As much as I enjoy the feeling of schadenfreude, I think it is unfortunate that the presidential race grew close enough after the first debate to give the Republicans hope. First of all, if they had known how screwed they really were, they might have stayed home allowing us to win one or two more Senate seats and to make more gains in the House. But, secondly, they truly seem to be in shock. And there is an apocalyptic feeling to their shock. You have Robert Stacy McCain saying “we are permanently and irretrievably screwed” and “doomed beyond all hope of redemption.” You have Mark Steyn quoting a British MP (in a different context):
“We’re all f***ed. I’m f***ed. You’re f***ed. The whole department’s f***ed. It’s been the biggest c**k-up ever and we’re all completely f***ed.”
You have David Gelernter at the National Review saying that Democrats “reject the American republic of God-fearing individuals in favor of the European ideal,” and basically calling for civil war. You have Bill O’Reilly saying “it’s not a traditional America anymore…the white establishment is now the minority.” It isn’t hard to find more examples, but you get the idea. The Republicans have not had time to prepare for this defeat and a lot of them have gotten pretty high on their own supply of bullshit.
But some of what they’re decrying is real. Team Obama demonstrated last night that their coalition is durable. The Democrats have a majority that can win the Electoral College for years to come, and their advantage is only going to grow as the electorate gets younger and more diverse. Losing will have consequences for the Republicans. The makeup of the federal courts will continue to trend away from them and their opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade was stripped away from them a moment before they reached the finish line. Despite the reluctance of the House of Representatives, ObamaCare will be fully phased in and become a permanent structure of our economy. Millions will get subsidies to help pay for health care, creating a new coalition of “dependents” who will not give a fair hearing to any Tea Partier who wants to take away their benefits. This group will include masses of the white working poor who the Republicans rely upon to vote for them out of fear and anger and racial solidarity and religious conviction. And, in any case, the new generation isn’t sold on the Culture War. They helped elect a lesbian to the Senate last night and to legalize gay marriage in Maine and Maryland. They decriminalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. Republicans who defined themselves as culture warriors lost their contests last night in Indiana and Missouri, and in lower profile races across the country.
If there was a demographic lesson last night it was that the Republicans cannot remain a party of white people that is implacably opposed to Latino immigration reform. They managed to polarize the white vote sufficiently to give themselves a chance and to roll up big margins in white areas sufficient to hold the House of Representatives, but at what cost? They lost Florida and Virginia and Colorado and Nevada precisely because they alienated Latinos. And how well would it all have worked if the president were not black. In 2016, the GOP will almost definitely face a white presidential candidate.
This all adds up to create a panicked and existential sense of loss for conservatives, as if something has been lost that can never be retrieved. Whether it is their sense that America is going to become more like Europe or that whites will no longer have a privileged place in our culture or that people are going to turn away from traditional values or just that the GOP is going to have to become less conservative to compete, Republicans are feeling very down at the moment.
And they are about to have a wedge smashed into their party over the fiscal cliff. Perhaps their worst curse was to retain power in the House of Representatives because they now will have to find a way to fund the government and they can’t do that and keep their pledges to Grover Norquist to never raise taxes.
Still, they shouldn’t feel so depressed. The Democrats are about to feel the same wedge since the president can’t avoid a Grand Bargain that will infuriate his progressive base. Our failure to retake the House has assured that. And, the truth is, Obama was never a radical and he didn’t propose anything that would change this country in any kind of fundamental way. The GOP kept telling people that until they believed it themselves. Most of the changes that concern the conservatives were coming whether or not the Democrats controlled the White House. Obama just sped things up.
Finally, conservatives should look on the bright side. They didn’t like Mitt Romney anyway. No one does.
I made the following comment in a post over at GOS:
I hope Obama will govern according to the realities.
Another wrench thrown in is that Puerto Rico voted for statehood, I think for the first time. Will Congress let them in and will they increase the size of the House or diffuse their power even more?
This may be the big underreported fact of the night. The question is if the US should keep its colonies. Puerto Rican statehood would be wonderful, that or independence. Not colonial status.
PR would probably be 7 electoral votes. Dunno how they would vote, presumably democratic.
The question is, assuming Congress allows them to become a state, will they increase the size of the House or will they just reapportion the current 435?
