? That is a different story. If the new Democrat machine targets the house, it is theirs, unless the Republican caucus really makes some big strategic changes over the next two years. If they do, then they might actually hang on to it. The ball is very much in their hands.
I think the GOP will start working with Obama. They’ll have to if they want to survive in the House.
Up through last night the GOP caucus has been saying they want to negotiate with Obama, but their definition of negotiate is, “Give us what we want, exactly as we want it, or we will say you are playing partisan politics and shred you in the next election.”
We’ll see if the current crop of Reps is smart enough to figure out that this game is played out. They will need to change strategies or they are going down hard in the midterms.
When functioning well, I actually think having some party splits between the executive and legislative branches of government can be a healthy thing. When it works, it works by getting the best ideas through from each party, and blocking the more sketchy ideas. But what we’ve had for awhile, coming to a head with the current Congress, is far from that. There is nothing healthy about the state of Congress right now at all.
Can they change? That is the real question. They may not be able to unless the entire Republican Party grows a pair and quits being held hostage by the Tea Party. It cost them the presidency this year and will cost them the House in 2014 unless the party grown ups man up and take a stand for sanity.
Post-Election Silence
I’m not going away permanently, but now that the election is over, I’ll be posting to this blog on a much less frequent basis. I’ll still be checking in from time to time, but probably not much until December.
Finally, now that this long national debate is over, I can focus on writing the NaNoWriMo novel that I should have been working on this morning instead of writing this post!
This blog has been around since 2004, though. Sometimes I drift away, but I always come back, eventually.
Thank you for contacting me in support of Internet freedom. My apologies if you tried to access my website on Wednesday January 18, 2012--it was blacked out in solidarity with Oregonians like you who believe in Internet freedom and entrepreneurship.
I could not agree with you more regarding this flawed legislation. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is intended to protect the intellectual property of United States businesses by shutting down websites that traffick pirated material. There is widespread agreement that online piracy and the problem of "rogue" foreign sites can threaten the economic security of U.S. businesses. There is also widespread agreement that the Internet has revolutionized the way the world learns, interacts, and does business.
Well intentioned though it may be, I have very strong concerns that SOPA would infringe on Internet freedom, stifle the innovation critical for Oregon's startup culture, and threaten Internet security.
Congress must be careful to protect intellectual property rights without jeopardizing what has made the Internet one of the biggest drivers of the economy. SOPA does not strike this balance and needs to go back to the drawing board.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me. I will continue working to protect the integrity of the Internet.
Can this government be fixed? Three steps that might help – USATODAY.com: "three "wave" elections in a row shifted political power but failed to fundamentally change the way Washington works, or doesn't work. They have some ideas for steps that could help.
Perhaps the most significant would change the way congressional lines are drawn, making more districts competitive and increasing the odds that centrist candidates could prevail. Revising the rules for Senate filibusters could prevent a few senators from routinely blocking action supported by a majority. And changing the congressional calendar could encourage legislators to build personal relationships with colleagues from the other party."
House unexpectedly defeats spending bill - Yahoo! News: " The House of Representatives unexpectedly defeated a bill that would fund the federal government past September 30 on Wednesday as dozens of Republicans broke with their party to push for deeper spending cuts.
The unexpected outcome was an embarrassment for House Republican leaders who have at times struggled to rein in a conservative wing that remains closely allied with the anti-spending Tea Party movement.
"This is a democracy. This is the sausage factory," said Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, who sponsored the bill."
I am always a fan of "primary source" material. To me, this is one of the best things about blogging: It gives people who would be normally overlooked by the mainstream media a readily accessible pipeline to the masses. Because of this, I don't have to go to Iraq to hear a first person story about life there. I don't have to rely on catching a few stories on life in Iraq squeezed into the slow news gap between the Peterson Sentence and the Kidnapped Fetus.
One of the worst things about blogging? Being stuck in an apartment in the suburbs with no access to primary material and writing about news and information recycled from other media sources. Using blogs for research isn't much better. It still isn't the same as being there, talking to a live human, but at least it feels one step closer...
