Tag Archives: Barack Obama

This just in: Hell has frozen over

For once I agree completely with a segment on Fox News. I found this over on Wonkette.

As I mentioned earlier today, I supported Ralph Nader, for a time, in the 2000 election. I’ve pretty much had it with him ever since then. Gore lost Florida by a few hundred votes, and it’s worth noting that in that same election, over 90,000 Floridians voted for Nader. There are plenty of arguments you can make as to what was the turning point in Bush’s “victory” in 2000, but in my mind, this has always been the one: Ralph Nader’s 90,000 votes in Florida. End of story.

Except it’s not the end of the story. For a third-party candidate, Nader actually had a respectable showing nationwide in that election, even buoying interest in the Green Party. But since then he has continued to run ever more irrelevant campaigns, with rapidly dwindling support. Yet he persists, not so much deluded that he might actually win the presidency — he knows he can’t — but deluded that what he’s doing isn’t having a net negative effect on the country.

And then there’s this, the piece from Fox News last night:

Uncle Tom??? Are you kidding me? Ralph, please go away. You have nothing left to contribute to this country.

What does it feel like to believe again?

It’s still sinking in that Barack Obama is going to be our next president. Is it real?

I’m so used to not believing in our leadership, I’m not sure how to handle myself. I would say that I haven’t felt this way since… something, except for the fact that I haven’t ever felt this way.

I was born just as Nixon was falling apart at the height of the Watergate scandal. Although I lived through Gerald Ford’s entire (brief) presidency, the first president I remember is Jimmy Carter. I knew we were supporting him in the 1980 election, and then… that was it. From the time I was in first grade until I was a freshman in college, our country was led by either Ronald Reagan or George Bush (the elder). Whatever enthusiasm I held as a student for native son Walter Mondale and amiable schmuck Michael Dukakis was in vain. (OK, he wasn’t really a schmuck, but even I remember him best for that ridiculous picture of him in the tank with the oversized helmet on his head.)

I turned 18 in 1992, and eagerly attended the (non-binding) primary election to cast my very first vote ever for… Bill Clinton. I voted for him again in the general, and again for re-election in 1996. I believed in him, and in Al Gore, though my enthusiasm diminished over years of rightward drift, ineffective battles with Newt Gingrich’s Republican House, and the whole Monica Lewinsky thing, which as far as I (and just about everyone I knew) was concerned, should have been a non-issue. But I never really admired Bill Clinton.

In 2000 I jumped on the “there’s no difference between the two major parties” bandwagon, going so far as to place a Nader/LaDuke bumper sticker on my car, before finally coming to my senses and casting my vote for Al Gore. Sadly, my primary season prophecy that, if nominated and elected, George W. Bush would find some excuse, any excuse, to go (back) to war with Iraq proved true. The rest is history. Except it’s still happening.

In 2004, I supported John Kerry, but I certainly related to the sentiment conveyed best by the infamous website, JohnKerryIsADouchebagButImVotingForHimAnyway.com. Seriously, Democrats, one of the demonstrably worst presidential terms in history, and this is the best you can do? And of course, the Democrats’ best wasn’t good enough.

But something significant did come out of that 2004 election. A (relatively) young senatorial candidate out of Illinois named Barack Obama made his debut on the stage of the Democratic National Convention, delivering a speech of such eloquence, substance and vision, that many (myself included) were left wondering, “Why didn’t we nominate that guy?”

This year we had our chance. Despite my leanings from day one of his campaign, soooo long ago, it was not until the eve of the Democratic caucus in February that I committed myself to supporting Obama. The eloquence of his speeches was matched by his calm, focused demeanor, by his thoughtful introspection and progressive vision in place of the usual political canned answers and paint-by-numbers policy platforms, and by the smooth, unfailing efficiency and organization of his campaign. He was simply the candidate for this moment in time. As America entered its darkest hour, here was a gleaming ray of hope for a new day, a new era, a new America.

So, like I said at the beginning, I’ve never felt the kind of passionate support for a candidate (although SLP described it as a “man crush”) as I did for Barack Obama, and I have never been so elated by an electoral victory. There simply has not been the kind of candidate, from either party, to move people like this in my lifetime. Some would argue Reagan, perhaps, but I believe (and always have) that Reagan’s vision was fundamentally flawed, tragically skewed to point our nation inevitably in the direction it has headed over the past 8 years, and largely over the past three decades.

