Ned Flanders, Mitt Romney and liberal schadenfreude

"The billionaire donors I hear are livid ... There is some holy hell to pay. Karl Rove has a lot of explaining to do ... I don't know how you tell your donors that we spent $390 million and got nothing," - A "Republican operative," to HuffPo.

In a 1991 episode of "The Simpsons," Ned Flanders opened a store at the mall selling everyday objects for left-handed people.  His next door neighbor Homer, typically, hoped the store would fail.  When it did, Homer's daughter Lisa sought to stretch her father's emotional intelligence a little bit:

Lisa:  Dad, do you know what schadenfreude is?

Homer:  No, I don't know what 'shaden-frawde' is [sarcastic].  Please tell me, because I'm dying to know.

Lisa:  It's a German term for 'shameful joy,' taking pleasure in the suffering of others.

Homer:  Oh, come on Lisa.  I'm just glad to see him fall flat on his butt! [getting mad]  He's usually all happy and comfortable, and surrounded by loved ones, and it makes me feel...what's the opposite of that shameful joy thing of yours?

Lisa:  Sour grapes.

Homer:  Boy, those Germans have a word for everything!

At times over the past decade, I think my fellow liberals have obsessed a bit too much over the antics and extremism of the conservative media echo chamber.  People like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck spew forth some kind of incendiary bile, twisting the panties of progressives into knots of righteousness indignation...while the plutocrats who actually run the Republican Party (and said media echo chamber) quietly go about their business.

That said, the results on Election Night seem to have turned the right-wing's entire public establishment into a burning ball of incandescent and inchoate rage.  And while Montesquieu is probably right that schaudenfreude is a kind of cowardice, I don't think that applies when the pleasure one takes at the suffering of others is aimed at the comfortable and powerful.  Indeed, one of the most morally repugnant aspects of what passes for American conservatism these days is that its experience of 'shameful joy' tends to manifest itself in a self-righteous and sadistic satisfaction in the struggles of the afflicted.

In an unapologetic elitism, in other words.

Laughing at the failures and foibles of the high and hubristic is (or should be) the very essence of humor in the age of mass democracy.

So, f*ck'em.  If they are stinging from a gigantic karmic bitch-slap, I see no reason for a lefty like me not to groove on the sound.  I'll get back to the thoughtful analysis of what the election of 2012 tells us about our country and its future in other posts in the coming weeks.  But for now, the only responsible thing to do in the face of absurdity -- and the faintest glimpses of an unexpected cosmic justice -- is to laugh your ass off.

And since I'm using funny foreign words in this post, let's pick something in French too, since that'll make them squirm even more.  The phrase 'l'esprit d'escalier' literally means 'the spirit of the staircase."  But in common usage, it refers to the exact moment a person comes up with a clever retort to an embarrassing insult, the sort of thing for which Churchill, Wilde and Parker were renowned.  I don't know about you, but those of us in the 'reality-based' community have had to put up with a wide variety of insults for years now -- to our morality, our patriotism, and our intelligence. 

So what's the clever retort here?

Well, I'm just going to point to the scoreboard.  And give you what's below, for your delectation.  Please note that no mockery or misinterpretation of what follows is necessary.  Just verbatim quotations and images, demonstrating a breathtaking kind of cognitive dissonance, as privileged white males sputter and choke in a desperate refusal to accept the epistemic change that confronts them.

So please know, my fervid conservative friends, that I am temporarily suspending the empathic sensibility that generally informs most of us on the left.  I am not laughing with you, in other words, since you seem capable of neither doubt nor self-deprecation. 

I am laughing at you.  You are welcome to join me.




First, of course, there was the willful denial in the days leading up to the election of the slowly accumulating empirical evidence that Romney wasn't going to have a good night.  This started with the homophobic vilification of Nate Silver.  It continued in the 48 hours before Tuesday, with electoral projections of a Romney landslide by George Will and even Michael Barone, that seemed to be based on nothing but wishful thinking, and the 'conventional wisdom' of others similarly placed and pigmented.

And then there was election night itself, and what followed.

Fox News coverage on election night provided a pitch-perfect peek at the right-wing media echo chamber, and the epistemic closure it seems to foster -- a complete refusal to look at evidence or arguments that don’t come from the like-minded.

The big screens at the Mitt Romney Victory Party at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center were on Fox for most of the evening. When Fox broadcast a positive development for Romney (like the early calls in the deep South), the audience would cheer -- at which point Fox would quickly cut to the party at the ballroom, and the crowd would cheer louder, now seeing themselves broadcast on the screens that were looming over them.  It was, in other words, a gigantic and ideologically re-affirming feedback loop, and a perfect symbol for how detached the most active portions of the Republican Party have become from the country they claim to embody.  That feedback loop finally seemed to unravel when Fox News called Ohio for Obama (and Karl Rove unraveled with it).

The Tory Andrew Sullivan, like me, watched a bit of Fox News on election night.  And he also used the word schadenfreude to describe his motivations for doing so, though as a conservative the alloy had a different mix of shame and joy than mine.  His observations are worth quoting at length:

Yes, I watched for Schadenfreude purposes. These charlatans and money-grubbers have turned the broad tradition of Anglo-American conservatism into Southern Fried Fanaticism - and I wanted to see them crackle in their batter. They have replaced empirical doubt with unerring faith in an ideology that had its moment over thirty years ago and is barely relevant to the world we now live in. That faith has been cynically fused with fundamentalist religion to make it virtually impossible for the GOP to accept that women are the majority of voters in this country, that gay couples are equal to straight ones, that 11 million illegal immigrants simply cannot be expected to "self-deport" en masse by a regime of terrifying policing, that war is a last and not a first resort, that the debt we have is primarily a function of two things: George W. Bush's presidency and the economic collapse his term ended with.

