Heartache With Hard Work

So Obama is the next president. But what about the various ballot measures? Is prop 8 going to pass and thus give a bittersweet tinge to the whole evening?

It’s tough to say at this point, but things don’t look good. The numbers from the various sites don’t match up, but all of them seem to put it at about 53/47 in the wrong direction. There’s still over half the precincts yet to report, but from looking over the maps, some of the big pro-equality areas have already reported. San Francisco is at 98% for example. That said, a decent chunk of the rest of the Bay Area is still out.

I was holding out hope because Los Angeles County hadn’t reported much yet. But they’re now up to 37% of precincts and are actually voting yes at a 54/46 rate. Basically, if you ever needed any more proof that LA sucks, this would be it.

On a brighter note, prop 2 is definitely going to pass. I know it’s a partial measure, but anything we can do to reduce the sheer horror of factory farms is a good thing. It’s the sort of thing that people want to just ignore, but once they’re forced to actually pay attention to the torture that is daily inflicted on millions of sentient beings people tend to get really uncomfortable. It’s the main reason why I’m doing my best to go vegan. But the reality is that while individual dietary choices are important, this is an area where the government absolutely has to step in and regulate these places. Failure to do so is really just a massive subsidy in favor of despicable practices.

Prop 4 is tough to figure out. CNN says the yes side is up 52/48. But the CA Secretary of State page says exactly the reverse: 48/52. The SOS page has been horrible all night, with pages failing to load and results not showing up. So I’m not sure why to treat as more indicative.

Prop 1A (high speed rail) is looking like it’ll be super close. Right now the yes side is up marginally, but it could still easily fail.

Elsewhere in the nation, we’ve got yet more gay marriage bans in Florida and Arizona (depressing), failed abortion bans in South Dakota and Colorado (encouraging), support for medical marijuana, and a resounding defeat for the attempt to eliminate Massachusetts’ income tax.

All in all, a mixed bag.

A Change is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke

I just watched Obama’s speech, and I have to admit that it made me cry like a little baby.

“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

I’ve been confident about this for weeks – months really. Going into today I knew there was virtually no chance of any other result. Once Ohio came in, it was virtually a foregone conclusion.

All that said, I wasn’t ready for this.

Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States. I am happy beyond words. I’m stunned. There are tears in my eyes. I am filled with wonder.

Keith Olbermann says it’s a “man on the moon” moment, and I really think that’s true. I’ve supported Obama over these years because I thought he would make a good president. And that remains true. I don’t like the idea of treating Obama as “the black candidate” because I think that diminishes what he’s really about.

But for this moment, I can’t help but just sit back and think, with no small amount of astonishment: a black man has been elected president. And it makes me feel a sense of pure joy at this wonderful, chaotic country. It’s been a long time coming, and there’s a lot of work still to be done. But for right now, I just want to revel in the moment.

Oh, Susquehanna! – Defiance, Ohio

Ladies and gentlemen of America: your next president, Barack Obama.

The networks call Ohio, and that completely closes down any possible McCain path to the presidency.

On the other hand, the road to 60 votes in the Senate is looking pretty tough for the Democrats. Franken might pick up the seat in Minnesota, which would be great, but I just can’t see any of the Southern trifecta (Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky) going blue.

Which means the real big question at this point is the propositions in California. If you live out here and haven’t turned out to vote against Prop 4 and 8 then hit the polls right now. If you’re in line when the polls close, you’ll be allowed to vote, no matter how long the line is.

Suddenly There Is A Tidal Wave – The Magnetic Fields

Been traveling and extremely busy. But I’m back just in time to say:

Go vote. Right now. Preferably for Obama and people like Jeanne Shaheen and Jeff Merkley and Elwyn Tinklenberg, and preferably in favor of marriage equality and high speed rail and reproductive freedom. But even if you’re not voting for any of that, please go vote.

