The Commentariat -- Nov. 7, 2012
Presidential Race
Jeff Zeleny & Jim Rutenberger of the New York Times: "Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of the United States on Tuesday, overcoming powerful economic headwinds, a lock-step resistance to his agenda by Republicans in Congress and an unprecedented torrent of advertising as a divided nation voted to give him more time. In defeating Mitt Romney, the president carried Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin, a near sweep of the battleground states, and was holding a narrow advantage in Florida. The path to victory for Mr. Romney narrowed as the night wore along, with Mr. Obama winning at least 303 electoral votes."
David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "Barack Obama was elected to a second presidential term Tuesday, defeating Republican Mitt Romney by reassembling the political coalition that boosted him to victory four years ago, and by remaking himself from a hopeful uniter into a determined fighter for middle-class interests. Obama ... scored a decisive victory by stringing together a series of narrow ones. Of the election's seven major battlegrounds, he won at least six."
Art by Donkey Hotey.Miami Herald: "With the presidential race settled but Florida still too close to call, Miami-Dade was still waiting Wednesday morning for final results. At 7 a.m., an elections spokesman told reporters that about 20,000 absentee ballots still needed to be counted. The office of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Wednesday morning issued a news release insisting that the 'unprecedented length of the ballot'* represents 'over 100,000 pages that need to be reviewed and verified, one by one. This in no way is representative of any issues or delays, but a matter of unprecedented volume,' the release said...." CW: it sure is a good thing this race didn't hinge on Florida. What a pathetic state. ...
... Update: "With the presidential race settled but Florida still too close to call, Miami-Dade was still waiting Wednesday afternoon for final results."
* CW: Let's get one thing straight: "the unprecedented length of the ballot" was one of half-a-dozen Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters. As Brittany Davis & Toluse Olorunnipa of the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times wrote today, "The outcome [of the vote on the ballot measures] is a sweeping rejection of the Republican-led Legislature's push to pile the ballot with long, complicated amendments, clogging precincts and causing voters to wait for hours in some cases. It was the worst outcome for constitutional amendments since 1978, when all nine of the state's proposed amendments failed." For a reminder on how many ways America's Worst Governor Rick Scott & his sidekicks in the Republican-led legislature tried to Screw the Vote, Adam Weinstein of Mother Jones wrote a nice primer last week.
CW: we're going to get a lot of these meaning-of-the-election pieces over the next few days, so let's start with a very good one -- by Tom Junod of Esquire.: "... tonight [President Obama ]celebrated the most sweeping political transformation in American political culture since the one Reagan cemented in his electoral victory of 1984: He had turned a center-right country into a center-left one." (See videos of Obama's & Romney's full speeches in the post below.)
** Ezra Klein: "President Obama's rousing victory speech left most everyone with the same question: Where's that guy been during the 2012 campaign? There's an answer to that question.... The Obama campaign found that their key voters were turned off by soaring rhetoric and big plans. They'd lowered their expectations, and they responded better when Obama appeared to have lowered his expectations, too. And so he did.... What you saw tonight, however, was that Obama didn't much like being that guy.... This has been the tension at the center of the Obama White House for four years now. Hope and change don't go together."
Michael Grunwald of Time: "President Obama started his term by passing a politically toxic stimulus bill. Next, he oversaw a politically toxic auto bailout. He then spent an agonizing year on a politically toxic health reform bill. His approval ratings dropped, the Tea Party erupted, and as he continued to do controversial things -- on gay rights, on immigration, on Iraq -- pundits continued to accuse him of political malpractice. Well, he won anyway. And there's a lesson there. The lesson is: DO STUFF!" (CW: note that we have the same old do-nothing, obstructionist House of Representatives we had before the election, so I'm not sure "Do Stuff" explains everything.)
New York Times Editors: "President Obama's dramatic re-election ... was a strong endorsement of economic policies that stress job growth, health care reform, tax increases and balanced deficit reduction -- and of moderate policies on immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage. It was a repudiation of Reagan-era bromides about tax-cutting and trickle-down economics, and of the politics of fear, intolerance and disinformation."
