fallout, political and geopolitical
Nov. 3rd, 2004 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiriasWell, 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?)
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?)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-03 08:08 am (UTC)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.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-03 08:49 am (UTC)Bah.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-03 09:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-03 10:35 am (UTC)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."
(