Obama doesn’t have to worry from a political standpoint that he appear to be conciliatory with the GOP. He did his first term particularly the first couple of years.
The only thing that will stop him from completely hammering them day and night is his own personal propensity to seek solutions. But I don’t see him making too many moves toward the Grand Bargain that will piss off his followers.
It’s not just about the electorate becoming younger or more diverse, it’s also about the easy flow of information and our casual connections to each other, even when it is just via the internet.
Anyone who is willing to look can read powerful accounts written by real people who have suffered or stand to suffer due to the policies that are intrinsic to the culture wars. Once the debate shifts from abstract statistics to real people’s lives, we win.
We don’t need a grand bargain. That;ls just code for give in to all the crazy GOP House demands. Period.
It is time to take the approach that Obama earned political capital and use it to demand tax increases on the top 1% or no deal. Put the pressure on the GOP. Obama should keep in campaign mode to sell tax increase before anymore spending cuts. Make the Republicans come to the table. The teahadist caucus won’t gpo along but enough Republicans in the House after this election will join the Dems imo if we stand firm. Now is not the time to show weakness. Portray it as true bipartisanship, instead of the GOP’s my way or the highway approach. Don’t go down the blackmail route we did the last two years – that solved nothing.
Obama will get his revenues, but that was always part of the Grand Bargain. He is going to have to give something up, too, though. There is no way around it.
If conservatives were smart (and they’re not), they would pare back the tax hikes to only the top 1% in exchange for discontinuing the debt ceiling.
Idiot.
The Democrats are about to feel the same wedge since the president can’t avoid a Grand Bargain that will infuriate his progressive base.
This is wrong, and you know it!! Avoiding it has nothing to do with it. The President wants it!! Why he feels the need to suck up to Pete Peterson is beyond me. What will you say if the Medicare eligibility age gets raised? How did the deficit reduction thing work out for Bill Clinton? Worrying about the deficit is a fools game.
I am prepared to fight the progressive fight for our values, including fighting to prevent cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But we aren’t going to get a 100% win because compromise is the only way to keep the government functioning and open. This has always been true, it’s just that the Republicans refused to acknowledge reality.
I’ve been thinking about what a compromise might look like for Social Security.
Republicans are all about raising the retirement age and for the most part we want to remove the cap on SS taxes.
What about raising the cap to say $500k and then mean testing the retirement age. For example those making $50k and under can retire with full benefits at 65; $50-250k age 67; etc. Obviously, I don’t know the numbers well enough to put specific cap number and age numbers but that would give a little to both sides.
So if I make more money, I can pay in more money to SS and collect less when i do retire, AND I have to work longer before I can collect? Seems pretty suck-y to me.
Here’s the deal, something will need to be done sooner or later. The longer we wait the more extreme the change.
Republicans want to privatize the whole system or worst case increase the retirement age for everyone. I’m against that because people in physical jobs can’t actually work any more years.
The most common Democratic fix is to eliminate the cap on taxes. That basically eliminates it as an insurance plan and I don’t see any chance that ever, ever happening.
All of it. All of the above. America isn’t a conservative country. It isn’t a center-right country. It’s growing pretty much as conventionally progressive (and libertarian) as any other first world nation, just with more heterogeneous demographics.
My election postmortem:
All the love in the world to the Obama team for running a legendary battleground campaign. They won the game of inches in eight out of nine states. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a mastery of strategic and tactical thinking and execution for 24 straight months.
And massive ups to the pollster community, the modelers, the aggregators and the political scientists. The polls were not wrong. They were right on it. They told us what was gonna happen, and it did.
No fucking cell phones, or skewing, or liberal media conspiracies, or cell phones, or turnout, or enthusiasm gaps, or rigged voting machines, or disenfranchisement, or cell phones. They told us what was gonna happen, and it did. Those who refuse to live in a measurable, empirical reality make fools of themselves, and will one day face severe public discrediting over it. One day. We hope.
Still, I look forward to no lessons being learned by either side two years from now, as we hear all the usual suspects swearing up and down the polls are wrong because…TURNOUT!!1!!11!
Rasmussen was wrong in every race they polled. And it would be worse if they handed moved to the center in the last week of polling. Same for Gallup and their five point Romney lead.