E. J. Dionne: "Many have argued that the president ran a 'small' and 'negative' campaign, and he was certainly not shy about going after Romney. But this misses the extent to which Obama made specific commitments and repeatedly cast the election as a choice between two different philosophical directions."
The Biggest Losers. Paul Krugman: "The limits of [Wall Street's] power have been cruelly exposed, and the reelected president now owes them nothing. Did I mention that Elizabeth Warren is going to the Senate -- a Senate that will be substantially more progressive and less Wall Street friendly than before? Bad move, guys."
The real winner tonight is Hillary Clinton, who Nate Silver is now projecting at a 68 percent chance of victory over Jeb Bush. That's up from 54 percent just a few hours ago! -- Wyatt Cynac, the "Daily Show"
Stephen Colbert announces the presidential election results:
Dan Amira of New York: Mitt Romney's concession speech was "as brief (at just under five minutes) as it was gracious. Romney thanked all of his supporters, congratulated Obama and his family, and called for his backers to 'earnestly pray' for Obama's success. He showed no bitterness, offered no excuses, and made no complaints."
This must be Egypt, 'cause this sure looks like De-Nile. New York magazine produced this great video of the Fox "news"-room's slow meltdown. Joe Coscarelli comments:
CW: I'm fairly certain there is no photoshopping going on here. Thanks to Ken W. for sending along the attractive snap.Dan Amira awards the Donald the Daily Intel's Election Night Most Unhinged Conservative Award for a series of tweets Trump sent screeching about the travesty of Obama's winning the presidency while losing the popular vote -- tweets sent before much of the vote was, um, counted. CW: apparently Trump is unaware there are Democrats on the West Coast. He is certainly unaware that Obama's plan was to win the election by Constitutional rules, not by Trump rules. P.S. Ask President Gore how much good it does to win the popular vote.
Congressional Races
Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "Deep disapproval of Congress and dissatisfaction with partisan division appeared no match for Congressional incumbency on Tuesday, as Republicans seemed to have retained a firm hold on the House of Representatives, assuring the continuation of divided government for at least another two years.... In the first Congressional election since decennial redistricting, Republicans -- thanks to their control of many state legislatures -- managed to shore up many incumbents by fashioning districts that Democrats had little chance of capturing."
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Democrats snatched Republican Senate seats in Indiana and Massachusetts on Tuesday, averted what was once considered a likely defeat in Missouri and held control of the Senate, handing Republicans a string of stinging defeats for the second campaign season in a row."
"The War Women Won." Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker: "It now appears that the number of women in the Senate could go from seventeen to twenty-three. If it hadn't been for those antediluvian attacks on contraception, we'd be calling this the Year of the Woman. If there was a war on women this year, it looks like the women are winning." CW: and, as I noted in the Congressional tallies, women were the winningest in New Hampshire, where the entire Congressional delegation -- House & Senate -- and the new governor are all women.
The Tortoise & the Orange. In case you had any foolish hopes to the contrary, be assured that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) (here) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) (here) are still going to be dicks.
Other Issues
Elizabeth Dias of Time has an overview of the outcomes of some state ballot initiatives. If you live in Kentucky, you now have a constitutional right to go hunting.
Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "Voters in Maine and Maryland approved same-sex marriage on an election night that jubilant gay rights advocates called a historic turning point, the first time that marriage for gay men and lesbians has been approved at the ballot box."
News Ledes
New York Times: "A one-two punch of worries about the post-election picture in the United States and economic weakness in Europe sent stocks reeling Wednesday, with major indices falling more than 2 percent. Some industry sectors, like finance and managed care, fell substantially more than that over fears they would be hurt by tougher regulations and other adverse policies in President Obama's second term."
NBC News: "A nor'easter dubbed Athena moved Wednesday into areas battered by Superstorm Sandy, causing new power outages and threatening to dump up to 12 inches of snow, flood coastal areas again and even turn debris from Sandy into projectiles. Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed across the Northeast, while residents of a few areas hit hardest by Sandy were urged to evacuate. Gusts up to 60 mph were possible along the New Jersey coast and in the New York City area...." ...
