Almost there… almost there… the US Presidential Election races to a finish. November 3, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in US Politics.trackback
Well, I guess it had to happen. There was John McCain on Saturday Night Live at the weekend. And it wasn’t a bad performance. Not at all. He was his customary self, pleasant, self-deprecating and with one or two excellent lines… such as…I’m a true Maverick… a Republican without money.
Hmmm… well, yes. Probably best though to have left Cindy McCain behind on the night. Because although it is indeed her money he’s not done too badly.
But, Tina Fey in a reprise of her now almost too perfect Sarah Palin imitation, continually, as might have been expected, stole the show. And to some degree that left McCain looking diminished, not least when she went ‘rogue’ speaking directly to the camera with a “Palin 2012 Tee-shirt” in her hands. From afar came McCain’s voice ‘what are you doing over there Sarah?’ to which she waved a hand airily and said ‘just talking about taxes John’. There was something utterly dismissive in the gesture, and perhaps moreso the overall conceit that McCain was selling ‘commemorative plates’ and ‘jewelry’ on QVC, that in a curious way pointed up the oddly downbeat tone of the Republican campaign in general and the lack of spark that McCain has had.
He has been a candidate curiously adrift. Perhaps it is his age, and yet he remains a vigorous man. Or perhaps it’s a generational thing, and time moves on. But all told it has not been to his benefit. Not at all.
So, why the long faces amongst Democrats and those of us who support a Democratic nominee in the White House. Well let’s put aside the obvious policy issues that might concern us, that Obama is insufficiently leftist. If he is even leftist in any sense that we might understand. That said, I had to laugh at Tony Blankley on Left Right & Centre trying to justify his claim from the Washington Times that Obama was a Marxist. Yeah, right.
Blankley is a normally sensible sort of person whose opinion is worth listening to, but if this excerpt from his column gives you pause for thought – well, I wouldn’t blame you at all…
And now we have Mr. Obama’s genuinely shocking words from a 2001 National Public Radio interview: “But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties … And one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change … The Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day … The Framers had that same blind spot … the fundamental flaw of this country.”
Now, just as the left often baselessly throws around the word “racist,” the right is often extravagant with its charge of Marxism. But those accurate, in context words of Mr. Obama must raise in the mind of any reasonable person the suspicion that Mr. Obama’s heart and soul is dangerously close if not fully seized of a Marxist (or perhaps Marxist Christian liberation theology) view of human and economic relations.
Erm… yes. Okay. I read Obama’s words and I think Nick Clegg could have uttered it without a smirk, or indeed many German Christian Democrats (granted not CSU members, although who knows – perhaps their populism would have gotten them across the line).
We live in dangerous days. The world economy teeters on the edge of the abyss. The exiting American president is a failed thing. An envious world smells a momentarily vulnerable America. The political beneficiary of Republican failure believes our Constitution is fatally flawed. He may be a committed Marxist. And if he held the presidency for four years, it would be the longest stretch that he ever held a full-time job. God save the republic.
“He may be a committed Marxist”. Or a Martian, or a member of the Rotary Club. Or more likely given his public pronouncements on an host of issues he’s none of these things. But go ahead, by all means, indulge in the paranoia that sometimes seems to grip the left and right wings of the US body politic on a ridiculously regular occasion.
Obama is a man of his time, as much as McCain is of his, and he’s a pretty ordinary US liberal. And in some ways not even that liberal.
But for all that Obama in the White House seems a qualitative improvement on the Republicans getting four more years. And yet it is curious how tentatively one might express the idea that he was there, or thereabouts.
Perhaps it is a natural cynicism, or caution. Or perhaps it is a sense that this could all go wrong, that once more for leftists, or more accurately in this instance progressives, defeat could be snatched from the jaws of victory. John Dickerson on Slate today made the point that:
An Obama loss would mean the majority of pundits, reporters and analysts were wrong. Pollsters would have to find a new line of work, since Obama has been ahead in all 159 polls taken in the last six weeks. The massive crowds that have regularly turned out to see Obama would turn out to have meant nothing. This collective failure of elites would provide such a blast of schadenfreude that Republicans like Rush Limbaugh would be struck speechless (another historic first).
But we’ve never been here before. Race plays a part. How much is yet to be determined. The really worrying issue is whether it is sufficient to overturn those poll numbers, whether in the safety, comfort and secrecy of the polling place a shift of 4 or 5 % of the vote towards McCain could occur simply because of a sense of ‘…not now’. Robert Scheer made the point on NPRs Left Right & Centre that were a white candidate exactly like Obama running for the Democrats he would be walking away with the election. I don’t like that thought, but it somehow rings true. And while part of the genius of the Obama campaign has been to make race somehow less obvious as a factor – has there been a candidate in recent memory who in his visual appearance seems to channel the early 1960s as successfully as Obama? – it exists nonetheless.
