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What happened to Chuck Grassley’s relevance? Such a shame. I don’t know how we’ll get through health care reform without him.

So, y’know how the right wing keeps getting crazier and crazier in their hatred for the President? I’d assumed it was just because they’re, well, crazy, and unrepentantly racist and just generally bad people. But it suddenly occurs to me that it’s not just that they’re getting carried away with partisan opposition, craziness, unrepentant racism, and general malevolence. Consider the following scenarios:

1. Particularly harmful elements of Party A controls all levers of government for close to a decade. Nearly all of the worst fears of a particular segment of Party B are realized, thanks to the avarice and misanthropy of the ruling portion of Party A. For this wing of Party B, it’s as if their society is completely turned on its ear, everything they hold dear is being crushed, and there’s little cause for optimism. Suddenly, Party B wins control of the government in a landslide, thanks in large part to Party B’s sudden interest in the aforementioned segment of itself. Things start to improve immediately, and Party B rejoices. Unfortunately, a horrific economic crisis explodes at pretty much the same time, and the outlook is extremely dire. However, given the demonstrated competence of the leader of Party B, as well as the widespread acceptance of the idea that recovery will mean a dramatic structuring of society in a way that the recently empowered part of Party B has been working toward for decades, there is cause for optimism. So members of this particular segment of Party B find themselves simultaneously relieved, exhilarated, and terrified.

2. Party A has controlled government for close to a decade, and despite early popularity, the segment of Party A that seems to be running things becomes increasingly reviled by the majority of the citizenry, even as all the things they fought to see happen for decades are implemented. As it turns out, they were wrong about pretty much everything. To make matters worse, Party B is getting much more popular at the same time that it is coming under the sway of the worst enemies of Party A. And, on top of all of this, the economy has completely collapsed (probably as a result of the implementation of Party A’s favorite fantasies), which is setting the stage for massive changes that happen to resonate strongly with the worst fears of Party A’s suddenly unpopular wing. There is nothing for these Party A stalwarts to feel other than defeat and hopelessness. They are utterly crushed and humiliated, perhaps permanently, probably for decades to come, but certainly for the next several years. There is no room for optimism.

Things are really bad for wingnuts right now. You remember in late 2001 how all us progressives started to feel a certain dread about what was to come? And how reality ended up much worse than we were expecting? And how each new day brought fresh horrors that could barely be believed? That’s where they are right now: everything they’ve ever believed in is blowing up in their faces, they’ve become completely politically marginal, their enemies are in power, and they’re afraid that Barack Obama will use the economic meltdown in the same way that George W. Bush used 9/11: as a political cudgel to smash in the brains of anybody who stands in the way of a radical agenda.

Of course, for most of us, Obama’s agenda isn’t nearly radical enough, but remember that the wingnuts think Karl Marx was an avatar of Satan. They have no idea what socialism is, except that it’s roughly synonymous with evil. And they’re proud of this ignorance: to know Marx/Satan is to become him. So, armed with willful ignorance, an alarming capacity for cognitive dissonance, and only the merest seed of empathy (though only in the form of “it could happen to ME!”), they go nuts. Barack Obama becomes their George W. Bush (which, given their dedication to dualistic thinking, makes perfect sense to them).

It’s not that I have any sympathy for the wingnuts (how could anybody?), but I’m trying to feel a little bit of empathy for them, if for no other reason than it’ll make it easier to keep beating them. Plus, right now we’re where the wingers were in 2002, and maybe if we understand them better, we can avoid their fate, or at least learn how NOT to lose when we’re inevitably tossed from power.

i woke up this morning to the sound of birds singing outside the window. no shit — birds. i’m trying hard not to find undue significance in every little thing i see today, but it’s seven degrees. nothing should be alive out there, much less creatures capable of making music.

has it only been a year since we sat in that booth at the brewpub, waiting for obama’s iowa caucus victory speech to begin?

it had been a day like this one, bright and clear and cold as hell. night had fallen hard, and early, as it does this time of year. amy and i were still warming our fingers and toes after the trek across town from our caucus location. it was amy’s first iowa caucus, and she still wore the sticker numbered “1,” proof  she was first in the door out of the hundreds who at our precinct, and a mark of pride for a newly registered Democrat. as we learned over the next few days, she was one of thousands statewide who’d attended their first party caucus, pushing turnout numbers to all-time record heights. this was no surprise, based on what we’d seen in our neighborhood: a veritable riot of twenty- and thirty-somethings, absolutely on fire for barack obama. i had seen enough caucuses to know something was up.