There was an article this morning calling Lance In Iraq, by Second Lt. Lance Frizzell, the first blog out of Iraq by a US soldier from Tennessee. I do know know if it is true that this is the first blog from a Tennessee soldier in Iraq or not, but it is the first blog I have noticed from any US soldier in Iraq.
It is an interesting read. It is written by a National Guardsman who's civilian job is being "the Press Secretary for the House Republican Caucus in the Tennessee Legislature."
There is bias here, obviously, but I have no problem with bias as long as it is not claiming to be "Fair and Balanced."
I get laid off from my job and decide to kill time by writing about life and politics on my blogs, this man gets sent to war and decides to kill time by passing "on some of the things the 278th[Armored Cavalry Regiment (now Regimental Combat Team)] is doing in country as well as talk a little politics and media analysis. "
I can respect that, regardless of his political affiliation.
The 278th is the same unit that Spc. Thomas Wilson is from. He is the soldier who asked the Secretary of Defense why the US Military had to "dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles." To make hillbilly armor, as they call it.
Obviously, I am interested to see what a Republican press secretary who is in a combat zone has to say about this...
...what would happen if the 278th hung out in Kuwait for an extended period of time waiting for official up-armor kits. Here is the answer:
The units we are scheduled to replace would be stuck in Iraq waiting to be relieved. A lot of these units are National Guardsman like ourselves who rolled in last year when things were dicier than they are now. I'd hate to be languishing here in country because some members of the U.S. Army are too prissy to pick up a welding torch and put steel on a vehicle. It's time for these guys to go home. It's time for us to take their place. Period.
If we are delayed a year from now because the next rotation is scared of angry family members and Congressional inquiries I (and everyone else in the 278th - especially those complaining about armor) will be highly pissed.
Frizzell writes that he is more concerned about the troop rotations, getting soldiers who are due to leave Iraq out, than having adequate armor. That is very noble. I would guess this is how most soldiers going into this situation feel. This is because we have good people serving over there. They deserve all the protection they can be given while they are doing their jobs over there.
The point here isn't quite on target, unfortunately. The debate isn't about delaying your arrival in the combat zone. You are going with or without the proper equipment. The debate is about making sure that going in unarmored stops.
In a different post from the same day, Frizzell talks about Clinton's secretary of Defense Les Aspin turning down a request for "tanks and armored vehicles for his forces" during the Somalia deployments.
In September General Powell asked Aspin to approve the request of the U.S. commander in Somalia for tanks and armored vehicles for his forces. Aspin turned down the request. Shortly thereafter Aideed's forces in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 75 in attacks that also resulted in the shooting down of three U.S. helicopters and the capture of one pilot.
In his post, the Republican press secretary/soldier writes, "Liberals and lefty media types using the armor issue to take down Rumsfeld were no where to be found during the Aspin debacle. "
The sentence immediately following the DOD quote above is:
In the face of severe congressional criticism, Aspin admitted that in view of what had happened he had made a mistake, but stated that the request for armored equipment had been made within the context of delivering humanitarian aid to Somalia rather than protecting troops.
Aspin ended up resigning a short time later.
I would use this example not so much to complain about differences in the media coverage between events a over a decade ago in Somalia and current events in Iraq, but to illustrate the difference between an administration that can admit its mistakes and one that cannot, no matter how bad they are.
Especially when considering... Aspin's mistake, apparently, did not cost those soldiers serving in Somalia their lives.
According to one of the comments posted on Frizzell's blog, "But of course having the armor wouldn't have prevented either the attack, or the deaths -- the armor was requested by the 10th Mountain Division, not the Ranger detachment, and the Rangers were based on the opposite side of the city than the 10th Mountain Division."
As far as the media coverage goes, I cannot remember if the media latched onto this Aspin controversy or not, but I do know that very little was said in the mainstream media about the lack of properly armored vehicles in Iraq until Rumsfeld was confronted by one of his own soldiers about the issue.
Body armor was discussed to some degree before then, mostly during the presidential campaign, but the discussion was focused mostly on congressional voting records, not if the soldiers ever actually received armor or other materiel that was supposedly being voted on at the time.
