Headlines For Today: November 7

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Let's just put these out there again, shall we?

Peggy Noonan:

We begin with the three words everyone writing about the election must say: Nobody knows anything. Everyone's guessing. I spent Sunday morning in Washington with journalists and political hands, one of whom said she feels it's Obama, the rest of whom said they don't know. I think it's Romney. I think he's stealing in "like a thief with good tools," in Walker Percy's old words. While everyone is looking at the polls and the storm, Romney's slipping into the presidency. He's quietly rising, and he's been rising for a while.

Dick Morris:

We're going to win by a landslide. It will be the biggest surprise in recent American political history. It will rekindle a whole question as to why the media played this race as a nail-biter, where in fact I think that Romney is going to win by quite a bit. My own view is that Romney is going to carry 325 electoral votes.

Michael Barone:

Bottom line: Romney 315, Obama 223. That sounds high for Romney. But he could drop Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still win the election. Fundamentals.

Brian S. Brown:

Romney wins the Electoral College with room to spare — somewhere around 300 electors. All four marriage votes in the deepest of blue states (Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, and Maine) will be won by traditional-marriage supporters. This will happen even though supporters of same-sex marriage have outspent us by gargantuan amounts.

In a fair and just society, political pundits who got things this fucking wrong would never be listened to again. When their names were mentioned, people would mutter embarrassedly and try to change the subject. If they ever tried again to appear on television or write a column about politics, people would point and laugh at their cluelessness until stuff came out their noses. Children would throw turds at them in the street and pin "Kick Me" signs to their backs. The sheer shame engendered by their own stupidity would trap them at home forever, dressed in the tattered rags of their reputations, wearing only one shoe and constantly revisiting the rotted ruins of a table laid with celebratory cake and Romney/Ryan How to Vote cards.

Assholes.

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Jill:

OK, OK, I believe you.

Bill, Chris, and Sandy.

Those are the three most important names to keep in mind as we heave a collective sigh of relief this morning that we are not going to have four-to-eight years of Paul Ryan kicking old people out on the street, John Bolton as Secretary of State, more prom night dumpster babies, millions of women scratching their heads at the local Walgreen's wondering why they can't refill their Yaz prescription, and an austerity-induced second plunge into recession.

It isn't that the Republicans didn't TRY to steal it, what with possibly rigged unverifiable voting machines, last minute unverified "software patches", telling Spanish-speaking voters to vote on the wrong day, reporting of a legitimate poll observer as a member of the New Black Panthers, and long waits caused at least partially by Republican ~~thugs~~ "poll watchers" demanding ever-more-elaborate forms of identification.

There were other factors, of course. There was the 47% video and the Etch-a-Sketch that tried to turn Willard Rmoney from a "severe conservative" into the Defender of the Poor, which made people wonder just what they would be getting of Rmoney were elected. Then there was the increasing hysteria of the last days of the campaign, in which Rudy Giuliani, the man who set up New York City's command center in the World Trade Center, called for President Obama to resign and Paul Ryan insisted that America's "Judeo-Christian" values were threatened by Barack Obama's re-election in some mysterious way that they weren't in the last four.

But in the end, it was those three names that ultimately turned the tide in this country towards at least some semblance of sanity and toward the future.

Bill Clinton got the ball rolling at the convention, when he laid out the case for not just why it was taking so long for the economy to recover, but exactly what the obstacles were. Clinton's gift has always been in his ability to explain complex concepts in simple terms and do it with a twinkle in his eyes, and the gift he has of making you willing to follow him anywhere started to make even skeptics take another look at this young president who navigated economic waters more treacherous than anyone since FDR has had to deal with.

Then there was Hurricane Sandy.

It's one thing to talk about "smaller government" in the abstract. It's one thing to talk about "let the states handle it" when there isn't an emergency. And it's easy to talk about self-sufficiency when you're talking about poor black people taking shelter in a football stadium while their town is drowning. But when the images of devastation in the media are of white people picking through their belongings in a landscape that looks like an asteroid hit their community, it becomes far more difficult to marginalize those affected as being "the other", even if you live in Iowa or Ohio or Wisconsin. The sad fact of our society is that until misfortune happanes to white people, far too many white people can still remain detached from it and not extrapolate the possibility of disaster to themselves. No one is calling for the people of Staten Island and Lindenhurst and the Rockaways and Mantoloking and Ortley Beach to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

The Republicans have made great hay of painting Barack Obama as a weak sister, a pussy, a girly-man. They've said he's not a leader because he doesn't beat his chest and proclaim to the world that he's the biggest, baddest dick on the block. But what Americans saw in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy was the kind of leader one wants to see in a crisis -- organized, calm, efficient, comforting; one not calculating the political points to be gained but offering both words of comfort and actions to those affected. Anyone can bluster, but a leader actually gets things done. And here Americans saw a kind of leadership that does not need to advertise itself in giant neon letters.

And finally there was Chris....Chris Christie.

