fallout, political and geopolitical

[eirias]

Well, that was disappointing.

The thing I think will be interesting, now that a Kerry failure seems all but certain, is to watch the left react to the news that they/we have no mandate. We have been behaving for four years as a majority party kept out of power on false pretenses. The present results of this election indicate that that is false. A narrow majority of the country wants things that are inimical to liberal politics. How is the Democratic party going to cope with this?

I've heard competing (though not mutually exclusive) suggestions as to what the Democrats need to do in four years to stop their slide into irrelevancy:
1) Build more of middle America into their base politically;
2) Eschew the intellectual stuff and pick a candidate who's more personable/principled/interesting.

The problem with 1) is that if they try to do this by moving toward the center, they risk leaving behind some of the core constituents - myself included - who just can't stomach majority views on certain issues (homosexuality, for instance). And if they try to do it by moving toward the left socially, they're going to lose that majority whose views I can't stomach. And if they try to do it by moving toward the center socially and toward the left fiscally... actually, that might even work, except that sort of candidate would suck and I would be hard pressed to vote for him/her. I was nervous enough about Kerry's protectionism and anti-marriage stance as it is.

The problem with 2) is... actually, that might work too, if such a person existed in the Democratic party. (Okay - that's unfair - Russ Feingold manages to be all three. But I don't think the rest of the country loves him as much as we do in Wisconsin.) The trouble is that we risk having a candidate who is too single-minded and not bright enough for the job - and again, I would have great difficulty supporting such a person.

All in all, I think my biggest lesson from this election cycle is that I'm in a minority, politically speaking, and given what the Democrats will likely have to do to regain power, it's only going to get worse for me for a while.

Graham and I were talking about the likely international reaction to this. He worries that a clear Bush mandate will decrease popular opinion of us abroad. Me, I'm not so sure; my impression has been that "the average Joe" overseas has assumed broad American support for Bush anyway - non-Americans I've met have always been surprised to find out that I disliked Bush. So I don't worry about that so much. I do worry that with nothing left to lose, this administration will become even more reckless as far as foreign policy goes. But those fears may be overblown - fear of losing popular support doesn't seem to have guided their actions much in the past four years, so perhaps it is reasonable to assume they won't actually get any less accountable for their screw-ups than they already have been.

Not that that's particularly reassuring.

At least Feingold won. Actually, every other election I voted in went the way I voted - it's hard to ask for a result better than that. And local politics most likely stands a greater chance of affecting me in the short term. Federal politics, and politics in other states, will be most relevant when I'm on the job market in 2-3+ years.

(Barring a draft, of course. But Bush and his top leaders have shown no signs that they know how bad things are in Iraq, and no signs that they know what they need to do to improve the situation, and no signs at all that they recognize the mission has been understaffed from day one - so why worry that they'll start now?)

Comments

[eldan.livejournal.com]

So far, most of the rest of the world distinguish between their hatred of America's govt and their generally fairly warm view of Americans [as per this survey at least (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/viewsofamerica/table/0,15223,1327308,00.html)]. One of the reasons I'm depressed about this result is that I could see this changing now. I hope I'm wrong.

For the more liberal parts of the world (and for me personally) there is one thing in all this that really does seem to argue that there is something essentially rotten in America: the overwhelming success of the institutionalise-homophobia amendments.

[cos]

Yes, the Republicans' #1 get out the vote tool in many important states (especially Ohio), was a series of anti gay marriage ballot questions. Fundamentalists weren't all that hot about Bush (they see him as not really being on their side, too liberal, gives them lip service), but they sure as hell wanted to get to the polls to vote against gay marriage! And if they're already at the polls, might as well vote for Bush too.

The bright side: Homophobia, at least currently, has a generational term limit. Young people mostly support gay marriage. As a right wing tool for controlling the country, this one has a limited shelf life (another decade or two), unless they manage to do a really good job of transforming the views of the next generation. We can probably stop them from doing so.

[eldan.livejournal.com]

You're right about the amendments as a GOTV tool, and I think the saddest thing is that it worked.