There are all the civic reasons why you should, and those are powerful. You’re not really taking part in the grand chaos that is democracy if you don’t add your voice to the avalanche. And there are crucial issues at stake. Not just on the presidential level, but in terms of the daily ordering of our lives. To choose not to vote is an active decision. It really means that you’re voting in favor of whatever position you least like, because you’re just making it more likely that they win.

But there’s also the simple fact that if you are an inquisitive, caring, sensitive person with opinions and dreams and desires and hopes. So even if your vote won’t be the single decider of an election, you owe it to yourself to take part in the process.

And if you live in California, go out and volunteer for No on 8 today. That’s where I’ll be this afternoon. Don’t risk letting what could be an otherwise triumphant year for progressive politics be sullied by letting the forces of intolerance write into law a denial of basic human dignity for an entire class of people.

Once the evening rolls around, I’ll be obesessively watching the results come in, tracking along on about 20 different blogs and results pages, and flipping through the channels. It’s also extremely likely that I’ll be posting pretty consistently over the course of the night.

Moral Majority – Dead Kennedys

Not counting the chickens before they hatch, but…

You’d have to imagine that John Judis and Ruy Teixeira are feeling pretty clever right about now. In 2002 they published a book declaring the emergence of a new Democratic Majority, grounded in the final ushering out of the last remnants of the New Deal structure. A coalition that was fractured in the 60s and left for dead in the 80s and 90s. But they forsaw that out of its ashes would emerge a new Democratic Party, far more progressive, and guided by slow but powerful demographic trends.

Of course, this was right in the midst of some very tough times for Democrats. And so they mostly got responses like this:

But a stable Democratic majority in the Congress or the Presidency is not likely to emerge anytime soon, and here’s why: because even if Judis and Teixeira are correct that the demographics are shifting toward the Democratic side, structurally our 18th century winner-take-all political system will continue to favor conservatives and the Republican Party. Unless confronted by reformers, that structural bias trumps the shifting demographics.
Electoral battles for the House, the Senate and the presidency are fought out district by district and state by state in winner-take-all contests–not on a national basis. The national polls on which Judis and Teixeira rely for their analysis are less and less meaningful.
The problem is where Democrats and Republicans live. Democrats tend to live heavily concentrated in the Blue America urban areas, wit Republicans more evenly dispersed in the Red America rural areas as well as suburban areas. The fact is, when the national vote is tied, Republicans still win a healthy majority of Congressional seats.
Indeed in 2000, even as Al Gore beat George Bush by a half-million votes, and the combined center-left Gore-Nader vote had an even bigger lead, Bush beat Gore in 227 out of 435 US House districts and in 30 out of 50 states. New US House districts are even more lopsided, with Bush’s advantage now rising to 237 to 198. It’s no coincidence that Republicans currently hold 229 US House seats.

This sort attitude was quite common at the time. Things seemed bad for the left. And it only appeared to get worse in 2004. I certainly felt tremendously despondent four years ago, thinking that the country really was going in exactly the opposite direction from me.

But suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, almost precisely the coalition that was discussed in The Emerging Democratic Majority has taken shape. Growth of the professional class has turned Virgina from red to purple (and frankly, maybe blue). Same with North Carolina. Growing Hispanic populations have put New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona on the table. And the Republican Party has yet to find a way to reconcile its base with more moderate issues in order to win back women.

We stand on the verge of an election that could usher in the most progressive government in US history, with a full mandate to take action on a wide range of issues

Of course, none of this means that the election is guaranteed. Or that if 2008 is another Blue wave that it will hold for any length of time. But at the very least it demonstrates how powerful the underlying demographics are, and argues for paying close attention to these factors. And perhaps some of those who laughed off Judis and Teixeira at the time could issue a mea culpa.

