Shorthand for Nothing

Yesterday, the House unanimously voted to reject the ~$800 billion economic stimulus package. Liberal commentators have been saying, essentially, that if the Republicans don’t want to play ball, the Democrats can, and should, pretty much play without them. And as Nate Silver pointed out, quoting the AP article, this doesn’t look good on their parts. And the fact that it’s unanimous makes it look like it was scripted, even if it wasn’t.

Assuming it was scripted, I imagine they were hoping for the reaction to go something like “Barack Obama couldn’t get a single Republican to vote for his stimulus package–what a failure on bipartisanship on his count!” I also imagine they were banking on the idea that, if it fails, suddenly they look prescient.

They did not take into account two things. First, Obama is very popular right now–given. So nobody is likely to spin this into an anti-Obama story unless they already dislike him. And the media doesn’t dislike him. Second, and this is probably the important part: a unanimous vote looks like posturing. I’m not convinced it will look good for them if the package fails. If anything, they might be blamed for it somehow. That’s obstructionism at its finest.

Maybe it wasn’t intentional. Maybe just none of them liked it. But I know what the narrative’s going to be from here.

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I really should have written this when it was still relevant, but here it goes.

A number of conservatives make no secret about blaming Barack Obama’s victory in the election on media bias. John McCain’s campaign got only negative coverage, where Obama only got positive coverage. I’m not going to dispute their claim, though I disagree with it. Let’s assume it’s true: the press was exceptionally positive towards Obama and exceptionally negative towards McCain. What could this mean/why could this be? The way I see it, there are four options:

• Barack Obama is legitimately better candidate than John McCain, and the media is merely reflecting the realities of the situation.
• Barack Obama is roughly on par with John McCain in terms of his ability to lead the country or win votes, but he ran a better, cleaner campaign.
• Barack Obama is roughly on par with John McCain in terms of his ability to lead the country or win votes, but the media liked him better so he was given a free pass and remained positive in the public perception.
• Barack Obama is a worse candidate than John McCain, but a vast media conspiracy concealed these obvious truths, and tricked the American public into voting for him.

I tend to favor one of the first two options. Though I will acknowledge that Obama was something of a media darling during the summer months, he had already weathered some pretty unpleasant media scandals during the primaries. And let’s face it: he has a compelling narrative.

Obama had people fired up about him irrespective of the media. He had massive support on the internet, and a terrifyingly efficient grassroots political machine.

Those who are inclined to favor the latter two options, I have two words for you: John Kerry. There is no way the media gave Bush more favorable attention than McCain in this election. He was pretty universally reviled at the time.

But even besides that, look at the record turnouts among young voters. If the media is biased, it has always been biased. Something about Barack Obama’s campaign made him popular among a generation of people that is largely disaffected with politics.

And he definitely ran a better campaign to reach these people. He brought technology into politics, in a prominent way. There were internet-based campaigns, and stories written about how internet-based politics were the way of the future. People received updates on text messages. His transition website uses some very web 2.0 technologies. John McCain was not a bad candidate, but his campaign, especially in comparison to that of Barack Obama, made him unelectable. It ruined his brand. It made him look like a bad candidate. He did it to himself, and the electorate responded.

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(A sincere apology to both of my readers, who have probably missed my insightful commentary deeply. I will probably change gears and stop talking about politics eventually, but I cannot not talk about Blagojevich.)

I’m not going to say the honeymoon is over for Barack Obama, but there is some talk circulating, including at least one unfortunate headline, which makes it sound like people think Obama knew about Blagojevich’s mind-numbingly stupid corruption. And people were concerned about his cabinet choices–Clinton cronies, people who have a history of sending dead fish to people they don’t like. They wonder if his politics of change was just talk, and if he will basically be the same as any other politician–or worse, because he’s from Chicago, which is comically corrupt.

I’m not sure if this qualifies as buyer’s remorse, but I haven’t lost my generic hopefulness just yet. Consider a comparison of the McCain and Obama campaigns, if you will. McCain’s campaign felt like it was being run by his advisors. McCain allowed himself to be herded and ended up appearing disingenuous. Obama never seemed to lose control. Perhaps he simply chose the right advisors, but it seems like he has the force of will to keep any of his staff picks from running amok–or at least that he can reign them in and use their powers for good.

