It's an Obama nation
Yesterday I said that seven or eight points was too much of a deficit for John McCain to make up. A commenter pointed out that McCain didn't have to make up those seven or eight points, but only to overcome Barack Obama's lead in several key states. This might be possible when you're down one or two points nationally. But a bigger deficit than that in the popular vote makes it unlikely that you'll be able to put together any combination of states that will yield 270 electoral votes. And it's worth remembering that only once in modern times- in an election whose popular vote differential was less than one percent- has the result in the Electoral College not followed that of the popular vote.
I take no pleasure in having been right. The inevitability of last night's result is of no comfort. All that helps is a sense of the rhythms of history, a determination to learn from our mistakes- and a realization that not everything about the new political landscape is a disaster.
Under the circumstances, losing five seats in the Senate and twenty in the House means that we got off easily. Barack Obama will not have the one-sided Congress the prospect of which made his presidency seem so frightening. While we lost Liddy Dole and several other good people, we kept our Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, and appear to have narrowly averted the election of arch-moonbat Al Franken in Minnesota.
Despite the Obamamania in which the nation is currently engaged, the challenges the new president faces are formidable, and while wishing him well we might perhaps be forgiven the passing reflection that his re-election is very far from being a sure thing.
Winning the presidency three elections in a row is tough under any circumstances, but George W. Bush doomed us. Nobody but a fool believes that Saddam Hussein lacked either the capacity or the intention of reassembling his arsenal of WMD's once the world's back was turned. But still, invading Iraq was a monumental blunder. Neither Bush 41 himself nor Brent Scowcroft nor James Baker nor any of the other grownups of that administration made any secret of the many and cogent reasons why Saddam Hussein's government wasn't toppled in 1991. Those reasons are all too obvious now.
Having toppled Saddam, we had no moral choice but to fight to give the Iraqis a chance to emerge with a stable, viable country in which people stood an excellent chance of going to the market without being blown up by a suicide bomber. "If you break it, you own it," Colin Powell famously told Dubyah in the runup to the invasion, and- although he seemed to forget it later, when he endorsed a candidate whose very candidacy was predicated on not honoring our moral responsibility to the Iraqi people- Powell was right. We had to see the thing through.
But seeing it through made last night inevitable. Now, at long last, George W. Bush is history. He no longer defines either the Republican Party, nor how the electorate views it. In 2010 and 2012, it will be the Obama administration, and not the current one, upon which the electorate will pass judgment. All Republicans everywhere need to heave a huge sigh of relief. We get to go on the offensive now- and there figures to be plenty of available ammunition.
Yes, last night's result was indeed inevitable. It probably became inevitable the moment the decision was made to invade Iraq. The nomination of John McCain gave the GOP a better shot than it ever could have had with any of the other candidates, and while the selection of Sarah Palin turned out to be a net negative (at least as far as the this year), for a while it energized the base enough to turn this election into what it never figured to be: a horse race.
The collapse of the markets (arguably more the fault of Democrats who, uncharacteristically, opposed Republican legislation to more closely regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than of anyone else, but inevitably blamed on the party in the White House) caused the bottom to fall out. I do not think that John McCain would have won even if Wall Street had not tanked. But when it did, any realistic chance of an upset went a glimmering.
Bush hatred helped doom John Kerry in 2004; Obama hatred helped doom John McCain. Malice is a turn-off. That's a lesson the Democrats clearly didn't learn in 2004. Hopefully, the Republicans will learn it this time out.
The idiots who kept insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and kept emphasizing his middle name (as if to imply that anybody named Hussein had to be a terrorist)and kept repeating discredited and obviously scurrilous personal attacks against Obama accomplished one thing, and one thing only: they effectively gave Obama plausible deniability when it came to valid criticisms of his history and record. The voters were so used to hearing garbage from the haters that they assumed that anything bad they heard about Barack Obama must also be garbage. The syncophantic media certainly helped, but our own lunatic fringe played a huge role in enabling the most liberal candidate the Democrats have run since George McGovern to be perceived by the electorate as a comparative moderate.
The wingnuts have to be contained next time out. Any conservative who has any desire at all to see another conservative ever sit in the Oval Office needs to make it a habit over the next four years to come down like a load of bricks on the haters in our own party.
Having a Democrat in the White House, and especially one of Barack Obama's ideology, is going to motivate Republicans wonderfully. Fundraising will probably be much easier. And with imagination, foresight, money and organizational competence, even if the dominance of the blogosphere the GOP enjoyed in 2004 can't be regained, at least next time out we will be able to compete on an equal basis. Somebody needs to give Matt Margolis a well-paying job with the RNC, and have him devote his time to an all-out fight to rebuild a Republican web presence capable of challenging the nutroots in 2010 and 2012.