... Here's the New York Times story.
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Reader Comments (23)
A couple of points. The big winner were women. The big loser was homophobes. The big problem is in both cases just barely. We won the battle but the war is far from over.
In looking at the election map, if we could just move CO and NM a little west and UT and AZ a little east we could have a clear definition of the two countries. And lastly, my best hope is that this time we elected a leader and my second best hope is that we will never hear another political word from the likes of Donald Trump.
Oh, I forgot to mention the other good news. It appears that Florida doesn't count. (Of course, nothing personal Marie).
Bill Boyarsky has another good piece about the meaning of the election in Truthdig:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_could_the_republicans_have_been_so_stupid_20121107/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig+Truthdig%3A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines
Congratulations to the president!
There is, and will be, plenty more denial on the part of Republicans. If Sarah Palin couldn't believe that Americans would choose rationality over rank, imbecilic, and dangerous ideology, the rest of them are having an even tougher time with pretty much every demographic group but older white males. For instance, this morning on NPR a Republican pollster made the interesting claim that she doesn't believe there's any such thing as a "woman's issue". She believes that is a canard floated in along with some fairy dust. That might be just one reason, of many, that Republicans lost so many women. This pollster tried to pooh-pooh it by saying that women vote with Democrats anyway so what's the big deal? I guess this is why they don't have a clue why women might be a bit unhappy about rich old white men ordering them how to decide on the most private decisions of their lives. Or why they don't understand why women don't think they should be grateful to be part of god's plan by being forced to carry a rapist's baby. The fact that Republican apparatchiks were unhappy about the Akin and Moredick comments doesn't mean they disagree with those sentiments. It just means they're pissed they were so publicly and explicitly aired.
Same with Hispanic voters. Someone on Fox basically said that they thought Hispanics just didn't understand Mitt Romney's concern for them. Oh yeah. Concern. Right. How 'bout they were scared to death that Romney would make Joe Arpaio head of the INS seconds after being sworn in, and give him and his deputies license to arrest them on sight and shoot them if they have to.
And don't think Black voters will forget who it was that tried to screw them by making it so difficult for them to vote. I'm sure Rove was most upset by the fact that people actually DID wait in line for hours in places like Miami Dade and Cleveland,in order to tell him to go fuck himself. These assholes just assume that blah people will never wait that long and will just get tired and go home. Maybe that's because they never got the message of the Civil Rights movement.
In Cleveland, in 1964, Malcolm X gave a speech in which he talked about white politicians coming in to jive black voters with promises they never intended to keep. He referred to this kind of shit as a conspiracy to deprive the black community of its voice and he ended the speech by saying "...when you see them coming up with that kind of conspiracy, let them know that your eyes are open."
Republicans think those eyes are closed.
Another problem of living in your own fantasy land.
I believe Karl Rove and friends were planning to challenge results in Ohio and Florida and Romney was originally instructed not to concede.... Thank the Universe for Obama's win in the majority of other toss up states--pulling the rug out from under that plan.
Despite the good news nationally, here in Wisconsin we now have a GOP controlled House and Senate.
This is me waving as we all swirl down the drain........
Best line from the President's acceptance speech:
"We have to fix that."
He was referring to long lines for voting and he is absolutely right, but I think this a mantra he should build on for other issues as well.
One of my favorite parts of Obama's acceptance speech last night was early on when he stated that "we have to do something about that", referencing the long voter lines. I sincerely hope he was referring to prosecution under a new voter statute "extreme asswipery with malice". We also need more IRS investigators that won't be intimidated by Carl Rove and his band of drooling money machines who run 501(c)(4) packs. Honestly, Sheldon Adelson is one of those folks who is as gross on the outside as he is on the inside.
Oh and Yeah Elizabeth! I felt my small donations were well spent on her.
