There's a lot to cover here, but the short version of my reaction is that all those good things you seem to believe will happen following an Obama victory - the Republicans getting their crap together, Obama governing as a pragmatist, the aftershocks in the media - I would expect the exact opposite to occur.

McCain & Palin seem to be the only Republicans capable of straightening out the party; the task is far easier following a wildly improbable victory than an expected defeat.

An Obama victory will be - rightly - regarded as a vindication of the nutroots; nothing in Obama's history indicates he desires to reach across the aisle, and, more importantly, he has no incentive to.

Last, wouldn't the victory of the media's chosen candidate encourage even more such behavior rather than diminish it? Do you really think that an Obama victory, or defeat, will be more likely to inspire critical self-reflection by the media?

AL, I really hope you'll be right, but I fear you won't be—baring a massive October surprise, it looks like Obama will manage a narrow to moderate win. Although he may be a pragmatist, I think there's enough socialist momentum to continue this crazy government assumption of the banking and insurance controls in the US, to unbalance the SCOTUS, and to generally enlarge government while diminishing individual liberties. McCain's record in those areas is pretty dismal, too, with the exception of SCOTUS picks, but he's so random that at least we know he can't get his act together enough to make a coordinated effort in all those areas.

I hope I can finish my two AR-15 builds before January… in the meantime, I'm buying "We're Screwed '08" shirts for Michelle and me tomorrow. :)

AL,
I like your argument. Crashes are often nessiary to clean out the crap in a large system, but I have a major concern about it all.

At this point I really don't really want John McCain to be president. I think he would just lurch from thing to thing, not really getting anything done. He ambition to do big things, but something about him says that he would make a mess of it all.

It's likely that Obama would cause the crash you describe (Bad leadership, very unrealistic view of humanity). Everyone in power is being increadibly ireasonible right now and a shock to the whole system would liklly lead to better things in the future. But then again, it might kill our system all together.

However there are other possibilities:
1. Obama could create a big enough cult of personality to mess up life for a long time. FDR is my example of this. FDR was totally irresponsible, kept the depression going for 5/6 more years that it would have normally, believed the crap that Stalin was putting out and tried to sneak us into a war that no one in America wanted. And everybody loved him. People who screw up are sometimes re-elected with overwhelming majorities.

2. Obama could permanently rig power for himself and the Democrats. He has strong ties to the biggest election fixing machine around. Remember, he cut his teeth in 2ed most corrupt political scene in America and once he gains power he will likely institutionalize that corruption. The media will look the other way and election after election will be fixed. Giving a very corrupt person great deal of power can lead to horrible anti-democratic results. He has already replace most of the DNC people with the crew from Chicago. We have seen him threaten strong armed tactics before the election as it is: removing tax free status (protest about Iran with Palin), fairness doctrine, revoking FCC licenses for TV stations that don't tow the line.

3. Obama proves to be very weak and guts the military. He pushing everything into domestic spending and lets the world go to pot. China and Russia goes on the warpath and Iran bullies the middle east. America falls into a terminal decline. When push comes to shove, people do what the powerful tell them to do. If we give up that power China and Russia will most certainly step into that gap we leave. And we return to 1940's land, but with nukes.

He is going to be the next president and I really hope you are correct. But I have my doubts. Good post.

Sorry, AL: "RF'd"? My brain's mind control laser crystal must be on the fritz... Ah! "Royally F***ed?" I m snart.

.
Great stuff! Either Obama does some good, or he may be out in 4 years. He may turn out to be the 'New Dhimmi Carter', thus educating more of today's young people of the folly of The Left.
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
ELECT Socialism

let the young people see
survive the false promises

.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe hates
history either way

America WILL survive
no matter who wins the votes

.
http://lulu.com/uspace

http://haltterrorism.com
.

Time for a Cleanup on Aisle 5?

Shorter AL: there's a pony in here somewhere

Jim: Drive by much? Stick around and contribute substance, great. We value that. Pop your head in and do what you just did before establishing some credibility / credit here, and be invited to take a hike. Your choice.

PS: Your post of 9/24 was not bad. "Shorter {x}" as your second post? Come onnnn.

[Edited]

Apologies, here's something I hope will be construed as on-topic, though a bit ranty. [And there's a lot of overlap with Blake Sobiloff's comment upthread. Oh well.]

It is not impossible that BHO is both a con man and feckless, depending upon context. Of course, that might be said of McCain as well. Thus my general dyspepsia regarding the next 4 years. I've already said to Beard, in another thread here at WoC, that I anticipate being less free (in law; in fact, who can say?) in 4 years no matter who gets the stick. It's just a question of which part of the balloon gets squeezed. The financial problem is one more invitation for folks who want to get a nice firm grip on that stick. Only -- ever hear of Pilot Induced Oscillation?

[There are two metaphors I'm trying for here. The balloon is the envelope of authentic rights purportedly defended by the government -- actually those rights that are not infringed at any moment in time. The stick is the monopoly on force the government gets, and by figurative extension, the control stick of an aircraft.]

With O, we will, without a question, get a Supreme Court packed with folks who will be inclined to reverse Heller (for instance) by a thousand cuts, and who believe that "harmonizing" US laws with other countries is better than stodgy stare decisis; along with a House and Senate who will cheerfully nod at utterances that things like health care are rights. That way leads, I'm sorry to say, to "a more perfect union" of the slavery kind. All consenting, of course. Cattle get all the pharmaceuticals they need, right?

Brrr.

Remind me how Obama's / the Dems' snake oil is any better than the kind apparently swallowed by way too many people who never learned in school -- or on the streets -- that a deal (mortgage / what have you) that sounds too good to be true probably is? "Soothing, habit-forming, deee-licious!"

Hmm. Surprising my own self here. Since CA is all sewn up for O, I guess I'll be pulling the lever for Bob Barr. Hell, he might crack 2% here! Hoooah!

[Edited]

There's a lot I could say, and would like to say in reply to this but (a) I'm not an American citizen and (b) I don't really have the time.

I just want to say.. Jimmy Carter's mistakes still haunt us. A legitimized theocratic Iran is among the worst of his legacies. The housing bubble can arguably be traced back to policies from that era, although I've no idea how much of a hand he had in them.

I really don't want the next president of the USA to be a similar combination of weak, idealistic and unable to see the consequences of his actions. Please don't make that mistake again. McCain is far from the best candidate but I don't think he's any of those things (although I think there's a glimmer of idealism left in him somewhere). As for Obama, I'll leave an assessment of him up to those who know more about him than I do.

[i]Look, I continue to be someone who sees one primary issue as central to the history of our time - are we going to kill (or allow to be killed) a shedload of Arabs because we allowed a crazed ideology to be funded by kleptocrats and delude their people into believing that they could defeat the two Satans if they really tried? I'd like to avoid this, thank you very much.

I believe that our leadership class does truly love the country an that they - like JFK - will try to do the right thing once they stumble once or twice.[/i]

The Democratic leadership has been happy enough before to condemn the people of South East Asia to the communist slaughterhouses.

How long has the left been agitating that the USA is to blame for the mess in the Middle East? Since the Yom Kippur and Iraq-Iran conflicts at least?

Obama has spend years helping to make the war against Arab extemism the most poisonous item in American politics. And certainly has never shown any political courage or deviation from leftist tropes.

But suddenly, if elected president that same Obama is going to spend his political capital on continueing the war in Iraq or Afghanistan? The insane left will suddenly throw overboard their lifelong convictions? Can't see it happening.
Much more likely is that Obama will abandon the Middle East, with Europe's participation evaporating at his first sign of weakness.

However, it isn't called peace until both sides decide to stop fighting, and it may take a nuclear mushroom to remind the West of that.

Apart from all the possible good results, for both Democrats, Republicans and Americans in general, AL, might there not be effects abroad, effects for those who have been fooled to think that throwing in their lot with the US of A is not an automatic death sentence?

