Obama's victory is a harsh lesson for Republicans
Last edited Wed Nov 7, 2012, 05:59 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: LA Times
The people have spoken. President Obama has won a chance to move beyond the stunted progress of his first term and, perhaps, become a historic president. On the losing side, the Republican Party remains shut out of the White House and has blown a chance to take over the U.S. Senate, largely because it catered to the narrow concerns of tea party zealots and social conservatives who imagined themselves as the only authentic Americans but who are, in fact, way out of step with most of the people in this country.
If Republicans fail to learn the lesson of this election they are fools. If they continue to let Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity set the angry, extreme tone for their philosophy; if they continue to let anti-science religious fundamentalists dictate their social agenda; and if they think Mitt Romney fell short because he was not conservative enough when, in fact, he only began to catch on with moderate voters when he suddenly veered from his self-proclaimed “severe conservatism” and transformed back into a Massachusetts moderate; then they are doomed to become a party of the past.
Obama was reelected by a coalition representing what the United States is becoming. Sure, a lot of aging, parochial white people do not like it – they do not like gays getting married or Latinos getting a chance at citizenship or urban liberals telling them that we are not just a nation of self-reliant cowboys, but a diverse, multiracial society that needs to be more tolerant and economically egalitarian. But this was quite possibly the last election in which a party that seemed to represent only this traditional, white America had a shot at victory.
That does not mean a conservative cannot become president. A pragmatic fiscal conservative with an enlightened view of immigration and a tolerant attitude on social issues could do quite well. Romney could have run as just such a candidate. He certainly tried to pose as one in the final weeks of the campaign, but it was too late for him to take back all his primary campaign pandering to the right wing.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obama-victory-20121106,0,2145466.story
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tomm2thumbs
(13,297 posts)and they will choke on it in the long run
defacto7
(13,485 posts)Hate radio must be reeled in, one way or another.
tomm2thumbs
(13,297 posts)and advertisers dry up, subscribers dry up, and frankly their voices dry up.
can't come soon enough for me
Dubster
(427 posts)
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)Republicans out of the party... whats left are haters, racists, religious bigots, homophobes, tea party idiots, and a flock of the insane. I wonder about those Republicans who respected Eisenhower..guessing most of them have fled to the Democratic party, or became Independents. I don't think that party will ever be right again.
Whats amazing to think is, for the next four years, we can expect an improvement in jobs, green technologies, women's rights, Education, and best of all no more damn wars...Lets hope this will be our finest century ever.
lexw
(804 posts)
Great article, sums it up perfectly.
SemperEadem
(8,053 posts)that if they'd backed Jon Huntsman instead of Mitt Romney, last night would have been profoundly different.
This is election is the result of allowing corporations and multi-billionares to attempt to buy an election and the Oval Office.
CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE, have the thug-heads finally got that yet?
bucolic_frolic
(43,148 posts)"Hello, John? This is God's Will!"
loudsue
(14,087 posts)They can't wait to run him.
Jeb will lose. He's as bad as the rest of them.
Mr.Turnip
(645 posts)
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)Then we can drown the winning faction in a bathtub!
I see the Baggers splittng off because they love racism more than they love winning.
woofless
(2,670 posts)
JPK
(651 posts)What they don't understand is that it is not finding ethnic personalities and that will solve their problems, it's their policies that are distasteful and they have to lie to make them sound palatable. We aren't that stupid.
xxqqqzme
(14,887 posts)to the far right that insured his primary victories. Guess that etch-a-sketch needed to be a little bigger.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)Yes, the House tends to be gerrymandered to be pro GOP, but until the US starts to elect a Democratic House, in addition to a Democratic President and Senate the GOP are in a VERY STRONG POSITION. Many of the States that elected a Democratic Senator and voted for Obama, ended up with most of that State's Representatives being GOP.
Now, much of this is the result of the 2010 Census and the Gerrymandering the followed that Census, but the House is still the "People's Chamber" and thus what the Democrats MUST win to show the GOP the door. This means addressing the concerns of those people in those pro-GOP districts, not all of them but the ones who have voted Democratic in the past. Many of these districts were won by less then 5% of the vote, others by less then 10%. One of the Side affects of Gerrymandering is, yes Gerrymandering makes it harder for the power out of power to get into power, but the change is NOT that great as if the parties were equal. Gerrymandering tends to make Majority party candidates quick victims in any change in attitude by the voters. The reason is simple, if you win by 5% of the vote, a mere change in 5% of how people in your district vote switches the district. The aim of Gerrymandering is to give the Majority party a solid 5-10% edge, that is all. To many majority voters means less majority voters in other districts.