charlie arrived shortly and settled into a beer. he gave a similar account of his precinct across town. rubbing our hands together and sipping pints of OCBW honey hemp ale, the three of us sat there watching the results and pondering the meaning of it all.

this time last year, i wasn’t an obamaphile. i had generally favorable impressions of the guy, sure, but i was still holding fast to that skeptical-pessimist posture we’d all learned to adopt, like whipped puppies, over the past seven years of bitter experience. who the hell was this dude, anyway? i wanted to believe that the smart antiwar candidate whose buttons adorned the backpacks of my favorite students was viable. but this wasn’t 2000 or 2004, and i was in no mood to dick around with another pyhrric victory of a doomed-liberal campaign. even with the tentative victories of ‘06, the wounds were still too fresh.

that uncertainty was echoed by a friend we ran into at the caucus, a long-suffering lefty of our parents’ generation who’d “been burned too many times” by charismatic and impressive Democratic leaders who tended either to become corrupt and ineffective over time, or to be assassinated before ever getting the chance. her perspective lent a sad poignancy to the spectacle of the political neophytes who surrounded us that night, too hopped up on optimism and adrenaline to even fathom the outcome that seemed most likely to us at the time — another humiliation for progressives, and a white house ultimately occupied by, if not a republican, then another weasely self-serving empty suit of a democrat who would continue carrying out bush’s disastrous policies from sheer inertia. still, it was hard not to be a little intoxicated by all that energy, unexpected as it was, not to wonder in the back of the mind: what if?

i wish i could say i allowed myself to get swept up in the obama movement then and there, but it took a couple more months. the only outcome i had hoped for on caucus night was a decisive defeat of hillary clinton, who struck me as exactly the kind of pro-war, corporatist political parasite who would guarantee another four years of the odious status quo. (i needn’t have worried; at our precinct, at least, hillary didn’t even reach viability, her supporters all but laughed out of the auditorium with zero delegates to show for their troubles.) throughout 2007 i’d been more or less equally impressed by obama, edwards, richardson and biden, and was prepared to caucus for obama if it came down to a close contest between him and clinton. but i also liked john edwards’ message and wanted to see him stay in the primary race a while longer, so when the register poll that week showed obama with a strong lead it seemed safe to caucus for edwards. (i’ve since come to regret that support, not because i give a shit about his pissant marital infidelities, but because of his monstrous act of political malpractice — when i think about the fact that he would’ve allowed himself to be the democratic nominee in 2008 knowing that bombshell could drop at any time and blow the whole election, i could kick the bastard’s teeth in.)

 back at the brewpub, watching the coverage and comparing notes with friends reporting in from other precincts, a picture was emerging: the obama thing was bigger than we’d thought. he wasn’t just winning decisively among the same old caucus stalwarts who dutifully pull on heavy coats and boots every four januaries and trudge out into the night to pick a candidate. obama was driving huge turnout among new, never-followed-politics-before voters. lots of them. that was my first inkling that in some ways maybe it didn’t matter who barack obama was or what he stood for; the important thing, the interesting thing, was the movement he represented. the people who’d been primed for politicization by a decade of republican farce and atrocity and were just waiting to be mobilized.

more precincts reports rolled in, interspersed with bemused commentary on the evening’s proceedings on the GOP side — miserable attendance, and a surge of support for mike huckabee, of all people. you could almost feel the collective shrug as the room’s attention drifted back to what was obviously the Real Story. we ordered another pitcher. charlie fiddled with his iPod, trying to pull down county-by-county numbers from the pitiful wifi signal that would waft into the pub from time to time. edwards and clinton, in turn, each marched out and delivered chipper concessions, eagerly looking forward to new hampshire.

by the time obama took the stage, there was silence throughout the bar. people on their way out stopped and stood there in their winter coats, listening. i don’t remember much of what he said, but the way he said it and the way his crowd responded was like nothing i’d ever seen before. the word “alchemy” comes to mind. i’d heard he was good, even seen him work a crowd in iowa city the year before, but this was something altogether singular to behold. and it hit me like a frying pan to the head.