"As we all know, the Iraq war was unwinnable from the start. The supposed 'anbar awakening' was at most a temporary fluke that was blown up all out of proportion by lying Generals in collusion with the Republican administration, but probably lies from beginning to end.
Since it was unwinnable, cutting aid to our corrupt puppet was not "selling out our allies" as the Stab-in-the-back-legend-Republicans like to pretend it was, it was stopping throwing good money after bad. Continuing would merely have delayed the inevitable outcome, wasting money and lives in the process, and made real the 'massacres' the Republicans fantasize about.
Oh yes, the massacres. Only reported by fleeing officials from the puppet regime, who would have preferred to continue to live off our aid and repress the majority. Only believed by supporters of the Bush administration, who desperately cling to them in an attempt to posthumously justify their disastrous war.
Is it really in the American interest to provoke a war with Iran by subjecting them to a blizzard of accusations about imaginary massacres? At the point where we might bury our old differences with Iran by stopping to oppose their appointment to the sixth permanent seat in the Security Council?
If it isn't in our interest to go to war against a nuclear armed adversary, what nations interest are the Republicans working for? Perhaps they should make sure their registrations as agents of a foreign power are up to date?"

...but nothing in his career has shown him to be anything but a sharp political operative with his eye on the main prize...

Didn't Obama run unopposed in his first Ill. election campaign? He didn't exactly open a can of whoop ass on Hillary Clinton, either.

Yeah, that Jeremiah Wright stuff. Very sharp political acumen there. And a great show of judgment. So in 20 years, Captain Brilliant never picked up the church newsletter? So a guy whose mentor was the black David Duke is gonna bring the country together? Yeah, probably in a second civil war we'll all becoming together?

And those campaign contributions from Franklin Raines. Well-timed. Hey, maybe Obama can get all the new Peace Corps volunteers to clean up the mess on Wall Street. And if anyone gets hurt, why they'll have the same health care as Congress!

William Ayers anyone? Yes sir, a new day is certainly dawning over the Potomac.

The main prize in Iraq is winning. Obama never even had his eye on that. The whole anti-surge affair-- why would anyone in the military take him seriously? You think Iran isn't licking their lips over the thought of an Obama presidency?

Sorry, but Obama's real political gifts begin and end with the media's dream of "being a part of something historic."

"because we allowed"

What is this, the "Only Americans have moral agency" theory of foreign policy? We act, everyone else is only acted upon?

What I believe:

1. Obama will win: The media are in the tank for him, spending the last of their rapidly devaluing credibility on getting him elected, and McCain is a lousy campaigner, who'd never have gotten the nomination if he hadn't had the fortune to win in winner take all primaries, and lose in PR primaries. And he just can't resist pissing off his base, no matter how much he needs them.

2. NONE of these clowns deserve to win. I weep for our country when I think the choice came down to this.

3. Damn straight it's going to get ugly. Democrats have been less and less willing to accept that they can lose elections legitimately, and Obama's got associations with ACORN, the name that always comes up when you see a report of fraudulent registrations. I expect the "Fairness" doctrine to make a comeback. I expect massive pressure to purge the media of any conservative voices. I expect efforts, probably successful to some extent, to institutionally entrench the Democratic party against the Republican, the way the two majors entrenched themselves against third parties over the last couple of decades.

This may be the last really free election we have.

And, Armed Liberal, I expect relentless attacks on our 2nd amendment rights from a former board member of Joyce, and Heller being reversed with a vengeance should any of the majority kick the bucket, assuming they don't just revive FDR's court packing scheme.

4. We're not going to be better off. The system needs a reboot, not a sledge hammer to the main drive.

Wow, reading through all this is just... hugely amusing.

As a relatively mainstream liberal Democrat, let me just point out that I'm far less confident about Obama's victory than many here seem to be- I do think he's gonna win, but after the last 8 years I'm not celebrating anything until McCain's concession speech.

That said, seeing all this brewing in the month before the election - seeing the right-wing conventional wisdom suddenly coalesce around the idea that of course Barack Obama's a hard core ultra-left wing sleeper agent programmed over a decade ago by Bill Ayers to DESTROY AMERICA - gives me some insight into what the talk radio world must have been like after Bill Clinton was elected.

And there are many, many things I could argue at length about in AL's piece above (you can say Obama's a "crony capitalist liberal" with a straight face after 8 years of George Bush? Please...) but I think mostly I'll take some comfort in knowing that AL's long-running "The Democrats must reform themselves to be more like me to win" thesis is well and truly dead, and that AL himself is reduced to hanging out with disaffected right wingers, watching his political avatars, like Joe Lieberman, crumble into irrelevance.

That, and the (minor, but real) possibility that we could be looking at FDR 2.0 here. Whoot!

I am a big fan of creative destruction. The present situation we find ourselves in is just reality's way of telling us what we have been doing, all of us, isn't working.

The world is upside down. Banks are being nationalized by Republicans.

Whatever the outcome of an Obama Presidency, it is not the end of the world. and, whatever the policies that are put into place over the next four years, they will survive or perish based on whether or not they work in the world that the Creative Destruction process we are we will go through produces over the next decade.

208 weeks is not going to usher in a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Awful stuff has happenend on the Republican watch and you pay for that at the polls. That is the way the system works. The Republic survives.

I like AL's take. I am interested in seeing what happens. How the parties will realign themselves. What new and brilliant ideas are spawned by adversity. It may not be fun, but it will be interesting.

And, we will make the best of it.

If Obama is elected, I sincerely hope that he will be a great president. I believe that he will be like Jimmy Carter on foreign policy (weak and vacillating), FDR on economic policy (disastrous but popular), and Saul Alinsky on domestic policy (divisive and socialist), and that he will end up being a lot like LBJ in overall effect (partisan and divisive at home, weak abroad, and requiring 20 years of cleanup to get to some reasonable point again in either area). That does not cheer me.

If McCain is elected, I sincerely hope that he will be a great president. I believe that he will be like Ronald Reagan on foreign policy (good and incisive, strong), Richard Nixon on economic policy (disastrous but popular), and George H.W. Bush on social policy (essentially uninterested).

In other words, I think that Obama would be a catastrophe, and John McCain would be ineffective or disastrous except on foreign policy. I hope, hope, hope I'm wrong, and I become ever more convinced that we should separate out the State from the Government, because the two require significantly different kinds of leadership and policy vision.

Wow, AL, you really stirred up the hornets nest this morning. I just got my coffee, so I'll have to ponder on it. I'm also not ready to count McCain out yet. He's got a whole set of new Ayers ads to run, and linking democrats to terrorists has always been a successful strategy.

Still, there's reason to believe this strategy will fail. I think the last two debates have helped define "Who is Obama?" in the public mind, at least enough so that the public will be partially resistant to the charges. I also think that the McCain/Palin demeanor is going to turn away undecided independents. But I could be wrong on both counts.

Obama has always struck as a pragmatist AND a politician, continuing some of the best and worst of both categories. Some of that is necessary to run an election, some of that is necessary to run a government. Certainly, some of these things are not helpful, but elections changing politicians is part of the problem with american politics (see McCain, John). What Obama keeps (and tosses away) from his campaign strategy will define his presidency. It could be a very interesting 4 years.

BTW: I think Palin is completely unable to reestablish the republican party. Thus far, she has only shown the complexity of a bumper sticker, when she would need to be a stick shift. She's smart, but has been completely unable to define herself outside of 'mainstreet mom', or show any interest in doing so.

AL,

I think both parties need to be reformed and that a whole sale clean sweep of DC of both the elected and the bureaucratic officials. Sadly, I disagree with you that Obama being elected would be a catalyst for this and I think recent history bears me out.

There are two recent historic cases which argue against this:

1. If having ineffective far left leadership in DC would force the reform you envision, than Pelosi and Reid should have already triggered it. Congress has dropped into single digit approval ratings, lower even than a very unpopular president, under their leadership. One of the most important bills in the last several years floundered not on reasoned discussion about the pros and cons, or even the wisdom of following the path. Instead it floundered on pure gotcha politics at a time the country needed to draw together! I see that becoming worse under Obama.

2. In Massachusetts we elected Deval Patrick as Governor. He is another charismatic, leftist, newcomer to politics. Almost literally the first thing he did in office was to trigger a series of scandals related to spending money on his own aggrandizement. These were acts of pure pride and power, the same faults many fear that Obama is susceptible to. Despite some truly widespread disgust in him after this, there is no evidence that any sort of reform is being looked at in the MA Democratic Party. The parallels in this case are significant and argue against your case.

Now, I don't consider McCain any prize as president. Palin could be a good VP, the jury is still out. On the other hand, I think if McCain unleashes her in DC, we will see a major clean up of the bureaucracy, which would effect part of the problem. I see both Obama and Biden leveraging the existing bureaucracy for their own benefit, and creating risk for further corruption based on favoritism.

Sorry, AL, but I think you're big hope is a mirage in the desert of corruption we're all in.