Broken Right Wing – Adeem
Wise Up – Aimee Mann
After the Laughter – And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

Me, on August 30th, the day after the Sarah Palin announcement: “Sarah Palin? Really?“

I thought it was a terrible choice at the time. It just seemed tremendously implausible that this was really going to appeal to Clinton voters (remember how at one time it was accepted wisdom that Palin was going to win over disaffected Hillary supporters?), and I thought it completely undermined the best line of attack McCain had going. Namely: trust me, I’m experienced and reasonable (and implicitly: you probably can’t trust the black guy with the funny name).

The thing about that approach is that it would have tapped into the things they’ve tried to do with Ayers and all that garbage without having to actually get into the muck as much. If the McCain campaign had strong message discipline on that, they could imply this stuff instead of having to make themselves look like the Looney Tunes brigade by putting it front and center.

I expected that within a few weeks, it was going to be clear that the Palin pick was a bad choice that would ultimately do more harm than good. That said, I never imagined it would turn out as disastrously as this.

Palin’s qualifications to be president rank as voters’ top concern about McCain’s candidacy – ahead of continuing President Bush’s policies, enacting economic policies that only benefit the rich and keeping too high of a troop presence in Iraq.

That’s right. Palin is the primary issue for people with McCain. All of the prominent Republicans who have recently endorsed Obama have cited her as major reason. Schwarzenegger does his best to dance around the issue but admits that she’s not ready. Even McCains BFF Joe Lieberman said “Thank God she’s not going to have to be president from day one.”

More data from the poll cited above: in that study Palin has a favorable/unfavorable ratio of 38/47. When you think about it, that’s really astonishing. This is someone who was unknown by 98% of the country less than two months ago. Now she’s got unfavorables of 47 percent!

Which makes it all the more astonishing to me that people are talking about her like she’s a frontrunner for 2012. That’s insane. People hate her. They think she’s a lunatic and an idiot. I can see her getting traction in the primaries for two reasons only. First, the base still likes her. Second, people might think it’ll get Tina Fey to come back and reprise her impression.

But seriously, the base may like her but they’re not that stupid. They like Huckabee and Jindal and plenty of other folks just fine, too. Surely, they will be able to see through the haze of their love for her and notice that going down that road invites the status of a permanent minority party.

This is all happening in the context of swirling rumors about her going off message. For example, from Politico, there’s this report:

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain’s camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain’s decline.

“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.

And then there’s this. Marc Ambinder reports about this phenomenon and mentions that the “palling around with terrorists” line was her own off-message invention. In response, Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser shoots back an angry response: “Just read your post. This is on the record. This is cleared by HQ. It is a fact that Barack Obama was palling around with terrorists. It was a fact before Governor Palin said it in a fully vetted speech and it is fact today. It is bullshit to claim or write anything else.”

Yikes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what it looks like when a campaign is running off the rails.

It’s also funny to try and resolve the question about whether going “rogue” is an intentional strategy or rather the result of simply being unaware of what the message is supposed to be. There have been a host of examples recently. On immigration, she supports a relatively moderate position. Back on the Bush Doctrine she stumbled into supporting the reasonable “preemptive but not preventative strikes” approach. Remember on Pakistan where she failed to process the convoluted McCain approach and just blurted out the reasonable Obama position? And now there’s the fact that she appears to fully align herself with Obama on negotiations and preconditions.

As Yglesias points out: “One of the virtues of Sarah Palin being badly underbriefed about national security issues, is that she has to rely on common sense to bluff her way through questions, and she keeps accidentally straying from conservative dogma.”

The crucial thing going on in all these examples is that she simply doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be saying because she doesn’t really have a position.

All this considered, I’m betting McCain is really wishing he could invoke the time-honored playground tradition of the “takeback” right now. I imagine him waking up in the middle of the night, terrified: I had this horrible dream that I nominated a maniac, loose-cannon, know-nothing for my VP. Thank god is was only a dream…

All that said, I’m not convinced that there really was a way to thread this needle. Sure it would have been less disastrous to nominate Romney or Pawlenty, but McCain is down by a LOT right now. And tempting as it is to put the blame on particular choices, a big part of it is that he’s simply running on a tarnished brand against a very good candidate. If he had executed flawlessly, sure, he could be ahead right now. But that’s true of virtually any race. And it requires ignoring the reality of the past eight years of repeated self-inflicted wounds by the Republicans.