Enjoy the crackle, below.

This one, from Charles A Donovan, echoes the apocalyptic tone found on much of the right Tuesday night: 

We may be on the verge of a new Babylonian captivity for religious conservatives. As we know, the story does not end there.

Some conservatives placed the blame for the evening on Sandy, presumably missing the irony of God's decision to intervene in a way that seemed to boost the fortunes of the 'apostate' President. 

Others blamed my people (college professors, not Jews).

David Gelernter, for example, came straight for me:

We’ve seen an important (though far from decisive) battle in the slow-motion civil war the nation is undergoing: The blue states want to secede not from America but from Americanism. They reject the American republic of God-fearing individuals in favor of the European ideal, which has only been government by aristocracy: either an aristocracy of birth or, nowadays, of ruling know-it-alls — of post-religious, globalist intellectuals (a.k.a. PORGIs)...

You can’t graduate class after class after class of left-indoctrinated ignoramuses without paying the price.  Last night was a down payment.

But we’ve won civil wars and preserved the Union before. We’ll do it again — if we face up to the fact that we need to replace our schools and colleges now; the grace period has lasted a generation, but it’s over. I know we can do it and I’m pretty sure we will do it. Americanism is too strong and brilliant and young to die.

From nationally syndicated conservative radio host Mark Levin, comes perhaps the most revealing and unfiltered response to the election.  If his view is widespread in the Tea Party wing of the party, the chances are not good for a Republican re-boot:

We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our children to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited...We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us, 57 million of us who voted against this yesterday, and they do not get to dictate to us under our Constitution.

We are the alternative. We will resist. We're not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our demise. We're not good losers, you better believe we're sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we're called 'purists.' Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism. We're purists now. And we have to hear this crap from conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives, Republicans.

And then there were those who argued that voters had just placed an iron heel on the neck of American freedom:  

Michael Savage said the election results were confirmation that "our society is being turned into a sort of prison camp."

Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jackson tweeted, "I can't stop crying. America died."

On National Review Online, Ed Whelan wrote that “the great American experiment in constitutional republicanism is in grave peril, if not doomed,” because the nation has been overrun with layabouts: “As the Framers understood, self-government depends on a virtuous citizenry. Instead, we have a growing mass of citizens seemingly wedded to dependency on big-government spending.”

“At the moment, I am convinced America is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, and any talk of the future fills me with dread and horror.”
—Robert Stacey McCain, writing at the American Spectator 

At National Review's The Corner, meanwhile, Mary Matalin stayed classy in her explanation of the evening's events.  She wrote this about President Obama: 

"What happened? A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform."

And then there is this:



The Republican Party, as Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has argued, "has become an insurgent outlier in American politics."  It is ideologically extreme, dismissive of compromise, and "unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science."

While it appears that this may be serving the partisan interests of the more centrist and reality-based Democratic Party, Republican extremism has made it nearly impossible for our political system to properly function.  How can we grapple with something like global warming (or inequality), if nearly one-half of our polity refuses to take policy and governance seriously?
 
As I will argue in a future post, the nation desperately needs a responsible, respectful conservative faction in our public life.  That faction must be prepared to respect empiricism, process and pluralism.  It must respect the loyalty and good intentions of its opponents.  It must inject a sense of limits into our cultural, economic and civic discourse -- and not least, impose that sense of limits on itself too.  None of these things are incompatible with conservatism.  Indeed, upon my reading, these things embody conservatism.

All of us have a stake in what comes next in the Republican Party, and we on the left cannot be so smug as to think that sinking it deeper into the paranoid swamp in the coming years will serve us or the country well.  The panic of the pale and privileged will surely go the way of all flesh eventually.  Tuesday night tells us, perhaps, that they will not take the nation with them.

Congressional delegations FULL of women, Mitt

The next time Mitt Romney chooses to venture down to Washington DC, in search of politically active women of talent and accomplishment, no binders will be necessary.

There are now Congressional delegations full of women -- though of course, the vast majority are Democrats.

Yesterdays election will leave the new 113th Congress with 20 female senators, the most ever.

 
16 of the 20 will be Democrats, reflecting years of party strategy aimed specifically at deepening the bench of nationally viable female candidates.

Joining the new Senate will be Democrats Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.).  All six Democratic women up for reelection -- Sens. Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) -- won their races.

It is not unreasonable to believe that the nation's first female president will come from this group.

That said, while 20 women in the US Senate is progress, the overall number remains abysmally low by international (and moral) standards.  

Ay, oh, way to go Ohio -- Obama is re-elected. And Hope, too.

I'll have more to say about this in a future post, but Obama now has the opportunity to be a truly transformative president.  As the economy improves under his watch, the Affordable Care Act is implemented, and US troops leave Afghanistan, his signal first term accomplishments have the change to be truly historic with a full 8 years.

And what would have happened had Obama lost?  Not only the reversal of what he did, but a rollback of the New Deal too.

And now -- Supreme Court appointments, immigration reform...labor law reform?  Minimum wage indexed to inflation?  A truly fair deal on the deficit?  Global warming legislation?  Universal pre-?

Hope.

Who knew that 47% was a majority?

