I
haven’t stopped smiling since 11:30pm Tuesday night. I’m capping off five days
of electoral afterglow with Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, bagels and – yes – donuts as
I watch the Sunday news programs. It’s kind of been like attending a week-long
wake of that mean uncle you never really liked and listening to the vague
defenses of his racist jokes, his three divorces and his innumerable lies and petty
cruelties.
I’m
not proud of enjoying that but I have been enjoying it.
Immensely.
Most
of the week has been spent by the commentariat asking, “What does it all mean?”
Perception
Republican
pundits and bobbleheads say the Republican Party has a perception problem – not
a policy problem. They’re policies are good, they argue, it’s just the
perception that needs to be corrected. Forcing an impregnated rape victim to
have that baby doesn’t mean they hate women, it means they love men who won’t
take no for an answer.
And
God, of course, who apparently blesses that rape.
Center-Right
These
same pundits and bobbleheads are maintaining that this is still a
“center-right” country. I have no idea what this abstract description of the
country is supposed to mean but it gets trotted out after each and every
Republican electoral defeat. I think it’s supposed to speak to the beliefs we
hold. Based on recent presidential elections, I might accept that we’re a
“split down the middle” country but neither would really be true because the
United States is not a monolithic culture. We see that in the red and blue
mosaic that reveals itself every four years. We are not monolithic people,
either. The Republicans made a good point when they argued that women don’t
vote only on the basis of their lady parts, they care about jobs, too. While
that’s true, they failed to understand caring about jobs doesn’t mean they stop
caring about their lady parts, or health care, education, equal pay and binders.
Takers and Makers
One
of the most pathetic claims made in the wake of the election was that
traditional America was over and the people with their hands out had won. The rugged,
hard-working individual who didn’t need any damned government funded infrastructure
to build that, that thing he built, that white man with a gun in one pocket and
a Bible in the other became extinct Tuesday night. This fact would easily
explain the joy expressed by people of color, women and homosexuals after Ohio
was called for Obama but it isn’t in fact, a fact.
A
co-worker told me this conservative parable. She said the signs in Yellowstone
Park ask people not to feed the bears because they become dependent on the
handouts. You see, the makers can only really help the takers by not feeding them. Ignoring for a moment
the implications of the casting of this dramatic reading (rich white folk who
can afford to go on vacation as people, the poor and the aged and people who
just lost their house to a hurricane as animals), ignoring the setting (a
national park funded by taxpayer dollars); people aren’t bears. In anything
other than Greco-Roman wrestling, people have huge advantages over bears.
Am
I missing something?
Wait.
Don’t answer that.
Seriously,
the analogy doesn’t hold and the evidence is that more people think it’s quite
possible to use government as a force for good that cares for the least of us
while guaranteeing freedom for all of us. And funding for safe bridges, rail
lines and power grids, all of which are excellent uses for taxpayer dollars.
We’ll
build the rest.
Cheaters Never Win
Republicans
gerrymandered districts; they passed voter ID acts and limited early voting in
an effort to suppress the vote. They did everything they could to limit voting
among likely Democrats and they did so nakedly and with no apology.
And
they lost.
Losing
fair and square is tough enough to take, but losing when you cheat your ass
off? No wonder Mitt didn’t have a concession speech ready.
I Can Tell a Lie
Perhaps
I was a child in a simpler time but the first thing I learned about the
presidency was that George Washington could not tell a lie. As we grow older we
understand the mythic elements of our country’s
history. Presidential campaigns in the past were every bit as dirty and
duplicitous as current campaigns. George Washington probably told a lie at
least once. Having said that, there’s a reason Romney earned the moniker
Mendacious Mitt from hilarious MSNBC pundit Martin Bashir. In the end it may
have been a lie – the claim that GM was sending its Toledo Jeep factory
off-shore to China – that probably cost Romney Ohio. It’s a what goes around
comes around kind of thing.
The Ground Game
One
seriously cross-eyed view of the election is that it was all about the “ground
game,” the organizations on the ground of Obama and Romney, and that it was
simply that Obama was better organized, not only getting their base out but
finding new voters to bring to the polls for the President.
Now,
maybe I’m confused but I always thought it was part of the Republican Party’s
value proposition that they were good at running things. They’re the guys with
“business experience” who are the champions of “small businesses” like hedge
fund managers who are “job creators.” They’ve got balance sheets and analytics.
But they’re not good at getting a president elected? That’s a pretty serious
gap in capabilities, wouldn’t you say?
But
the President’s re-election organization does not stand separate from the
President’s policies; rather it is the tangible evidence for grassroots support
for his policies. I thought there was supposed to be an “enthusiasm gap?”
Mandates
George
W. Bush referred to it as “political capital.” In those terms, Barack Obama has
a tall stack of cheddar in front of him right now. Will it matter with John
Boehner held hostage by the extreme right/Tea Party elements of his own party?
Alas, I think not. The people have spoken but so what? Politicians only care
about the people when you need to count votes. The rest of the time, they
answer to their donors. Old white men may be a minority on election night but
they still have most of the money.
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