StargazerA5

if I'm wrong, I have a lot of faith in American institutions to rein him in.

It looks as if the Democrats will achieve the 60-majority in the Senate they need to override any filibusters. When you combine Obama's record of following Pelosi and Reid's lead consistently, also with solid enough control of both Congress and POTUS to override the brakes that are built into the system, it looks like we're headed for the kind of serious abuses that happen when there isn't divided government.

My hope is that the Blue Dog Democrats will unite with the GOP remnants to block any truly egregious abuses, but that's clutching at straws. Hope is not a plan.

I'm not saying the GOP doesn't deserve the time out in the desert which they're about to embark on, just that expecting Obama to suddenly become a pragmatist is, frankly, wishful thinking. There's no reason for him to do so: the man is a believer, and with Congress under firm Democratic control, there's no reason to expect anyone to rein him in.

I also fear Obama's going to be getting seriously schooled in foreign policy by seasoned pros like the ISI, the Turks, and the Russians (not to mention the Iranians). They know what they want, know how to play one party against another, and they're ruthless. They'll test Obama early to see what he's about.

I will be taking some version of Esmay's pledge before the election, and I'm definitely not hoping for this to happen, it just seems the most likely scenario.

I'm hearing some rumors around that the polling going on has been skewing the respondents. Nothing solid.

Personally -- I think Obama's going to win. A simple look at the electoral map reveals it. IF the data is good, and there aren't any October surprises coming down the pipe (Ayers isn't it).

I'm a libertarian hawk -- if the Democrats wanted to resurrect the New Left, minus the Communism, I'd be okay with that. If the Republicans want to rescue the Reagan Coalition, I'm okay with that, too. Some of both party seems to be running in that direction. Meanwhile, my own party drank the cool-aid and insisted on ideological purity... so they're toast. Electorally speaking, read your Drucker, or die.

But what we've got running is a bunch of Progressives/Populists. If some creative destruction occurs around that one, I'm fine. I'm inclined to believe that Obama would do MUCH less damage, with at least part of a party in opposition, than McCain in office and both parties steamrolling his populism through Congress.

Folks, please don't take my predictions for assumptions that Obama will be a great president - I'd say the odds on his being a decent one are about 1 in 4 - lowered because the times will be so turbulent.

And no, turbulence is never fun, and lots of people are going to be hurt.

But I genuinely - and maybe foolishly, I'll admit - believe that's what's on the other side of these rapids is better than where we are, and look forward to pushing through them.

A.L.

Didn't Obama run unopposed in his first Ill. election campaign? He didn't exactly open a can of whoop ass on Hillary Clinton, either.

You left out his effortless ascension to the Senate after Jack Ryan's campaign imploded (a judge unsealed his divorce court records (link) at, um, a very convenient time in the election cycle) and he ultimately ran against Alan Keyes, of all people.

The man has literally built his resume out of his opponent's misfortunes, a single speech at the 2004 DNC convention, and a lot of charisma. Even if he had the best ideas ever for the country--which he definitely is nowhere near--he certainly does not deserve to win the election any more than, say, Sarah Palin does.

As a relatively mainstream liberal Democrat

Oxymoron alert!

That, and the (minor, but real) possibility that we could be looking at FDR 2.0 here. Whoot!

Uh, absent the need for one due to a third World War, that is not something to cheer for. (And if anyone thinks BHO is ready to run WWIII...)

The world is upside down. Banks are being nationalized by Republicans.

QFT. And the Democratic leadership is running around whining "No one knows what to do", when this kind of government power grab is usually their default mode of thinking. Of course they ultimately passed it after browbeating the GOP; wither the "opposition" in Congress?

Interesting times, indeed. And I mean "interesting" in the Chinese curse sense.

[ Link fixed. Additional Slate.com article on Jack Ryan's Senate run here. -- M.F. ]

Oops, MoveableType seems to hate Wikipedia's formatting for in-article links. If anyone could replace the Jack Ryan that with the link to the main article(Senate_candidate) (or to this Slate article if that still doesn't work), it should fix the strangeness.

[ Changes made to #23 -- M.F. ]

Unbeliever-

As a relatively mainstream liberal Democrat

Oxymoron alert!

Nope. Internalize this now - if Obama wins by the kind of margins he's currently getting in the polls, the idea that liberalism is somehow outside of mainstream political thought is dead as a doornail.

That, and the (minor, but real) possibility that we could be looking at FDR 2.0 here. Whoot!

Uh, absent the need for one due to a third World War, that is not something to cheer for. (And if anyone thinks BHO is ready to run WWIII...)

Yes, Unbeliever, clearly I'm hoping for World War 3, instead of being excited about the kind of Democrat who can rise above historical crises and shape national politics for decades to come. Also, like Barack Obama, I associate exclusively with terrorists, pray to the twin gods of Stalin and Mao daily, and use the American flag for a handkerchief.

Any other ridiculous stereotypes you'd like to trot out, or are we done with this nonsense?

Let's go through these one at a time:

I. OBAMA'S GOING TO WIN

No argument here. I think what Armed Liberal said is right.

I would only add that the right response for conservatives is to follow and imitate Sarah Palin. Organize, work for victory, swing from the hips every day that's left, and always enjoy the fight.

For those who need some pepping up, here's a rousing haka: (link)

Does that say "game on" or what? That's the spirit!

II. OBAMA OUGHT TO WIN

On substance, I disagree with Armed Liberal. I think the only foreign policy that's going to do any good is in a nutshell less Islam, and all major parties oppose that, so foreign policy is a wash. Morally, I think there's one overwhelming issue, and when it comes to life and death, Sarah Palin is as good as possible, while Barack Obama is as bad as possible. On cultural issues which are important to the character and national identity of our American friends, such as full-blooded support for the first and second amendments, I think that the Republican Party is always far superior, and Heller, decided by one vote, shows how important the difference is. But in this election the Republican offer is less palatable than usual, at least at the top of the ticket. John McCain, of McCain-Feingold and McCain-Kennedy, is unconvincing as a defender of the first amendment to the Constitution and of the national identity. On economics, I think the Republicans have sounder principles and the better record, but in the present crisis neither party gives evidence of knowing what it is doing. On administration, I think Barack Obama is about as crooked as can be, while both Palin (a sterling reformer with executive experience) and McCain (an authentic pork-buster who knows where the bodies are buried) are ideal. Except that they would have almost no power to impose reforms in the face of a crooked Democrat legislature. So that's better than a wash for conservatives, but not by all that much.

Ultimately I come down for Sarah Palin and against Barack Obama on life. Naturally those who support choice will see it the other way.

There's also the question of how the election was won.

It's no good to ask for any restraint from liberals here. Too many of them believe that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, and that his presidency was illegitimate. Now it's payback time. On the other hand, conservatives think that George W. Bush was legitimately elected, and Al Gore tried to to get himself legally selected, and failed, and that ought to have been that.

After this election, there will be a long list of precedents that conservatives will think Barack Obama has set - not, from their point of view, in legitimate retaliation - as to what you can do in the 21st Century to get elected. Conversations among conservatives already trend to the view that on judicial appointments, since Democrats have obstructed qualified Republican nominations by harsh tactics, Republicans ought to be just as nasty and harsh when it's a Democrat president, otherwise you just lose and reward bad behavior. I don't think conversations about the way this election was won are going to be much different. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, Barack Obama's win will legitimate every tactic and attitude that brought it about, including diversion of government money to pay for electoral fraud (ACORN), silencing critics (with the Obama campaign launching what were in effect denial of service attacks against radio shows that gave a voice to people Barack wanted silent) and the mainstream media and academic campaign of hysterical, vomiting, head-exploding rage and hatred against Sarah Palin. (And by using those adjectives I only quoted Mrs. Palin's critics and Barack Obama fans describing their own and their friends reactions.)

Eh. It is what it is. Liberals were bound to win a presidential election in the 21st Century, and since they've been acting like this continually since they started to delegitimize the election of George W. Bush, whenever they won they were going to consolidate the legitimacy of this style of politics. So this has been baked in the cake since Bush vs. Gore.

The potential up-sides Armed Liberal points to in a Barack Obama presidency are well thought of, and I hope they come off. Maybe the Democratic Party will take more responsibility for resisting jihad terrorism, and if so that will be a great thing.

III. IT GOING TO BE UGLY WHEN HE DOES

Ah, yuh. But compared to Armed Liberal's expectations, I think things are going to be easier for Democrats and harder for Republicans than he expects.