What was that money for? One of our left-liberal stars, Rep. Jim McDermott from Washington, outlined some of it on the House floor...
We have got no jobs in this country. But we are printing money. The presses are running like mad printing this money to send over to Iraq. Now, what are we going to send it there for? You heard from one of my colleagues a little bit of it. We are going to send over a guard system for public property, $15 million. That is just for training and administration.
We are going to send them 80 pickup trucks at $2.6 million. That is $33,000 apiece. That is a pretty good pickup truck. You can get a pickup truck for under $20,000 right now. But, no, we have to send them the $33,000 brand.
We are going to send over a communications system of handheld radios, 400 of them, and 200 satellite telephones, for $6 million. How many of your police departments have that kind of equipment? And yet we can send it over to Iraq.
Or we can go and give security for the judges at $200 million. Four hundred judges. We are going to provide security details constantly for $200 million.
These phony dollars that they got us into, they got us into a war on a fraudulent basis. The President stood right here and said things which he now says, ``My, it wasn't true.'' But we are going to pay for it.
We are going to pay for a witness protection program. If any Iraqis come forward, we promise them that we will take them to the United States and set them up someplace in Florida or wherever, I do not know, and spend $100 million on them, like they were crime fighters in the Mafia in the United States. That is what your money is going for. Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of things in this country that ought to happen before that happens.
We are going to buy them 200 tanker trucks. We are going to buy them 250 natural gas trucks. More of these dollars. They are going out. They are going out to the people, and they are going to be spent over there, and the Iraqis themselves say, ``Give us 10 cents on the dollar, and we can do it ourselves.'' But this is an American occupation headed by Viceroy Bremer, and there is no intention in this list of turning over control to them.
We are going to set them up an army. We have decided they need a 40,000-man army. They had an army before. Where is it? Why do we have to buy new weapons for all of them?
Four hundred thirty-five Members are going to come in here with their rubber stamp, and they are going to say, ``Mr. President, you want it. I close my eyes, it is yours.'' And we are going to send them $87 billion , with no discussion. It is wrong. Keep your eye on them.
$87 Billion in October 2003, $25 billion on August 2004, another $70 Billion in the works; all in addition to the initial " $78.5 billion measure that included $62.4 billion for combat and $7.5 billion for foreign assistance..."
This is why the lefties get a little upset and confused when US troops still seem to be unprepared two years into this phase of the Global War on Terror.
This is what inspires "lefty" Congressmen, like Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., to demand accountability from the Secretary of Defense.
Dodd sent a letter to the Secretary "and called the secretary's answer to Spc. Wilson's question 'unacceptable.'"
"Your response -- 'You go to war with the Army you have' -- is utterly unacceptable," Sen. Dodd wrote. "Mr. Secretary, our troops go to war with the Army that our nation's leaders provide."
I can spin in Oregon. Frizzell can spin in Iraq. That is the beauty of blogs.
So, it happened... Now what do we do about it? More than that, what do we do with the real threat of losing the Democratic Party as a viable voice of opposition to the Republican controlled Executive and Legislative branches of our Federal Government, and to increasing Republican control of our State and Local Governments, as well?
On November 2, 2004 we lost a battle, but we did not lose the war. However, we must not roll over. We must not lose track of that tremendous store of energy that the Democrats mustered for this election. At the same time, we also must take a hard look at why the Presidency was lost and at why seats in both houses of Congress were lost.
We must look at, explore and understand why the vast majority of the country comes up red in the Presidential Election every four years. We must understand why the Republican Party always seems to control the debate in these elections; why the Democrats are always responding to their attacks on the character of the candidates instead of the Republicans responding to attacks on their stance on the issues.
It is only a few days since the election, but it is not too early to start focusing on the future. Rightfully or wrongly, there will be a bloodbath in the Democratic Party power structure. In the gap created by this, the people need to step in and demand change.
democracyindistress.com has been thrown together quickly. It will improve, and hopefully visitors to this site will take advantage of the message boards and the other tools here to suggest improvements. Until more content is added, please take advantage of the Message Boards and the Blog… Join the conversation. Add ideas.
This is our country. Our voices demand to be heard. We can make it happen.