Andrew Sullivan nails it:

This election, to my mind, is immensely more important than the breakthrough of 2008, after the catastrophe of Bush-Cheney. What it has done is rip open the complete epistemic closure on the Republican right about what America now is. It has revealed that Fox News, Drudge, and the rest have been engaged in a massive propaganda campaign to create an alternative reality and get the rest of us to go along. Americans saw this. They were not fooled. And they made the right call, as they usually do. What was defeated tonight was not just Romney, a hollow cynic, but a whole mountain of mendacity and delusion. That sound you hear is the cognitive dissonance ringing in the ears of ideologues and cynics. Any true conservative longs for that sound, the sound of reality arriving to pierce through fantasy and fanaticism.

We are the ones we have been waiting for. And now we have entrenched it deeply in the history of America and the world. That matters. May the next four years make it matter even more.

A brief jocular interlude: Todd Akin, the Most Interesting Man in the World

10:52pm:  just watched Todd Akin's concession speech, if you can call it that, in the Missouri race for the US Senate.

The transcript:  "GOD!  JESUS!  BENGHAZI!  JESUS!"

Todd Akin is collecting a number of trophies for his case tonight

Knuckle-Dragging Philistine of the Year! 

Most Valuable Theocrat!

and now, The Most Interesting Comb-over in American politics. 

Dude, you could sail a sunfish with that thing.

How to laugh at white people while waiting to vote

For my friends in swing states waiting on line to vote, here are a few relevant (and funny) things to amuse and entertain you while you wait.

Monty Python's take on election night (Silly Party vs. Sensible Party):






Dave Chapelle's 'black George W. Bush':






And finally, Louie C.K. on white privilege:

Democracy is coming, to the U.S.A... (I hope)

Or so says Leonard Cohen...


:

An election guide, and a prediction (or two)

Let's get my predictions out of the way first.

Electoral College:
Obama    303
Romney  235

Others (like the ubiquitous Nate Silver) have Obama with a slightly larger margin, but I've chosen to take a more conservative approach to the swing state results.

I have Obama taking Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, and New Hampshire.
I have Romney winning Florida and North Carolina, though I have a hunch that Obama could pull off a surprise in Florida.

If it breaks this way, Obama doesn't actually have to win Ohio to win the election.  Indeed, he could lose Ohio and Virginia (the two closest of the states I've put in his column), and still win.  Or, to put it differently, if the networks call either Ohio or Virginia for Obama early in the evening, you can be quite certain of an Obama victory.

I am not going to make a specific prediction on the popular vote, since that would be pure guesswork.  Silver has it at 50.9% to 48.3%.  I agree with him that Obama will ultimately win the popular vote -- but I use the word ultimately, because I believe there is a distinct possibility that the leader in the popular vote may change in the weeks to come.  Don't be surprised if Romney is ahead in the popular vote when you go to bed tonight, but Obama gradually catches and passes him as provisional, absentee and mail-in ballots are counted in California, Ohio and elsewhere.

If you'd like to check out a variety of other predictions (a few of which have Romney winning), go here.

I have been reasonably confident of an Obama victory since last year, and nothing I have seen since has caused my view to change. 

Why?  Three reasons.

First, Obama has been a successful president, particularly given the situation he inherited at home and abroad.  While obviously only half the electorate, perhaps, agrees with me in that judgment, only a very small portion of the country (overwhelmingly white and male, and mostly Southern) strongly disagrees.  And Obama himself remains very popular.

Second, as a consequence of Obama's personal popularity and perceived success, the Republican candidate would have to have the unique talent of holding the extreme elements of the party while broadly appealing to the moderate middle.  The primary field was almost entirely drawn from that extreme element, which would inevitably handicap even the most talented of nominees.  In the aftermath of the two conventions, Romney struck me as one of the weakest Republican candidates for president in years (perhaps since Dole).  The campaign appeared to be poorly run, the candidate headed up a party whose most active and vocal wing was extremist and unrestrained, and Romney himself seemed to lack both personal charisma and a policy argument.  Starting in early October Romney proved himself to be a more formidable candidate than I had anticipated, though not in ways that brought much glory to him or the electorate.  To the extent that he had a policy argument, he abandoned it, tacking toward the center rhetorically.  The extremes of his party, desperately hungry for victory, surprisingly restrained themselves too -- in part because Romney's move to the center appeared to be working after the first debate.  This will have some important consequences for how Republicans interpret their defeat tonight, but I'll save that for a different post.

Finally, the extremism of the Republican Party in recent years, and its racialization in particular, has boxed it in demographically and geographically.  It has become the party of the Confederacy:

Other than among white Southern males, President Obama is going to win a popular vote landslide tonight, and will effectively split the non-southern white vote overall.  If one includes the fact that Obama will win over 70% of Latinos and 90% of blacks (who combined will move toward an electoral majority in the next two decades), and close to 2/3rds of voters under the age of 40, one could argue that only two things made this race competitive:  Obama's race, and the poor economy. 


Things to watch for tonight:
First off, if you read anything on the web this afternoon that claims to use exit polls to give you results, ignore it.  Exit poll interviews skew slightly toward the Democrats, and the early leak of the numbers in 2004 fooled a lot of Democrats (and pundits) into thinking Kerry had it in the bag, before the polls had even closed.  Even the news media won't get the results until 5pm, and barring another leak even they won't release them until actual polling closes.

Polls in parts of Florida and all of Virginia close at 7pm, the first swing states to reveal official results.  I sincerely doubt the networks will be able to call Virginia right at 7pm, and an early result in Florida is even more unlikely, because many polls don't close until 8pm, and voters in heavily Democratic precincts will probably still be in line waiting to cast their ballots.  That said, if either state is called for Obama in the first hour or two after the polls close, you can be quite certain that the president is heading for victory.  If Romney wins Florida, Obama still retains a comfortable path to victory.  However, if both FL and VA are called for Romney, things get MUCH more interesting.

