Shorthand for Nothing

The more reports I read from the campaign’s postmortem, the less convinced I am that John McCain really had control over his message at the end. Once he had picked Sarah Palin as his running mate and took a hard tack to the right, the campaign had entered into its final stages, with attack ads that took a turn for the nasty and a running mate who seemed to represent everything I have ever disliked about the conservative base. At that point he seemed less interested in acting like the moderate he has developed a reputation for being. It had become a campaign of gimmicks, of erratic and seemingly desperate stabs at the presidency.

Had they recognized they had lost before that point? Did they think their only chance was to hope the conservative base outnumbered Obama’s legion of supporters? Were they counting on the youth vote to be as unreliable as previously? The strategies after the conventions seemed risky. Sarah Palin seemed at once a cynical attempt to attract Hillary’s supporters, a grab to energize the Republican base, and a desperate stab at weakening Obama’s message of change by bringing someone else who can lay claim to being an agent of change.

I am not convinced that balancing act would have been possible even for a political mastermind, and I certainly don’t think Sarah Palin fits the bill. I grant her bloody, luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin that has a name; she may even be intelligent and clever. But she is not cunning. She is a creature of gimmicks. She was also almost entirely unknown, apparently even to the McCain campaign. The convention bounce came, held for a while, then faded into an Obama lead once the public got an idea of who she was–and was less than impressed.

But I’m not really here to talk about why the campaign failed. He was taking some risks and failed. I think they got away from him at some point. He lost balance, things happened too fast, and the only choice was to run with it and hope. I can’t say it was a civil campaign at the end. But I think it is important to remember at least this much: John McCain is not a monster. His supporters are not all hateful fearmongers. Perhaps it’s time to make the attempt to make some unity happen?

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Racism is not dead, it’s just taken a bizarre turn. Now you have some of the conservatives blaming the blacks for being racist. That’s right, folks: the blacks are now oppressing the white man. Those making these observations are almost invariably the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts, but the tone of the observation tends to vary from “idle sociological observation” to “THIS IS AN OUTRAGE WHY AREN’T THEY BEING ROUNDED UP.”

This is where racism has been lately. Most conservatives don’t think it exists anymore, unless it is the “blacks hating whites” variety they have no problem talking about. Now that we no longer have racist laws, racism is pretty much gone. The reason blacks are poor is because they choose to be poor! The reason you don’t see as many minorities in government as you would expect from numbers is because they just aren’t as qualified for office! We aren’t being racist, we’re just observing that in the land of opportunity, they don’t seem to be seizing the day very well.

This is the kind of racism that expresses itself by saying, “I’m not racist, I love my black friends.” It’s a sort of blindness to your own actions and a belief that what you do is perfectly normal and acceptable. “I’m more than willing to get past racism, I’m just waiting for them to go first.”

I think a really good awareness program would be just confronting some of these people with some basic sociological research on minorities in America.

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Just a quick update on an earlier post in which I said Republicans don’t threaten to move to Canada when they lose. Turns out some of them do! I think mostly younger ones. And a few are saying New Zealand or Australia or something. Apparently Obama is just that bad.

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As of this writing, the last few states are too close to call. It is clear that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States, and I’m not alone in feeling like this may be the start of something big for our nation–and I hope the world. His speech was spectacular and moving. John McCain gave a concession speech that was polite and dignified and everything a concession speech should be.

Tonight I’d like to look back at this election, all sarcasm, snark, and joking aside.

I really started following it towards the end of the primaries. I’d heard of Barack before, but didn’t know a lot about him. I knew I didn’t want to see Hillary as president–but I think more importantly, I knew that Barack Obama had a lot of grassroots support. He was energizing people–he was energizing the young, disaffected, cynical group I was a part of. There was hope for something new. So I started watching the primaries. Hillary had long odds against her when I started. Superdelegates were a big deal. And I started learning more about Barack Obama. He was intelligent, calm, dignified, charismatic. There was something inspirational about him, and this unbelievable sense of inevitability.

