Blog category: G.O.P.
Election | November 2nd, 2010
So that happened.
Once upon a time, and by that I mean just a few years ago, I used to get emotionally involved in national elections and politics. Then I thought hard about it, and I realized that caring about this stuff all the time impacts my daily life in pretty much one way: mental stress, because both my ability to impact national events and the likelihood of those national events changing significantly are just above nil. So I looked at it rationally and realized that there was little point to maintaining the same level of emotional involvement: I still vote, I still support ideas, and I still read a lot of news, but that’s really about it in terms of brainpower. There are things in life that I can control, so in mental-energy allocation, I stick to those.
This has had varying success: I think political interest is pretty ingrained in me by now, but for the most part, cynical-but-rational detachment has been pretty good to me. I like Obama, but he hasn’t failed my 2008 expectations because mine were pretty down-to-earth anyway. Now the zen thing seems to be working again: sure, I’m bummed that lots of voters apparently can’t figure out what they want out of government, but these supposedly world-shattering GOPers are going to go to DC, make a bunch of noise about deficits, and then cut absolutely nothing meaningful in federal spending while actually worsening the deficit situation through further tax cuts. (This is actually in line with what the public wants, though, so you can’t accuse them of selling out their constituents.) In other words, nothing will change until the country is somehow forced to change, and we aren’t there yet. (Which is good.) In the meantime, one party won’t even consider logical steps like means testing, while the other party seems to think revenue is somehow unimportant to solvency. Caring about these illogical people all the time makes sense for one’s daily existence? I think not.
On the contrarian increased-involvement side, now that I’m a homeowner and have put down some roots in a city, I finally pay a lot of attention to local politics. So in that sphere, which does impact my life directly, I’ve now started to care significantly. But for the “tidal wave” and “historic permanent shift” and all that: I await the next permanent shift in 2012, and then the one in 2014. Meantime, I got work to do.
I’m not 100 percent bummed about tonight; this will probably force Obama and the Democrats to focus on naked job-creation projects like they should have done in the first place. The only problem is that any efforts to get job projects passed will probably get caught in the newfound morass – by gaining a seat (and maybe more in November?) and never budging an inch to support anything Democrat-initiated, Republicans have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that government can’t solve anybody’s problems.
And apologies to anyone who follows my Twitter posts, from which I basically constructed this entire post. Recycling is good for the Earth, after all.
Tomorrow is the Massachusetts special Senate election for Ted Kennedy’s seat, the coverage of which has been drawing my attention for the past week and a half. While I think it’ll be a disappointment if Coakley loses, as it would indicate reinforcement of the unsuccessful status quo of the past decade, that and a G.O.P. gain in November will surprise me about as much as our Chicago toaster oven will when it burns the toast again. (And by that I mean I will be not at all surprised.)
The stats on midterm elections are frequently trotted out, and they’re almost always bad for the incumbent President’s party. Also frequently trotted out these days is the fact that the “Tea Party” is more popular than either major party, and while that movement doesn’t seem to me to have a platform beyond “visceral howls of opposition”, that’s a lot of voter anger floating around that’s inevitably focused on the team in power.
That said, what potential G.O.P. candidate out there can win in 2012? It looks now like none of them can: Romney is too manufactured to get the nomination; Huckabee commuted the sentence of a prisoner who later murdered four police officers; Palin won’t convince enough general-election voters that she’s competent; and Pawlenty is possible but Midwestern governors are usually too nondescript (remember when people said Tom Vilsack could get the Democratic nomination?). The best remaining candidate is probably Rudy Giuliani, but his personal life is a mess, he’s too socially liberal for the base, he dropped out in 2008 when he couldn’t even win the Florida primary and he’s made enough ridiculous claims recently to turn off most voters. In early 2006 the Democrats had the Hillary machine and Obama was an untarnished star, but there’s nobody in the G.O.P. like that as of January 2010.
Anything’s possible in almost three years — caveat up in here — but the conservative part of the G.O.P. is super fired-up and determined to knock off all moderates, meaning they’re either going to nominate someone like Palin who is very unlikely to win the general election or they’ll get angry at having to swallow yet another compromise mainstream candidate like McCain. Either way, not a great situation for challenging a sitting president who’s had time to recalibrate from midterm results.
I’m not the only one:
Hark! The Voters Speak!, New York Times, Nov. 5, 2009
I saw tonight — I’m still awake doing negotiations homework, good times — that the G.O.P. won in two governor’s races but lost the 23rd Congressional District race this Tuesday. My response: wait until 2010 to make any considered response.
While I think the 23rd Congressional race is interesting because of the internal power dynamics reflected in the G.O.P. big guns’ involvement, ultimately I feel like all three elections turned more on local concerns than on national ones. Gov. Corzine has been unpopular for a long time, and people were ready to see him go since way before he argued that he should win because his opponent is fat and he isn’t. The G.O.P. can be happy about the victory, but not too happy — to win a blue state like NJ, Christie’s still gotta be a Northeastern moderate Republican and not a conservative, so he’s exactly the type of politician that Limbaugh, Palin, Malkin, etc. were trying to drive out of the party when they beat on Scozzafava in the 23rd until she abandoned her candidacy. (She later turned around and endorsed Bill Owens, the Democrat and eventual winner – doh!)
Meanwhile, the conservatives’ guy lost, and while that might have some national significance, it’s not the be-all either: Hoffman only sorta lived in the 23rd anyway, and he jumped in at a late date, both of which would certainly affect things. As for Virginia, I think it’s pretty simple: the state just liked McDonnell better than Deeds.