On a sobering Slate Gabfest podcast over the weekend Dickerson noted that the ‘undecideds’ are problematic and dependent on polls and states their numbers can be between “6% or 12%”. He noted that “Joe the Plumber said he was undecided and yet there was no way in the world Joe the Plumber would vote for Barack Obama”. Interestingly he suggested that usually ‘undecideds break to the challenger i.e. Obama…’… but he also noted that the McCain camp was convinced that by pushing the ‘lack of experience’ issue they could see those votes come back to them. We shall see. Dickerson thought that many used the ‘experience’ issue as a cover for issues of race. And he also pointed to the polls from the Clinton/Obama primaries where people said they were voting for Obama but on the day they shifted – in some cases – towards Clinton. That said, as in the piece by him quoted above, he also noted that all polls trended to Obama and had for months.
Another point, Jon Stewart made the interesting admission last week to Bill Kristol that had John McCain been the Republican nominee in 2000 he would have voted for him over Al Gore. The funny thing is that I don’t find that entirely unlikely. Stewart always expressed a strong enthusiasm for McCain, and in the ’straight-talking’ incarnation of the latter it is is easy to see how that would have appealed strongly to him. One of the most fascinating dynamics of this campaign, as regards the media, has been the slow revelation of Stewart’s contempt and frustration at what he clearly considers a dismal campaign by McCain, not least the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate. Always a programme coasting along a fine line between humour and appalled incomprehension at the stupidities of political activity, The Daily Show has become angrier and angrier. Quite some feat after eight years of George Bush the younger.
But look, there is one glimmer of comfort. Whatever way November 4th and 5th goes, at least the present incumbent is out. That alone is cause for slight celebration.
I am not going to vote for McCain or Obama. I will vote for a third party candidate in hopes that my vote will help create a viable third party. Both candidates say that they are not going to raises your income taxes.
…………………INCOME TAXES………………
What about the taxes that the big evil corporations pay?
They are just passed to the consumer.
…………WE ARE THE CONSUMER! …………
They all grow government at any cost to the taxpayer.
http://nomedals.blogspot.com
“Whatever way November 4th and 5th goes, at least the present incumbent is out. That alone is cause for slight celebration.”
Indeed WbS.
How can you best sum up his 8 year legacy…? Wars, corruption, greed and misery….
Mr. Barr then for you Jason?
harpymarx, that’s the long and short of it.
Readers of the Cedar Lounge undoubtedly know all of this already, but I want to remind comrades of another Democrat, a genuine liberal Democrat, even a New Deal Democrat, who presided over the most important civil rights legislative in a century and favored public works, regulations and a Great Society.
He went far beyond Obama in terms of public policy. My goodness, he even talked about the poor (you’ve heard nary a thing advocating for them this election) and a War on Poverty. He was the man who ordered John McCain to bomb Vietnamese villages (a war crime). LBJ became one of the most reviled sitting presidents in history and ended up having to bow out.
So before we get our hopes up lets remember that imperialism is imperialism and there is no good imperialism. Obama becomes the head of the Empire. We will learn to revile him as well.
But look, there is one glimmer of comfort. Whatever way November 4th and 5th goes, at least the present incumbent is out. That alone is cause for slight celebration.
Well, no. If it all went horribly wrong tomorrow, replacing Bush-Cheney with McCain-Palin would be no cause for celebration.
Thankfully, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Even with a 5% Bradley-type effect, on current poll numbers Obama would squeeze home with 278 electoral votes.
And while it’s different this time – a presidential rather than a senate or house campaign – Nate Silver on fivethirtyeight.com has demonstrated that there is no evidence of a Bradley effect in the 2006 Congressional elections.
Tomorrow’s going to be a big night, a rare time to celebrate for progressives. Sure, there may be disappointments and dirty compromises ahead, but I’ll raise a big glass to Barack Hussein Obama tomorrow night (well, Wednesday morning
)
Rustbelt, that’s a fair point, but incremental steps post-Bush are absolutely essential. It’s too much to hope that there will be root and branch change, but a softer cough would be no harm as a starting place.
Damian, I hope you’re right. What figures give you 278?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/
If you give McCain all the states where he’s within 5 points – McCain takes Florida, Virginia and Ohio, Obama holds on to Pennsylvania, Colorado and Nevada.
While I’m nervous saying it, I really don’t think it’ll be that close.
Yeah, that does it, doesn’t it? This dynamic where we *think* he’ll make it but we’re not certain, it’s sort of interesting in an unpleasant way…
“While I’m nervous saying it, I really don’t think it’ll be that close.”
Like when one says there is no God when really wasted.
“Or a Martian”
It was McCain who’s been campaigning in Roswell.
During the primaries, Chris Rock made an appeal, particularly to blacks, to support Obama thus:” How are you going to feel in 50 years time when your grand-kids ask what it was like to support the first African-American president right from the beginning and you have to say ‘I voted for the white lady’.” I think there has been a tipping point even for whites where this is more significant than the Bradley effect. He doesn’t even need the dead gran bounce.
I see Knoxville Crotch has gone wildly Obama. The first voter looked suspiciously like David Spade. And even though Nader got zero, it does tell people he’s on the ballot. And I hear Al Franken is in a tight race, must find out how that goes.
I’m half-inclined to hope it’ll be close just because it was so much fun eight years ago.
