If Democrats lose control of the House of Representatives next week, as most political observers expect, there is a good chance that the House Speaker will opt to spend time with her eight grandchildren rather than toil in the relative obscurity of the minority.
A consummation devoutly to be wished, a side effect of Republican victory that would be especially sweet. I, for one, would welcome not having Nancy Pelosi to kick around anymore.
Many others are also speculated to be contemplating retirement if Democrats become the minority (see the article for the whole list). Louise Slaughter, she of the infamous Slaughter solution, is one.
In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who “sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.’ “…
This from a president who won’t even use “enemies” to describe an Iranian regime that is helping kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This from a man who rose to prominence thunderously declaring that we were not blue states or red states, not black America or white America or Latino America – but the United States of America.
This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends – not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.
Oops! A letter to Obama from Harvard Law professor Larry Tribe, written while the president was mulling over Justice Souter’s replacement, has surfaced. In it, he urged the president to nominate Kagan, and wrote the following about Sotomayor:
Bluntly put, she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is…
Bluntly put, it occurs to me that much the same could be said of Obama.
But I’m not sure that anyone could be as smart as Obama seems to think he is.
President Obama decided to appear on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, the better to fire up his youthful but enervated base. Almost immediately, Obama displayed a well-known characteristic of his—or rather, two—complaining and historical ignorance:
“We’ve gone through the two toughest years of any time since The Great Depression.”
Oh yeah, the combined recession/inflation of the Carter 70s and the Iran hostage crisis was a piece of cake. And I recall the Vietnam War and the late 60s—with demonstrations, assassinations, and the inner cities burning—as a veritable breeze, not to mention a couple of more recent years that included 9/11, the Afghan War, and the invasion of Iraq. Oh, and I hear tell that WWII wasn’t nearly as bad as the hype we’ve heard all these years. Blah blah blah; bunch of old folks carping.
Obama’s usual grandiose and ahistorical narcissism was on display again when he spoke of the HCR bill:
“I think most people would say this is the most significant piece of legislation in this country’s history.
Perhaps by “most people,” Obama means most people who surround him and know how to stroke his ego. Or perhaps he only means most people who listen to the Stewart show.
Obama suggested that his administration did so much that “we have done things that some folks don’t even know about.”
The comment seemed to catch Stewart by surprise.
“What have you done that we don’t know about?” he asked. “Are you planning a surprise party for us, filled with jobs and health care?”
Stewart’s joke somewhat obscures how surpassingly strange Obama’s comment was. I’m getting tired of saying it, but it’s true: I’ve never heard this sort of thing from any previous president, left or right, good or bad, like him or not. It’s another expression of an attitude Obama displays fairly often: the idea that people are not paying attention to him and not appreciating him enough, whether through laziness or distraction or stupidity he doesn’t say.
It reminds me of one of his wife Michelle’s most shockingly arrogant pre-election utterances, offered before she started censoring herself more effectively:
Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics,” his wife said a few weeks ago, adding that Americans will get only one chance to elect him.
To have gone into the presidential race with such an attitude, and to now be faced with the ungratefulness of the not-nearly-as-smart-as-Obama American people—ouch, how that must rankle.
[NOTE: That “two toughest years since the Great Depression” quote was so out of line that I kept thinking that Obama had qualified it in some way. But then I saw the tape (it occurs towards the very beginning of the Stewart interview), and he did not:
Susan Estrich writes that the people of Nevada should re-elect Harry Reid because of his ability to bring home the bacon. And that’s about the only reason. A more crass and cynical political column I don’t think I’ve ever read.
And in other not-so-great media moments, the WaPo’sDavid Broder doesn’t believe the projected resounding Republican victory would mean that the country is turning to the right. After all, the House will probably only gain a bare Republican majority, and the Senate is likely to stay in Democratic hands.
Many people predict a greater House turnover than even that, however, which would be of hugely historic proportions. And on the issue of a Senate turnover, Broder seems to conveniently forget that only a third of the Senate is up for re-election in any one year. In 2010, by my admittedly quick calculations, if every single Republican incumbent won re-election (a feat in and of itself), and every single previously and currently Democrat-held seat turned over into Republican hands (a virtually impossible one, even in a tsunami year), the largest number of seats the Republicans could possibly gain would be 19. So gaining even eight or perhaps more, as they are projected to do, would be huge.
Also—have you noticed a lull in the news for the past couple of days? It’s almost as though the nation and even much of the world is holding its collective breath to see what will happen on Tuesday.
Sometimes I need a break from all this politics (like right now!), and one of the things I turn to is dance. Most often ballet. Specifically, certain dancers of my youth, who now, to my joy, are readily available for the watching on YouTube.
I’ve written about Maya Plisetskaya many times before. One of my all-time favorites, she was distinguished in her heyday by her tremendous vitality, an enormous springy jump, great strength, flexible arms, sexiness, joy, drama, and a fluidity of movement that seemed remarkably free, despite her long confinement to the USSR by Soviets who were afraid she would defect if they allowed her to leave.