For example, if you have 40,000 Republicans and 40,000 Democrats and four districts, two district for each parity would be a "Fair" division of the four districts. Gerrymandering would put 20,000 Democrats into one district, 6666 Democrats in the other three Districts along with 13,333 Republicans in each district. Thus the GOP wins three out of the four districts.
The problem is if 1/4 of the Republicans in each district suddenly change party, the Democrats wins all four District, when if they was no gerrymandering the GOP had a good chance of retaining at least one. (The one Democratic District would stay Democratic, the other three districts would still have 6667 old time Democrats, but instead of 13,333 GOP voters, you have 3334 Voting for the Democratic and less then 10,000 voting for the GOP Candidate. Thus the Democrat then win the Three GOP seats by one vote).
Now, most districts are NOT 2-1 GOP as in my example, most are just 5-10% GOP, thus you need less then a 25% change in party voting preference to wipe out a majority party. Thus a 5 to 10 % voting change would change the compensation in the House.
In many ways, that is what needs to be done, mostly in the Rural North. The Rural north, like the Rural South USE to do, is vote the way their ancestor shot in the Civil War. Other than that tradition, they are much more progressive then the GOP party as a whole. The Rural North is the weak point of the GOP, not the suburbs. and if the Democratic Party would start to SHOW how the DEMOCRATIC party is helping the people in the Rural Areas, these areas could be switched from the GOP. My suggestions are as follows:
1. Have the Democratic Party maintain its view on Climate Change and the need to reduce Carbon Emissions in the future, but emphasis that it is NOT a "War on Coal" and attack anyone who says it is, even if it is close ally, In Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Eastern Ohio, coal is viewed as something one can earn good income with and thus any "War on Coal" is viewed as an attack on the income of the people in the coal producing areas (It is why I believe my Democratic Representative, Critz, lost his seat, the "Stop the war on Coal" signs were all over his district
2. Address the issue of high gasoline prices. Unlike Urban and Suburban areas, Rural areas were among the first areas of the US to embrace the automobile and are the most dependent on it (Many if all most rural residents had automobiles by the mid 1920s, something that would NOT occur in urban areas till the early 1950s). This does NOT mean a promise to reduce gasoline prices, but pointing out WHY prices are high and what the Democratic Party is going to do about it (including permitting new Cash for Clunkers program so rural residents can trade in their huge SUVs for more efficient cars ANd support for Corn to fuel programs).
3. Emphasis Federal Support for Education, the Charter school programs are NOT popular in Rural America, come out against it but also emphasis an increase support for all schools, including grade and high schools.
4. Do a good Stimulus program of getting people to work, Rural youths are almost in the same situation as inner city youths, start of jobs program to help them BOTH,
5. Increase infrastructure, rural american wants Civic improvements, including improvements in is roads and bridges more then any thing else, thus the rural areas support for a good Stimulus package, a package rejected by Suburban tea parties.
We tend to thinks in terms of urban-suburb thinking, and ignore the rural vote. We see statistics that 80-90% of the people live in "Urban and Suburban" areas, without understanding the definitions of what is "Urban and Suburban". A small town where 1/2 the population of a rural county lives is 1/2 Urban and 1/2 rural under that definition, but in thinking it is all rural. Thus the better way to view the Country is 1/3 urban (inner cities plus older suburbs i.e. suburbs built up to about 1960), suburbs (Roughly new housing projects from 1950 to today) and rural America (areas NOT Urban and NOT Suburban). There is NO solid lines between these three groups, it flows from one to the other (and more often Rural to Urban to Suburban, which is how people moved off the farm starting in the 1800s but speed up since the 1930s).
We have to address the problems of Rural America, and right now the GOP are making all the right SOUNDS of support for Rural America, while failing to do so. It will take some imagination but it is possible to convert the Rural North to the Democratic party (and maybe even reclaim the Rural South) if we do NOT let the GOP dictate what the Democratic Party stands for and try to address the concerns of Rural America.
CanonRay
(14,101 posts)they just learn to cheat better the next time. We've got four years to get rid of voting machines.
Atypical Liberal
(5,412 posts)The key, and probably impossible passage here is this:
"That does not mean a conservative cannot become president. A pragmatic fiscal conservative with an enlightened view of immigration and a tolerant attitude on social issues could do quite well. Romney could have run as just such a candidate."