Remember in the summer when everyone on the Left was freaking out because Obama was ahead, but not be nearly as much as he “ought” have been? I tend to think about the recent widening of the margin as simply those underlying factors becoming concrete.

That doesn’t mean I’m complacent. For all the disasters of the McCain camp, they’re still polling within 5-7 points, and while a recovery of that margin may be unlikely, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility. In that context, you have to see the Palin pick as a gigantic anchor on an already difficult task. And if they do manage to eke out a win, it will be very much in spite of her.

Black Fur – Fredrik

Sometimes you hear a song and you realize that it’s exactly what you’ve been craving all day without even realizing it. It’s almost like a new window in your brain opens up – something that until this very moment simply could not be thought is suddenly possible.

There’s nothing epic about it. This is not the discovery of some transcendental truth. It is, however, one of the prettiest and quirkiest little slices of Swedish orchestral pop you’re ever likely to find. It’s uplifting, and not in a hokey way. Just in the simple beauty of the way people find time to be kind to each other, or the way the dawn breaks over the horizon and sets the whole sky alight. It’s the sound of things we take for granted, but which would bowl us over in amazement if we really stopped to think about them.

And in the past twenty minutes, it’s become one of my favorite songs of the year.

I know literally nothing about Fredrik except for what the press release said (see above: Swedish, weird), but I am in the process of downloading Na Na Ni the recently-released record from whence this came from eMusic, and I’m incredibly hopeful.

I’ll admit it. This made me cry.

For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn’t in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president.

Sometimes the world is really okay.

Harder Hit – Loquat
In My Sleep – Loquat

The new album from Loquat is one of those rare cases where a band will make a series of subtle changes to their approach – all in the direction of producing a more sophisticated, complex sound – and have everything fit perfectly.

Usually, when bands try this they crash and burn, producing dull, pointless albums with no soul. This time, precisely the opposite occurred.Secrets of the Sea is chock full of character. Of knowing glances and shy glances.

And above all, it is smooth beyond all belief: gliding, seemingly without effort, through eleven exquisitely constructed songs. It’s a record without peaks and valleys – instead you’ll find ebbs and flows. It’s a delicate mixture of organic and electronic sound, a lush soundscape – the sort of record you want to simply let wash over you.

Each song fits perfectly into the larger scheme. Most begin languidly, in no hurry to club you with purpose – content instead to unfurl slowly. Some build toward a climax of sort. But far more often they leave things at a slow burn. Witness for example the outstanding opener “Harder Hit” which features a chorus that absolutely soars, and yet you’re left with a sense that much more remains hidden beneath the surface. Or there’s “In My Sleep” which is driven by a deep groove (and some excellent drumming) that skips along the surface of your subconscious like a rock across a lake.

This happens on track after track. They simmer without bursting, conveying a tremendous sense of latent energy that only seeps out in fits and bursts which slide past us. It’s a difficult task made possible only by a near perfect balance of elements. In that respect, this record reminds me in attitude (if not at all in style) of one of my favorite records of last year: Boxer by The National.

In terms of sound (and especially considering Kylee Swenson’s voice) this is far more reminiscent of Metric or a more chilled out Cat Power. It’s not a record that gets you humming the tunes. But it is one that works its way deeply inside your head. So much that it can sound both mysterious and completely appropriate at the same time.

It’s also one of those cases where the lyrics on paper are not particularly interesting – perhaps even trite. But once they are wrapped up in the music you realize that they are exactly right. The point here is to generate a soundscape, a general feeling, not to prove a particular point or come up with a witty turn of phrase. And in that respect it succeeds admirably.

Secrets Of The Sea came out last week, and you should go buy it immediately.