Looks to me like the Bradley effect now belongs in the dustbin of history, if it ever really existed at all:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/persistent-myth-of-bradley-effect.html
As for Obama being just another imperalist, that’s undoubtedly true, it’s even part of the job description. But it’s questionable as to whether he’ll be another LBJ, given that the empire is no longer in the high noon of its potency and power, but is rather beginning a long descent from ‘global hegemon’ to ‘just another country’.
We are truly through the looking glass here, people (always wanted to say that) and reasoning via historical analogy (which is never reliable at the best of times) won’t be much help at all from this point onwards.
We are truly through the looking glass here, people
JFK? Not perhaps a parallel we want to run too closely (he says, reasoning via historical analogy).
For me one of the most instructive stories I heard about McCain was that during one of his senate campaign he wife ran her hands through his sparse crop of hair and made a comment about him going bald. The jocus McCain responded that at least he didn’t plaster on two layers of makeup like a trollop you c*nt.
It strikes me that a forceful man like that, or to be honest an asshole like that, would hardly be able to muster a team around him that would be able to discuss strategy in an effective manner. There would be a lot of pressure to be a yes man.
Personality, more than age, may be part of the story as well.
What if there never was a “Bradley Effect”?
Exactly – Bradley may have been more a case of bad polling than latent racism.
And as several people have pointed out on fivethirtyeight and elsewhere, there are plenty of reasons someone can give to a pollster for not voting Obama that don’t touch on race – he doesn’t share my values, he’s inexperienced, he’s the biggest marxist since groucho – so there’s less pressure to not appear racist.
And if you apply this to the primary – particularly New Hampshire – with Hillary there were fewer clear cut differences, so race loomed up. And so some degree of a Bradley effect could have come into play. With Obama v McCain there’s more substantial differences.
Have to say I’m veering between worrying that it’s going to be too close for comfort and excitedly thinking that it’ll all be over by midnight with Obama sweeping Georgia on route to a 400 seat landslide….
I dont know if its accurate to call the New Hampshire vote a Bradley effect. That was early in the campaign when Obama was working to prove himself against what appeared to be one of the Demoncrats most formidable candidate. They may have gone for what they felt was experience. New Hampshire is a pretty liberal place so not sure if they would have succummbed to the race card but who knows.
turnout looks like it will be very high in some states fom what i gather off cnn
Anyone who has lived in the US should know that race and its various permutations underlies almost every debate there. That is why an Obama win, for all its limitations would be astonishing. But remember that Democrats have been telling white voters that Obama isn’t an American black, and that his dad is white, and any other way you can take attention off his race while pandering to those for whom its a problem. And lets not even talk about how they handled the Muslim ‘allegation.’ But still, this is historical.
No, it’s historic. It’ll be historical tomorrow.
I think the polls are due to close in Virginia at 7 or 7.30 with exit polls there giving a good indication of any landslide. I did find myself wondering about Kansas which seems to be so firmly red-state as not be be worth mentioning, yet was the subject of a book a few years ago which sought to undermine the whole red/blue state distinction.
I noticed Jeremy Vine on the BBC say that all states were winner-takes-all, yet I’m sure some (small) states have split decisions.
If McCain does get stuffed, there does seem to be enough blame to go around to ensure that Palin isn’t looking like a viable candidate for 2012.
He has been a candidate curiously adrift. Perhaps it is his age, and yet he remains a vigorous man. Or perhaps it’s a generational thing, and time moves on. But all told it has not been to his benefit. Not at all.
I’ve read it argued that both McCain’s driving egotism (let’s face it, you need it for politics) and his biggest handicap derive from the same source: the sense of entitlement of this son and grandson of senior US admirals who has had his paths cleared for him (the fact that he should have been drummed several times out of the Navy as being a quite poor officer and pilot is perhaps the most blatant).
No, he should be be President because he’s doggone suffered for an ungrateful US nation. Didn’t you know tht he was a POW? Why does he have to stoop to this ‘election’ crap anyway? Who does the uppity Obama think he is? Hello, POW?
I noticed Jeremy Vine on the BBC say that all states were winner-takes-all, yet I’m sure some (small) states have split decisions.
I think Maine and Nebraska split their votes in the Electoral College on a district basis
Any popular vote predictions?
I’m sticking my finger in the air and saying 52% for Obama. Can’t see it going much higher than that.
Yep, I’d agree there. Any higher and the Democrats will sweep all ahead of them…
I did find myself wondering about Kansas which seems to be so firmly red-state as not be be worth mentioning, yet was the subject of a book a few years ago which sought to undermine the whole red/blue state distinction.
It also said that it had the fewest tourists of any of the states, which naturally tempted me to go. Unfortunately the prices for getting there were prohibitive…
I’ve travelled through Kansas. It’s very flat, very empty and very dull. Tourists don’t go for good reasons. Wichita Linesman is an ace tune all the same.
It is indeed. Okay. Let’s put this the other way, what about McCains share of the vote?
McCain and Obama are closely tied at this moment in time for the win
with them both have around 50% but Obama currently leading with 56% of the vote and McCain having 44%
Isn’t that a bit contradictory?