“he’s going to win,” i said, twisting around in the booth to see amy and charlie. “he’s going to be president.” it wasn’t  a prediction. it was a sudden jolt of crystal-clear perception, spoken with the slack-jawed guilelessness of one who has just processed the punchline to a joke told five minutes earlier. a simple extrapolation of facts and processes already in motion: right time, right place, right guy. and he was simply too smart and competent to fuck it up.

there followed several weeks of campaign sturm and drang, during which my impressions of obama as a political supergenius grew stronger, though i still withheld judgment as to whether this was necessarily a good thing. for a while there i suppose i rooted for him more out of animosity toward hillary clinton, who had morphed before our eyes from an unreliable, underprincipled and entitled but otherwise more-or-less capable leader, into nothing short of a political horror show.

but that’s water under the bridge. obama made a believer of me in march, when i heard the “a more perfect union” speech — an epiphany already well documented here. a few other moments from the campaign stand out… the feeling i had, watching the speech in berlin, that it might soon be possible once again to venture out into the world with a U.S. passport and my head held high. the calm and reason he exuded amidst the abject panic of september’s bank implosions. the people i met while out door-knocking in godforsaken flooded-out little post-farm-economy towns and shitty section-8 apartment buildings along the highway, or humping voter registration forms up and down the ped mall. and the eyeball-popping euphoria of election night, after ohio was called… all indelible memories. but this morning, watching the inaugural festivities on TV, wishing i was there in the capitol freezing my ass off with ben and the gajillions of others who are witnessing this moment firsthand, it’s last january that’s on my mind. it’s cold — ungodly, unmercifully cold — but spring is coming.

happy new year, america! i love you all.

you know what america needs now? more bush!

a shame that hillary’s defeat in the primary ended our twenty-year streak of presidential dynasticism, but we could still bring the american aristocracy back by electing the just-as-evil but possibly-more-competent brother.

(the “result” numbers here are based on MSNBC’s map.)

on the overall result, i’m astonished to see that i out-pessimisted ben on this one, posting the most conservative and — to my great delight — least accurate electoral prediction of the panel. gray’s cockeyed optimism, meanwhile, turned out to be scary-accurate: he nailed the EV count, assuming these numbers are stable. if we should happen to see NC shift to mccain in the final count, charlie would take over the title of Supreme Handicapper, with mark a close second in either case.

for individual states, the entire panel called PA, VA, CO, NM, GA, AZ & IA correctly. charlie was all alone in picking indiana for obama, as was gray with north carolina. charlie & gray also both nailed ohio, which the rest of us were afraid to believe was winnable (i’m still a little shocked). ben was the only one who ventured a guess on nebraska’s 2nd district, which was correct, though counting continues with a mccain lead of less than 600 votes at last check.

though we all accurately predicted the winner in pennsylvania, we significantly underestimated obama’s margin, and as a group we tended to lowball colorado and new mexico. the spread in nevada was also a big surprise — for me especially; i was way off.

Over the last two days of canvassing around Johnson County, IA, including some pretty rural locales, I’ve seen tremendous interest in the election, especially among minorities. I think one of the surprises tonight will be the black & brown turnout in places like Iowa that people don’t often think of as having a significant nonwhite vote. Either way, based on anecdotal evidence as well as polling, I’m confident Obama will win here by a big margin.

Ed Rendell on MSNBC a few minutes ago talked about truly astronomical turnout in the Philadelphia area, which if true could mean Pennsylvania is already out of McCain’s reach.

Virginia’s electoral system seems to be seriously fucked so we may not know the result until late, though it may not matter in the end either.

Waiting, waiting…

  

Josh's prediction

 

 

Battlegrounds:

Pennsylvania – McCain can’t win without it, so if PA goes blue it will likely mean an early night. OTOH, despite a commanding lead in the polls it’s not entirely in the bag for Barack (viz. This American Life’s slightly ominous report from the weekend before last). Obama by 3-5.

Ohio – Polls show Obama ahead, but with this state’s history of voting irregularities & out-and-out widespread disenfranchisement, I just can’t count on Ohio. McCain by 1-2.

Virginia – Should be among the first results posted, and if paired with good news out of Pennsylvania will mean it’s time to pour the champagne. Don’t know why, but I feel like Obama will squeak by with a one or two point spread.

Florida – Ditto Ohio, though there are signs of improvements to the voting system like Crist’s laudable decision to extend voting hours. Between that and Obama’s well-publicized army of lawyers and apparently kickass ground game, I feel like he could win, but not by more than a few points.