The lady is now well into her eighties and she looks marvelous. Here’s a videotape from a few years ago; I believe Plisetskaya was then a bright young thing of 74. She is rehearsing a French dancer named Marie-Agnes Gillot, who was about 24 years old at the time.
I am transfixed by Plisetskaya’s high heels, among other things. I’m significantly younger than she, but I’d have trouble even standing in them for more than a few minutes, and here she’s practically dancing in them. As I watched the video, despite Gillot’s approaching the prime of her dance life and technique, my eyes were riveted on Plisetskaya instead.
This is how major dance roles are generally transmitted, by a sort of spirit transfer. The older dancer tries to infuse the younger with the sense of the thing as it was first taught to her, adding all she’s learned about the subtleties of dance in the interim. Such teaching doesn’t always really take, except in bits and pieces; dance has changed too much.
You can see that Gillot’s technique is exponentially more spectacular than Plisetskaya’s ever was: in particular her huge extensions, the arched articulation of her feet, and the secure plumb line of her turns. But to my taste, Plisetskaya is above and beyond her in everything else that makes for dancing. Even here, when she had lost the ability to dance on the stage, so much remains (be patient; she doesn’t really get going till about midway through the clip).
[NOTE: I’m aware the Gillot is learning the role and not dancing full-out. But Plisetskaya certainly isn’t dancing full-out either; she can’t.
For those of you unfamiliar with the variation they are rehearsing, it is part of the third act of Swan Lake: the role of Odile, an evil temptress come to impersonate the heroine and make the Prince forget his vows to his true love. You will note that, towards the end of the tape, Plisetskaya mimes a whole series of moments: where Odile laughs in manic triumph at her success when she gets the Prince to swear falsely (around 4:42), and then in turn some of the reactions of the assembled court, including his swooning mother.]
You may notice that I haven’t done any posts on how many seats the Republicans will gain next week. And I don’t plan to, either.
That’s because it’s not my thing. There are plenty of articles all around the MSM and in the blogosphere that do just that, though. If you want to read predictions, just start scrolling down at Ace’s; RealClearPolitics has lots on its left and right sidebars as well as this; and Jay Cost opines here.
I don’t like to speculate on numbers at all. I think the Republicans will make large gains, but exactly how large is anybody’s guess.
That’s right: guess. All elections hinge on turnout, but this year turnout is far more of an unknown than usual. What we do know is the following:
(1) Republicans and Independents are more highly motivated than Democrats. This will favor Republicans.
(2) Fraud is occurring, and it will favor Democrats.
(3) The tendency is anti-incumbent.
(4) The unknown factor of weather will also tend to favor the more highly motivated, which we already know is Republicans.
I’ve been saying for quite some time that this is one of the most important elections I can ever remember, certainly one of the most (if not the most) important midterm elections. This means that—despite the glowing prognostications of huge Republican victories—as the big day approaches, I am getting very nervous.
It’s one thing to read predictions and even to look forward to something fervently, which I most definitely am. It’s another to know that very soon it will happen and we will know the results. Till then, Schrodinger’s cat is both dead and alive, and we won’t learn which until very late next Tuesday night, when we open that box.
[NOTE: To all you physicists out there: yes, I know it’s not the most perfect metaphor. But I like it.]
I see it in Williams eyes when I happen to catch him on Fox these days: he’s spitting mad. Personally outraged, and most of all surprised.
I don’t know whether the NPR firing will lead to any political change for him, and it almost doesn’t matter. But it is interesting to watch—and to recognize—the emotional process he’s undergoing. He appears to be struggling with a sense of betrayal and of shock, because he seemed to have previously been a believer in the essential fairness of the liberal world of which he was a part. His unjust treatment by NPR—“after all I’ve done for you”—came as a surprise.
It shouldn’t have, if he’d been paying attention. But people (not just Juan Williams) tend to filter their perceptions of reality through their belief systems, and ignore that which doesn’t fit in. But there is nothing quite like a personal experience to focus the attention. Williams’s attention is pretty focused these days.
It’s not for nothing that I have a category on the right sidebar entitled, “Leaving the circle: political apostasy” (a category to which I will assign this post when it’s done). I remember quite vividly when I first experienced the phenomenon. At the time, I was far from being a Juan Williams, having lived a relatively apolitical life. The reaction I got when I first politely voiced my relatively moderate disagreements wth the liberals who surrounded me sent me reeling, in the emotional sense.
I’ve adjusted in the many years since it first happened (neo’s not so neo any more). I’ve gotten used to it and come to expect it. But in some ways I’m still reeling, and probably always will be. It’s that profound an experience.
And in other news, Mr. Bipartisan Lovefest speaks out:
[Obama] said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”
Class act, that Obama. And it’s an interesting metaphor, isn’t it, conjuring up not only back seat drivers who are not allowed to give advice on steering, but Southern blacks relegated to the back of the bus.
And it wasn’t just some accidental, off-the-cuff metaphor, either. He said much the same thing last week at another venue.
But I say, better in back of the bus than under it, where so many of Obama’s erstwhile friends have ended up. Honestly, though, forget the racial overtones; I’ve never heard a president in my lifetime publicly express such a vile, contemptuous—okay, I’ll say it, un-American—sentiment about the other party.
