Last political post of this season, I promise. Of course I’m super pleased with last night’s results. I dearly wish Obama was more of the radical liberal the right tries to paint him as, but I’ll take him over any avatar of the racist, faux-faith based, intellectually bankrupt ideology the right is peddling any day. Here’s hoping that set free from the need to run again, Obama turns out to be less of a centrist and more of the lefty the right is terrified he secretly is.
I’m also super pleased to see how quickly and dramatically we’re making progress on the civil rights issue of our time. After going 0-fer something like 25, 3 out of the 4 state gay marriage initiatives passed last night. A decade ago if you had suggested that this would be possible I would have laughed at you. Today I’m proud of how quickly we’re turning the corner on this. If you’re a Republican, pay the fuck attention. Keep running on these ‘family values’ issue, and see where it gets you.
Why then is it taking us so long to turn the corner on pot? My guess is the 60’s still haunt us, but at least 2 of the legalize it ballot initiatives passed last night, so I’ll call it progress. On the way to work I told Susan I look forward to retiring to my small pot farm in my dotage 😉
My observation about Romney that’s not drawing much attention this morning – he ran, and was widely perceived as, a successful businessman who knew how to organize and manage things. He held up his ‘saving’ of the Olympics he managed as an exemplar of this talent. He was up against an incumbent President who had presided over a very difficult economic situation, high unemployment, and no clear resolution in sight. Despite this, when it came to running a campaign and managing a national organization designed to put him into office, with at least $400 million at his disposal and a staggering sum from his ‘friends’ in the superpacs, he still got his ass handed to him badly by Obama’s ground organization. Not only did they lose, by most accounts they truly felt they had won. Florida is still undecided (and OH could possibly still flip to him), but it looks like he also lost in every one of the key battleground states he needed to win to take the election.
Put simply, not only did they manage it badly compared to the badly handicapped competition, they didn’t realize they had managed it badly. I think this says lots about what we could have expected from him as President.
Folks on both sides of the aisle are saying Romney was running into demographics more than anything else, and from my understanding there’s more than a little truth there, but even so, this should have meant Romney’s camp seeing the writing on the wall, not walking into the evening still thinking they were very likely going to win. Maybe they spent too much time watching Fox news and believed their faux-press clippings. I’d actually like to believe this is true, there’s wonderful poetic justice to that notion 😉
Within a year we’ll probably know enough about how the Romney campaign was talking amongst themselves about this, and maybe they knew precisely where they were and my criticism is off base. It sure doesn’t feel like it to me based on the last month or so. In fact much of what you need to form that impression can be seen in the ridiculous exchanges on Fox News last night as the writing was etched on to the wall and they incredulously fumbled their way through their acceptance of the facts. (google it, it’s worth a laugh).
A couple of random other points – first, hurrah for Elizabeth Warren winning. I voted for her. She *is* the liberal lefty the right is terrified of, and she ran a great campaign in MA, with a competent ground game I had multiple interactions with. Here’s hoping *she* heads down to WA and makes waves.
Next, Nate Silver for the win. Google him if you’re unfamiliar. Third election in a row I followed him, and third time in a row he’s more or less been right, emphasis on the more side of that.
Obama and bipartisanship. Fuck that says I. He tried that first term, and the republicans completely stonewalled him, riding on a ‘if we fuck this guy over and say no to everything, he loses the next election and we get to say we told you so’ strategy. That didn’t happen, they almost drove our economy over a cliff, and they have shown time and time again that they have no actual interest in negotiation, it’s ‘do what we want, or fuck off.’ Maybe that will change now, but it seems unlikely. I wish Obama would start publicly calling them out for this bullshit instead of trying to maintain a veneer of civility and repeated attempts at negotiation that just end up looking absurd.
With that, I think I’m done, maybe not to take up this political baton again for ~3 years 😉
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