Obviously, the money and organizing effort it requires to rebuilt the "ground game" the Republican party and the Bush campaign had in 2004 is absolutely necessary to our chances next time out. From voter registration to the election day operation, every aspect of the Republican effort in this realm needs to emulate the well-oiled machines that were the GOP effort in 2004 and the Democratic effort in 2008 if the Republicans are going to re-take either Congress or the White House.
Motivated by the devoutly-believed myth that John Kerry was undone by Bush-orchestrated "swift boating"(actually, the Swift Boaters were individuals who had served with Kerry in Vietnam and who were unaffiliated with either the Bush campaign or the Republican party, who brought forward their concerns about Kerry's suitability to be president at their own initiative), the Obama campaign put together an "anti-smear" site which effectively spun every charge laid against Obama, his history or his record as a slander. The truth was not always well served by this effort, and the site engaged in its own smear tactics without compunction. But there can be no doubt that, coupled with the inadvertent contribution of Republican idiots and an Obama-loving media which simply refused to do its job when it meant putting The One in a bad light, the site was tremendously effective. Ready-made rebuttals were available there for any less than industrious "fact checker" inquiring into a charge made against Obama, and once the Obama party line had been accepted. it proved impossible to move these supposedly neutral arbiters of the facts off of it.
There needs to be a similar site and a similar effort for the Republicans in 2012.
All in all, last night's result wasn't as bad as it could have been- and, once the first boot had hit the ground in Iraq, it was probably inevitable. But in 2010, it will be the Obama administration the voters will pass judgment on- and there will doubtless be plenty to judge. The very size and intractability of the problems facing America at this hour in her history raise serious doubts as to whether any candidate of either party elected yesterday could have gone into the 2012 campaign with better than a fifty-fifty chance of being re-elected. If we were going to lose the White House, this was probably the best possible year to do so.
In the meantime, let's hope President-elect Obama exercises more than his tongue in helping to suppress the childishly malicious partisanship of those in his own party. It is in our own interest, as well as America's, that we Republicans do the same.
There is a story that on his way home after learning of his defeat in his first race for the Illinois legislature, Abraham Lincoln tripped over something. Just as he was about to sprawl headlong, he somehow managed to catch his balance.
"A slip- but not a fall," he thought to himself, wondering whether the same description might in time seem to describe the defeat he'd just suffered. And so it did.
The same can be true of this defeat- if Republicans are willing to learn for it, and to do what needs doing to ensure that defeat in 2008 is followed by victory in 2010 and 2012. The moment in history is favorable for just such a reversal.
But we're going to have to make it happen- and the effort needs to start today.
And now, the speeches, if you missed them. Both men should be congratulated for them.
I take no pleasure in having been right. The inevitability of last night's result is of no comfort. All that helps is a sense of the rhythms of history, a determination to learn from our mistakes- and a realization that not everything about the new political landscape is a disaster.
Under the circumstances, losing five seats in the Senate and twenty in the House means that we got off easily. Barack Obama will not have the one-sided Congress the prospect of which made his presidency seem so frightening. While we lost Liddy Dole and several other good people, we kept our Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, and appear to have narrowly averted the election of arch-moonbat Al Franken in Minnesota.
Despite the Obamamania in which the nation is currently engaged, the challenges the new president faces are formidable, and while wishing him well we might perhaps be forgiven the passing reflection that his re-election is very far from being a sure thing.
Winning the presidency three elections in a row is tough under any circumstances, but George W. Bush doomed us. Nobody but a fool believes that Saddam Hussein lacked either the capacity or the intention of reassembling his arsenal of WMD's once the world's back was turned. But still, invading Iraq was a monumental blunder. Neither Bush 41 himself nor Brent Scowcroft nor James Baker nor any of the other grownups of that administration made any secret of the many and cogent reasons why Saddam Hussein's government wasn't toppled in 1991. Those reasons are all too obvious now.
Having toppled Saddam, we had no moral choice but to fight to give the Iraqis a chance to emerge with a stable, viable country in which people stood an excellent chance of going to the market without being blown up by a suicide bomber. "If you break it, you own it," Colin Powell famously told Dubyah in the runup to the invasion, and- although he seemed to forget it later, when he endorsed a candidate whose very candidacy was predicated on not honoring our moral responsibility to the Iraqi people- Powell was right. We had to see the thing through.
But seeing it through made last night inevitable. Now, at long last, George W. Bush is history. He no longer defines either the Republican Party, nor how the electorate views it. In 2010 and 2012, it will be the Obama administration, and not the current one, upon which the electorate will pass judgment. All Republicans everywhere need to heave a huge sigh of relief. We get to go on the offensive now- and there figures to be plenty of available ammunition.
Yes, last night's result was indeed inevitable. It probably became inevitable the moment the decision was made to invade Iraq. The nomination of John McCain gave the GOP a better shot than it ever could have had with any of the other candidates, and while the selection of Sarah Palin turned out to be a net negative (at least as far as the this year), for a while it energized the base enough to turn this election into what it never figured to be: a horse race.