Dude, c’mon, you know what Rasmussen is all about. Don’t play that game.
The polls were by and large both accurate and precise. Outliers like Gallup were called out when they occurred. Polling medians got all 50 states right at the end of the day.
I’m not playing any games. Rasmussen sucked. Gallup sucked.
Rasmussen doesn’t care about being “right” and you know it. They target very specific consumers, and you’re not one of them.
It’s a competitive marketplace, and you are free to shop elsewhere. Or go take it up with the media enablers, who keep Ras in business.
Gallup was ever worse. How many people know that?
Gallup is a service industry. If they care about their business, they will replace the people at the top, and redefine their sampling and methodologies and try to do better next time.
It’s not 1952. There were a diverse menu of other options. If you seriously think Gallup kept the race artificially close by misrepresenting the likely electorate to the public, I don’t know what to tell you. They’re not that powerful.
i believe there were rigged voting machines and there was voter disenfranchisement. I just think that Obama got enough votes that we were able to win in spite of that.
There’s absolutely Republican efforts to discourage voting among very obvious subsets of the electorate.
But I’m not talking about morality or comparing turnout to some ideal, I’m saying you can predict and model the shape and character of the likely voting public and foresee what’s gonna happen before it does.
It doesn’t matter to a poll why the state of Florida might be razor close, it just matters that it can predict that probability. Our measuring system still works. Ignorance is a choice.
I keep looking for a list of final pollster predictions, especially for Senate. My memory says they badly missed final margins in WI, MT, MA, and more. It’s surprising there doesn’t seem to be a list. Anybody know of one? Joe, what are you basing your conclusion on?
l don’t know about WI or MT, but they sure blew MA.was calling it a dead heat on the 5th and look what happened…a 7.4% victory’s pretty decisive where l come from.
oops…corrected link : dead heat
It appears you and DaveW don’t understand that individual polls aren’t indicative of anything, and that’s why you average and smooth them over time to get a better understanding of movement.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2012-massachusetts-senate-brown-vs-warren
Outliers (like your link) happen, but 90% of the polls for the race at the end had Warren comfortably in the lead. YouGov, Suffolk and PPP all had Warren +6-7, and even Rasmussen had it Warren +5. You take many polls to plot a trend, you don’t declare the exercise pointless because of individual data points.
The Republicans have earned their moment in the wilderness. This morning the United States officially looks a lot more like me and my friends and family. Some of us smoke weed, some of us are gay and we all want to tax the rich more, protect Social Security and Obamacare and women’s rights in general. Pretty clearly we’re not alone. These are the values that were soundly endorsed by the national electorate last night. This is not the “center right” country the Beltway establishment believes it is, and that’s a lot more obvious now.
The Republicans will not adapt (not being big fans of Darwin, after all), and will face a difficult path until they do.
Not all the conservatives are pouting. Batten down the hatches, and prepare yourselves to deal with a whole lot of this.
Sadly, that’s not a conservative, in the strictest sense. Those are the LaRouchies.
Fair enough – my overall point remains though. I’ll be shocked if the conservatives don’t make some attempt at getting the impeachment train on the rails.
Rouchies were weird and unsettling in the ’70s when they first appeared.
Now they are just assholes. Lyndon LaRouche. A self-important, arrogant, fascist pig. His followers wallow in the kool aid.
I will only say that listening to Rush Limbaugh right now is hilarious. Just knee-slappingly funny.
North Carolina will be a bellwether of where the GOP intends to go. Will Pat McCrory and the GOP legislature try to rush through all of ALEC’s initiatives and wind up as another Wisconsin and Michigan or will McCrory be a moderate corporatist like he was as mayor of Charlotte? Will he try to frustrate the implementation of the state health care exchanges before 2014? Will they try to further tighten restrictions of voting?
The spin about a rightward drift in America has already been started by the New York Times.
And Mitch McConnell seems to be doubling down.
But:
This argues that Democrats and President Barack Obama are going to have to physically go to Republican states and do retail politics on policy because the media will not reach those people. BTW IMO this is the Achilles heel of any strategy that is not a 50-state strategy. The necessity to show folks that one is not a ogre.
Looks like the Republicans sold themselves the Brooklyn Bridge, and, they paid top dollar for it.