Ohio and North Carolina close at 7:30pm.  I anticipate NC will be called for Romney shortly after that.  In Ohio, however, you are likely to still have people in line (particularly in Democratic areas) past 7:30pm.  In the best case scenario, the networks won't call Ohio until after 11pm, and the Ohio vote won't be determinative anyway.  In the worst case scenario, Ohio becomes the pivot, and we have to wait days -- even weeks -- for all ballots to be counted (and legal challenges to be dispensed with).

Polls in NH and PA close at 8pm.  I would guess that both will be called for Obama shortly thereafter.  Colorado and Wisconsin close at 9pm.  If the scenario I've described above plays out, it may be possible for the networks to call the election for Obama shortly after 9pm, but I doubt they will.  They've been criticized in the past both for calling things too soon, and for interfering with the voting out West by doing so.  On the other hand, there is tremendous pressure to get it right first, so you may find some of the reliable web sources (see below) making the call this early.

Race and voter suppression:

Two other likely stories tonight:  voter suppression (and long lines) in FL and OH, and the Latino turnout. 

Voter suppression presents this country with a serious crisis, that must be addressed in the coming months.  I will follow some of the specifics on this blog as the night goes on, though I don't think suppression efforts will determine the ultimate outcome. 

Still, it should be pointed out that for much of American history interference with and restriction of the franchise has been the norm, not the exception.  In the first four decades or so after World War II the franchise was expanded, most significantly in the Jim Crow south.  But we have witnessed a contraction over the past few decades, with voter ID laws as only a part of a broader trend.  The most egregious example is the disenfranchisement of ex-felons, which keeps over 5 million mostly black American men from voting each election. 

The great danger here is that voter suppression, particularly of the poor and minorities, is now in the exclusive and direct self-interest of one of our two political parties -- and demographic changes will push it further in that direction, unless the leadership of the party chooses another path in the wake of Romney's defeat.  Starting in 2000, and picking up great speed since 2008, the Republican Party has deployed a strategy of state-level voter suppression, particularly after a conservative Supreme Court supported it in its 2008 ruling on Indiana's voter ID law.  For the good of the nation, one hopes that Romney's defeat -- and political reality -- fosters a change in Republican strategy.

The U.S. was one of the last countries in the developed world to attain universal suffrage, and even now we do not have a federally protected right to vote.  Voting is not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, and the details of voting and election law are determined and enforced by the states, even for national elections.  Not until 1868 did the phrase 'right to vote' even appear in the Constitution, when the 14th amendment was passed.  According to the majority in Bush v. Gore (2000), "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States."  Americans can vote in presidential elections only if their state legislatures offer them the opportunity, and only under the conditions determined by those legislatures.

For over a decade -- since the 2000 election debacle -- a proposed amendment to the US Constitution has languished on Capitol Hill.  The amendment, proposed by Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), is officially known as House Joint Resolution 28.  It declares that all citizens of the US aged 18 and over "shall have the right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides," and that right cannot be denied or abridged by the federal government, state and local governments, individuals, or public and private entities.  While the amendment has dozens of sponsors, it has never gotten out of committee.  And it has no Republican co-sponsors.

Latino turnout in 2012, if it is high, will not only ease Obama's path to victory -- it will clearly and irreversibly mark the transition to a new multi-racial America.  Because this transition is and will be resisted, this country should seriously consider making the vote a federally protected right.  This may be the last national election in which any party can build a winning coalition with white men at its core, as the Republicans have sought to do.  Latinos were 13% of the vote in swing state Colorado in 2008, for example.  If we find out after 5pm that the number has risen to, say, 18-20%, it is likely to herald a strong showing by Obama.  If turnout of black and young voters is comparable to or greater than 2008, one can draw the same conclusion.

Where to get reliable and interesting information tonight:
I have a few favorite places that I will be checking in on.  Since I don't have any independent sources of information, I will primarily draw on the sites below for what I write here and on Facebook.  All of them are fact-based, and will resist feverish conspiracy mongering and impulsive judgments.

Assuming the site doesn't crash, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight is going to give you the best information on the exit polls, and projections.  If the numbers he's been providing are substantially off, he'll let you know. 

Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo is a really good site to follow as well.  Marshall will be live blogging the election, and reporting on stories and results from around the country in real time.  It will be a particularly good place for information on voting controversies, and he also has stuff on the Senate races and referenda.

Ezra Klein's WonkBlog at the Washington Post is a great site for meta-commentary.

Finally, I'm a huge fan of Andrew Sullivan's blog at the Daily Beast.  You really can't beat the perspective of a witty, well-read gay British conservative Obama supporter.  More to the point, he's the only political blogger I know who keeps a foot in both camps.  So if you want simultaneous information on the election, and left and right commentary, go there.

Romney as the minority candidate

It says quite a bit about race in this country, that the person whose viability as a presidential candidate depends entirely on his deep support from one racial group (Romney, and white men over the age of 40) is portrayed by the mainstream media as having wide appeal...while the candidate who is supported by a strong majority of those voters who will increasingly dominate the electorate in the decades to come (Obama) is depicted as being almost entirely dependent upon 'minorities.'

Privileged and older white men ARE a minority group, people, and will become even more so over time. And their votes count the same as everyone else's. 

And they no longer represent the 'center' or 'core' of anything.  Other than the Republican Party, that is.

Crazy election scenarios, part 1: an electoral college tie

Could the 2012 presidential election result in a tie in the Electoral College?

Yes, and the scenario -- while unlikely -- isn't wildly improbable either.