A new day is upon us. This election is profoundly significant for many reasons, not the least of which is the unprecedented transformation in race relations that is now made possible by the pending inauguration of our first African-American president. That’s huge, it’s profound, and it’s long overdue. But that’s just part of it. As President-Elect Obama has said himself, there is not a black America, or a white America, or a Latino or Asian or Native American America. There is the United States of America. And today, despite the 20 red states on the map and the 46% of us who voted for John McCain, we have never been more united across the many long-standing internal divisions we’ve faced, than we are today.

The last politician who inspired this kind of enthusiasm and who brought America this kind of vision was Robert Kennedy. The last president who entered office at such a challenging time, with such a transformative vision, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I believe Barack Obama has the potential to have the enduring positive impact on this country that FDR did, and perhaps even more. He may usher in a new era in the world, an era of greater understanding and cooperation and vision for our collective future as one people, one planet.

That’s a tall order. Barack Obama is brilliant, gifted, and committed, but he is just one man. The kind of transformation his election demands is something that will affect, and be affected by, all of us. But it’s a transformation we should undertake, to believe in ourselves again, to believe in each other, to believe in a world that will be better tomorrow than it is today, and to believe that anything is possible. We just have to make it happen.

One step forward, two steps back

Yea, Barack Obama was elected, and the heavens did smile. But what of these state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, (apparently) passed even in places such as California?

Yesterday was a major triumph for civil rights as race is concerned, 40-odd years on in the fight. The jubilation over that victory is tempered by the setbacks in today’s civil rights struggle, just as some real progress was starting to take shape. How many more decades will we drag out this fight before truths we should hold to be self-evident make themselves so?

Don’t be fooled by all of that red territory

America does not vote by the square mile. The electoral college is fundamentally flawed, but it does at least approach an accurate representation of the will of the American populace, as much as the will of 305 million people can be evenly divided amongst 538 electoral votes.

As it stands, the vote is weighted slightly, and unfairly, in favor of states with small populations. I’ll spare you the civics lesson on how the number of votes per state is determined (if you don’t already know, shame on you, Sarah Palin), but suffice to say that each state has at least 3 electoral votes. The inequality here is best summed up in the comparison between Wyoming, our least populous state, and California, our most populous state. Wyoming’s 3 electoral votes reflect the will of its 522,380 residents at a rate of 1 vote per 174,127 people. California’s 55 electoral votes, in contrast, are divided amongst its 36,553,215 residents at a rate of 1 vote per 664,604 people. In other words, a person’s vote in Wyoming counts 3.8 times as much towards the electoral total as a person’s vote in California.

That’s unfair. But there it is. So in short, the will of the citizens of Wyoming is disproportionately represented by almost four times as much as that of the citizens of California, per person.

Nonetheless, it’s worth considering the mass of California’s 55 electoral votes when contemplating a speculative map such as the one below (from Yahoo’s Election Dashboard) — based on the likely outcome as determined by the “prediction markets” — a.k.a. the bookmakers who take bets on who will win the election. Of course, betting on the outcome of the presidential race by an American citizen is illegal. But that doesn’t keep residents of other countries from taking a sporting interest in the outcome. And, given bookmakers’ need for an accurate prediction of the outcome of any wager-worthy event like this, they’re probably more reliable than the latest polls, or even the kind of meta analysis we’re seeing out of FiveThiryEight.com.

As an Obama supporter, I often look at maps like this and am dismayed to see so much red. Geez, I think, Obama may end up squeaking by on this but just look at it — that’s a whole lotta McCain territory out there. But again, the land isn’t voting. The people are. It helps to pay attention to those little numbers on each state. I did a quick tally and found that large, snakelike swath of the west, consisting of Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas all together comprises 55 electoral votes. The same as California.

In fact, the only big red state is Texas, and the only other reasonably big state among them is Georgia. So McCain has two 15-or-more-electoral-votes states, compared with Obama’s nine (California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida), and Virginia and Massachusetts are also larger than any other McCain states.

So there you have it. Remember that land doesn’t vote — people do. And even if, thanks to the electoral college, people’s votes count relatively more if there’s more land between them, ultimately the proportion of voters favoring one candidate or another is not accurately indicated by the amount of red or blue space you see on the map, but by how big those little numbers on the map are.