Geniuses. Shrewd businessmen. Smart with a dollar. Twits.
Thanks for the link. That article is great. You know, we are so used to the incredibly high level of “perception management” in this culture, it’s very difficult to navigate through it, many people have neither the will not the ability to attempt it.
I believe there is something profound about the election experience of 2012, as well as 2008. The first Obama election is easier to explain: it was a pretty straightforward rejection of 8 years of Bush, probably the worst president in American history. In 2012, we have just undergone the most intensive and expensive attempt at perception management in American history, and that is really saying something. And it did not work! It was just too much at odds with reality for the GOP to pull it off. People can talk about their incompetence, but consider the inherent difficulties of the task at hand.
That being said — IT ABSOLUTELY DID WORK ON THE REPUBLICAN FAITHFUL. These are people for whom it was more important, or necessary, to believe all this crap, than to actually deal with reality. For God’s sake, the reality is not so terrible for most Tea Partiers. But a lot of these people have voluntarily allowed themselves to be programmed into what is virtually a cult mentality. Of course anything outside of the cult is scary to them.
Right, plus it’s slowly dawning on the brain-bugs in the party, listening to Morning Joe today, that what they were trying to sell us was so blatantly repellent on its face, that their message could only possibly appeal to those already in the trance.
They thought their zombie army was so-big, but lord a’mighty, lookit all the voters who figured them out.
I’m thrilled.
Yes, and as far as I’m concerned this is the fundamental lesson of the whole thing. And I don’t see how any of this could have happened unless Obama understands it a lot better than either of us do. And that’s why I’ve always had faith in him, even when he did things I didn’t like. He’s playing a long game, and in politics sometimes you have to do stuff in hopes that later you won’t have to do them. And you do make genuine mistakes. In other words, I give him the benefit of the doubt. But I hope to hell he will build on the incredible strength of truth, and faith in the people of this country. I believe he will.
I simply don’t care whether Obama is a “progressive” or not. This country has been driven so far to the right over the past 40 years, that you don’t have to be a card-carrying progressive to go a long way towards redressing the balance, and you don’t blow your political capital either. The Republics are going to call him a communist Muslim whatever he does.
The problems of the middle class, working class, and poor are plain to see; the problems of infrastructure, budget, etc., and corporatism on steroids are also obvious. The majority of the country, even some who just voted against him, would have his back if he would go for it, to hell with the BS “centrist” counselors and the recalcitrant House. Yes, I understand the House can really limit his accomplishments, but let them play defense.
This is an excellent article and I think really hits home the “sheeple” concept. Despite all of the evidence that Democrats had (Nate Silver’s analysis especially) many of us were anxious about the results and we had our share of doubters.
On the flipside, even with all of the evidence stacking against them, Republicans lined-up in lockstep and took their marching orders because many of their leaders had a “gut feeling”.
Then Republicans get shocked that they lost, and that their leader’s intuition failed them, but they don’t make the connection and think, “hmmm…maybe our leader’s are wrong about other things, like climate change, equal rights, religion, taxation, economic policy, war, etc…”
It seems that Republicans keep winding up on the wrong side of the argument, but they never accept or admit why.
Well there’s going to be a helluva bunch of great parties come inauguration night, too bad McConnell can’t dance…it’s a partner thing you know…
After this morning’s interviews with Patty Murray, it will be a long time before I get the image of her grinning ear to ear out of my head long enough to even focus on the Rep grimaces.
“We’re all f**ed. I’m f*ed. You’re f*ed. The whole department’s f*ed. It’s been the biggest ck-up ever and we’re all completely f**ed.”
Actually, if Steyn really means this, and depending upon exactly what he means by it, I see it as a ray of hope for the country, because it’s the first true thing I’ve heard from the republicans in four years. Everything about this campaign was wrong.
We have talked about many demographic factors trending badly for the GOP. If even five percent will only wake the fuck up and get out of that bubble this country will be a better place. I can definitely respect a true conservative position on many issues, but these guys have simply been living on another planet, and there’s no excuse for that. They cheerfully allow themselves to be manipulated by sociopathic demagogues.
I mean, whose fault is it that they’ve been living in La La Land — not for four years, but more like forty?