In order to be elected president, a candidate must win at least 270 electoral votes.  If you tweak the potential results in 7 battleground states, for example, and assume no surprises in those places already assumed to be in one column or the other, you can get to a 269-269 tie.

Three states with 22 electoral votes (Iowa, Nevada, and Wisconsin) would have to be in the Obama camp (all are thought to be leaning that way), while four states with 69 electoral votes (Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia) would have to be in the Romney camp.  Of these 4 only Florida appears to be leaning toward Romney, but all are very close.

Here is the state-by-state breakdown, under this scenario.  The 7 battlegrounds are marked with an '*' (sorry if the formatting is wonky): 

Obama                                                      Romney                                  

California                        55                    Alabama                       9

Connecticut                       7                    Alaska                           3

Delaware                           3                    Arizona                       11

D.C.                                   3                   Arkansas                       6

Hawaii                               4                    Colorado*                    9

Illinois                             20                    Florida*                     29

Iowa*                                6                    Georgia                       16

Maine                                4                    Idaho                             4

Maryland                         10                    Indiana                        11

Massachusetts                 11                    Kansas                           6

Michigan                         16                    Kentucky                       8

Minnesota                        10                    Louisiana                      8

Missouri                          10                    Mississippi                    6

Nevada*                            6                    Montana                        3

New Jersey                      14                    Nebraska                       5

New Mexico                     5                    New Hampshire             4

New York                        29                    North Carolina             15

Oregon                               7                    North Dakota                3

Pennsylvania                   20                    Ohio*                           18

Rhode Island                      4                    Oklahoma                      7

Vermont                            3                    South Carolina                9

Washington                     12                    South Dakota                  3

Wisconsin*                     10                   Tennessee                     11

                                                                Texas                            38

                                                                Utah                                6

                                                                Virginia*                       13

                                                                West Virginia                   3

                                                                Wyoming                         3   

Total                              269                    Total                         269

The 12th amendment to the Constitution is quite clear about what would happen next.  The presidency would be decided by the newly elected House of Representatives, with each state delegation casting one vote.  Barring a highly unlikely Democratic takeover of the House tomorrow, the end result would almost certainly be a party line vote in favor of Mitt Romney.  While Obama's support largely comes from the most populous states, Romney would have support from a higher number of states.  And even in some of the states Obama is likely to win -- like PA, OH, and WI -- the majority of their House delegations are Republican.

It would be quite something, no question, if this were the result -- among other things, it might be incredibly destabilizing politically, particularly if a case could be made that GOP voter suppression efforts (voter ID laws) played a role in swinging even one state (Florida would be, once again, the most likely culprit).  Of course, if that case cannot be legitimately made, the Constitution says what the Constitution says, and Mitt Romney would rightfully become the 45th president.

Perhaps the strangest part of this whole scenario actually involves the selection of the vice-president.  The Senate makes this decision, which at first blush appears to mean that Romney would be joined by Joe Biden.  However, the 12th amendment (and Senate rules) are silent on whether a minority of US Senators could use the filibuster to frustrate the will of the (Democratic) majority.  If the Senate parliamentarian allows the use of the filibuster, the presiding officer of the Senate (who would be, of course, VP Biden) could ignore that advice, and call for a straight-up vote.

Which could result in a 50-50 tie.  However, unlike other decisions over which the Senate regularly presides, Biden could NOT then break the tie.  The 12th amendment calls for a majority.

No one knows what would happen at that point.  Presumably they could continue to deliberate, until 1 person changes their mind.  It is possible some other individual -- not Joe Biden, and not Paul Ryan -- could be selected, if 51 senators could agree.

There will, of course, be a great deal of pressure for the Senate to select Ryan, since the House will decide first.  But if Obama-Biden won the popular vote on Election Day, there will also be a great deal of pressure to select Biden.  One probably shouldn't discount the fact that Biden was a US Senator himself for a very long time, and has many friends on both sides of the aisle.

That said, I think this scenario is extremely unlikely, because Colorado and especially Ohio are most likely going to wind up in Obama's column.  Obama also holds a small but steady lead in the polls in Virginia, and demographic changes since 2008 make a surprise Obama victory in Florida a decent possibility too. 

One should also keep in mind that there still are a couple of states (Maine, Nebraska) that allow the splitting of electoral votes.  While this is unlikely, its not impossible, and it could break the deadlock before it gets to the House (most likely in Romney's favor).

Making the perfect the enemy of the good, or why you can't vote 'none of the above' this year

Two anti-Obama articles by progressives have gotten quite a bit of attention in the blogosphere recently:  Matt Stoller's piece on Salon, and Conor Friedersdorf's article on the Atlantic Online website.  Both call for people on the left to refuse to vote for Obama.


I obviously disagree, and strongly.

These kinds of arguments tend to piss me off, I have to confess, because they make the perfect the enemy of the good, and seem to be based on a breathtakingly simple notion of how the world actually works.  This is particularly true for libertarian arguments (Friedersdorf is a libertarian).

Like most arguments from the left that claim there is no difference between the two parties (and candidates), I just think they are stunningly naive.  Stoller in particular writes as if he suddenly and recently discovered that both parties support corporate capitalism -- like an undergrad the first time they read Marx.

Really, the parties support corporate capitalism, and are more inclined to listen to the powerful?  No sh*t. 

Welcome to politics in the modern developed world, much as it has looked for 8 decades.  C'mon in and join the battle, Matt and Conor.  The water, I can assure you, is tepid.  Want it to get hotter?  Then get jump in, get wet, and heat it up.