The problem here is that "social issues" are lost for the Republicans on two fronts:
First, there is this underlying fear of any kind of "handout" program. There is an underlying fear that someone, somewhere, is abusing welfare. There is this over-arching, incorrect feeling that most people, given the chance, would rather be deadbeats than productive. If you give someone who is hungry food, you will somehow breed legions of people who don't want to work for food. If you give someone who is sick or injured free health care, the quality of the care must be terrible.
There is an absolute refusal to acknowledge any benefit that taxpayer-funded services might have given them in their lifetimes. There is an absolute refusal, even disdain for the idea that virtually no one in modern society is entirely self-made.
I don't see this attitude changing.
The second, and bigger, problem here is that many of these "social issues" are really "religious issues". Birth control. Abortion. Contraception. Gay marriage. The problem here, as someone else pointed out, is that the Republican/Conservative population is essentially living in Victorian times, or rather they like to tell everyone they are. Like the Baptists who refuse to look each other in the eye when they bump into each other at the liquor store, Republican/Conservatives talk a good game about "family values" but invariably they are the ones with wide stances or some other peccadillo. I remember a study that showed that since 1945 something like 95+% of people had pre-marital sex. To hear the Republican/Conservatives talk, though, everyone before 1960 was a candidate for monasteries and convents.
Modern social morals concerning sexuality have changed, and drastically, even from when I was a teenager 20+ years ago. When I was coming of age, finding an uncle's Playboy was some serious shit. Today's kids have the internet, and are exposed to every kind of kink you can possibly imagine. Their attitudes towards sex are light-years more liberal than my generation. Today's young adults embrace sexuality and expect to be able to enjoy sex routinely and casually. That means unquestionable access to contraception and abortion. And it means and end to trying to legislate who can get married and who can't based on who has a penis or not.
And that attitude I don't ever see changing. The Republican/Conservative population is the final political refuge of the religious nuts. It is who they are. It defines them. Thus expecting them to change their attitudes on any social issue that revolves around sexuality is a complete lost cause.
Amonester
(11,541 posts)That 'someone' being, in fact, the 'nevah-enuf-monee' 0.0001% who receive corporate welfare fiscal-year in, fiscal-year out.
And not only that, they even 'manage' to not paying their fair share of income taxes by legally labeling their revenues using different words than 'Income', just like Robmehood & Co.
Of course, they are being submitted to the non-stop day-in, night-out costly propaganda by these plutocRat$ who abuse the system to their own advantage!
Of *freakin* course!!
yardwork
(61,599 posts)Our country was built on racism, slavery, and genocide, and it's an original sin that poisons us to this day. The Republicans want to believe an alternate reality, one in which America was built by the rugged individualism of Christian white men. They ignore the fact that millions of Americans responded to the Civil Rights Acts by abandoning public works.
1ProudAtheist
(346 posts)I have been screaming from the highest mountains that this election was going to be more about the rejection of social conservatism than it was going to be about fiscal conservatism. Our country has evolved to the point where social equalities are more important than economic differneces between Dems and Thugs. Our personal rights, freedoms, and liberties were at stake last night, and we won the right to keep them.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)They are not known for their ability to either learn or evolve.
olddad56
(5,732 posts)had Romney come across on the campaign trail like he did in his concession speech. Much more genuine, humble, and down to earth, and had it not been for Bill Clinton's help, and the way our president handle the Hurricane Sandy disaster, this election could have gone a different direction in the very tightly contested swing states.
Just saying, this was a tight race and our man won a close election. We are blessed.
stubtoe
(1,862 posts)it would take a spectacular crash and burn like this for them to re-assess the strategy.
Amonester
(11,541 posts)farther to the cRazy, extReme Right.
Mark my words. They probably will give santorum a second 'chance' next time. Count on it.
Left Coast2020
(2,397 posts)..."perhaps become a historic president...."? It appears to me he WILL be a historic president. Hands down. And I cannot wait till he writes his first book after office. I will buy it and read it. This dude will no doubt accomplish some great things in his second term. I can't wait to see those before my own eyes.
BeHereNow
(17,162 posts)Thanks for posting this JRLeft!
BHN 
DCKit
(18,541 posts)Hold your breath.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)it's being flexible and open-minded.
lovuian
(19,362 posts)Scalia and Thomas will be a minority and history will show their corruption