“Democrats “reject the American republic of God-fearing individuals in favor of the European ideal,”…
The “European ideal” looks pretty damn good to me after spending our non-existant vacation money every year to feed the new MIC (Medical/Industrial Complex).
FWIW, gay marriage also passed in Washington state last night. It’s just that the East Coast had already gone to bed, so for the national stories it’s like it didn’t happen.
Can we kill the filibuster this time?
Haha, this RS McCain piece is pretty comical. America is now “doomed” and “irretreivably screwed” because a minimally qualified plutocrat loan shark was not elected prez. Debt and economic stagnation! This from a party that retained absolute control over the power of the purse by holding their census-gerrymandered, Citizens United-proof Do-Nothing House. Buck up indeed, you crybaby “conservative”. You’d think they lost every branch.
Most likely after a few more nights of wailing into their Boss Rushbo blankies, our “conservatives” will return to reality—they can continue their gridlock strategy on almost everything and not much can be done about it. Americans foolishly left them in control of our fiscal operations.
But Ryan and Boner’s two year long con game on the current budget has reached its endpoint and something now has to be done with both the expiring tax cuts and the insane sequestration they demanded. Will Obama negotiate a deal with the worthless lame duck Congress? Or hold Repubs’ feet to the raging fire by letting all the cuts expire at year end, and then demanding an extension for only the bottom 98%-ers? Or will he let them off the hook much more easily with some phony one-time “revenues”?
Obama has a lot of cards to play, and a pretty good hand. If only he enjoyed punching Repubs up more. Obama has the bully pulpit (in theory) and Repubs have the soused Boner and chinless Mitch in the ring. Shouldn’t really be a contest….
I’d like to think I’m a kindly, tolerant person, but just can’t summon up a molecule of empathy with the Rep losers. Their pain and anger is an anodyne. Maybe I’ll try a meditation class or something, but for now schadenfreude is a great high.
beer helps, too.
“This all adds up to create a panicked and existential sense of loss for conservatives, as if something has been lost that can never be retrieved.”
And remember, these people have guns–lots of them. Also, too, ammo.
Danger, Will Smith.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Two words for our
bullyConservative friends…Just two words.
The most important thing that happen Tuesday, more important than anything else….. Obama won and he did not need Florida, Virginia, or Ohio. And only one other state, Colorado, was particularly close. This fact is devastating to the GOP. Yet they won’t even see it. Right now they are saying ‘we were really close in these three states, all we need do is get a better messenger’. Let me tell you, if a white democrat had been running, he would have won Florida by HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of votes, and not need it! The old white people in Florida simple will not vote for a black man. Other dates he won are the same, the margins would be bigger, not smaller.
You cannot overstate this change in the path to the WH. Obama does not need to cut any deal. So we now ask….how tough is Obama really? Is he tough enough to let the tax cuts expire? Is he tough enough to go over the fiscal cliff? Because if he is that tough, the GOP will come calling with hat in hand.
The southern strategy is dead in American. And a black man killed it. Four years from now Clinton or Biden can use Obama’s blueprint to get all the way through 2024 before the GOP came to their senses. No need to compromise, because the future of the WH is blue.
The future of the WH is blue….if Obama is tough enough.
Hehe, responding to my own posts!
This is what Obama meant when he made that comment about respecting Reagan, or wanting to be like Reagan, or whatever the comment was.
Reagan did the same for the GOP. He set them up. I really think Obama knew from the very beginning what he had to do to do the same for the Democratic Party. Kill the southern strategy, and build a new path to the WH. People complain about the ACA, and it should have been more progressive. But the actual details don’t matter at all, if the Democrats can keep the WH for 16 years in a row. Its a hand crank meat grinder strategy.
This seems right to me. I think that some sort of “deal” is ultimately required, but it really needs to be cut when the Boner Boyz are feeling the pressure and have something to lose if they keep up the 24/7 obstruction. Perhaps going off the cliff will help concentrate their minds….
And if they can’t be made to feel they really have anything to lose, politically, then denounce them every day and let them reap the whirlwind.
As for the destruction of the southern strategy, that is really big picture thinking! I think you may be right. Hard to see that NC was anything other than a primal scream of the Obama Haters–I question whether most of them really think another round of 20% tax cuts for Donald Trump and the Koch turds are really the culmination of the American Dream, haha.