…but there may be more trouble ahead.
I don’t pretend to have a truly informed opinion on what will actually happen. But I’ve heard a great many ominous rumblings about it.
India on 200 million dollars a day
Remember those Arthur Frommer travel guides that promised the reader a way to tour Europe and spend only $5 a day?
I know inflation has made that a thing of my youth. But still, I find this figure hard to believe, even for a restless president and his entire entourage.
Could it really be? And if so, why isn’t everyone outraged by it? And is this trip really necessary?
I’m all for cementing business ties with India, a country Obama spent the early part of his presidency alternately ignoring and offending (as discussed by this author, who seems to be an admirer of Obama’s foreign policy in general). But the side trip to Mumbai seems gratuitous and excessively expensive, even for Obama.
[ADDENDUM: I found it hard to believe, and apparently that was the proper attitude: it’s not true.
Whew.]
The Times on the Republican victory
Shorter NY Times: it’s the tactics, stupid.
Yes, the Republicans just had a better organization and attack machine, “careful plotting,” and a “torrent of corporate money from outside interests.” Ha! Somehow they managed to overcome mere “miscalculations” of Obama and the Democrats, as well as their too “ambitious” agenda.
The article goes on for three full pages without mentioning the real causes for what it terms—in a general, amorphous, phrase—“an electorate with deep discontent.” I could find nothing about the economy and the failure to address its biggest problems, and to instead add to those problems. Nothing about the passage of HCR, cap and trade, any of the hugely unpopular Democrat-driven legislation this Congress muscled through against the public will in ways “transparently” nefarious. Nothing about how those things drove the people to try to tell the government how they felt in the summer of 2009, and how the government closed its eyes and ears, or demonized those trying to talk to it.
Looking at the 2010 map
More random reflections on looking at this map of House results:
Quite a few states are either all red or all blue. But among those that are mixed, not too many are spotted. In other words, the red-blue divide within states often follows distinct geographic lines running either east-west or north-south, or (as in the case of liberal strongholds California, Oregon, and Washington) coastal vs. interior. Of course, the other divide in most states tends to be rural/urban.
Regions tend to be blocks, as well. New England now emerges as probably the most generally liberal area of the country, I regret to say. If you look at the map and mouse over it, you’ll see how strongly Democratic it remains, with Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine posting big Democratic victories and representing completely solid oceans of blue. In fact, those are the only states in the union that are solid blue, and they are all in New England.
And then there’s anomalous New Hampshire. Remember that motto, the one the other New England states laugh at, and which periodically comes up for repudiation by the state itself but thus far has survived: “live free or die“? That libertarian streak is a good part of the reason New Hampshire has turned back to the Republican side.
The map of the US is now predominantly red, but looks can be deceiving. The reddest states tend to be low in population. And because of the Democrat/urban link, my guess is that Democrats will try to take advantage of that and become ever more intent on abolishing the Electoral College if they ever should come back to power.
2010: the whiplash election
The results of this election represent a backlash against the machinations of President Obama and Congress. But it isn’t just backlash; it’s whiplash.
Whiplash in the medical sense is caused not just by a sudden wrenching movement, but by a one-two jerking: first violently in one direction, and then violently in the other: “the head snaps forward and then back again.”
Despite the fact that the Senate remains (barely) in Democratic hands, this election is being compared to other large and sudden transfers of power in Congress, such as occurred in 1994, 1948, and even 1894, which was the biggest change of all (see this and this if you want some of the details). I’m not an election history expert, but I wonder whether there have ever been two such dramatically opposed consecutive Congressional elections as 2008 and then 2010. That’s where the whiplash would come in.
In the double whammy of 2006 plus 2008, control went from the Republicans to the Democrats in a pretty conclusive repudiation of the earlier Bush congresses. But the pendulum has swung forcefully back again in only two years.
But as I mentioned in this post, the Republicans are only on probation. They seem to realize it, at least for now (as the Democrats did not in 2008-2010); Boehner’s victory speech reflected that knowledge in a subtle way; Rubio’s in a more obvious one.