At some point during the summer, I started really watching the election in earnest. Blogs, news media, political analysts, polls. There was something almost absurd about Barack–there was so much eagerness, so much enthusiasm. The media was in love with him. Everyone I knew was in love with him. And it was infectious. I found myself laughing, not because he was a bad candidate, but because he was a good candidate. It was refreshing to joke about how awesome a candidate was, and to be sincere.

Still, I knew he wasn’t going to save the world. There was something almost Messianic about his presence. And it was easy for his detractors to paint him as if he had a Messiah complex. In the end I felt that he knew that really, this wasn’t about him–this was about inspiring the people of America. This was about reminding America that they could make a difference.

And what a difference we’ve made. I don’t need to explain how momentous this occasion is. I hope this energy lasts. If everyone remains as fired up as they were for the campaign, we really will be able to change America. Who can say if it will last, or how long it will take? But change has arrived in America. If Barack Obama can keep people as fired up for the next four years as he has for the past two, maybe we won’t be a nation of people who think it’s somebody else’s problem.

If that’s the case, that’s change I can believe in. (I know, I know.)

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One of the conservative forums on which I lurk has a thread for predicting the election’s outcome. Approximately half of the 35 votes believe McCain will win (18/35, slightly better than half). In the interests of full disclosure, a lot of people on this particular forum seem to be under the age of 18. Still, I was surprised that fully half of voters thought McCain would win.

Some gems from the thread, after the jump.

(more…)

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Probably you’ve heard by now that Sarah Palin, in the event McCain/Palin loses this election cycle, wants to remain a prominent figure in national politics. I’ve been quietly making this speculation for some time now, but at first I thought she might be more likely to run for one of the state’s Senate seats. I think I was wrong about this one. Sarah Palin wants to be president of the United States in the year 2012, and she is going to use the same narrative she’s been running on.

She kicked out the incumbent Republican governor, if you recall. She fought the existing Republican establishment. She is a diehard Republican, but she still bucked the establishment. And now she has a flotilla of intellectual Republicans who don’t like her and think she is dangerously unqualified and a bit of a lunatic. She will be fighting against these elites who think that knowing what you’re doing is important in a candidate. She has a narrative already. She will drag the word “maverick” kicking and screaming back into politlcal discourse.

You see, many observers think the Republican party is tearing itself apart. You are seeing the intellectual conservatives and the conservative base, and they are not happy with each other. John McCain has ultimately decided he would rather appeal to the base. And he has set up Sarah Palin to become their new champion. It’s politics without high-minded discourse, just gimmicks and obvious ploys to make the common man feel included. Joe the Plumber? Really?

Are the gimmicks working? Can Sarah Palin come back from this election and lead the Republican Party to victory? Can this Republican Party win elections anymore? Do they need someone whose gimmick is being a reformer to shake up the party? Or is it perhaps that what they really need is someone who is intelligent and thoughtful and has the right temperament to lead, to redefine the party so that it is no longer associated with angry shouts of “socialist!” and “terrorist!” and “muslim!” and “kill him!” at rallies. A thoughtful party with traditional values, rather than a hateful party afraid the gays are going to steal their jobs.

Watch Sarah Palin carefully. What happens to her could be a sign of the future of the Republican Party.

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I’d like to encourage you to take a good look at the picture of Ashley Todd, who didn’t get mugged yesterday. See how the ‘B’ is backwards, sort of like she made it herself, in the mirror? I’m not really here to talk about that, though. Nor about Fox’s prediction that this would sink the race for McCain. There isn’t a lot of insight to add–McCain staffer makes a bad decision, makes headlines, and then admits that she was race-baiting in Pennsylvania.

I’d like to talk about some of the conservative reactions, as collected by Wonkette. It’s not every day the conservatives are dealt a blow like this. Colin Powell elicited a predictable reaction. Most endorsements do. But Ashley Todd? How do they feel about someone taking a risk for their campaign and failing?

If the collection of comments are any indication, the reaction appears to be partly what you would expect–lamenting that someone would risk their campaign’s good standing like that. But it also consists of people claiming she is probably a liberal plant: “Exactly something an idiotic liberal coward would do. bet if you look close enough she’s an obama supporter.” Apparently conservatism is incapable of doing wrong–it is all caused by acts of liberal sabotage.