I wasn't quite as enamored of Lord SB concession speech as others. He just couldn't hide the smarmy prick factor. It seemed like all the pundits were eager to forget a campaign that was based in racism, misogyny, disdain for the non-wealthy and lies lies lies. Not enough talk about how democracy prevailed in the face of mega money, much of it secret, and dirty, blatant, tries to suppress the vote. Yeah, I can celebrate the victory but the breathtaking BS that occurred along the way should be a big part of the story. If it isn't front and center, it makes it easier to happen the next time.
Marie, I thought you did an exceptional job covering the election last night. Much appreciated it.
@Nisky Guy & Diane. Couldn't agree more. "We have to fix that" may not have been in Obama's prepared speech, but as a cry for fundamental democratic principles, it was his most important commitment.
Contributor Trish Ramey wrote in yesterday's Commentariat about an elderly, disabled black woman who went to the polls in Kentucky, most likely knowing that her vote would not move the election (though I would argue that the national popular vote matters psychologically; it made Al Gore's "defeat" in Florida seem all the more a sham -- and if Obama comes out ahead in the popular vote, as it appears he will, that is one less excuse for wingers to scream "we wuz robbed!"). Contributor safari wrote about Al Jazeera's no-nonsense coverage of our disgraceful election system in which Republicans have tried to disenfranchise the poor by any means possible.
Poor people and minorities know what it's like, in so many aspects of their lives, to "get no respect." What I found heroic was the determination with which they bore the burdens of one more whopping serving of disrespect and stood in those interminable lines in defiance of official overlords intent on beating them down once again. Michele Obama called voting rights the civil rights movement of our time, and she is right. Hundreds of thousands of the would-be disenfranchised took the "We Shall Overcome" path of civil resistance to oppression. They stood up, literally and figuratively.
The government they elected must stand up for them now. Voting is an inherent & inalienable right in a democracy or a democratic republic, even if our vaunted Founders didn't think so (and they didn't).
We have always had areas of the country where voting was a sham, either because of disenfranchisement of minorities, as in the South, or vote-buying -- i.e., "Chicago-style politics" & election rigging. The Voting Rights Act didn't come about in a vacuum. Our Supremes (see Madison, Kate) are fixing to obliterate it. But we need another one -- an equal-opportunity act (or Constitutional Amendment) that comes down as hard on Ohio as it does on Mississippi. How that will happen with a Republican House, I'm not sure, but if I were the President, I wouldn't let the House go home until they passed a bill that ensured equal access to voting. I know the President isn't much of a salesman, but if he can't sell the American people -- and thus embarrass Republicans into acting -- on the fundamental principle of one person, one vote, then the rest of us will have to step in & help him.
Marie
Joining James Singer's appreciation.
Great job, CW. and a tip o the hat.
mae finch
Don't hold your breath waiting for the right wing to do any soul searching. As card-carrying severely conservative John Ziegler reports, the right wing is so embedded in its bubble, that they are largely impervious to learning what did them in:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ziegler/romney-loss-conservative-media_b_2084911.html
I meant to paste Ziegler's last line with my last point. Here it is:
"One of the many reasons that the conservative movement is in such deep trouble is that those who were wrong here will suffer no consequences and those who knew the truth will receive no benefit."
Re: Afterglow; OK; that's done. Here's the punch list. Get Hillary going on 1216. I would, no kidding, vote for a Hill and Bill ballot. Do something about the voting processes in the red states. Make green energy a hot topic on Wall Street. Get Paul Krugman the President's cell number. Execute a Corporation in Texas. Raise the Fed minimum wage. Kick Karl Rove in the balls. Repeat last item again.
Marie; You stated you were shutting down after the election; hope AK can change your mind. If not thanks for the ride; I don't know how you could devote so much time and have such a great site without great sacrifice.
Diane; Your my choice for best new comments. AK; you win the potty mouth award, Nice fucking job on LSB. Kate, May you get the court of your dreams. Too many others to single out for great comments. So take the rest of the day off with pay; find a winger and don't gloat, just shake your head and say; "you were kidding, right?"