"But he has lashed together a coalition that includes folks who just aren't going to be happy at all when he turns out to be a pragmatist."

That's OK: there's plenty of room yet under Barack Obama's bus, and that represents the best hope that he may be a reasonably efficient president. The people who need to be out of his circle for him to do a good job are crazy enough to force him to get rid of them.

Armed Liberal, you've often said that the mainstream media holds a hidden disadvantage for the Democratic Party. When those who should be reviewing your performance and giving you useful feedback on how you're doing are in fact praising your holy name and getting thrills up their legs at the very nearness of you, you can lose your way. I and Joe Katzman on the other hand have simply insisted: a mighty wurlitzer is an advantage. And as we can see from this election, so it is.

I kept meaning to add - but forgetting till now to post it - that pure and constant hate-tinged negativity also deprives you of feedback. It's depressing, it's infuriating, it's corrosive, undoing the sense that we all have some important interests in common. But mainly, it's uninformative.

I've also addressed some other problems the Republicans have before.

I think the party has shown that it's not serious about delivering to pro-lifers and religious conservatives what they want. George W. Bush seemed to take his Supreme Court appointments as no more than chances to give a couple of his old cronies, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers, good jobs, and he didn't care at all how ugly the needless dispute over Harriet Miers got: all that dissuaded him in the end from continuing to press her candidacy was the sad news that she simply couldn't be coached to a level of constitutional adequacy that would get her through a Senate hearing. As time and stare decisis render Roe unbudgable, and with it the total defeat of the pro-life cause irredeemable, people are going to wonder what they're fighting for.

After that, I think we're going to see some reduced turnout elections. A very large part of America, under a third but still significant, is going to tune out like late Romans, when it became apparent that the state they loved had no more use for them, and its course was going to be directed by emperors, without them and their republican values, to the end of Rome. They will have nothing left worth fighting for, because by a judicial coup the Constitution will have been redefined to rule their deepest sense of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" illegitimate. The contest is going to be for the support of people who do want things that politicians can and will deliver, like patronage.

The Republican Party has no idea how to win in a landscape like that. Once you rule out of court the old believers in republican virtue and the pro-lifers and the Christian conservatives, there's not enough people left who will vote Republican without being well paid to do so.

Patronage works best with huge, discrete pools of permanent clients, and in support of deep bigotries that keep those pools partisan and locked in at minimum cost. The Democratic Party has won this game in advance, and Barack Obama's monolithic Black support illustrates that.

IV. WHY THIS IS GOOD NEWS

"The collapse of an established - anything - whether a political order, a worldview, a movement, an industry is a time of great anxiety."

Yup.

"And of some suffering as the winners in the old order find themselves no longer on top."

And of much more suffering for those who were never on top, but who had hope that however long the road, however high the cost, right might eventually prevail, but who see the door close forever.

That is a bitter cup, and Barack Obama the baby-killer is going to make pro-lifers drink from it, right to the dregs.

And a brave new world will be born.

Civilization is sterilization.

Progress is lovely.

One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.

When it comes to the unborn handicapped - or even eventually with the born, and those in comas and considered not worth trying to help, etc. etc. etc. : Ending is better than mending.

Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have today.

That last one, I approve of. Sarah Palin's obviously having fun. The party won't last forever. Get in there!

After the election is lost, there will be plenty of time to draw conclusions about the right way to behave in Barack Obama's world.

Chris, in the wildest, most optimistic visions of the Obama folks I know, the election looks like a 55 - 45 race, with a closer electoral vote b/c the big margin Obama wins will be concentrated in the core blue states.

That leaves 45% of the public who don't accept Obama-esque liberalism as a core value.

Obama's reaction to that will determine the success or failure of his Administration.

Because 2 years from now, we'll be having a Congressional election, and to the extent that Obama is pissing on their shoes, it's likely that we'll see changes in Congress that make it harder - not easier - for him to operate.

A.L.

#23 from The Unbeliever at 3:58 pm on Oct 09, 2008

Oxymoron

I have been defending this very specific and beautiful word from degradation through mis-use for the past 40 years.

People more and more use it as a synonym for the phrase Contradiction in Terms.

In fact, it refers to a poetic device that merges seemingly contradictory terms or ideas, most famously used by Shakespeare when Juliet speaks to Romeo in the garden scene, she says:

Sweet, so would I,
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Both have enormous emotional charge. Anyone who has ever experienced love cannot deny the verity in these seeming contradictions in terms. Especially the last, which distills the emotional power of the device to its purest form.

The word Oxymoron shouldn't be debased by confusing it with its poorer cousin.

Nope. Internalize this now - if Obama wins by the kind of margins he's currently getting in the polls the idea that liberalism is somehow outside of mainstream political thought is dead as a doornail.

Roughly a 5% average lead does not an impressive landslide make. Combine both Obama's and Hillary's blatant image morphing to appear moderate, and the fact that twice as many Americans self-identify as conservative over liberal (and yes, I know the counter-argument about operational liberalism), and I think you're being a little, ah, "irrationaly exuberant".

Yes, Unbeliever, clearly I'm hoping for World War 3, instead of being excited about the kind of Democrat who can rise above historical crises and shape national politics for decades to come.

Personality cult much?

FDR was great at political image but not so good at domestic policy. He lengthened the Great Depression, instituted wage and price controls, and got large swaths of the New Deal struck down as unconstitutional (after his whole court packing fiasco; can you imagine what would happen if Bush (or Obama) tried that today?) He started programs which have put America on a deficit footing to this day, and came pretty damn close to turning the US into a planned economy.

So no, I am most definitely not hoping for a second FDR. If you want to be excited about better communicators as head of state, fine; that's been my main problem with Bush since 2002. But you're foolish to invoke a good communicator with crappy domestic policies, in an election season where the leading candidate is a charismatic speechmaker with a socialist economic policy.

(Obviously you would have got less disagreement if you hoped for another Reagan as the next Great Communicator. But that would clash rather harshly with your party's myth and narrative, now wouldn't it?)

And as my Grand Bipartisan Gesture for the year, I'll agree to TOC's entire post #28 and concede my grammatical laziness. I blame the Internet's tendency to encourage us to communicate via memes instead of exact terms, when it facilitates quicker communication of general ideas. (Just like the liberal vs conservative labelling that started this.)

#27 from Armed Liberal at 5:01 pm on Oct 09, 2008
Chris, in the wildest, most optimistic visions of the Obama folks I know, the election looks like a 55 - 45 race, with a closer electoral vote b/c the big margin Obama wins will be concentrated in the core blue states.

That leaves 45% of the public who don't accept Obama-esque liberalism as a core value.

Obama's reaction to that will determine the success or failure of his Administration.

Because 2 years from now, we'll be having a Congressional election, and to the extent that Obama is pissing on their shoes, it's likely that we'll see changes in Congress that make it harder - not easier - for him to operate.

A.L.
___________________

The most important impact in this election will be in the Senate. I have never underestimated Obama. When many here saw him as an empty suit, I said that this was a very formidable opponent and an outstanding politician. Possibly even better than Reagan and Clinton, who as politicians were both excellent.

I fully expect Obama to turn the country 180 degrees during his first 100 days in office. The Senate will be where he has secured his power to do so.
I also said that I thought he was ruthless, which I do not feel is necessarily a bad trait.

As David Blue mentioned above

That's OK: there's plenty of room yet under Barack Obama's bus, and that represents the best hope that he may be a reasonably efficient president. The people who need to be out of his circle for him to do a good job are crazy enough to force him to get rid of them.

I cannot remember a president entering office with more of a mandate a from top to bottom. From state legislatures to the Federal level with a choke hold on both Houses of Congress. Maybe Johnson, but I don't feel like looking it up.

Anyone trying to predict President Obama's actions is going to be surprised. We will just have to wait and see. for all the complaints that Obama has no political resume, he is about to step into a position of power that no President has enjoyed since Roosevelt.

It is really remarkable.

That leaves 45% of the public who don't accept Obama-esque liberalism as a core value.

And it assumes the 55% are voting for Obama as a liberal. I don't accept this assumption. Obama is not running as a liberal, he's running (quite successfully) as not a Republican. They're not the same thing.

I hope Obama governs as he's campaigned, and not the way his personal history would lead me to believe. The lack of any counter-balance greatly concerns me, however.