The collapse of the markets (arguably more the fault of Democrats who, uncharacteristically, opposed Republican legislation to more closely regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than of anyone else, but inevitably blamed on the party in the White House) caused the bottom to fall out. I do not think that John McCain would have won even if Wall Street had not tanked. But when it did, any realistic chance of an upset went a glimmering.
Bush hatred helped doom John Kerry in 2004; Obama hatred helped doom John McCain. Malice is a turn-off. That's a lesson the Democrats clearly didn't learn in 2004. Hopefully, the Republicans will learn it this time out.
The idiots who kept insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and kept emphasizing his middle name (as if to imply that anybody named Hussein had to be a terrorist)and kept repeating discredited and obviously scurrilous personal attacks against Obama accomplished one thing, and one thing only: they effectively gave Obama plausible deniability when it came to valid criticisms of his history and record. The voters were so used to hearing garbage from the haters that they assumed that anything bad they heard about Barack Obama must also be garbage. The syncophantic media certainly helped, but our own lunatic fringe played a huge role in enabling the most liberal candidate the Democrats have run since George McGovern to be perceived by the electorate as a comparative moderate.
The wingnuts have to be contained next time out. Any conservative who has any desire at all to see another conservative ever sit in the Oval Office needs to make it a habit over the next four years to come down like a load of bricks on the haters in our own party.
Having a Democrat in the White House, and especially one of Barack Obama's ideology, is going to motivate Republicans wonderfully. Fundraising will probably be much easier. And with imagination, foresight, money and organizational competence, even if the dominance of the blogosphere the GOP enjoyed in 2004 can't be regained, at least next time out we will be able to compete on an equal basis. Somebody needs to give Matt Margolis a well-paying job with the RNC, and have him devote his time to an all-out fight to rebuild a Republican web presence capable of challenging the nutroots in 2010 and 2012.
Obviously, the money and organizing effort it requires to rebuilt the "ground game" the Republican party and the Bush campaign had in 2004 is absolutely necessary to our chances next time out. From voter registration to the election day operation, every aspect of the Republican effort in this realm needs to emulate the well-oiled machines that were the GOP effort in 2004 and the Democratic effort in 2008 if the Republicans are going to re-take either Congress or the White House.
Motivated by the devoutly-believed myth that John Kerry was undone by Bush-orchestrated "swift boating"(actually, the Swift Boaters were individuals who had served with Kerry in Vietnam and who were unaffiliated with either the Bush campaign or the Republican party, who brought forward their concerns about Kerry's suitability to be president at their own initiative), the Obama campaign put together an "anti-smear" site which effectively spun every charge laid against Obama, his history or his record as a slander. The truth was not always well served by this effort, and the site engaged in its own smear tactics without compunction. But there can be no doubt that, coupled with the inadvertent contribution of Republican idiots and an Obama-loving media which simply refused to do its job when it meant putting The One in a bad light, the site was tremendously effective. Ready-made rebuttals were available there for any less than industrious "fact checker" inquiring into a charge made against Obama, and once the Obama party line had been accepted. it proved impossible to move these supposedly neutral arbiters of the facts off of it.
There needs to be a similar site and a similar effort for the Republicans in 2012.
All in all, last night's result wasn't as bad as it could have been- and, once the first boot had hit the ground in Iraq, it was probably inevitable. But in 2010, it will be the Obama administration the voters will pass judgment on- and there will doubtless be plenty to judge. The very size and intractability of the problems facing America at this hour in her history raise serious doubts as to whether any candidate of either party elected yesterday could have gone into the 2012 campaign with better than a fifty-fifty chance of being re-elected. If we were going to lose the White House, this was probably the best possible year to do so.
In the meantime, let's hope President-elect Obama exercises more than his tongue in helping to suppress the childishly malicious partisanship of those in his own party. It is in our own interest, as well as America's, that we Republicans do the same.
There is a story that on his way home after learning of his defeat in his first race for the Illinois legislature, Abraham Lincoln tripped over something. Just as he was about to sprawl headlong, he somehow managed to catch his balance.
"A slip- but not a fall," he thought to himself, wondering whether the same description might in time seem to describe the defeat he'd just suffered. And so it did.
The same can be true of this defeat- if Republicans are willing to learn for it, and to do what needs doing to ensure that defeat in 2008 is followed by victory in 2010 and 2012. The moment in history is favorable for just such a reversal.
But we're going to have to make it happen- and the effort needs to start today.
And now, the speeches, if you missed them. Both men should be congratulated for them.
Comments
Thanks to the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party and the ridiculous attacks, when I had legitimate questions regarding Obama's associations and history regarding Ayers and the like, the sound of crickets chirping was deafening.
Of course the MSM did not do their job, but the bill will come due for that as well.
Great writing here Mr.Faber, I plan to become a regular.