And here are some words from one of my favorite voices from the past:
Some post-election reflections
(1) It’s not enough for candidates to be conservative. They need to be good, as well. Surely such candidates can be found, but many of the Republican candidates who lost last night (especially in the senatorial races) were not among them.
(2) The rift between red and blue parts of the country—and within many states—seems more sharply differentiated than ever.
(3) This split is mirrored by a similar split in Congress, where the Republican and Democrat parties have grown more conservative and more liberal, respectively.
(4) It’s very difficult to flip a Senate from a 60-vote majority for one party to a majority for the other party in a single election.
(5) California, New York, and Massachusetts will remain strongly liberal enclaves for the foreseeable future. (One caveat: rule 1 above may at least partly apply here. Republican candidates in each state were not generally strong. For the House it was different—see Bielat vs. Frank—but despite some good Republican candidates in those contests, the liberals were barely threatened. New Jersey and Christie, Massachusetts and Brown—both seem to be the anomalies rather than evidence of a growing trend in strongly liberal states.)
(6) The emergence of Republican women and minorities is one of the many pleasures of this election.
(7) The flip of many state legislatures to Republican is one of the so far untold stories of this election.
(8) The Republicans have their work cut out for them. They are now, as many have said, on probation.
Reid wins
Just heard it on Fox; can’t find a decent link as yet.
This is bad news. He retains his seat, and probably the Majority Leader position, too.
Chuck Schumer may be sad about it, though. No Majority Leader spot for him.
Other random good news:
The margin of Rubio’s victory. Rubio gets it:
We make a great mistake if we believe that tonight these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican party,” Rubio told supporters at a rally, referring to his and other GOP wins around the country. “What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago.”
Kirk in Illinois. An especially sweet pickup.
Buck of Colorado, who was behind a little while ago, seems to have pulled ahead.
It’s still election night
Well, I’m back at my computer. Not a moment too soon. I’m writing this very quickly; apologies if it’s kind of sketchy.
Expectations were so high that reality couldn’t quite match it (particularly upset at how badly my guy Bielat did against Barney Frank).
On the other hand, it’s still pretty darn good. Most of the races have gone as expected so far, and it looks as though the accepted wisdom—Republicans control the House, Democrats retain slight majority in the Senate—may be exactly the way it goes down.
I haven’t had time to really think hard about it, but my first impression is that many of the blue states that went red tonight were blue collar blue states—Ohio and Pennsylvania, for example, as well as Illinois. Non-blue-collar blue states such as Massachusetts remain every bit as blue as ever (Scott Brown the lone island of red), and my prediction is that California will remain true blue as well, when all the returns are in.
This indicates to me that Democrats who switched were paying attention almost entirely to the economy, in particular their own jobs, rather than some permanent switch to a more conservative way of thinking. And many of the Republicans and Independents who flirted with the idea of Obama as moderate, healing force have learned their lesson.
The governorships are going strongly Republican, but that’s not a surprise, either. Governorships tend to be slightly more conservative in general (even Massachusetts has had the odd Republican governor, as have New York and California). This year, with its enormous fiscal challenges, people want to try some belt-tightening at the state level.
It’s Election Day!
Well, it all comes down to today.
I’m going to be especially busy during the day and early this evening, although I plan to be back at my trusty computer by the time things really get going later tonight. But just in case I’m late to the party, here’s a thread for you to talk about it all.
Yes, vote. Please. Not that any of you would fail to do so.
What I used to think of Republicans
Here’s Bookworm, writing a month ago in response to a question about what she used to believe about Republicans:
He was curious as to what I believed.
My answer was a simple one: “When I was a college Democrat, I believed that Republicans are evil people who hate blacks, children and poor people, who want to force everyone to convert to Christianity, and who want to weaponize America to take over the world.” In other words, my understanding of my ideology was simply that I, as a Democrat, existed to thwart evil Republicans. By voting straight down the “D” column on my ballot, I was protecting blacks, children and poor people, and keeping the proselytizers from my state house.
