MSNBC - A turned-on turnout:
A lot has been written about the youth vote, much of it conflicting. They showed up. They didn't show up. Here are the hopefully definitive numbers:
"Early on election day, exit polling data suggested that young voters were not turning out in the numbers activists had expected.
But once the votes were tallied, the research group CIRCLE found that almost 21 million Americans under 30 had voted � 4.6 million more than in 2000.
The turnout among young voters rose from about 42 percent to 51 percent, according to CIRCLE, which is based at the University of Maryland."
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Without a Doubt by Ron Suskind
Many of us seem shocked about the role of faith for a select segment of American voters in this election. We should not be. This well-researched article by Ron Suskind (and many others) described this rising cultural phenomenon in vivid detail. Weren't we listening?
"The crowd went wild, and they went wild again when the president finally arrived and gave his stump speech. There were Bush's periodic stumbles and gaffes, but for the followers of the faith-based president, that was just fine. They got it -- and ''it'' was the faith.
And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me.
''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence.
"They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!''
"In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.
"...In the end, Bush doesn't have to say he's ordained by God. After a day of speeches by Hardy Billington and others, it goes without saying.
To me, I just believe God controls everything, and God uses the president to keep evil down, to see the darkness and protect this nation,'' Billington told me, voicing an idea shared by millions of Bush supporters. ''Other people will not protect us. God gives people choices to make. God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation at this time.'' "Read "Without a Doubt."
Friday, November 05, 2004
Salon.com | What do we do now?
Salon.com invited intellectuals of all stripes --politicos, academics and artists -- Huffington, Paglia, Lamott, McInerney, Moby and more -- to respond to the prospect of four more years of Bush.
Heidi Julavits - novelist and co-editor of the Believer:
"To be honest, I didn't really care much about the feelings of that 51 percent -- I far more cared about rectifying our terribly tarnished image throughout the world...Now, however, I realize that we have to treat our own country as a foreign country, with whom our relations are strained beyond the point of communication...
I cannot -- cannot -- understand why 51 percent of the people in this country voted for George Bush -- and that is a problem. We need to understand why, and if we understand why, then perhaps our attempts at communication will be more effective."
Heidi Julavits - novelist and co-editor of the Believer:
"To be honest, I didn't really care much about the feelings of that 51 percent -- I far more cared about rectifying our terribly tarnished image throughout the world...Now, however, I realize that we have to treat our own country as a foreign country, with whom our relations are strained beyond the point of communication...
I cannot -- cannot -- understand why 51 percent of the people in this country voted for George Bush -- and that is a problem. We need to understand why, and if we understand why, then perhaps our attempts at communication will be more effective."
Thursday, November 04, 2004
AlterNet: Molly Ivins on Mourning in America
Of the all encompassing conservative rule, Texan wise-woman Molly Ivins says let em stew in it . I'm starting to agree.
"Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.
The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans."
A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America
Sadly, from my beloved Lincoln Center/Upper West Side hood, here's a great example of how we screwed up this election. If I didn't have friends who say similar things, I'd think this Dr. Joseph quoted in the New York Times was working for Karl Rove:
"City residents talked about this chasm between outlooks with characteristic New York bluntness. Dr. Joseph, a bearded, broad-shouldered man with silken gray hair, was sharing coffee and cigarettes with his fellow dog walker, Roberta Kimmel Cohn, at an outdoor table outside the hole-in-the-wall Breadsoul Cafe near Lincoln Center.... 'I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland,' Dr. Joseph said. 'This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country - in the heartland.' 'New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for us,' he said."
His friend, Ms. Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art, contended that New Yorkers were not as fooled by Mr. Bush's statements as other Americans might be. "New Yorkers are savvy," she said. "We have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say." "They're very 1950's," she said of Midwesterners. "When I go back there, I feel I'm in a time warp."
Yup. that's the way to win friends and influence people. Perhaps we Dems could begin to regroup by not contemptuously disparaging our fellow Americans no matter how justified one feels.