To argue, as both of them do, that since both sides do bad things, I no longer have a moral obligation to choose the lesser of two evils, seems to me to be morally irresponsible.  You know why the lesser of two evils is better?  Because it involves less evil.  When I worked briefly as a labor organizer in my early 20s I constantly encountered this argument.  Hell, I think I made it too.  There is nothing easier than stepping outside the field of battle, and judging, keeping ones moral views pristine, while real lives are affected by real change.

But, as Edmund Burke once said, the only thing needed for evil to prevail in the world is for good men to do nothing.

Voting for a third party, or not voting, or arguing there is no difference between the two options, is doing nothing.  It is also empirically inaccurate.  These are the same arguments people made when advocating a vote for Nader in 2000.  How did that work out?

As an alternative, these two authors propose...what, exactly?  Voting for a third party?  Really?  Why not just not vote?  Hell, why not just vote for Romney?  When I was doing the labor stuff, I remember a number of colleagues saying that if we can push the system to a crisis point, then real change can take place.  This is basically what Stoller argues. 

But what tends to happen historically, when things go from bad to worse, is that they then go from worse to even more worse.  Revolutions end in blood.  States based on formal equality, with liberal institutions and the rule of law, that at least make some pretense to trying to balance capitalism and mass democracy, have only been the norm (even if frequently dishonored) for a very tiny portion of human history.  Even now, the vast majority of the world's population does not live in such places.  And these things do not persist of their own accord, and once they're gone, there is no guarantee whatsoever that they can be reconstructed.  And the fundamentals of that liberal system are under attack here especially, but in Europe too, in ways that Stoller notes.  To observe that they are being attacked and undermined through both political parties tells us nothing, when the differences between the two are otherwise so stark -- wider than they've been since the 1860s.

There is NO path to change in this country that goes through a third party, unless somehow that third party emerges from within the Democratic Party.  None.  There are only two -- interconnected -- paths to real change:  social movements for economic justice, and working within and pushing the Democratic Party.  Friedersdorf is concerned with drone attacks and civil liberties.  Stoller is concerned with inequality and the power of the financial sector.  Personally I'm much more concerned about the second one than the first one, but I just think it is stunningly naive to think that progress on either would be possible with today's GOP in control of 2.5 of the 3 branches of the federal government.

To vote third party this year, or to not vote at all, is an act of moral cowardice.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

Preview of tonight's foreign policy debate

I do plan to live blog the foreign policy debate tonight, but I want to preface my comments and reactions a little bit -- first, because there are things I think we have to keep in mind in order to fully make sense of what goes on this evening, and second, because my own views may require a fuller explanation, which I cannot provide when the clock is ticking.

First:  if you think this debate is Obama's to lose, because of his experience, his knowledge, and his successes -- I think you are mistaken.  Romney is the one with the advantages here.  A bigger man would hesitate to exploit some of those advantages, for reasons of national security.

Romney is not that man.

Second:  I think that by and large, Obama has had the most successful foreign policy of any American president in decades.  I expect everyone on the right to disagree with me on that -- but I also expect many of my allies on the left to disagree, too.

Why do I think Romney has the advantage tonight?

Because Obama is the president -- and because Obama is who he is, and Romney is who HE is.  What Obama says becomes, in effect, a statement of American policy.  As a consequence, he must be guarded in what he says, and will often be unable to provide full explanations for his positions for reasons of diplomatic strategy and national security.  Obama, as we know, is a man who values the meaning of words, and measures them very carefully (this is why he is fond of the teleprompter).  He is a writer, and a constitutional lawyer, and it is reflected in the measured language he tends to deploy, and the pragmatic and process-focused approach he uses to the world.  He is in many ways the ideal president for the country to have at the moment, as we seek to re-familiarize ourselves with the cultivation and use of soft power after a decade in the self-destructive manichean wilderness.

Romney really has no restrictions whatsoever on what he can say tonight, save what his conscience and political instincts tell him are inappropriate.  There was a time, not too long ago, when presidential challengers knew that there were certain kinds of issues, questions, and discussions that had to be put aside during the election season.  Our times are different, and Romney doesn't seem like the sort of candidate who would honor such limits anyway.  He has already demonstrated that he doesn't care whether his arguments directly contradict his prior statements.  He also doesn't particularly care whether what he says is logical, reasonable, or truthful.  I'm guessing he also doesn't care that the consequence of attempting to corner Obama into a belligerent 'if-then' statement might be a dramatic narrowing of our national options, with regard to a nuclear Iran in particular.  Romney is even more likely to shake the etch-a-sketch on foreign policy than on domestic policy, since the ignorance of the remaining persuadable voters on world politics is extensive to say the least.

Let's make this more concrete.  Romney is likely to push -- hard -- on two inter-related issues tonight:  the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and the commitment of the U.S. to Israel's national security.  He has the luxury of bellicosity on both of them.  Even if Romney were tempted to rein this in for moral or intellectual reasons, the political benefits to saber-rattling will be too tempting for him to ignore, especially because Obama cannot responsibly match him.

Tonight, Romney will attempt to draw a 'line in the sand,' and draw Obama into making a definitive statement that we will never tolerate a nuclear Iran.  He will do the same with Israel, by trying to depict Obama as someone who would throw Israel under the bus to avoid military conflict with Iran.

Obama cannot join him in the drawing of such lines.  If he does, I'm going to come down on him like a ton of bricks, because he will be betraying the restraint, balance and realism that have led to his foreign policy success.  It will be the functional equivalent of a wartime president saying 'defeat is not an option.'  Of course its an option -- it always is -- and one must always leave room to maneuver in case it becomes the most likely one.  A nation, like an alliance (Israel!), is not a suicide pact.