In all fairness, I do not think conservatives on the whole will be accusing her of deliberate sabotage. Anger at the media makes more sense, for breaking the story in the first place when the police were clearly not convinced of the story. It may not be reasonable to assume the media won’t break a story like this–but it certainly fits in with the conservative metanarrative.

But the fact remains–there are those who are so devout in their support of the cause they believe anyone who does damage to it is a saboteur rather than merely someone who makes bad decisions. Sometimes unquestioning devotion to your cause is a bad thing.

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The conservative forums I have been reading seem to have a common consensus these days: the election is close! Normally I would link to all of the polling sites and political analysts who disagree–who think it is patently obvious at this point that McCain is in dire straits, that the election will likely not be close, and that a McCain victory will be an upset.

I have been saying this election will not be close for a long time (but not blogging about it, so you will have to take my word for it). Partly this was based on political analysts, partly it was based on this feeling that Barack Obama was an exciting candidate. Sure, I worried. But at the same time, there was this feeling of inevitability, one that made it all the more exciting, instead of complacency-inducing.

While I don’t think the McCain campaign should become defeatist, and while I do believe they are flailing around in mad desperation at this point, I believe that a healthy understanding of the polls might benefit their cause.

There’s a bit of a disconnect, though. It’s clear the McCain campaign knows it’s losing. Morale is low, and I think Obama’s feeling of inevitability is beginning to wash the Republican campaign under. But it talks as if it doesn’t believe that. “We’ve got them just where we want them!” Seriously, John? That just makes you sound out of touch–making the defeatism worse while simultaneously making the “it’s a close election and you are all fooled!” people believe it even more.

Whatever is going on internally with the McCain campaign, I can say one thing with conviction: this is not a close election. I would be much less enthusiastic if it were.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Colin Powell has just endorsed Barack Obama, and the conservative base is not pleased with the result. He has “betrayed his party,” “revealed his true leaning,” and basically all sorts of nasty words. Perhaps this is a minority representation–I’m still looking into a more representative reaction–but this is pretty much exactly what I expected.

It reveals a lot about the campaign. Let’s go back to John McCain for a minute. He’s a maverick, right? He leans across party lines. He’s got half the Democratic ticket from 2000 endorsing him. He fights his own party leaders. He does this because he is bipartisan and compromises.

Colin Powell is, as far as I am aware, is a highly respected public figure, which may well sound the death knell for McCain’s political chances. I believe he is respected across party lines. If anyone’s endorsement would likely be viewed as “mavericky,” as something indicative of a strong independent mind and reasoning apart from party lines, I think it would be Colin Powell’s. But instead, it’s casually dismissed as treason to his party, probably because they are both black.

Obama is routinely criticized for never reaching across the aisle by the conservative base. He is “the most liberal Senator.” I wonder if this isn’t because everyone who ever works with Barack Obama is immediately dismissed as a traitor to his party?

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Earlier today I made the comment that the post-debate polls have Obama winning by a really lopsided number–well over 20 points–among independent voters. One of the crazier conservatives I know responded with the following gem: “Yeah, but the people answering the polls are probably, idiots. Obama lied so many times, that I think Luciger [sic] wants to be his apprentice.” (Punctuation and spelling are his. I think he meant Lucifer.)

I didn’t watch the debate so I couldn’t comment on whether or not Obama was lying–my understanding is they both said some pretty outrageous things about health care. I don’t get the feeling he was lying so often Satan, Prince of the Air, Father of Lies, The Great Enemy, would want to become his apprentice.

But for all that, this is a pretty common reaction among the conservatives I encounter: if the polls disagree with you, disagree with the polls. When in the minority, they say “well most people are idiots.” And when they’re in the majority, they say “finally the people are seeing through the lies.” While conservatives are by no means the only people who view statistics through a heavily distorted lens, they certainly seem to do it more frequently than others.

But maybe I’m biased–I haven’t seen any presidential statistics that favor conservatives in a long time. It’s hard to selectively interpret data to be in your favor when the data actually is in your favor.

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