GOP Won With Accent On Rural and Traditional
Washingtonpost.com on the rural strategy:
"Indeed, even close observers of Ohio politics might have missed the Bush campaign's emphasis on social values because much of its outreach efforts occurred away from the mass media. While the two campaigns slugged it out on big-city TV stations with commercials about the war and the economy, Bush's Ohio campaign used targeted mailings, phone calls and doorstep visits to talk about values, said John C. Green, a University of Akron professor who studies religion and politics. Green described one piece of mail from the Bush campaign that featured a beautiful church and a traditional nuclear family. It was headlined, 'George W. Bush shares your values. Marriage. Life. Faith.' 'It could not have been clearer if it had quoted from the Bible,' Green said. "
"Indeed, even close observers of Ohio politics might have missed the Bush campaign's emphasis on social values because much of its outreach efforts occurred away from the mass media. While the two campaigns slugged it out on big-city TV stations with commercials about the war and the economy, Bush's Ohio campaign used targeted mailings, phone calls and doorstep visits to talk about values, said John C. Green, a University of Akron professor who studies religion and politics. Green described one piece of mail from the Bush campaign that featured a beautiful church and a traditional nuclear family. It was headlined, 'George W. Bush shares your values. Marriage. Life. Faith.' 'It could not have been clearer if it had quoted from the Bible,' Green said. "
A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America
The New York Times:
"Some New Yorkers, like Meredith Hackett, a 25-year-old barmaid in Brooklyn, said they didn't even know any people who had voted for President Bush. (In both Manhattan and the Bronx, Mr. Bush received 16.7 percent of the vote.) Others spoke of a feeling of isolation from their fellow Americans, a sense that perhaps Middle America doesn't care as much about New York and its animating concerns as it seemed to in the weeks immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center.
'Everybody seems to hate us these days,' said Zito Joseph, a 63-year-old retired psychiatrist. 'None of the people who are likely to be hit by a terrorist attack voted for Bush. But the heartland people seemed to be saying, 'We're not affected by it if there would be another terrorist attack.' "
"Some New Yorkers, like Meredith Hackett, a 25-year-old barmaid in Brooklyn, said they didn't even know any people who had voted for President Bush. (In both Manhattan and the Bronx, Mr. Bush received 16.7 percent of the vote.) Others spoke of a feeling of isolation from their fellow Americans, a sense that perhaps Middle America doesn't care as much about New York and its animating concerns as it seemed to in the weeks immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center.
'Everybody seems to hate us these days,' said Zito Joseph, a 63-year-old retired psychiatrist. 'None of the people who are likely to be hit by a terrorist attack voted for Bush. But the heartland people seemed to be saying, 'We're not affected by it if there would be another terrorist attack.' "
Living Poor, Voting Rich
The New York Times: "'What we once thought - that people would vote in their economic self-interest - is not true, and we Democrats haven't figured out how to deal with that.'
Bill Clinton intuitively understood the challenge, and John Edwards seems to as well, perhaps because of their own working-class origins. But the party as a whole is mostly in denial.
To appeal to middle America, Democratic leaders don't need to carry guns to church services and shoot grizzlies on the way. But a starting point would be to shed their inhibitions about talking about faith, and to work more with religious groups.
Otherwise, the Democratic Party's efforts to improve the lives of working-class Americans in the long run will be blocked by the very people the Democrats aim to help. "
Bill Clinton intuitively understood the challenge, and John Edwards seems to as well, perhaps because of their own working-class origins. But the party as a whole is mostly in denial.
To appeal to middle America, Democratic leaders don't need to carry guns to church services and shoot grizzlies on the way. But a starting point would be to shed their inhibitions about talking about faith, and to work more with religious groups.
Otherwise, the Democratic Party's efforts to improve the lives of working-class Americans in the long run will be blocked by the very people the Democrats aim to help. "
Two Nations Under God
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Two Nations Under God: "At one level this election was about nothing. None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed. But at another level, without warning, it actually became about everything. Partly that happened because so many Supreme Court seats are at stake, and partly because Mr. Bush's base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president. I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out.
The election results reaffirmed that. Despite an utterly incompetent war performance in Iraq and a stagnant economy, Mr. Bush held onto the same basic core of states that he won four years ago - as if nothing had happened. It seemed as if people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on.
This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, 'Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?' the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way."
The election results reaffirmed that. Despite an utterly incompetent war performance in Iraq and a stagnant economy, Mr. Bush held onto the same basic core of states that he won four years ago - as if nothing had happened. It seemed as if people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on.
This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, 'Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?' the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way."
New Leaders from The Red Zone
The New York Times reports:
"Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the G.O.P. convention that he made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new members of Congress will make W. seem moderate.
Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that 'the gay agenda' would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between 'good and evil' and said he had heard there was 'rampant lesbianism' in Oklahoma schools.
Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, 'I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children.'
John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an anti-abortion Christian conservative - or 'servant leader,' as he was hailed in a campaign ad - who supports constitutional amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage. "
"Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the G.O.P. convention that he made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new members of Congress will make W. seem moderate.
Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that 'the gay agenda' would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between 'good and evil' and said he had heard there was 'rampant lesbianism' in Oklahoma schools.
Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, 'I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children.'
John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an anti-abortion Christian conservative - or 'servant leader,' as he was hailed in a campaign ad - who supports constitutional amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage. "
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