Some notes on the elections from last night
For those of you who do not know, part of my undergrad education was actually learning how to break down and analyze politics and deliver speeches on it every weekend, so I have actually been trained to do this. My opinions are not expert level, by any stretch of the imagination, but since everything I thought would happen did, and no TV or political personality anywhere did the same, I'm gonna say I have as much expertise as those who get paid to bloviate on cable news (which, by the way, no one should ever watch). I will tip my hat to RealClearPolitics.com and Nate Silver's Five-Thirty-Eight blog for the New York Times, which were useful aggregators for the information that was out there, and they were my go to sources for my thoughts and predictions. By the way, again, these sites had called the election and saw it as I did, based on the facts in evidence, the hard data available, and years of working with these numbers.
One more thing, before I get into this: I am suspending my "go for the funny" rule for this post because I'm not attempting to be overtly political, but rather explaining why things happened the way that they did when so many people felt or worried that things will go the other way. I would love nothing more than to take pot shots at idiots like Karl Rove, Victoria Jackson, Ted Nugent, everyone at Fox News and on right-wing talk radio, but there are enough people covering that field, and I'd probably just be doing a poor imitation of their humor.
So, here we go:
1) You might as well make a presidential term 8 years and reduce term limits to one term, because an incumbent president in our media and money era is never going to lose. Think back if you will, to 1996 and 2004. Clinton and Bush had huge waves of popular sentiment riding against them, and both won reelection. Now, the results were not exactly the same: Clinton won a huge majority in the popular vote and the electoral college and W. just squeaked by Kerry, but there was a large segment of the population that believed these would be one term presidents because of their scandals. The reality is, whomever is in the Oval Office has a huge home field advantage in that the ground game that got them there is already in place before a challenger even gets out of the gate. This is why Mitt Romney began running for 2012 as soon as he dropped out in 2008: he knew that if McCain didn't win, a challenger to an incumbent would need a massive operation ready to go. Points to Romney for recognizing this, but honestly, it wouldn't have made a difference. Basically, an incumbent president would have to be a convicted felon and puppy kicker to get ousted because with communications, organization and money the way it has been since 1992 (and only getting more advanced each year), the operations that an incumbent has to draw on are so significant as to be completely insurmountable. So, we might as well limit presidents to one term, make it 8 years, so they don't have to waste 2 years running for a reelection that they are going to win.
2) Challenging parties need to at least look like they are trying. I'm sorry if you like any of these people or voted for them, but seriously, Bob Dole, John Kerry and Mitt Romney were all jokes to run against entrenched presidents. This year might have been the worst of all. At least Dole and Kerry in 96 and 04 were people who had been in the trenches working in the system and knew what they were getting into. The republican field this year ran from the very crazy, to the mildly crazy, to the boring, and there wasn't a serious candidate there for an actual conservative (as opposed to a neo-con or a Tea Party Member) to latch on to. In each of the last three challenges to an incumbent, the party out of power went with a relative moderate who did not speak to the base of the party and who the party did not really like. This year, republicans would have been better off running someone like Gingrich or Santorum because they actually reflected the current base of the party. They would have been even better off if a serious candidate like Jeb Bush had bothered to run, but he didn't. So, at least look like you are trying people.
3) If you are getting your information from cable news, you shouldn't be allowed to talk anymore. I could just sit here and tell you up one side and down the other how Fox News is the worst thing in the universe, but CNN and MSNBC aren't better in any sense other than they simply aren't Fox News. Fox was busy spinning and cherry picking numbers, having their people say it would be a huge victory for Romney, no question, especially in the last week. The polls did not show that. MSNBC and CNN were building up a nail biter saying it would be an electoral slug-fest. The polls did not show that. If you followed the trackers on RealClearPolitics or Five-Thirty-Eight, the national polls showed a close race, but all of the battleground polls, except Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, showed clear and consistent leads for Obama. RealClearPolitics' "No-Toss-Up" map consistently showed President Obama winning at least 300 electoral votes. Not a close race and not a landslide win for Romney. The information was there, it was clear and public and published, and cable news continued to completely ignore it. Conservative writer and filmmaker John Ziegler addresses a lot of this in his column "Why the Conservative Media Got It So Wrong," and I highly suggest you read it.