The intensity and depth of thought Marie has put into Realitychex and the effort to bring it into existence is inspiring at so many levels. I would tip my hat, but it is already off and over my heart and my head is in deepest bow at what Marie has achieved.
The quality and creativity of the commenter's has been incredibly entertaining and thought inspiring. Thank you all for the brain stimulation.
I will suffer some withdrawal pains when Marie shuts this down, but the memories are indelible.
My biggest thanks to Marie for her tireless excellence in paying attention and reporting! Next in line is the God I do not believe in. Thanks fella. Then comes a whole line of cyberfriends here at RealityChex: Akhilleus, PD Pepe, Diane, JJG, Julie in MA, Victoria D, Ken Winkes, Marvin, Mae Finch, Safari, Calyban, James Singer, Dave S ,Roger Henry Ohhh.,.....there are more, but my mind grows old! You have been wonderful company in this torturous trip. I thank you. And the Supremes thank you, because you cared enough to Remember. Now if we could arrange for Scalia and Thomas to take a long walk off a short pier, we could get the Court we deserve!
I am taking the $500 I won from my impossible right wing brother-in-law and splitting it in half. (He, of course, wants to send me only the amount remaining after Obama taxes him to death! I told him--same as last time--that I will like and respect him even less if he does so. Plus, I will send an email to his children and grandchildren telling them what a dishonorable father/grandfather they have.) Anyhoo....I plan to send $250. of this to the Red Cross and $250 to the NRDC to save the Wolves in Wyoming from being shot down by sadists in helicopters.
Marie, I will understand completely if you decide to end your reign as the most brilliant and competent political reporter on the internets. But I hope you will stay with us for awhile--maybe not in a daily fashion, but perhaps a bi-weekly one, she said hopefully! I do not know how many years we have been friends, but it seems forever.
Farewell forever to Lord SB, Lady SB, Tagg and the rest of the Rawmoneys. And a special good bye to Donald Trump. I hope Karl Rove decides to put his head in the toilet. And the Tea Partiers may consider switching to something a LOT stronger. Maybe they can mellow out on some good MJ now legal in several states. Last and least, good bye forever, Sheldon Adelson--you rich, pompous, obese, ratfuck! I wish all the millions you gave to buy your asshole friends a job could be recalled and sent to the Red Cross. There are so many rich ratfucks we never will have to hear from again--especially if Elizabeth Warren gets behind Glass-Steagall! And Obama finally does the right thing!
Phew. Waiting for the results of the Massachusetts senate race was nerve wracking! I was heavily involved with campaigning for Warren, and feared defeat. As the results were trickling in Warren's lead fluctuated. At 9:43 p.m. I received a text message from friend in Missouri (yes, she voted against Akin) reading, "yah for Elizabeth!" Then 2 minutes after that my mother called from NY with yahs for Elizabeth. But, I was with MSNBC, and had not heard anything! All I could think of was the mistake by CNN (I believe) when they initially incorrectly called Obamacare defeated by Supremes.
It wasn't until I surfed through several channels, and saw Warren declared Projected Winner on several teevee stations, that I was able to jump for pure joy!
Thank you to commenters on Realitychex! You all helped me look at the world in ways that I otherwise may not have. And, mostly thank you to Marie for her critical analysis, integrity and wonderful sense of humor!
Agreement with all about the need to fix the way we vote. There needs to be a constitutional amendment and some kind of commission to standardize and oversee the voting process. And I agree with Diane (by the way "extreme asswipery with malice"? brilliant) that, now that it's all over, we shouldn't forget or let anyone else forget that a presidential election was very nearly abducted by a liar under cover of huge amounts of money and abetted by voter suppression.
The biggest reason we need to do something about voting and not forget how close a chronic liar (two chronic liars) came to the highest seat of power in the land is time.
Truth, they say, is the daughter of time. And we'll get there. But we don't have much the kind of time that sort of thing can take.
