relief

[piranha]

romney is making his concession speech, and he is actually being quite gracious. while karl rove is probably still being talked down from the ledge of bullshit mountain. i can sort of understand, because this was nowhere the nailbiter the republican echo chamber and the media aching for a horse race predicted. over so soon. sweeping nearly all the swing states. and republicans are getting hammered in their senate races as well (please, may michele bachmann lose too; that would put the icing on my schadenfreude cake).

what REALLY has me excited is that it was a fine day for my people. in maine and maryland, gay marriage ballot measures have passed, prop 74 is leading in washington, and minnesota struck down a state constitutional amendment to enshrine the "one man one woman" concept of marriage. openly gay, progressive tammy baldwin was elected to the senate.

nate silver's statistical model, vindicated. karl rove's "statistical" model, shown for the piece of shite he is. uh, it is. ahhhh.

will the republican party wake up now and become less extreme? not holding my breath, but it would be nice. maybe necessary. though i am wondering now whether they're not making themselves increasingly irrelevant in a changing electorate.

al jazeera wasn't quick with any projections, but i really enjoyed their coverage; it had no high drama from attention-whoring pundits, just relatively courteous discussion. glenn greenwald was very much... nicer in person than he is in writing. it was interesting.

Comments

[graydon]

It's the county map that says it, really; US politics are getting even more rural/urban split.

I don't imagine that this will become less extreme, because there's no alternate identity available on the Republican side.

One could think of it as a coming-out process; there's a ton of dis-satisfaction and discontent and people increasingly vehemently insisting that they are so the way they say they are, and it'll stay that way until there's a general understanding that there's a less discontented, more honest option.

[wild_irises]

graydon isn't far from where I am. The Republican party has an essential problem, what the Marxists call a "rotten bloc." They are the party of the rich and the party of the white poor, and their two constituencies have really really different values, needs, and concerns. However, they have been able to paper over that issue astonishingly well.

I think the underlying point is the "broad mandate" point that Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Politico made so excruciatingly badly last week. (If you haven't seen this, scroll down to "Democrats have a liberal problem.")

We will never have the kind of broad mandate in this country that the Politicos are calling for, until and unless more white men realize that they are no longer in the majority and they don't run the world (even if they do own the world).

[piranha]

my reply to graydon: http://piranha.dreamwidth.org/635244.html?thread=2814316#cmt2814316

i usually don't read politico because, well, not good enough analysis IMO. *goes to read* -- *ugh*. i think they're mostly wrong; that base is not a problem at all; that base is a damn good start, and its demographic is growing, while white men are become less and less relevant. the problem is that they do need a few more white men -- and hey, the ones in ohio realized which side was buttering their bread, could well be that white men who don't own the world in some other areas will realize the same. i am kinda vague on that because (ha!) i haven't read much on what makes poor white men who act like they're one with the ones who own the world tick beyond denial, anger, and wishful thinking.

yeah, that papering over by the republicans impresses me, because they have a bloc of poor whites voting against their own best interests because they're being skillfully manipulated by people who don't actually give a fuck about them. that can't hold, i keep thinking. mainly it can't hold because the rich will need those supporters less and less as globally more demographics open up to make the rich richer -- china and india have growing middle classes. why pour billions into US elections that don't guarantee things will go one's way anymore? though ego could be more of a driving force than i recognize.

[piranha]

the NYT has an interesting map on its front page: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/07/us/politics/obamas-diverse-base-of-support.html so yes, the urban/rural divide is stronger than ever. i'm thinking of it more as a grieving process for rural conservatives who are losing a way of life with which they were comfortable -- they seem stuck in the anger stage of grief right now.

however, that does not mean republicans have to become more extreme. heck, it won't help them! because the trend of urban populations dominating rural ones isn't gonna reverse, it's getting stronger, and no amount of gerrymandering will stop that. and if they persist in catering to the teaparty and evangelicals, they will start losing more states -- it's significant that virginia didn't turn red again this year. if you lose more states, you lose every presidential election, and even if you gain in the house and hold the senate hostage, you cannot govern the country by pure obstruction.

so either the republican become less extreme by standing up to and reasoning with their extremists, or the party splits. i am sorta hoping it splits. i'm hoping that for the democrats as well, but it's much less likely to happen because the democrats style themselves as the party with broad appeal to diverse groups.

i guess obama won't be the president who brings the extremists in from out of the cold because he's black and they're racist. too bad, because he actually has what it would take otherwise.

[matthewdaly]

http://isnatesilverawitch.com/

[piranha]

*laugh*! oh, that is great.

also, http://xkcd.com/1131/

[necturus]

Oh, the Republicans will wake up, sure enough. They'll be reclothing their true agenda in something that will make them look "kinder" and "gentler", in the words of Bush the elder. But they'll never stop seeking to concentrate money and power in the hands of the super-rich, for that is their raison d'etre. They've been slowly transforming Republic into Empire for the last 40 years; I can't see them quitting just because of yesterday's bump in the road.

[piranha]

oh, i agree completely. but i think i'd prefer the reclothing because it might allow some things to get done -- heck, i don't view the democrats as being a true alternative anymore. but while both are busy concentrating money and power, since i see absolutely no way to break out of this other than armed revolt (and i don't see that happening any time soon), a kinder, gentler republican party would result in some "trickling down"(oh ghod, i'm am NOT channeling reagan) of social ease. you know, like a little less racism, a little more respect for those who are "other". it's not much to hope for, but it'd beat the really toxic atmosphere of the last few years.