4) The Republican Party is and has been led in the wrong direction on social issues. Get used to gay marriage, because it's happening and you can't stop it. The march towards equality only stops when good people stop working. Now, some republicans like Megan McCain and Ted Olson (the lawyer who actually led the challenge to California's Prop 8 is a veteran of two republican administrations), have been making this argument for some time, and people who cling to Bible verses that they don't actually know the meaning of have been resisting this with all their might, and for what? It ends up making you look out of date and out of step with reality. Similarly, immigration reform, which started as a republican idea, was latched onto by President Obama, but as soon as he said he liked the GOP's idea of the Dream Act, suddenly, it had cooties and all republicans started to line up against it. Pick the social issue you want and look at the polls, the Republican Party was out of line with what mainstream America wanted, and if they want us to care about their economic and foreign policy concerns, then maybe they should stop trying to push against things like gay marriage, immigration reform, women's health and reproductive rights, and teaching evolution, because, in the end, those are all issues they will lose on. Economics and foreign policy are abstract concepts to most voters; social issues are much more concrete. The Republican Party seems to still think this is 1988 and we are in the same social place. We aren't.
5) No matter who won, not much was going to change. Even though I was sure of my analysis, I wasn't too concerned with the outcome (aside from the nervousness I get every election night because, for a political junkie like me, it's like if the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Stanley Cup were all happening at once and all Detroit teams were playing). Yes, there are two to three supreme court justice spots opening up, but whomever nominated them would have to have gotten them through a narrowly controlled democratic senate. Health care reform was going to stay in place; so were PBS and NPR; so was Planned Parenthood. Undoing a law or cutting funding to a program makes a lot of noise, but it's easier said than done. No presidential candidate or actual president will ever be able to have the kind of change a campaign talks about. The way the system is set up, it takes so long to make something happen at the federal level, there is no chance for the kinds of change some people were talking about.
6) We all need to get over our own sense of entitlement to use social media to comment on every little thing. Please do not misread that. I am not saying that everyone needs to shut up or censor themselves, but quite honestly, no one really cares about your personal thoughts, agree or disagree, on politics. Yes, 10 or 20 people may have clicked like and there may have been some kind of interesting commenting thread, but one of the reasons why I went all radio silence on this election was because so many people I know were going absolutely wild about every little thing someone said or did, and it all became a lot of noise. Some of it was important, some of it was entertaining, but most of it was a complete waste of time and energy. Instead of the endless stream of links, short, badly spelled posts, and grammatically questionable replies, how about withholding and asking yourself this: "Is my voice really that special and unique that everyone needs to know how I feel about every little thing all the time?" If you answered yes, please seek professional help. This is why I went with my "go for the funny" policy on politics and social media. We, as a culture, take ourselves, our voice, and our opinions way too seriously, and it's one of the reasons why we cannot get shit done. Use social media for what it is actually good for: being social and connecting with people. It is not for a daily stream of your ranting and raving about every little thing. If you choose to use it for that, don't be surprised when people stop liking you.
7) We need to break the two party system. In reality, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party is a "Big Tent." People go there because they feel it is their only real option. The country could, and should, support at least four major parties and a slew of national minor parties, but because these two parties have a strangle hold and won't let go, we have to try and break it for them.
8) We will never break the two party system. More reality here: because of the way in which the presidential debate commission has been set up by the two major parties, you can forget about a third party candidate ever getting enough national attention to crack through. After Perot in 92, the Republican and Democratic parties set up the presidential debate commission to specifically lock out third party candidates. This lock will never be broken. Furthermore, as long as we have a congress and not a parliament, any third party at the national level will be limited to a few more independent states like Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, and that has just become an entrenched fact about the nature of a federalist republic that runs on a representative democracy. I applaud those of you pushing for a third party, and I do vote for third party candidates when I can, but truth be told, most of them are crazy because serious politicians know that they need money to win, and thus, they will continue to attach themselves to one of the two parties that has control on our system.
9) Voter turnout is still crap. Roughly, 120 million people voted. Now that number is going to go up, but the current adult population of the U.S. is about 250 million. The whole population is over 300 million. 120 million with 99% counted is a really shitty turn out number. Not even half of all who are legally allowed to vote bothered to vote. Utter and complete crap.
10) Stop whining about the Electoral College; you aren't helping and it isn't going anywhere... ever. You don't like it? You want a direct election of the president? Well, tough. To get rid of the electoral college, here's what has to happen: 1) Both houses of congress need to agree that the Constitution needs to be amended, by a two-thirds vote. 2) Amendments get proposed, and must pass with the same two-thirds vote in each chamber. 3) 75% of all state legislators must ratify the amendment for it to pass. The 13 smallest states can, and will, use both their members in congress and their own state legislators to stop this from happening. Yes, that's all it takes to stop it. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, New Mexico, and West Virginia all have 5 electoral votes or fewer, and that is 15 states that have a vested interest in keeping the Electoral College around because it gives them power. Tack on the states with 6 electoral votes who will also lose power in a strict popular vote, and you can do the math: the Constitution will NEVER be amended to eliminate or even alter the electoral college. Get over it and move on to things we can actually do something about.