I really do want to know who his Secretary of the Treasury will be. That's the person I'm most interested in.

#30 from The Unbeliever at 5:11 pm on Oct 09, 2008
And as my Grand Bipartisan Gesture for the year, I'll agree to TOC's entire post #28 and concede my grammatical laziness. I blame the Internet's tendency to encourage us to communicate via memes instead of exact terms, when it facilitates quicker communication of general ideas. (Just like the liberal vs conservative labelling that started this.)

____________________

Yes, but will you join my crusade. One thing I will tell you when you defend Oxymoron in the way I just did, the chicks love it. :)

I'd like some of what A.L. is smoking. This, though a minor point, seems particularly preposterous:

a Democrat will be able to get more from the public sector unions than a Republican will

To the extent Obama has a jobs program it revolves around regulation and expansion of the public sector. A lot of the fiscal burdens will be hidden or in the long-term form of pension benefits for future administrations.

But I don't reject outright the notion that only Nixon could go to China and perhaps only Obama can bomb Iran, but its doubtful. Obama and too many of the Democrats have only one organizing principle: NOT BUSH. This makes sense as an electoral strategy, but for governance it looks pretty weak. Bad things are going to happen in the world is my prediction. And Obama will be blamed for them justly or unjustly.

A new political alignment as the alignment of 30 years ago splinters.

Again, what is A.L. smoking? First of all, the cult of personalities that are the candidates for both parties do not have the type of ideological depth for re-alignment. Secondly, if there were any re-alignment, it would not be one to A.L.'s liking. Obama represents the rise of the technocratic elites in the Democratic Party and the fall of the working class Democrats. Almost certainly Republican candidates will be looking to exploit that gap four years from now.

So who is in this new alignment you dream of?

#31 from TOC:

I cannot remember a president entering office with more of a mandate a from top to bottom. From state legislatures to the Federal level with a choke hold on both Houses of Congress."

And the Fourth Estate, let's not forget them.

I've never seen anything like it.

#31 from TOC:

"for all the complaints that Obama has no political resume, he is about to step into a position of power that no President has enjoyed since Roosevelt."

"It is really remarkable."

It really is. The world is changing fundamentally before our eyes.

PD Shaw, all you need for a deep, permanent change in what plays in America is some Supreme Court picks. It doesn't work if they betray you, but Supreme Court "growth in office" goes only in one direction. It doesn't work if you pick conservatives who want to upset the apple cart as little as possible with each decision, but it works fine if you pick radicals who think that their duty is to impose their own wills. And it doesn't work if you can't get your picks, or if the pool you pick from is restricted due to people not wanting to be Borked or held up indefinitely, but it works fine if the Fourth Estate and the Senate are cheering for you.

Barack Obama has what it takes to remake America and the world. The only thing that could make him even mightier is for more vacancies to open up on the court.

#8 Nortius:
Sorry for the snark. I do lurk here when I can but mostly don't comment, since others have usually said what I'm thinking.

Substantively, I think AL is probably right on #1, probably wrong on #2, probably right on #3. The snark was due to the late night jaw-drop at #4. I actually hope #4 is right, but there is so much uncertainty about what might happen when things collapse, it struck me as wildly optimistic to say "this is good news" vs. "this might be good news". Especially since aspects of #3 could erase whatever post-racial credit we'd want to give ourselves for electing Obama.

I'd love to see a couple of centrist, pragmatist parties emerge from the ashes of the Dems and the GOP, especially if one of them would have room in the tent for the handful of metrolibertarian hawks like me. But for the replacements for our collapsed establishment institutions to be better, the better angels have to be found for the rebuilding. What do we actually see in this year's political landscape? I see:
- both parties are running on soak-the-rich populism
- the political innovations from the Dems include the Kossacks, ACORN voter-registration, and Doodad Pro
- the GOP analysis of the McCain weakness is that he hasn't veered far enough to the right
- as AL points out, the MSM has thrown out its credibilty
- even the Libertarian wing of the political discourse is the Paulbots and Bob Barr (?!!!)
If I wasn't deep down an optimist about American exceptionalism, I'd be downright depressed. For mostly nonrational reasons, I think we'll survive the next 4-8-whatever years. But I would have done #4 as "Why this might not be an unmitigated disaster" instead of "Why this is good news".

I would probably add: "for us here in the USA". I'm less optimistic about the idea of Obama helping our standing in the world, especially in the sense of what it means to be an ally or a trading partner. After the debate, I realized that the pattern for the two candidates is that McCain says intemperate things about our enemies (Bomb Iran etc.), but Obama likes to threaten our friends. The Iraqis, the Afghans, the Canadians, the Mexicans, and the Colombians... they all need to step up more or...what?

Is that better? Can I come back?

When a caller to the debate eagerly asked what kind of sacrifices they would demand from "the American people", it was obvious that aging liberals expect to finally inherit the world they've always dreamed of: a dismal socialist bureaucracy, headed by the Beautiful Leader who not only tells people what to think and feel, but tells them who and what they are.

No longer a world but a story - a story with a political moral. A nasty, puritanical, Woodrow Wilson kind of moral.

This is not going to be as easy as they think.

Is that better? Can I come back?

Jim, given your weakness for puns about fluorescence resonance energy transfer, the answer can only be, "sure thing!"

#38 from Glen Wishard:

"This is not going to be as easy as they think."

To give them everything they want? No.

But for the Supreme Court to toss something extraneous and incompatible with the constitution into it, and leave the rest of society struggling for decades or centuries with what they've done, is horribly easy.

Every time the Supreme Court sits is a constitutional convention, if the justices are so disposed, and only their opinions are really consulted.

Quoth Chris:

if Obama wins by the kind of margins he's currently getting in the polls

You mean 11%? Or do you mean 2%?

That kind of spread is striking to me. Not to you, apparently.

Personally, I only go with Gallup polls, because I think they are done the right way. I believe them when they tell me what I want to believe, and I believe them when they tell me what I don't want to believe.

Gallup: Steady: Obama 52, McCain 41 falls into the latter category.

I'd reprise George Orwell's famous statement about not assuming current trends will continue (without the accusation he tacked onto it -- that doing so is 'power worship'). At a time when we've just seen our financial models collapse, in spite of having been built by the best experts money could buy, we ought not to be too certain that our political forecasting is better. It suffers from the same flaws: for one thing, that the people doing it have a great deal personally invested in the outcome.

There remain any number of forces that could change the trends of the election. I'll point to a simple one that is highly likely to come up: this very line of thought that you're engaging in here has consequences.

The very thought "Obama has this thing just about won" has consequences: people start thinking along these very lines.

#31:

...for all the complaints that Obama has no political resume, he is about to step into a position of power that no President has enjoyed since Roosevelt.

The "buyer's remorse" concept has a real effect on elections, and we've seen it at work in this election. Hillary Clinton's long, strong finish came about precisely because Barack Obama seemed to have won early, and voters had to ask themselves if he was what they really wanted. The voters fought tooth and nail in many places to stop him, until the superdelegates had to step in and say, "No, we'll ensure he is the nominee."

We're about to see that phase of the general election. People will start to say, "Hey, he's about to win the Presidency. Do we really want that?" People will be thinking, "What would he do with all that power?"

How deep will the effect be? I don't know, and neither really does anyone else. It depends on what other events and conversations harmonize with the thought.

#43 from Grim at 7:30 pm on Oct 09, 2008

The "buyer's remorse" concept has a real effect on elections, and we've seen it at work in this election.

You are right here. Unfortunately, the candidate who has inspired most Buyer's remorse has been John McCain and the absolutely dismal campaign he has run. This guy is turning out to be the worst candidate I have ever seen. His campaign team is even more incompetent than McGovern's and Dukakis'.

He and his campaign infuriate me. His effect as a millstone around the party's neck is going to cost us the ability to even filibuster in the Senate.

"Buyers Remorse" Steve Schmitt and John McCain are the very definition of Buyers Remorse.

If you think the electoral map looks bad now, we haven't yet seen the right's flight to Barr and Paul kick in yet. How does a loss in Georgia sound. Thanks to this campaign it is becoming a possibility.

Tell me about Buyer's Remorse, I am suffering from a severe case of it at this point.

" Look, it's not fair that the media are looking through Palin's used Kotex with a microscope and a gene sequencer and ignoring major stories about Obama."

AL: This goes well beyond sexism and bad taste.