I believed all of this absolutely. I was unconcerned about more sophisticated issues of limited government; the moral rot of welfare; the economic damage wrought by government’s heavy hand in the marketplace; the genuine threat totalitarianism posed to world stability and American security; the danger of allowing government to pick winners and losers amongst its own citizens through taxation, spending, legislation and police action; etc.
All I knew was that Republicans were evil, and I was not evil. They hated people, and I wanted people to do well. Whatever they were for, I was against it.
Bookworm, of course, has since changed her point of view. But the question interested me: what did I used to think about Republicans? I’m older than Bookworm, and so not only do I have to think back further to come up with my childhood and young-adulthood memories, but the memories are of a different era, before liberalism had quite taken over so forcefully in the school system.
I never could have believed that Republicans hated blacks, for example, because I had personal memories of the 50s and very early 60s in the South, and I knew that it was Democrats who had stood in the way of civil rights there. Who could forget Orville Faubus or George Wallace? And who didn’t know they were Democrats? It was almost unavoidable to be aware of that, if you followed politics at all. So revisionist history about noble Democrats and racist Republicans could not touch me.
Likewise, I had been a child during the lengthy (seemingly interminable, at the time) presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican. His election campaign slogan was “I Like Ike,” and everybody did. It was nearly impossible to dislike him, or think of him as evil, even if you were a liberal Democrat, as were my “All the Way With Adlai” parents. He was a war hero, for starters. And he seemed a genial, non-extreme sort of president.
What’s more, I grew up in a part of New York that had a fair number of Republicans (for New York, anyway), and I knew some of them. They were just—well, they were just people. So there was really never any chance of demonizing Republicans in general. Maybe the John Birchers, whoever they were.
I also watched the decidedly odd Bill Buckley on TV and had to admit he was an intelligent sort, and humorous, too. It’s true that when Barry Goldwater conservatives started to take charge of the Republican Party it was a new breed of cat, and one with whom I disagreed at the time (I was still pretty young). But I never thought he wasn’t motivated by a sincere belief in what he was advocating, nor did I think he hated anybody.
At worst, I thought he—and other conservatives—just didn’t care all that much about poor people. I thought the worst they were was selfish and perhaps mean, rather than evil. But that was “mean” in the way of tough, hard parents who wanted their children to struggle and learn things on their own. As a child, I had no sympathy with that—I wanted things done for me! I wanted to be coddled! But at least I understood that it could be motivated by what we would now call tough love, rather than hatred.
Maybe I’m whitewashing the past. Maybe I was more intolerant and narrow-minded than I care to remember. But I don’t think so. Half the time I hadn’t a clue what party my friends belonged to, and didn’t care; we simply didn’t talk politics as a rule. In fact, I distinctly recall that when Clinton was running, I was very surprised to be part of a group conversation among about ten of my friends and to learn that all of them were Clinton supporters and Democrats. Until then, I’d had no idea.
Never such innocence again.
Spambot of the day
Hyperbolic spambot:
This post is so amazing, I almost spontaneously conceived a child just from reading it. Just incredible.
Pre-election excitement?
So, it’s come down to this: one more day till the election.
Are you excited, nervous, cocky, or blase? Or perhaps some combination? Here’s a thread to discuss it all.
I briefly listened to some of the cable stations this morning and it seems it’s nothing but election, election, election and polls, polls, polls. As a politics wonk, I must say I find it fascinating, although a decade ago it would have been something of a yawn to me. Mid-term elections? Whoever paid attention to those? Not this baby.
Here’s just a small roundup of pieces I find of special interest:
All of a sudden, this poll shows Miller of Alaska ahead. I have no idea whether this means anything or not.
Nate Silver has a lot to say. And for those who are detail-oriented, he crunches the numbers here.
At Politico, Alexander Burns wonders what the final score will be. As does just about everyone, although Democratic pollster Dave Beattie has tried to be philosophical: “”˜It sucks…I’m resigned to the fact that it sucks.”
It bears repeating, though: don’t assume anything. Get out there and vote!!