So that's it. I'm done with politics for now, though I may, later, take some funny shots at people who are being stupid about the election.
One more thing, before I get into this: I am suspending my "go for the funny" rule for this post because I'm not attempting to be overtly political, but rather explaining why things happened the way that they did when so many people felt or worried that things will go the other way. I would love nothing more than to take pot shots at idiots like Karl Rove, Victoria Jackson, Ted Nugent, everyone at Fox News and on right-wing talk radio, but there are enough people covering that field, and I'd probably just be doing a poor imitation of their humor.
So, here we go:
1) You might as well make a presidential term 8 years and reduce term limits to one term, because an incumbent president in our media and money era is never going to lose. Think back if you will, to 1996 and 2004. Clinton and Bush had huge waves of popular sentiment riding against them, and both won reelection. Now, the results were not exactly the same: Clinton won a huge majority in the popular vote and the electoral college and W. just squeaked by Kerry, but there was a large segment of the population that believed these would be one term presidents because of their scandals. The reality is, whomever is in the Oval Office has a huge home field advantage in that the ground game that got them there is already in place before a challenger even gets out of the gate. This is why Mitt Romney began running for 2012 as soon as he dropped out in 2008: he knew that if McCain didn't win, a challenger to an incumbent would need a massive operation ready to go. Points to Romney for recognizing this, but honestly, it wouldn't have made a difference. Basically, an incumbent president would have to be a convicted felon and puppy kicker to get ousted because with communications, organization and money the way it has been since 1992 (and only getting more advanced each year), the operations that an incumbent has to draw on are so significant as to be completely insurmountable. So, we might as well limit presidents to one term, make it 8 years, so they don't have to waste 2 years running for a reelection that they are going to win.
2) Challenging parties need to at least look like they are trying. I'm sorry if you like any of these people or voted for them, but seriously, Bob Dole, John Kerry and Mitt Romney were all jokes to run against entrenched presidents. This year might have been the worst of all. At least Dole and Kerry in 96 and 04 were people who had been in the trenches working in the system and knew what they were getting into. The republican field this year ran from the very crazy, to the mildly crazy, to the boring, and there wasn't a serious candidate there for an actual conservative (as opposed to a neo-con or a Tea Party Member) to latch on to. In each of the last three challenges to an incumbent, the party out of power went with a relative moderate who did not speak to the base of the party and who the party did not really like. This year, republicans would have been better off running someone like Gingrich or Santorum because they actually reflected the current base of the party. They would have been even better off if a serious candidate like Jeb Bush had bothered to run, but he didn't. So, at least look like you are trying people.
3) If you are getting your information from cable news, you shouldn't be allowed to talk anymore. I could just sit here and tell you up one side and down the other how Fox News is the worst thing in the universe, but CNN and MSNBC aren't better in any sense other than they simply aren't Fox News. Fox was busy spinning and cherry picking numbers, having their people say it would be a huge victory for Romney, no question, especially in the last week. The polls did not show that. MSNBC and CNN were building up a nail biter saying it would be an electoral slug-fest. The polls did not show that. If you followed the trackers on RealClearPolitics or Five-Thirty-Eight, the national polls showed a close race, but all of the battleground polls, except Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, showed clear and consistent leads for Obama. RealClearPolitics' "No-Toss-Up" map consistently showed President Obama winning at least 300 electoral votes. Not a close race and not a landslide win for Romney. The information was there, it was clear and public and published, and cable news continued to completely ignore it. Conservative writer and filmmaker John Ziegler addresses a lot of this in his column "Why the Conservative Media Got It So Wrong," and I highly suggest you read it.
4) The Republican Party is and has been led in the wrong direction on social issues. Get used to gay marriage, because it's happening and you can't stop it. The march towards equality only stops when good people stop working. Now, some republicans like Megan McCain and Ted Olson (the lawyer who actually led the challenge to California's Prop 8 is a veteran of two republican administrations), have been making this argument for some time, and people who cling to Bible verses that they don't actually know the meaning of have been resisting this with all their might, and for what? It ends up making you look out of date and out of step with reality. Similarly, immigration reform, which started as a republican idea, was latched onto by President Obama, but as soon as he said he liked the GOP's idea of the Dream Act, suddenly, it had cooties and all republicans started to line up against it. Pick the social issue you want and look at the polls, the Republican Party was out of line with what mainstream America wanted, and if they want us to care about their economic and foreign policy concerns, then maybe they should stop trying to push against things like gay marriage, immigration reform, women's health and reproductive rights, and teaching evolution, because, in the end, those are all issues they will lose on. Economics and foreign policy are abstract concepts to most voters; social issues are much more concrete. The Republican Party seems to still think this is 1988 and we are in the same social place. We aren't.