#44 from TOC:

"He and his campaign infuriate me. His effect as a millstone around the party's neck is going to cost us the ability to even filibuster in the Senate."

Not if Sarah Palin can prevent it, and maybe she can.

She's certainly trying her heart out, and in so doing setting the right example for all conservatives to follow now.

Jerry, if you're infuriated by that, you should stay away from what the media and major commentators are saying about Palin. I think it's an accurate reflection of their state of mind.

A.L.

JerryT, I don't agree. No bad words were used, and this is approximately what the mainstream media is doing. Its grubby intrusiveness is the offense, not Armed Liberal calling them on it.

The devastating thing for Republicans is how much credibility the press hasn't squandered in doing this, how many people simply think the mainstream media is being fair.

For conservatives, read this Pew research and weep: (link).

Some high points: 60% think the press is being fair on John McCain (and 15% think the media is being too easy on him), 60% think the press is being fair to Barack Obama (and 7% think the press is being too tough on him), 66% think the press is being fair to Joe Biden, and even though 38% think the press is being too tough on Sarah Palin, an equal number (38%) thinks the press is being fair to her, and 21% thinks the press is taking it too easy on her. In no case is "fair coverage" less than the most common public verdict on how the press is treating a candidate.

People really do believe what they read in the papers.

#46 from David Blue at 8:05 pm on Oct 09, 2008

Not if Sarah Palin can prevent it, and maybe she can.

This is what the party has come to? Reliance on Sarah Palin? Don't get me started on how choosing her is the very symbol of the Party being intellectually bankrupt.

Poor Sarah Palin, the Rovian tool.

#49 from TOC:

"This is what the party has come to? Reliance on Sarah Palin?"

Yes. Someone has to make an effort, get out there are rally the troops, no matter how bad the circumstances are. She's doing it joyfully. And that makes her better than all the people who aren't doing anything. So it's right to look up to her.

#49 from TOC:

"Don't get me started on how choosing her is the very symbol of the Party being intellectually bankrupt."

"Poor Sarah Palin, the Rovian tool."

Well, you were more polite than David Brooks calling her a fatal cancer, so that's something.

Specifically (link): Sarah Palin "represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party." As opposed to David Brooks' response to Obama: "And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say."

People are and have been reading rivers of toxic, cruel slime directed at Sarah Palin and her family, and daily religio-erotic press adorations of Obama, and they simply go: 'sure, that's fair'.

To behave like that and continue to be believed, to be treated as fair and the arbiter of what's mainstream and reasonable: that's power.

Senator Roark: "Power don't come from a badge or a gun. Power comes from lying. Lying big, and gettin' the whole damn world to play along with you."
- Sin City (2005)

Glen,

Speaking of Woodrow Wilson, that may be what Obama turns out to be, rather than Jimmy Carter.

Ultimately, Jimmy Carter was an executive, a do-er, whereas Wilson was a professor. Obama may have had more legislative experience, but he remains a professor/thinker.

Another parallel is that Wilson is the culmination of the progressive era, and Obama is also the product of the new progressive movement.

David Blue (#26)

The Latino population remains a potential game changer in the demographics of American politics. For now the Latino vote goes largely Democratic. But for how long? Already in the Southwest, we see a conflict inside the Democratic party machine between the black and Latino caucuses.

Unions have also had an uneasy relationship w/ the Latinos. They can't decide whether to unionize the illegals or not.

In addition, as Latinos move up the economic ladder, they are becoming more conservative in outlook. Many of their ancestors took charge of their destiny by moving across the border. That is an inherently Republican value.

So the future is still unwritten. There is only one way to find out.

For most of the media, "fairness" in this campaign seems to mean that if the story's out there--somewhere--then it's been covered. The time spent on reporting positives and negatives, the framing of the issues: trust us, we've got it about right. And per #48, most Americans seem to agree.

For instance, reams have been reported about Palin and her doings. And there have been stories about Obama's associations with Ayers, as well, even in last Saturday's NY Times.

Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.

Oh. Sorry. I forgot the "blockquote" command for that last paragraph. Those aren't my words, but the sentiments of John M. Murtagh, who was a nine-year-old at the time that Ayers' and Dohrn's Weatherman cell attempted to murder him. His father had the poor taste to be the judge of a trial of Black Panthers. Eggs, omelets, family, firebombs, Ayers might plausibly quip.

In case I'd missed this color, I queried the Times' search engine with "Murtagh Ayers." The null-set results were not surprising.

#50 from David Blue at 8:32 pm on Oct 09, 2008

I have nothing against Sarah Palin. I think she was used by Schimtt and McCain, who bear the full responsibility for this debacle and for the cynical, totally political motivation for choosing her.

Worse, they did not vet her, went under the assumption that she could attract women and have more or less kept her in purdah for the bulk of the campaign.
I don't like that kind of behavior, nor do I think anyone else in their right mind does.

Again I have nothing against Sara Palin, I do have a lot against the McCain campaign for choosing her.

David Blue, my view of the Supreme Court is that if Obama wins, two liberal justices (Stevens and Ginsburg) will probably retire. It's an interesting question whether Obama would replace them with liberals or moderate liberals. One of the names thrown around is Obama's friend, Cass Sunstein, a judicial minimalist who would be highly preferable to me.

If McCain wins, I am less certain that Ginsburg would retire and the possibility is that Scalia might retire. And I question McCain's ability to nominate conservatives that would be ratified by the Senate. He's likely to pick a moderate.

So my tally is that liberals have the most at stake in the courts this election since their seats are most likely to open, but there are probably little gains that conservatives can gain in this election cycle either, and there is some perverse risk that they could lose their spokesperson.

AMac,

You seem to be happy playing the role of todays pawn in this tiresome and losing effort to connect two people who only have had peripheral involvement with one another and who do not share views on many issues, most importantly on domestic terrorism and acts of violence.

As Obama has made clear many many times, but you choose to ignore.

It is frustrating to think that your political opposition is capable of little more than this. I can't decide if we're lucky or unlucky to be living in a time of such radical change and turmoil where such piffle is naturally relegated to the far fringes of the discourse. But here we are. And here you are talking about Ayers. Sad, really.

You'd think the very fact that it is trivial to make similar associations of McCain/Palin/Bush etc. which, in some cases, are stronger and more sinister than Obama/Ayers, should be enough to deter this kind of thing, or at least provoke the fear that it can backfire. Apparently not.

Sorry to say but your quiver is nearly empty and this last arrow is broken.

Chris, in the wildest, most optimistic visions of the Obama folks I know, the election looks like a 55 - 45 race, with a closer electoral vote b/c the big margin Obama wins will be concentrated in the core blue states.

Oddly enough, AL, the current electoral map counts I'm seeing have Obama's likely electoral victory closer to 65%. And, considering that Bush Sr.'s win over Dukakis was only 8 percentage points, but was plenty enough excuse for liberals to be told for years afterwards how out of touch they were, I think it's only fair that conservatives hear the same for a similar victory by the Democrats.

That leaves 45% of the public who don't accept Obama-esque liberalism as a core value.

Obama's reaction to that will determine the success or failure of his Administration.

Because 2 years from now, we'll be having a Congressional election, and to the extent that Obama is pissing on their shoes, it's likely that we'll see changes in Congress that make it harder - not easier - for him to operate.

Alternatively, as even people on this thread have pointed out, this is the end of the Reagan coalition, which means that the 45% the Republicans scrounge this election may turn into a much smaller percentage next time around, as guys like, say, Ross Douthat and David Brooks decide that the paranoid ravings of the Republican base are more of a turnoff than sane, thoughtful liberalism.

I would love to hear some sane, thoughtful liberalism. It just seems very hard to find, particularly in the national Democratic Party.

I'm still looking at popular vote projections at FiveThirtyEight showing Obama winning with 51.8% of the vote. That could certainly turn into a more significant electoral vote (347.6 according to 538), but I think that's way too close to (a) predict realignment or the end of the Reagan coalition or (b) pronounce liberalism ascendant.

Armed Liberal said:

The media absolutely shaped this election, let's be clear.

Just waking up to this notion I see? They've shaped the last two as well. Look where that got us. At least in this case their alleged favorite is also likely to do more good than harm, unlike his predecessor.

Folks, please don't take my predictions for assumptions that Obama will be a great president - I'd say the odds on his being a decent one are about 1 in 4 - lowered because the times will be so turbulent.

Not sure where you got these numbers...perhaps from your back pocket or somewhere in close proximity?

