While this blog has mostly just been hanging out on Facebook (facebook.com/DemocracyInDistress), every once in awhile I get fired up enough to write a longer post over there. For a number of reasons, I want to start, at minimum, making sure I share those here, as well.
For the last few years, I've been so buried in other projects that I really haven't had the time to write much on politics and the threats to democracy in America but, as you all know too well, my silence had obviously not led to silence on the subject online. Because of this, I've been less motivated to write and more into just curating content over on the Facebook Page.
As some of these last couple years' long projects start coming to fruition, though, it's time to re-up my blog game. One of my fellow collaborators on several books recently released, with more coming in the Fall, recently declared the rest of the summer to be "Heavy Content Summer" for both of us, so here I go!
hot girl summer is over it's time for the fall of society
Whether or not this sticks for me, well, I've been optimistic about getting back into the political writing game before, but for today, at least, I offer this...
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I woke up to Dr. Fauci on Meet the Press this morning. Disheartening stuff before my first cup of coffee, popping me out of my blissful bubble of Olympics and novel writing that I've lived in, mostly, for the last few weeks. The choices that folks are making in some parts of the country, not just about their own heath, but everyone else's...
Ultimately, I realized, maybe just to get myself up and to work this morning, that we're locked into the Two Americas solution on the pandemic, and by the time the 2022 elections roll around, we'll know which America made the correct calls and which didn't.
With a pill of bitterness, I grumbled to myself, at least it will be wiping out the former guy's voting block and, after the massive gerrymandering and redistribution of House seats (a way larger threat to the future of our republic than the new voting laws), we need all the help we can get.
The Newsweek article is far less hyperbolic than this week's cover and the headline suggests, covering some basic science around the virus and the possibilities for mutation with this one. Not super new stuff for most folks who've ever taken a biology class, but it was a decent refresher on the basic situation we find ourselves in at this point.
The risk of a mutation defeating the vaccines is there, and of variants becoming more lethal, but the threat of such mutations is not as large as we might fear.
Still, over the last few years of miracle-level bad luck the nation's had, in the end, I think I'd rather defeat the new far right at the polls next year than risk them thinning their numbers through self-inflicted biological warfare.
Finally, here is a strong argument to get the rest of the world vaccinated, even if it is on America's credit card. We may not be able to do much about the choices being made in Red America, but it is still in our nation's best interests to make sure that we keep the threat of mutation as low as possible around the world.
This needs to be one of the very top priorities in Washington, and even in the private sector, including corporations as well as NGOs, to keep America safe.
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.
While researching (Heh, I called it researching!) one of my posts for the evening, I saw an ad for Secession T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, etc.
It's funny and I would like one of the T-Shirts for my birthday, but I hope that this is not a mounting movement.
We do need to unify this country. Most of the values of Red America are shared by Blue America. I believe that it is the parties, both parties, harping on a few key issues that has created the feeling that there are irreconcilable differences between Iowa and California... Okay, maybe there are between those two states, but living my whole life in Washington and Oregon I feel there are irreconcilable differences between my states and California, but we both manage to come up Blue.
And that is my point, I suppose.
Unfortunately, we got Skippy the Wonder President saying his obligatory few words about reconciliation and unity after the election, so the Administration's efforts at building bipartisanship in America is complete for the next four years.
It is probably going to be up to the Democrats, to the lefties within the party, to reach out to Red America. We need to explore the issues important in rural America, we need to field candidates that are electable in rural America, we need to redefine the issues and control the message so our beliefs are not corrupted and labeled antagonistic to rural America, and we need to do all of this without sacrificing our principals and morals.
I believe it is possible.
This is one of the main themes that I mean to pursue with Democracy in Distress. At this point, most of my posting has been commenting on news items, but we do need to start organizing. We need to take control of the party, control of the issues, control of the message and we need to learn how to heal this nation.
On a side note, in my evening's running commentary on Comedy Central programming, The Daily Show just ran their Great Moments in Punditry segment where they had children reading transcripts from Scarborough Country on MSNBC. That is about the clearest illustration I have seen recently of the current state of political debate in this country.
Scary stuff. We must demand better from both the media and from our politicians. And from ourselves… Poopy heads.
And yet another final note on a rapidly growing post… Clicking over to the Scarborough Country for the web link, I noticed a clip of Al Franken and Ann Coulter debating whether The Passion of the Christ would be nominated for an Oscar. It turned into a “debate” on if either Mel Gibson’s controversial film or Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 would be nominated.
In the end, there wasn’t much debate. Neither of the talking heads had seen the other camp’s movie.
Could this be a part of the problem? It does illustrate part of the media’s problem, more and more the debate over controversy is being analyzed with out enough attention being paid to the root issues behind the debate. In this case, two movies. In the election, the media ignored the candidates' actual platforms and instead focused on the horse race of the campaigns themselves.
No, not me... Yet. Maybe check back next week just to make sure.
Local politics affect our day-to-day lives more than any other level of government, but for most people, issues affecting their hometowns are often the most overlooked and ignored. More people are likely to vote for President, Senator, or Governor than they are for City Council candidates or School Board members. Unfortunately, in most cases, the City Council and School Boards are the ones who are going to be making decisions that directly affect what you can or cannot do every day, or what your child can or cannot do every day.
In fact, local government is a major battleground of the Red v. Blue stand off. Look at what has happened to School Boards across the nation. We are living in the 21st Century and the Scopes trial could be a current event in many cities and towns. State Legislatures are falling across the country to the Republicans, even in the bluest of states, reflecting the fact that most geography in the Blue states is actually Red. These bodies have tremendous influence on the debate both up and down the food chain, influencing everything from your taxes to who gets to be President.
Quality local sources of news and information are very important, though, to my knowledge, fairly rare. Municipal and regional issues can often seem very dry, which means you won’t be seeing any in depth coverage on your local broadcast news, and in most parts of the country the quality of journalism on these broadcasts is atrocious. Daily newspapers vary greatly in their bias and competence and most cities these days only have one. It is never wise to rely on one source for information about news and politics. Many larger cities also have weekly alternative papers, but again, the quality varies greatly here too, and the anti-establishment biases may not always be conducive to fair reporting.
So, well researched and well written blogs focusing on local issues may be a niche that is waiting to be filled in most areas, and it may be one that needs to be filled again in Portland.
The Portland Communique, a blog that focuses on local issues in Portland, OR, is probably going the way of the mammoth in the next few weeks.
From what I have seen of this blog, it is a well-written, informative source of information about local issues in my hometown. While democracy is in distress all over the nation, and while it is doing much better in Oregon than it is in other parts of the country (I glance four miles to my left from where I sit now), it would still be a shame to see a resource like this disappear.
I just had an odd idea for a website: turnmeintoaliberal.com.
Each week or so, we'd post a profile of a Bush Voter, from middle of the road swing voters to hardcore theorcratic conservatives, and their reasons for pulling the Elephant Lever in November and then we would use post comments using logic to try and change their mind.
Unfortunately, this would have been better before the election, but we do have the 2006 Congressional Elections coming up quicker than we can blink.
I am not putting this together yet, just sharing the idea. I think it would be good practice for taking the message to Red America.
This idea probably came around because I consider myself a centrist, but things are moving so far to the right in this country that I feel like I am turning into a Liberal myself.
I don't know... it would be amusing. I don't know which would be better, creating fictional Republican profiles or finding real people to submit to our assaults.
Today is Sunday. Douglas Adams wrote about an immortal being who went insane because of Sunday afternoons. But that is a better topic for my personal blog, Rubble.
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.