But Republican gangsters like Karl Rove and their sugar daddies like the Kochs and Scaifes understand that the wheel is turning on them. Time is running out for their dream of an all conservative country. Their winning demographics will soon be as deep underwater as New Orleans when Bush let hundreds die. 2014 and 2016 have the potential to be the nastiest, most brutal, underhanded, gangster/billionaire driven political campaigns in American history.
One thing that truly irked me more than most of the inanities spouted by the MSM gasbags on all the networks I watched (their cyborg systems must be connected, Borg-like, by some wireless network bridge because they all used the same term), was the tireless and tiresomely untrue assertion that this election, in the end, meant NOTHING. "We spent all that time and money, and for what? To maintain the STATUS QUO." "Oh" they whined, "the Status Quo has been kept. We have a Democratic President, Republican House, and Democratic Senate. We gained nothing."
Wrong, oh children of howler monkeys interbred with various species of slugs. Wrong. Again.
We learned plenty.
We learned the lengths to which money and corruption and lies will be used by Republicans to cheat the public. We learned that complete abandonment of facts can bring you a battleground state or two from the White House. We learned that many Americans just won't take the kind of shit dished out by Republicans anymore.
But we also learned that people will still vote to maintain a Republican House.
We learned the depths to which pundits and GOP supporters will stoop to besmirch the opposing party. MSM commenters complained about what a dirty campaign Obama ran but I heard not a single one of them reiterate the raft of lies spread, with impunity, by the Rat.
We learned a lot. The Status Quo is NOT the same. We also learned, over the last four years that the GOP would rather see this country sink into a stinking swamp than go along with a black Democrat. And we know for a triple checked fact that the forces of darkness are again arraying against the president.
What he does about it, with the knowledge of what these people are capable of, that's another matter.
But we have seen an enormous movement away from those forces, even by just a few degrees. This is not nothing. This is not the status quo.
So let's take what we learned and do something with it. Logic suggests that if you find yourself in a trap with no way out, the best solution might be to go deeper into the trap. In other words, rather than trying to make nice with these creeps, who will just punch you in the face no matter what you do, drill down deeper and expose them for the hypocritical gangsters they are. This may involve assistance from an unbiased, alert, and conscientious press corps, which will be a problem, but we've already tried the other way.
Onward.
Marie: To the thanks expressed by faithful readers in this day's comments, I add my profound gratitude for your efforts to enlighten and inform by your tireless efforts to bring information to RealityChex readers. I couldn't have made it through the last couple of months without your wise voice and the profound thoughts expressed so eloquently by your readers. But I think the comment you made above is perhaps the most poignant I've read in sometime. The ability of the poor and minorities to keep the faith and endure the obstacles placed in their way is inspiring and your ability to capture their struggle so beautifully in words was a real tribute.
Like Kate Madison, I can only hope that you continue to provide this wonderful forum for thoughtful discourse. RealityChex is kinda like the old general store of my youth--the pot bellied stove warming all comers and inviting them to sit a spell and share the warmth.
Congratulations to President Obama and all of us Kenyans that voted for him!
Good grief, I missed the news that Marie might close down the blog. That dims the glow from the election!
Say it isn't so! But when I consider the amount of time Marie must spend on RCx, I wonder how she can manage it.
Marie, thanks for everything.
You see Marie, how grateful we be? You be the one, lady, you be what carries us along on these bumpy works and days-––so say it isn't so––say you'll stay a little longer? Could we all help in some way financially? We have a little family here and it would be so sad to have to leave. Am I begging? you bet!
Thank you Marie.
It has really mattered to me.
I will very much miss RealityChex when it's gone.
And I will miss all the wit and wisdom of the comments as well.
Quit? Okay. Your prerogative. You've worked your butt off and, no matter how grateful we are, you've gotta be tired of it.
But the revolution won't be finished until after the 2014 mid-terms. Until we regain the house. Until we have a congress that forces the president to do the right thing.
I am a bit heartbroken that my first click of the mouse each day will not be to RealityChex. I can't tell you how much what you have done has meant to me. I will miss all of you.
Jack