Times are going to be very tough. A McCain presidency will destroy America. An Obama presidency at very least has the change of turning things around.

My biggest fear, and a very realistic one I'd say given past and current (McCain/Palin's Hate Rally's...er, campaign events) behavior, is that Republicans would rather he failed (and the country as well) than succeed, in order to avoid the possibility of a Democrat getting credit for doing good, or better still, great.

With wolves like this nipping constantly at his heels, he will have more of a challenge than just the current events present. He will have opposition from within, who will gleefully regard screwing America as mere collateral damage on their mission to destroy Obama's presidency.

Warren Harding won the Presidency (a) campaigning on a "Return to Normalcy" from the hectic Wilson years, (b) with a thin resume supported by good looks and a good speaking voice and © with celebrity endorsements from Hollywood.

They call this Warren Harding Error.

Vista, having been at some recent Democratic events here in SoCal, to single out the emotion at the McCain rally and call it a "hate rally" is just silly. The amount of venom on both sides is far too high, and your own posts here are often sharp enough to suggest that you're happy to partake when it's your own team's.

A.L.

"With wolves like this nipping constantly at his heels, he will have more of a challenge than just the current events present. He will have opposition from within, who will gleefully regard screwing America as mere collateral damage on their mission to destroy Obama's presidency."

You sound exactly, and I do mean exactly, like a Republican complaining about criticism of Bush from Democrats.

Hey, remember those Republican activists shouting down Obama at the DNC? Oh, no it was the other way around... Remember when the McCain campaign sent an email out urging supporters to flood the phone lines of radio stations to demand critics not be given air time, oh wait, not it was the other way around.

Vista #56 --

this tiresome and losing effort to connect two people who only have had peripheral involvement with one another and who do not share views on many issues, most importantly on domestic terrorism and acts of violence.

Those are the talking points of David Axelrod and the ~75%? of the media that wants to do their job well while helping Obama get elected.

John Murtagh was quite eloquent on the impact of "involvement" (#53 above). I agree with you and, presumably, Murtagh that Obama doesn't share Ayers' views on domestic terrorism. Ayers himself is self-congratulatory on his bomb-throwing past and without a shred of remorse for his evil deeds. He celebrates his lack of empathy for his victims, actual and intended. This makes "Hate the sin, love the sinner" a bit of a tightrope walk in this case. No?

Obama is an unusual candidate because of the thinness of his resume. He stands out in comparison to (for example) McCain, H. Clinton, Romney, Biden, Richardson, Bush 43, Bush 41, Gore, W. Clinton, and Dole. Among recent national candidates, perhaps Palin and Huckabee approach Obama most closely in this respect. Instead of accomplishments, each of these three based their candidacies around a Story--one that is inspirational to their fervent supporters and alienating to their opponents.

Personal history (exotic and otherwise) aside, what are Obama's credentials?

• Graduated from an Ivy League college
• Alinskyite community organizer
• Went to Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude
• President of Harvard Law Review
• Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge
• Illinois State Senator
• A run for Congress
• U.S. Senator

What are his major accomplishments?

• Credit for whatever good he did as an organizer
• Wrote two autobiographical best-sellers
• Credit for whatever good the CAC did
• His legislative wins in Springfield
• His legislative wins in Washington, DC

This is from memory, jogged by this timeline. I couldn't do this off-the-cuff with, say, Bill Clinton.

The point is that these lists aren't particularly long. And yet a couple of weeks before the election, significant gaps remain in the mainstream media's coverage.

Obama has indeed made clear many many times that Ayers was just a guy who lives in my neighborhood. That narrative runs into difficulty because of Ayers' central role in at least two of Obama's main accomplishments: the Annenberg Challenge and his State Senate campaign. There's circumstantial evidence that the connection of the two men is deeper and extends back to the late 1980s. People who read blogs know of these twists, but--since the mainstream chooses to ignore such leads--most voters don't.

your political opposition is capable of little more than this.

I comment on what interests me. If I'm a pawn of McCain's, be reassured that I'm a low-paid one.

You'd think the very fact that it is trivial to make similar associations of McCain/Palin/Bush etc. which, in some cases, are stronger and more sinister than Obama/Ayers, should be enough to deter this kind of thing

The ironic aspects of this tu quoque defense regularly elude Obama's champions. In any case, the circumstances surrounding Troopergate and the Keating Five scandal should get thorough airings. At least when it comes to that side of the aisle, journalists and editors can identify what their job is.

I can't decide if we're lucky or unlucky to be living in a time of such radical change and turmoil... your quiver is nearly empty and this last arrow is broken.

As far as that ancient Chinese curse, we'll begin to find out the specifics, soon enough. If quivers and arrows are meant to refer to the outcome of this election, then you and I agree once more. As David Blue and others have said upthread, it goes to Obama--and the unlikely event of a last-minute McCain upset would be nothing to celebrate in any case.

Jeff Medcalf-

I would love to hear some sane, thoughtful liberalism. It just seems very hard to find, particularly in the national Democratic Party.

I suppose it does depend on your reference point, at that. If you think Armed Liberal here is the voice of sane, thoughtful liberalism, then yes, the Democratic Party is just about fresh out. On the other hand, if you think W. and the Iraq War have been as big a disaster as most of the rest of the country does - and as Douthat and Brooks apparently do - then the current Democrats may be just what you're looking for.

PD Shaw-

I'm still looking at popular vote projections at FiveThirtyEight showing Obama winning with 51.8% of the vote. That could certainly turn into a more significant electoral vote (347.6 according to 538), but I think that's way too close to (a) predict realignment or the end of the Reagan coalition or (b) pronounce liberalism ascendant.

As for (a), I suggest you take it up with AL, who said it far more clearly than I:

The GOP will start the slugfest as the Reagan coalition deconstructs itself. The GOP has been this weird accumulation of insider traders, courtiers selling favors, small government true believers, strong America advocates, and those seeking to recapture a traditional America which - while a great and necessary myth - really never existed. They are going to be seriously pissed off at each other after November.

And as for (b), the combination of Obama taking the presidency and the very real chance that Democrats won't merely control both parts of Congress, but will also have a filibuster-proof majority, sure sounds like liberalism ascendant to me.

Chris -

Well, for two years it will be, yes.

A.L.

Marc, I am going to engage with your point II, as you've assured me before that it's the core of your motivation to support Obama, and I take you at your word.

It's also wretchedly sloppy thinking on two levels.

First, Obama. Whatever positive attributes he may possess, determination and steadfastness in the face of adversity that can harm his political future are not on the list. Just how many have gone under his bus during the campaign? His pastor, his financier, his grandmother, soon the 'educator' that got him started in politics, if past is prologue.

Unfortunately, there's room under that bus for a nation or two, including the hard-fought successes won by our troops. Why you would believe that a man of this character will stand for four years against the antipathy and rage of his base if he holds the line in Iraq and elsewhere, setting himself up for a come-back from Hillary, I do not know. You may call it hope, I call it wishful thinking. And that's not a strategy.

Obama and the Democrat congress have said repeatedly what they intend to do if they have the power to control the course of the war. I take them at their word; I suggest you do as well.

Though I'm not sure it matters any more, at least in the way that you state - 'avoiding killing a shed load of Arabs'.

The 'win by being nice' plan has had its run. It may even succeed in part, but that matter is now largely out of our hands, and into those of the Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims. Obama can and probably will reduce the chances of success, by pulling out early while whatever institutions may evolve in Iraq are still shaky. But the Arabs and Muslims have now seen both Al Qaeda and America at their fullest - and they now have their own choice to make.

Whatever the full motivations, what we did in Iraq and to large extent in Afghanistan was the act of a wealthy nation confident in its staying power. While the cost in American lives has been less than any historical precedent, the monetary and political costs have been enormous. We gave away enormous force multipliers and years of time in order to get down in the dirt and try to create a decent alternative to slaughter.

It won't happen again. No sane strategist or commander-in-chief is now going to put forward a plan requiring years of endurance and expense, and commitment from both sides of the political aisle. The political will is expended, we are done. We may also question whether we will have the wealth to afford niceties in the future, the way things are running this month.

If there's another go around, either through another terrorist assault, or the need to confront Iran or an Islamist Pakistan, it's going to be full kinetic. Political, economic and military trends all point to a return to the 'kill people and break things' way of persuasion if it comes to that. I don't believe McCain has an interest in going the way of GWB, and I don't think Obama would risk ending up a second Jimmy Carter.