Obama cannot responsibly take the bait.  If, in refusing to take it, he can appear more reasonable, responsible and knowledgeable than Romney -- if he can make the case that there are outcomes in the world that the United States does not have the power, even the right, to determine -- he can turn these exchanges to his advantage.  But it will be exceedingly difficult to do, because of the logical and emotional simplicity of the policy choices that Romney will present.  Romney will try to make this into Munich, and will make Obama's attempts to qualify and complicate the situation into something that sounds like waffling and appeasement, rather than a reasoned judgment based on a full understanding of the limits of American power in general, and military power in particular.

Obama, of course, could respond by being bluntly honest.  He could say that a war with Iran -- following quickly upon the worst foreign policy blunder in the nation's history, in Iraq -- would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States, and for Israel.  It would almost certainly grease the already slippery slope toward American national decline.  And he could conclude this response by saying that a nuclear Iran is inevitable, and we must begin to the lay the groundwork now for dealing with it, by establishing a diplomatic structure to prevent an arms race in the region.  Since Israel already has nuclear weapons, perhaps some kind of stasis can be obtained. 

But he can't say any of this, because he is the president.  Does Obama know that we probably can't prevent Iran from developing nuclear materials, and weaponizing it?  Of course -- he must.  He knows that is an option, even the most likely one.  Does Obama know that a military strike on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster?  Surely.  But he cannot say so publicly, for fear of losing whatever leverage the US still might have over Iran's rulers.  But he also can't follow Romney into the corner, because he will eliminate his room for maneuver should he get re-elected.

Romney will tell the country that the most important foreign policy threat facing the country is the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.  I believe the most important foreign policy threat facing the country is the possibility that our own domestic politics (and the irresponsible behavior of Israel) might lead us into a military conflict with Iran.  I'm quite certain that President Obama holds a position closer to mine.  But he's going to have a devil of a time trying to make that argument during the debate, without being depicted by his opponent as an appeaser, and a betrayer of our Israeli ally.

Second, you can discern my foreign policy views from what I've written above.  I'm including a few paragraphs on this, because some of my comments during the debate tonight will probably be disagreeable to some of my friends on the left.

I believe Obama has been our most successful foreign policy president in decades, because my study of American history tells me that it is far easier to start wars, than to finish them.  Some military conflicts have easily definable goals -- the definition of victory, if not the path to it, is clear.  Victory in World War II was going to ultimately require the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan.  Victory in Korea was going to require the preservation of the territorial integrity of South Korea.  One might also call these 'necessary wars,' though obviously the case is much clearer for the former than the latter.

Iraq and Afghanistan more clearly resemble the Vietnam War, than these other conflicts.  In each case, we were ostensibly trying to pursue political goals through military means -- they were wars of choice, in other words.  In each case, both the definition of and timetable for victory was essentially left in the hands of either our enemies, our local allies -- or both.  And in each case, little to no effort was made to assess whether the price (in blood, treasure, reputation, domestic civility, and opportunity costs) was ultimately worth it, until we began to seek an exit.

I'll have more to say about this in a future post, but I maintain that the invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States.  And I say that with an expert's knowledge of the Vietnam War, which was a far more bloody and destructive conflict.  While over 2 million people (59,000 Americans) were killed in Vietnam, and it bitterly divided the country and stressed the federal budget and the economy, it had no appreciable impact on the nation's strategic position, its military capabilities, or its national security.

The invasion of Iraq, in contrast, fundamentally and perhaps permanently changed the position of the United States in the region, and in the world.  It also greatly weakened the possibility of success in Afghanistan, while strengthening the one nation in the region willing and able to check American power (Iran).  40 years from now, when historians write about the first decade of the 21st century, they will likely mark the acceleration of American national decline to the decision to invade Iraq, as well as the manner in which the war and its aftermath were prosecuted.

Obama inherited TWO of these wars of choice -- oh, and the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.  And to make the task of winding these conflicts that much more challenging, Obama was the leader of a political party that had been repeatedly hammered from the right since the late 1940s for lacking the stomach to fight and win wars.

Obama nonetheless undertook the detailed strategic assessment that his predecessor should have engaged in before these invasions took place, and did so with what I believe was an admirable sense of the limits of American power.  The preeminent foreign policy goal of the first Obama Administration had to be the marking of a clear exit path from both Iraq and Afghanistan.  While those of us on the left may lament how slow the wind down has been -- particularly from Afghanistan, where the initial response was to increase the number of US troops -- we must not forget the enormity of this task.  Lyndon Johnson kept throwing America's young men into the volcano that was Vietnam, too cowardly to admit that victory was not possible, too cowardly to accept that sometimes tactical retreat is the only wise path.  Richard Nixon, not wanting to be the "first president to lose a war," ran for president in 1968 claiming to have a 'secret plan' to end the war...and then sent over 30,000 Americans to their deaths in Southeast Asia, with the full knowledge that victory was not possible. 

Obama finished the work of winding down the war in Iraq, so that the nation's resources (financial, military, diplomatic) could be concentrated on extracting ourselves from Afghanistan in as satisfactory a manner as possible.  Initially, this required resourcing US forces there -- the 'Afghan surge' -- in order move the status quo to a place where a timetabled exit was possible.  This was not nation-building, Bush style, though some on the left have said as much.  The Afghan surge was not about 'victory.'  It was about getting out.  If you doubt this, read some of the reporting by Woodward and others on Obama's decision making in the late summer and early fall of 2009.  The deliberations included detailed discussions of the Vietnam War, of the limits of military power, and of a timetable to leave.  Some in the administration argued against any kind of surge at all; others, mostly the devotees of the religion of 'counter-insurgency,' hoped to use the surge to launch an ambitious test-case for nation building.  Almost everyone, other than the president, resisted the idea of a timetable -- a date.  Obama was so adamant that the surge had to be in service to a time table to withdraw, that he ultimately settled the internal debate by writing a 10 paged single-spaced brief one night on just what he was agreeing to...and got all the major advisers to sign it.