The big lesson: these three (only three!) elections are going to have a lot less significance for 2010 than whatever the Democrats do over the next year. Nothing benefited the Democrats in 2006 like standing by while the G.O.P. screwed up, and that’s true for any minority opposition party anywhere, ever — the party in power has a lot more to do with your fortunes than you do, so you just gotta stay in contrast and wait and see.
You heard it here first: Neverland is the new Graceland.
Man, what a week for news. It’s been a while since we had such a contrast of the important (Iran) and the junk-ridden (Transformers 2 = 2nd highest grossing opening ever).
- My vote for biggest story: Considering that I live in the U.S., it has to be the start of American withdrawal from Iraqi cities. There’s the potential for the sectarian pot to boil over again now that American troops won’t be piled onto the lid anymore, but the alternative of policing the country forever isn’t going to work. This is all after the fighting there has been all but forgotten by the general public. I’d put Iran second, and the dramatic turnaround the nation’s opinion of Michael Jackson third, but in my mind it was a return to the big story of the decade.
- Michael Jackson: it’s sad that the guy fell so far from the heights of the ’80s and never made it back, but the country this week seemed to forget the past 15 years in a single afternoon. This is the same thing that happened when Richard Nixon died — granted, Nixon did real harm to the country, while Jackson was just weird — but I wonder if it’s a uniquely American thing for national opinion of a controversial guy to turn on a dime whenever that guy passes on.
- I first heard about Jackson’s death on Twitter myself, but this is just incorrect. You know what I did after I first read that whiff of the story on Twitter? Started hitting the NY Times, CNN and BBC news sites. You can’t note that people check the “respected” news outlets before they really believe an account of something, then turn around and say that this proves those respected news outlets are pointless. Plus, I don’t get the comment about TMZ representing “the new realities of journalism” when they got their scoop through old-fashioned reporting. The truth is that the base of all news will always be reporting, and obviously you don’t have to be a giant, 100-year-old paper to do that, but it still has to happen somewhere along the line.
Let’s also face the fact that TMZ had nothing to lose by claiming Jackson was dead at the very first moment there was speculation. He’s not actually dead? “Well, they’re just a tabloid anyway.” He died? “Brilliant job getting the story!”
- Guy who benefited the most from Michael Jackson’s death: Mark Sanford.
Guys who benefited the least: Anybody out on the street in Iran. Just as the Iranian government counter-reaction gets ugly, too.
- Gail Collins said it better than I can on Sanford: it’s not that he committed an affair or that he’s a total moral hypocrite that makes him a bad governor; it’s the fact that by definition, bailing out on being governor tends to make one a bad governor. And no, I don’t feel bad for him, even if I give him credit for a more human response than most politicians caught cheating.
- And speaking of red-state moralists, who knew that Utah has the highest rate of subscription to pornographic sites?
- Transformers 2 has been a lot of fun for me, and I haven’t even seen it: every critic has sharpened the knife for the review, so at that point it’s a contest to see who can get it the sharpest. Naturally Roger Ebert’s review is brilliantly written, but I also liked Dana Stevens in Slate and The A.V. Club. I like my wit dry, with just a hint of acid.
The funniest part of it all is that Transformers 2 has been critically hated-on more than any movie I can remember, yet it also had the second-highest opening of all time. (Thankfully for the American cultural soul, Dark Knight barely kept the top slot.) One of the commercials this week even ran a bunch of critical excerpts with the tiniest possible font for attribution. Interesting move by the studio to do a Terrell Owens on the Dallas 50-yard line.
- R.I.P., Billy Mays. As I felt the need to tell anyone each time he showed up on TV, the dude was from Pittsburgh. The guy sold some bizarre products, but he was the rare salesman where I enjoyed the pitch.
As a tribute to the man, I will republish that in the style he knew best:
R.I.P. BILLY MAYS! AS I FELT THE NEED TO TELL ANYONE EACH TIME HE SHOWED UP ON TV, THE DUDE WAS FROM PITTSBURGH! THE GUY SOLD SOME BIZARRE PRODUCTS, BUT HE WAS THE RARE SALESMAN WHERE I ENJOYED THE PITCH!
The TV world lost a truly fun character. Vince from ShamWow just isn’t the same.
Happy 200th birthday to Honest Abe, the greatest President the United States has ever had and namesake for my ‘hood in Chicago. I probably shouldn’t use the term “hood” to describe arguably the most yuppified area in the country, but that’s how we do it in streetz of LP — Chads and Trixies fo’ life.
There’s been a lot written about how every generation reinvents Lincoln as an ideal President for today’s theories and challenges, and that often requires a pretty huge leap in logic. But as this Salon article points out, it’s really a stretch when the modern G.O.P. tries to claim that the tall lanky dude would fit in well with today’s Republicans:
How Would Lincoln Vote Today?
The author sums it up best himself in this paragraph:
Can anyone believe that a contemporary Republican politician who refused to join a Christian church, who was described by friends as “an avowed and open infidel,” who had written a book mocking the miracles in the Bible, who described evangelical voters as “priest-ridden,” and was a “warm advocate” of evolutionary theory, could be nominated for president by today’s Republican Party?
I’m gonna go ahead and answer “no” to that question.
And one more Lincoln link: This 2005 Atlantic profile of Lincoln and depression was really powerful and stuck with me.
(CNN) — A candidate for the Republican National Committee chairmanship said Friday the CD he sent committee members for Christmas — which included a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — was clearly intended as a joke.
“I think most people recognize political satire when they see it,” Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman told CNN. “I think RNC members understand that.”
Damn dude, “Negro”? It makes it tough to rock effective, current satire when you’re communicating to a 19th-century audience. I heard the next big RNC hits take down the Mussulmen, Orientals and Papists. Mocking the Papists? I can’t believe they went there!