It doesn't necessarily mean killing shed loads of Arabs (or Persians or Pashtos), not directly. There really has been a 'revolution in military affairs' in the last few years, though not in the original meaning of the phrase. JDAM and its buddies give us a 'reverse neutron bomb' - we can wreck the infrastructure and leave the population mostly intact. In the dark, cold (or hot), and no longer a threat.

The initiative has passed. It's up to the "other side" (in its broadest sense) whether we go another round. If it happens, the nature of that round is not in very much doubt.

I believe your national security case for Obama fails on two grounds - his character, and the exigencies of the strategic situation.

That unfortunately leaves us with the reality of a choice between a Republican, centrist statist, and a Democrat, leftist statist. Perhaps your penchant for wealth redistribution makes you more sympathetic to the potential socialist; if so, it would be better to put forward your case for that destiny of our country, rather than crutching along on a broken national security argument.

NM-

if Obama wins by the kind of margins he's currently getting in the polls

You mean 11%? Or do you mean 2%?

That kind of spread is striking to me. Not to you, apparently.

Haven't seen any polls with a 2% reading lately, NM - though I have seen a few 3s, and yes, one happy one in double digits.

That said, the poll average has clearly favored Obama for months now, with the solitary exception of McCain's post-convention bump, and yes, I feel pretty darn comfortable talking about Obama's popular vote margin at this point... not to mention his electoral margin, as I pointed out to AL above.

But then, based on what you said above in #9, I'm just enslaved cattle happily chewing on my meds, or something, so what else would you expect me to say?

Moo!

Vista --

A blogger I now read regularly is Fabius Maximus, who is now writing daily about the unfolding financial crisis. To give a sense of the urgency that he and some of his knowledgeable readers share, I reproduce part of a comment by Michael: this afternoon --

...events are heading to a nexus that is bigger than any political solution.

Tomorrow [10/10/08], $400 billion in Lehman Bros CDS [credit-default swaps] will be settled. They have to be settled under their contractual terms, because Lehman has defaulted on its debts. The current guess (no one really knows, of course) is that recovery from Lehman directly on those debts and commitments will be $.10 on the dollar. If so, that means the “insurers” of the CDS - the ones who have been taking money form all the Lehman creditors who wanted to “hedge” against default, plus those who bought the CDS as pure speculation - will have to pay $.90 on the dollar of loss. The insurers are many and include JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, AIG etc.

This means, in the anticipated scenario, these banks and insurance companies would have to produce $360 billion dollars in cash for immediate payment TOMORROW. It’s no coincidence that the DOW fell almost 700 points today when Treasury announced it interpreted the “spirit” of the TARP (it sure ain’t in the language) to permit it to give - on its own authority - “around “$300 billion” directly to banks and other companies inexchange for preferred stock. This will be a make or break moment, since failure to settle these CDS “successfully” means the remaining $50 trillion in CDS are essentially worthless, and there is no more financial system to worry about saving. Sound drastic? If I were King of the Forest, I’d put a moratorium on CDS settlements in place (yes, that would produce its own - much lesser - panic), until we calmed the rest of the financial system down - a matter of months at least.

Is Michael correct? I don't know, but I have growing suspicions that such analyses are at least partially right. Thus, President-Elect Obama (or possibly, McCain) is going to have his hands full on November 5th, dealing with a massively complex set of developments that make his promises and platform irrelevant, at least for a few years.

In focusing on the shortcomings of this campaign, I lose sight of the need for effective governance. I am (obviously) very dismayed by the inadequacies of a failing media, and by the candidates put forward by our two-party system. Certainly, I wish that an economically-literate person with proven management skills (Romney) was going to be the next president. But this is not to be.

I'll keep my fingers crossed and support the President-Elect as he wrestles with these overwhelmingly serious threats to the economy.

Tim - longer reply coming...but I disagree.

What does Obama want? He wants to be elected. Once he's elected, what will he want? He'll want to be re-elected.

American helicopters lifting folks off of embassy roofs is not a path to re-election.

I'm more worried by his soft attitudes (no matter what he says, I read what he and his advisers have written) about Israel, which may make them nervous enough to Do Something.

A.L.

AL-

Well, for two years it [liberalism ascendant] will be, yes.

Yep. And I'd worry more about your suggestion that'll change after 2 years, but you've had a pretty lousy prediction record starting since 2004, so...

It's also interesting - but not terribly surprising - to me how you're reacting to the idea of Obama winning and the Democrats cleaning up big in Congress. There's an excellent chance we'll see real forward momentum on things like health care, the environment, jobs packages, tax cuts for the working and middle class - all traditionally liberal issues, and mostly things that one would think would nicely fit in with your supposed "what is the Democratic party doing to help a 35-year-old factory worker?" concern.

Instead, you're somewhat pleased that Obama may turn the screws on unions, a bit. But still think he'll probably suck as president.

You and Joe Lieberman have fun starting in 2009, AL... from a liberal perspective, you deserve exactly what you're getting.

There's an excellent chance we'll see real forward momentum on things like health care, the environment, jobs packages, tax cuts for the working and middle class

I read things like this and I wonder, do people really believe that we can simultaneously cut taxes on (almost) everybody, increase government benefits, reduce fossil fuel consumption and generally increase prosperity? There are no trade-offs to be made?

I mean, it would be great if we could do all, but don't you think some of these goals are in opposition to each other? Or is it your belief that we really can have it all, and it's just been Republicans, either through ignorance of malice, that's kept it from happening?

#74:

I notice that the moderator has asked a variation of that question in all three debates. 'Given the reality, however, which of these many things you're promising to do is most important to you, and which will you let go if necessary?'

It is a good question that I hope they continue to ask, because so far, not one of the candidates, presidential or vice presidential, has answered it in a satisfactory and candid fashion.

SG-

I read things like this and I wonder, do people really believe that we can simultaneously cut taxes on (almost) everybody, increase government benefits, reduce fossil fuel consumption and generally increase prosperity? There are no trade-offs to be made?

I mean, it would be great if we could do all, but don't you think some of these goals are in opposition to each other? Or is it your belief that we really can have it all, and it's just been Republicans, either through ignorance of malice, that's kept it from happening?

SG, while I wouldn't go so far as to say "ignorance or malice", I would say that there's at least a possibility that those goals can be achieved simultaneously. Obviously we could write several books going back and forth on the feasibility of that statement, but the back-of-the-envelope thinking is basically:

1. Given the massive tax cuts we've seen on the wealthy during the GWB years, yes, there's at least some room to shift the tax burden upwards and still, at the very least, remain revenue neutral, compared to the Bush years.

2. "Increase government benefits" means, I assume, some form of national health care. And I think there's more than a little evidence here that moving us towards a more centralized health care system that puts a greater emphasis on preventative care, long-term health maintenance, and getting everybody in the risk pool, and less emphasis on a gigantic medical billing bureaucracy would, again, at least be revenue neutral. The one example we've seen recently of a country switching from a private insurance scheme to a nationalized health care scheme - Taiwan, in the 1990's - tends to bear this out.

3. Reduce fossil fuel consumption - oil is cheap, but there are very real suggestions that there are renewable and efficient energy technologies on the horizon that are even cheaper: photovoltaics that convert IR to electricity, hydrogen-cracking genetically engineered bacteria, and flying wind turbines that can get juice from Hadley cells, off the top of my head. I believe a concerted government investment effort can move these technologies to market that much quicker.

4. And even if moving to this stuff wasn't cheaper than oil, and even if there are no collateral benefits from heavy R&D investments in this stuff (spin-off technologies, green entrepreneurs, creation of new US-based industries, all of which we've seen from earlier government investments in stuff like space travel, the Internet, etc.), the real question is, would the costs of going green outweigh the trillion-odd dollars we're currently spending on Iraq?

Now, all that said, I have no doubt that 95%+ of WoC readers think I'm being outrageously naive or outright delusional about this stuff. And I'm quite positive, from arguing on these boards for the last 3+ years, that I won't convince any of you, so let me just put it this way: y'all had your shot at achieving a big dream with GWB and the Republican Congress, of getting rid of all the world's bad guys (or at least the Axis of Evil) and remaking the Middle East as a network of happy democracies. For better or worse, that failed.

Now there's an excellent chance we'll get Obama in the White House and Congress fully under our control. It's time to try out our big dreams.

Just one thing about your