Daily Archives: November 5, 2008

American Voters: Now That We Have Your Attention …

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As near as I can figure it, the final Electoral College vote will be 364 Obama and 174 McCain. This assumes Obama has won North Carolina and McCain has won Missouri. The popular vote is 52 percent Obama, 46 percent McCain, 1 percent Nader. This seems fairly decisive to me.

Both of George W. Bush’s victories were razor-thin by comparison, yet he “governed” as if the will of the other half of the nation didn’t count. He was free to be as far Right as he wanted to be. Yet even before Tuesday’s election, “pundits” were warning not-yet-president-elect Obama not to move too far to the Left once he is in the White House. Because that’s, you know, bad.

If you look at the spectrum of political opinion of the planet, of the entire human species, you see that politics in America stays within a very narrow range. In recent years the pendulum has swing about as far to the Right as it has ever swung, and now it’s correcting, but I don’t see the pendulum swinging outside its historical range. Nothing either Obama or the Democrats propose comes anywhere close to true Socialism. I doubt President Obama will change the course of the nation as much or as abruptly as FDR did, although I wish he would.

That said, in spite of this resounding victory, the Right is going to fight everything Obama tries to do, tooth and nail. And they have lots of money, and have countless media outlets, and they have many allies in Washington. The Right will struggle to preserve everything George W. Bush did in office, even as they blame him for their failures. They will pull out every stop they can pull to override Obama’s efforts at reform.

If We, the People, are going to get the government we want, we must remain engaged in the governing process. Remember, the government has legitimacy only by our consent. It’s true that sometimes our governmental leaders recognize that the right thing to do is not the popular thing to do, and act against the popular will. But on the whole, if the government has become utterly unresponsive to the will of the people about anything, then that’s our own fault.

Politics isn’t something that happens only every other November. It is enormously important to pay attention to what the President and Congress are doing the rest of the time, too, and to speak out about it. And after the January inauguration, it will be important to make a continual show of support for reform.

Otherwise, the message voters sent to politicians yesterday could be ignored, and nothing will change.

I’m not saying we all have to be in knee-jerk agreement with everything President Obama does. If he is doing something you don’t like, speak out about that, too. But as reform initiatives are discussed in media and among your acquaintances, and as measures come up for votes in Congress, make your opinions as public as you can make them. Write your senators and representative. Write letters to the editor. Call in to talk radio programs. Send emails to people you know. Speak up whenever you have an opportunity.

In other words, demand that the government becomes responsive to us. That’s what it’s bleeping for.

If the President and senators and congress critters know what the public expects of them, and also know there are lots of voters who support change in spite of what the entrenched punditocracy says, then change is a whole lot more likely to happen. Electing Obama was just a start.

What the Referendums Tell Us

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There’s one sad news item today, which is that it appears California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, has passed. I don’t know if it’s been officially called yet, but the numbers don’t look good. Last night voters also passed anti-gay marriage amendments in Arizona and Florida. Arkansas voted to ban adoption and foster parenting by gays.

On the plus side, yesterday three states had initiatives on the ballots that would have limited abortion rights, and all of them failed.

  • Colorado voters defeated a referendum that would have criminalized abortion and some forms of birth control by defining human life as beginning at the moment of conception. This failed big; a not-final tally had the votes at 74% to 26% opposed.
  • South Dakota defeated a measure that would have banned abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when there was severe risk to the life of the mother. This was a slightly tweaked version of another initiative that South Dakota rejected two years ago. The not-final tally is 55% to 45%, which seems pretty decisive to me.
  • California’s parental-notification referendum also is failing, although I don’t think the results are official as of this morning.

I’m not 100 percent certain this is true, but I have read that, since Roe v. Wade, no state referendum limiting abortion rights has ever passed. I’d also like to point out that yesterday’s election was between a candidate with a 100 percent approval rating from NARAL and one with a 0 percent approval rating from NARAL.

Notice who won. Notice who won big and easily.

The message that I hope is not lost on either party is that it’s time to stop catering to the Fetus People. I’m sure there are states and localities in which being opposed to reproductive rights can still help a candidate win elections. But those are exceptions, not the rule. It appears to me that an enormous majority of voters, including voters in conservative states like South Dakota, are either mostly pro-choice or are more concerned about other issues.

In short, the anti-reproductive rights movement has no political clout except in the most conservative localities. And in those localities, conservatives probably don’t need the Fetus People to win elections.

The message to Democrats is that they don’t have to be afraid of the anti-choice vote. Say it loud — we’re pro-choice, and proud. And the message to Republicans is that being against abortion is not the wedge they thought it was. In fact, on a national level, being opposed to abortion rights seems a huge liability.

We’ve all heard the story that John McCain wanted to choose Joe Lieberman as his running mate and was overruled, entirely because Lieberman is pro-choice. Another veep candidate who might have helped McCain, at least in Pennsylvania, is Tom Ridge, also pro-choice. Sarah Palin may have “energized the base,” who one assumes would have voted for McCain anyway, but she drove away independents and conservative Dems. She probably didn’t lose the election for McCain by herself, but she sure as hell didn’t help him. I think a McCain-Lieberman or McCain-Ridge ticket would have been taken much more seriously by more voters.

But the GOP feels compelled to cater to the anti-reproductive rights movement, and so it gave away whatever chance it had to win the presidential election.

It’s time for politicians of both parties to tell the Fetus People to take their hate and misogyny and get lost.