I'm not sure about the generational term limit though. The way that's worked in Europe is that society has in general become more liberal over time, yet now in America we have this big step backwards. I hope you're right, but I can't help thinking that this actually shows us that the trend as a whole is retrograde here.

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

By and large, Joe Not-From-America is pretty good at being able to discern the difference between Americans and America and the American government. That said, I was hearing on NPR about how far opinions of America and our government have sunk in the past four years.... In 2000, about 50% of Spain had a positive opinion of America--now it's down to 14%. And this is one of our allies.

It was really interesting to be abroad in the wake of the 2000 election, to talk with the Italians and Brits about the situation. Overwhelmingly, they were embarassed for us. In Italy, everyone we talked to said that they had looked up to America as a positive example in the world, and that what was happening with Florida made us look like some kind of banana republic, and a complete joke.

It will be similarly interesting to hear what the rest of the world says about this year's election.

As for whether or not there will be a draft... What concerns me is that in 2000, Bush ran as a pro-choice, pro-environment, small-government, fiscal conservative who wouldn't "use our troops for nation building." What he said in that campaign reads like a checklist of the opposite of what his presidential record has been. Given this "say one thing to get elected and do the exact opposite" track record, I expect that we'll be conscripting before the decade is out. (I hope against hope that this does NOT turn out this way, but I think it's tragically realistic.)

[thekat03.livejournal.com]

hey, he kind of got "small government" with his big push towards privatizing stuff

i'm really hoping that the gender-inequality of the draft will continue for bush's term... otherwise, i'll be a prime target of the draft as a health care professional when i graduate
maybe i can draft-dodge by working in an underserved area of the US (which i think i'd like to do anyways)

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

Small government == Department of Homeland Security ?
Small government == No Child Left Behind ?
Small government == Push for Constitutional amendment defining marriage ?
Small government == New Medicare prescription drug entitlement ? (Which is a whole 'nother can of worms all its own)
Small government == Not vetoing a single spending bill?

Though, there will probably be smaller government in the long run... when everything else is driven to the point of collapse.

Oh well.

Good luck not getting (hypothetically) drafted... I am luckily not a prime candidate for it, though depending on the circumstances, one can never be too sure.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I just looked at House numbers on a bill that was put forth in October to reinstate the draft. It failed 2 to 400-something (I forget how many people are in the House). Granted, this was just prior to the election and the point may have been to demonstrate that not even hawks want a draft; it's conceivable that the tune could change now that they're assured another four years. But the process would take some time, and even this bill wouldn't have started conscripting people until June 2005. So, at worst it will buy us some time. That's critical for me, because my partner, at going-on-twenty-five of age, is most likely the youngest male in my social circle, and so he's still got a year and a half until he's in the clear. (It's possible that he and cognative, you're not allowed to die either, just so you know.)

I mean, not that a draft isn't horrible regardless - I don't want to come across as some kind of monster who thinks it's OK if people die as long as they're not the people I love. No, it's still horrible either way. Drafts are an evil. But it's even more horrible when it's your own family's head on the chopping block.

[cognative.livejournal.com]

In the worst case senario of a draft I'm not sure what the technicalities would be. I know it'd be males 18-25ish. But then there are other things that could rule you out. Being a student? Being an only child? Not sure about all of these, I hear different things from different folks. There's always the option of being suddenly gay.

My dad was actually drafted in '68 and he got out of it. We never really talked about it but I'm pretty sure he did it in a slightly dubious way (fake injury).

Either way. I hope it never comes to that. Though I don't beleive Bush for a second when he says he has no plans to institute one.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I've considered the "suddenly gay" thing too. Hey, I've got some cute female friends ;). But actually I think given a draft they would suspend the anti-gay rules in the military. It becomes waaaay too convenient a way to get out of it.