5) No matter who won, not much was going to change. Even though I was sure of my analysis, I wasn't too concerned with the outcome (aside from the nervousness I get every election night because, for a political junkie like me, it's like if the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Stanley Cup were all happening at once and all Detroit teams were playing). Yes, there are two to three supreme court justice spots opening up, but whomever nominated them would have to have gotten them through a narrowly controlled democratic senate. Health care reform was going to stay in place; so were PBS and NPR; so was Planned Parenthood. Undoing a law or cutting funding to a program makes a lot of noise, but it's easier said than done. No presidential candidate or actual president will ever be able to have the kind of change a campaign talks about. The way the system is set up, it takes so long to make something happen at the federal level, there is no chance for the kinds of change some people were talking about.
6) We all need to get over our own sense of entitlement to use social media to comment on every little thing. Please do not misread that. I am not saying that everyone needs to shut up or censor themselves, but quite honestly, no one really cares about your personal thoughts, agree or disagree, on politics. Yes, 10 or 20 people may have clicked like and there may have been some kind of interesting commenting thread, but one of the reasons why I went all radio silence on this election was because so many people I know were going absolutely wild about every little thing someone said or did, and it all became a lot of noise. Some of it was important, some of it was entertaining, but most of it was a complete waste of time and energy. Instead of the endless stream of links, short, badly spelled posts, and grammatically questionable replies, how about withholding and asking yourself this: "Is my voice really that special and unique that everyone needs to know how I feel about every little thing all the time?" If you answered yes, please seek professional help. This is why I went with my "go for the funny" policy on politics and social media. We, as a culture, take ourselves, our voice, and our opinions way too seriously, and it's one of the reasons why we cannot get shit done. Use social media for what it is actually good for: being social and connecting with people. It is not for a daily stream of your ranting and raving about every little thing. If you choose to use it for that, don't be surprised when people stop liking you.
7) We need to break the two party system. In reality, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party is a "Big Tent." People go there because they feel it is their only real option. The country could, and should, support at least four major parties and a slew of national minor parties, but because these two parties have a strangle hold and won't let go, we have to try and break it for them.
8) We will never break the two party system. More reality here: because of the way in which the presidential debate commission has been set up by the two major parties, you can forget about a third party candidate ever getting enough national attention to crack through. After Perot in 92, the Republican and Democratic parties set up the presidential debate commission to specifically lock out third party candidates. This lock will never be broken. Furthermore, as long as we have a congress and not a parliament, any third party at the national level will be limited to a few more independent states like Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, and that has just become an entrenched fact about the nature of a federalist republic that runs on a representative democracy. I applaud those of you pushing for a third party, and I do vote for third party candidates when I can, but truth be told, most of them are crazy because serious politicians know that they need money to win, and thus, they will continue to attach themselves to one of the two parties that has control on our system.
9) Voter turnout is still crap. Roughly, 120 million people voted. Now that number is going to go up, but the current adult population of the U.S. is about 250 million. The whole population is over 300 million. 120 million with 99% counted is a really shitty turn out number. Not even half of all who are legally allowed to vote bothered to vote. Utter and complete crap.
10) Stop whining about the Electoral College; you aren't helping and it isn't going anywhere... ever. You don't like it? You want a direct election of the president? Well, tough. To get rid of the electoral college, here's what has to happen: 1) Both houses of congress need to agree that the Constitution needs to be amended, by a two-thirds vote. 2) Amendments get proposed, and must pass with the same two-thirds vote in each chamber. 3) 75% of all state legislators must ratify the amendment for it to pass. The 13 smallest states can, and will, use both their members in congress and their own state legislators to stop this from happening. Yes, that's all it takes to stop it. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, New Mexico, and West Virginia all have 5 electoral votes or fewer, and that is 15 states that have a vested interest in keeping the Electoral College around because it gives them power. Tack on the states with 6 electoral votes who will also lose power in a strict popular vote, and you can do the math: the Constitution will NEVER be amended to eliminate or even alter the electoral college. Get over it and move on to things we can actually do something about.
So that's it. I'm done with politics for now, though I may, later, take some funny shots at people who are being stupid about the election.