But Blagojevich! He may sound like a badly written villain in a comic book, but is his corruption going to ruin the Obama presidency? In this particular instance, I am going to say no. The American public has the memory span of a goldfish, so even if he did something shady, he’s in the clear in four years–and he has already been elected. Right now, public opinion can’t do anything to him.

The media is a big fan of freaking out. It always ends up blowing over.

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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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Okay, this time I am prepared for it. This time I am ready. Here it is, Hope himself becoming a god.

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Surprise liveblog, after the jump!

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In a few short hours we find out whether America will finally fall to the black muslim Arab terrorist space demon communist freedom-and-america-hating freedom-hater terror-loving godless inexperienced elitist fraudulent anti-Christs. If this happens only a minority of America is actually America anymore, and we will soon change the name of the country to Obamaland, and the capital will be changed to Hopeville, and all good American patriots (ie, Republicans, who put Country First despite thinking half of the country is full of America-hating freedom-haters) will be rounded up and put in camps, where they will be forced to do work and get paid huge salaries, but all of their money will be taken away from them and given to fat lazy black people, who hate whitey and love sitting around and accepting handouts from the government. They will laugh quietly to themselves and give one another terrorist fist-bumps, because they know they are really just milking the system at the expense of the poor belabored patriots! They are all evil and selfish, statistically. Rich people just want to be able to enjoy their wealth without having to think about those horrible poor people, but they won’t be able to do that anymore, because soon the poor will control the government and it will be like Karl Marx but a whole lot bloodier.

Terrorists will randomly bomb churches and private schools and small businesses and good Christian homes and then fist-bump the puppet governments in the cities, and host fundraisers for Obama in their living room, where everyone will have to come and give all their money, ever. And everyone will profit off the labor of the Republicans in their slave labor camps and sit around being decadent and drinking wine that the French shipped over. The whole country will look like a war zone and it will be a mockery of everything America once stood for. The Freedom Eagle will circle the skies one last time, shedding a single patriotic tear, and fly off, crying like the phoenix, vowing to return one day and plant the seeds of freedom anew.

So yeah, I predict Obama with about 350 electoral votes.

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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 you to perform a little thought experiment with me. I want you to think of some people you know in countries with socialized health care–usually, it is Canada and the UK. Have you ever talked to them about health care? If the answer is yes, I’m going to make a prediction: they ‘agree’ with your stance on the matter. And I’m going to go a little further: if we had the same friends in the UK and Canada, and you disagree with me on socialized health care, you will still assume your Canadian or British friends agreed with you over me.

Maybe it’s the questions. Maybe I ask them “do you like not having to pay for health care?” and they say “yeah, it’s great,” and you ask them “do you like having to go through government red tape in order to get health care?” and they say “man I hate it.” Perhaps I say “do you like that even those who are poor are afforded basic medical care?” and they say “it’s great, man” and you say “do you like paying extra taxes to pay for your health care?” and they say “no, it’s pretty lame.” But I think it’s more fundamental than that.

I think it’s the basic premise: nobody likes dealing with health care, period, socialized or not. There are reasons for this. The first, and perhaps the most obvious and overlooked, is that nobody likes being sick or injured. Americans don’t like it eather. Generally speaking going to the doctor is unpleasant because the only time you are going is when there is something wrong with you. The second reason is that nobody likes paperwork. Nobody likes doing taxes. Nobody likes waiting for administrative red tape to be cleared. Nobody likes dealing with bureaucracy. And let’s face it. That’s basically what government is.

There are plenty of arguments to be made for and against socialized health care. Fair enough. Let’s not bring the Canadians into this, shall we? Because I’m pretty sure you and I can look at the same group and see two very different things.

(I’d prefer if we don’t bring up our experience with Medicare or Medicaid, either–I don’t generally feel those are terribly successful, but that has nothing to do with why socialized health care as an entire system will work or fail.)

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