As my friends on the left will rightfully point out, part of this process of clearing a path to the exit from Afghanistan has been the use of drones there and in Pakistan, often resulting in the deaths of civilians.  But to me, as long as Obama is able to keep his eye on the prize here -- it must only be a tool to facilitate what will ultimately be a much smaller American footprint -- I think its a call a pragmatic American president has to make.

And so, our military role in Afghanistan will come to an end, too, as it has in Iraq.  If you do not think that the implementation of two tactical retreats constitutes an ENORMOUS foreign policy accomplishment, I will remind you once again of the failures of his predecessors when confronted with similar moral and strategic dilemmas.  I believe it is the greatest foreign policy accomplishment of any American president in nearly a half century.

And of course, Obama's sense of limits -- he is an avid reader of Niebuhr, recall -- has extended to the rest of his foreign policy as well.  If the situation with a nuclear Iran comes to a head in the next 4 years, it is absolutely essential that we have someone like Obama in charge.

But do you think Obama can explain all of this in a debate, when Romney hammers him repeatedly about killing the bad guys?  God help us all if he can't.  Romney is surrounded by the same neo-conservatives that Bush was.

Rich people to the rescue! Taking apart Romney's tax plan

In the first two presidential debates, Mitt Romney -- without using that horrid word 'stimulus' -- has claimed that his 20% across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates will spark massive job growth AND reduce the deficit.  He has also claimed that the middle class will primarily benefit from these cuts, while the rich will not.

Deficit reduction would presumably occur because he would broaden the tax base by eliminating deductions and subsidies, and because the stimulative impact of the tax cuts would increase investment and demand, and effectively pay for itself through the increased tax revenue that the subsequent growth would provide.

None of these claims are backed up by the evidence.

Economist Laura D'Andrea Tyson gives us a really good breakdown in the NY Times Economix Blog today -- so let's go through it.

Romney proposes the following:
1.  an across-the-board 20% cut in marginal tax rates
2.  repeal of the estate tax (he conveniently didn't mention this in the debates)
3.  repeal of the alternative minimum tax
4.  cut the corporate income tax to 25%
5.  extension of the Bush tax cuts

These cuts would reduce federal tax revenue by an estimated $6 trillion over ten years -- $5 trillion for the first four listed above, $1 trillion for the extension of the Bush cuts.

In other words, his tax cuts would increase the deficit by that amount, all other things being equal.

It should be noted that 4 of the 5 proposals above would be heavily weighted toward tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans -- roughly 2/3rds of the $6 trillion would go to the top 5%, or those taxpayers making $200,000 a year or more.

Even if this $6 trillion could be made up through eliminating loopholes, deductions and subsidies (which it can't), is this really the most effective, efficient and just way to create jobs?

The answer is clearly no. 

More to the point, there is little evidence that cuts of this kind would actually create jobs.

Tyson:

If tax cuts for high-income earners generate substantial real economic activity and job creation, then we should expect to see two things in the data. First, employment growth should be stronger in the years after tax cuts for these earners. Second, parts of the country with a larger share of high-income earners should experience stronger employment growth after national tax cuts for these taxpayers, because the places where they live receive a larger share of the national tax cuts.

What do we actually see after combing through a half-century of economic data? Neither of these predictions is borne out.

Personally, I'm skeptical about relying upon massive tax cuts at all right now, for economic stimulus.  Given how low borrowing costs are at the moment, and given our need for massive infrastructure investments (and money for states and localities), I still strongly prefer to see a job creation program that leans more toward spending than tax cuts.  If we are going to temporarily have the federal government spend more than it takes in, we'll get more bang for our buck with investments.

That said, if the approach of both parties is going to lean heavily toward tax cuts, the evidence is clearly on the side of giving them to the bottom 95% - not the top 5%. 

While Tyson found no link historically between job creation and tax cuts for the wealthy, there is a clear link between job creation and tax cuts for everyone else: 

Almost all of the stimulative effect of income and payroll tax cuts on job creation in the short to medium run result from such cuts for the bottom 95 percent.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service confirms this.

Remember that consumption -- regular people spending money -- still accounts for 70% of our economy.  Our recovery is slow because of insufficient demand.  It is not possible for the spending of the top 5% to spark sufficient demand to create jobs in large numbers.  Tax cuts for the bottom 95% are much more likely to be quickly spent.  And when they are spent, demand increases...which will lead to more hiring.

In survey after survey, employers have been abundantly clear:  they will hire more people, when demand increases.  Romney seems to think that if he is elected, his overall personal white guy awesomeness will somehow magically cause the confidence of wealthy white employers like himself to soar...inducing them to hire more people.

Does that sound like an economic policy to you?  Romney and his fellow 'job creators' may seek to trickle something down on the rest of us.  But whatever that something is, I'm pretty sure it won't be jobs.  And keep in mind that every tax cut dollar that is distributed in the way that Romney proposes is a dollar that cannot be spent on public investments that will benefit the vast majority of Americans in the coming decades -- public education, public health, infrastructure, etc.

3 Cheers for the Sedentary Voter...

You know, they say 'free your mind, and your a*s will follow.' Well...