Who would have believed that Chris Christie, he of the bullying bluster, would end up as arguably the statesman of the year? When the biggest test that a governor can tackle came about, Christie put the good of his state above ideology and above party and not only toured the devastated areas with the same President he had excoriated days earlier, but consistently praised the President for his leadership and cooperation -- no doubt damaging his future, perhaps fatally, in the Republican Party as a result. For those still sitting on the fence, watching a respected rising star in the Republican Party praise this Democratic President, must have been food for thought.

And so today those of us who yesterday were terrified of a nation in which women are nothing but vessels for the continued power of white Christian men; of a nation in the discredited neocons of the Bush era are allowed to start even more unnecessary wars; of a nation in which them that's got shall get and them that's not shall lose; of a cruel winner-take-all society, can breathe just a little easier, in no small part because of Bill, Chris, and Sandy.

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For someone who owns casinos, Sheldon Adelson is amusingly inept at betting on a winner.

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This is frightening.

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We don't do thoughtful analysis at MPS

We do vulgar bump-and-grind victory dances in the end-zone.

Here's the thing: The Stench started off by telling 47% of us to go f*** ourselves; the GOP then told 51% of the population to get raped and have the baby. At the convention and beyond, the GOP's best fetus-fondling God-bothers told 10% of the population that you are not "real" people and could not get married. Then, as the cherry on top, the GOP told the fastest growing demographic that they were going to check their papers any time that they see someone who doesn't look American, whatever that means.

Is anyone surprised that for the most part the old Confederacy went for Willard?

Our pal SoyBlo got it exactly right in 2008 when she told her party that they have already lost the battles of the future.

What we are seeing is a dinosaur party thrashing about in the tar pits not realizing that their fate is already sealed.

This was an epic beat-back: more women won election to the Senate than ever before, including an openly gay woman. Marriage Equality passed at the ballot box in three states (Maggie Gallagher is weeping as she defiles yet another Crucifix, Exorcist-style); and soon you will be able to smoke dope in public in Colorado and Washington.

It was a night of progress, but our work is just beginning. All the pressure has to continue. Now is not the time to become complacent.

But do enjoy today, and for gawd's sake: spike the ball in the end-zone, and start doing your most tasteless dance of unbridled joy! We won the right to be bad winners!

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Reflections on the election: 'Get over it'

I'm going to try to restrain myself from being ugly to the vanquished, but only up to a point. For one thing, the defeat is not complete. They still have control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Orange Julius will remain Weeper of the House, and therefore it's not likely that much will be done in Washington for at least the next two years.

But also, being ugly is just no-class, even when I do it. I ended a "friendship" with a righty back in November 2004 because, after Kerry's surprising defeat by Il Doofus, this drooling idiot thought it was a good idea to send all his liberal/progressive "friends" some parroted shit from Rush Lardbaugh about sending liberals to re-education camps, etc. I sent this guy a response asking essentially, "Have you, at long last, no class at all?" effectively ending our "friendship."

I sincerely have little understanding of what makes a person in contemporary America a right-winger, unless they are so rich that they benefit from the tax bonanzas. I suspect that there's a great deal of brainwashing involved. And it's especially frustrating to hear such people moronically referring to Obama as a "Marxist" when his economic policies are perhaps more than a shade to the right of Dick Nixon's. Such sheer ignorance simply angers me.

But, I will try harder to be nice. There are many Americans who have a Reaganesque image of a mythical America, that "shining city on the hill" that is supposed to have once been. My experience has been that this was always very much a myth. Those who drank the Kool-Aid under the gazebo always did so at the hideous expense of those who were just trying to pummel off the rats that were gnawing away at their Kool-Aid packages.

But, many people live by, and for, myths. Black and white, wrong and right, good and evil. No ambiguity, just absolutes. Life would be unbearable torture without that oh-so-clear dichotomy.

Reality has come to visit these people, and much to their horror, it has dark skin and is a world-class orator. This travesty could just never have happened back in 1956, the year in which yours truly was born, and when everybody liked Ike.

Romney was never really the man who was supposed to lead them back up to the summit of that "shining hill." He's a friggin' Mormon, an elder in a "church" that many people regard as a ludicrous cult. But he was what they had, and the only alternative to that uppity n****r.

Well, Romney lost, damn it. Now we are facing hard choices, decisions that will require shared -- I repeat, shared -- sacrifice by Americans rich, poor and in between, and not just that "47 percent" that Romney infamously denounced in a moment of unintentional candor. Two-thirds of U.S. corporations pay absolutely no federal income tax. Many wealthy individuals act as though they owe absolutely nothing to this country, hiding their money in the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts.

Nobody, black or white, will be serving these people Kool-Aid under the gazebo. It's time to start acting like real Americans, like people who understand that they have some skin in this game. It was never realistic to think that we could make this into a Great Society -- but we may still have a chance to make it into a good one.

I am reminded of what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the five ringleaders who appointed the "president" in December 2000, said about the Bush v. Gore decision during an interview -- "Get over it."

Well, Obama's people didn't find it necessary to steal it, or to have the Supreme Court appoint the chief executive. Now "get over it" yourself.

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