[cognative.livejournal.com]

Don't underestimate people's desire to cling to their prejudices.
I think unless practicly everyone uses it to aovid the draft they wouldn't change it.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Andrew Sullivan, conservative gay blogger, mentioned in one of his essays (http://www.andrewsullivan.com/homosexuality.php?artnum=20010921) that "[a]lready, the military has suspended its discharges of homosexual servicemembers, because in a war, we cannot afford the waste of resources such pointless persecution incurs." He didn't cite any source on that, though. But I think he's a low-ranking "Washington insider," whatever that means.

[mokatz.livejournal.com]

I also seem to remember that they even didn't discharge gays during Vietnam, or at least, that wasn't an excuse to avoid being drafted. I have no evidence of this of course. :)

[cognative.livejournal.com]

gosh darnit. Why can't homophobia work in my favor.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Any Republican who has lost the endorsement of The Economist is clearly not a small government candidate.

[trygve.livejournal.com]

Whoa, I'd heard he ran on a pro-choice platform in a failed campaign for Congress years ago, but he ran as pro-choice in 2000?? Wow, I don't remember that ...

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

He promised a prominent women's rights group that, if elected, he would under no circumstances approve any legislation that limited a woman's reproductive rights. He got their support, and then (as usual) did the opposite.

This was overheard on NPR on my drive home >6 months ago, so my apologies for hazy memory and no linkage. The lady being interviewed was the head of said organization who had Bush's personal, face-to-face promise.

[trygve.livejournal.com]

Whoa, interesting, thanks!

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

I strongly recommend cultivating an NPR addiction.

[trygve.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I sort of stopped listening to it for a month or two there, but I've been listening again all this week (man was that a depressing way to wake up Wednesday morning!), and will probably continue.

[kirin]

I'm not very comfortable calling 51% a "clear mandate", even if it does end up being a clear victory.

To my mind the biggest thing this election shows is that the major parties have managed to neatly divide people using black-or-white hot-button issues, most of which aren't even the importatnt issues. But the sound bites are what stuck, and currently the Republican knee-jerk issues have a slight edge over the Democtratic ones. Bleah.

But yeah. My gut feeling is not that Bush won because a majority of Americans feel that we should, say, invade Iran or something. He won because a big chunk of people that used to be kind of apathetic about voting are still scared of the acceptance homosexuals. (Among other things, of course, but I'm guessing that was a big part of it.)

[gieves.livejournal.com]

I fear that may be right, but I also think that a major problem was that a large proportion of Kerry voters were motivated not by support for their candidate, but by extraordinary antipathy for the opposition. I realize that this also similarly motivated a number of Bush voters with regards to "moral issues", but I think that the lack of genuine and positive support for Kerry himself undermined his campaign.

Bah.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Man, it must be tough for you living in a house divided - I hope darlox isn't the type to gloat. :P

[gieves.livejournal.com]

Only a bit. He's been pretty restrained in general. He did send me this article (http://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/109939163448620.xml) yesterday, though.

My favorite part of the article: "Just because your vote is going to be canceled out by a colossal moron doesn't mean you can't still love that person," he said. "Try to set politics aside."

(darlox then redeemed himself by admitting that he must seem at least as moronic from my perspective as I do for his. Now that, I tell ya, is love... ;-)

[cos]

everyone is in a minority, politically speaking. There is no single coherent bloc of people in the country that forms a majority. The presidency is won by appealing to multiple groups, plus a large chunk of the very large set of people in this country who don't really pay attention and don't have a political ideology. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are really a "majority", and probably haven't been for at least a couple of decades.

Graham is right, in that now the US as a whole has clearly taken on and accepted responsibility for the things Bush has done. We will face more distrust from other countries, both collectively and individually. But it may not be a very big change.

As for what will happen with the Democratic party: the big fight for the soul of the party that started with Dean last year, is going to accelerate. The DLC & establishment centrists have failed. Democratic party members, and their voters, saw that argument in public during the primaries, and saw the result. Our path to taking over the party has been made easier. We need to keep working at it, and we will.

A Democratic party that truly pushes progressive values, can win a majority in America. We haven't had that party for a while now.