Colorado – Decisive for Obama, to the tune of 4-5 points.

New Mexico – Forget everything I said a couple of weeks ago. Obama by 5+.

Nevada – It can’t all be good news, so I’ll randomly give this one to McCain, by a negligible margin.

Shouldn’t-be-close-but-could-flip-anyway:

North Carolina – Polling ridiculously close, but feels too good to be true. If they do go for Obama, though, it will mean all bets are off in Georgia. McCain by microns.

Georgia – Holy shit. As I’ve mentioned, the idea — however far-fetched — of Georgia being in play for the Democrat gives me a boner. I don’t think it will happen, but I’ll have a change of pants handy tomorrow night just in case.

Montana – Why not? Like elsewhere in the interior west, MT has been subtly trending blue, and seems like the kind of wild-card state that could deliver an upset. What the hell — Obama by one.

Indiana – Meh. Recession or no, those crackers will never back a Democrat. Polling is tight, but I just don’t see it.

North Dakota – Like Montana, their 3 electoral votes aren’t likely to make or break either candidate. Best-case scenario is MT & ND cancel each other out.

Missouri – Who knows? Obama could definitely win it. He’s campaigning there today, but my sense overall is that MO has not been one of the top-tier priorities for the O camp, and since it’s an overwhelmingly red state by default, McCain gets the edge.

Arizona – It would add a nice bit of insult to McCain’s many injuries, but it’s probably asking too much. Anyway, we’ll likely have a winner before their results are even in, so it’ll be mostly symbolic whichever way it goes.

Okay, your turn!

There’s flip-flopping, and then there’s this. Pheeew.

But in all fairness to John McCain, the disconnect runs deeper in the GOP. How do you premise your entire economic platform on keeping government’s dirty mitts off our sacred financial institutions, then insist the government bail them out when they inevitably succumb to the too-predictable consequences of unchecked, boneheaded, myopic greed? How to reconcile the yawning discrepancy between these two postures? Let me give it a shot…

Everybody knows that free markets are identical with freedom and state planned economies are evil. Taking over an entire industry is about the most evil thing a government can do, but only when that industry is successful. See, when a foreign government dares to nationalize a critical economic resource — let’s say oil — because its private owners — who, just for fun, let’s postulate have their home offices on Wall Street — have failed to handle that national resource in a way that sustains that nation’s economy or benefits its people… well, that’s bad. Real bad. We go to war over stuff like that when other people do it.

But when our own financial institutions get into trouble, the government has to take control in order to right the ship. Otherwise, the economy would suffer! It may seem unfair to expect taxpayers to bail out companies that do stupid, evil things that ultimately lead to their own undoing. But things will be even worse if we don’t. It’s all about the public good!

And so you see, it’s not that Republicans are against government oversight of private enterprise. On the contrary, when the shit happens they advocate the same policies as guys like Hugo Chavez. It’s just that they draw a key distinction between assets and liabilities: when a business is successful, hands off! As long as somebody somewhere can theoretically be making money off it, any form of government intervention would be oppressive. BUT, the moment that moneymaking enterprise ceases to make money and instead creates problems, it’s on the rest of us to dig the moneymakers out of the hole they have dug for us all.

I hope that clears up any confusion. You may now resume voting Republican on the principle that they’re good with money.

OK, so conservatives keep proving their impressive talent for fiction, so how come their attempts at self-expression are always so pathetic?  How come they can’t come up with a single novel, film, or TV show that isn’t just completely worthless?  I’m really stumped.

two likely long-term political outcomes of the 2008 flood occurred to me while in the midst of sandbagging last week:

one, a lot more people are going to be open to the idea of global climate change after this summer. two 500-year floods fifteen years apart should be enough to convince even the most willfully ignorant skeptics that, at a minimum, something is up.

two, there’s vast political capital to be reaped by whoever is smart enough to grasp the magnitude of the disaster and respond accordingly. unlike louisiana, a state where democrats lost influence with the post-katrina exodus of african americans, there will be no diaspora here. instead, as is often the case in situations where normal life has been turned upside-down, the potential for change — and people’s appetite for it — are at a peak. the conventional strategies and demographic calculations that used to keep populations divided and neatly contained within predictable voting blocs are falling apart faster than a poorly constructed levee.

in the last week i’ve seen iowa city hippies working side-by-side with mormon and baptist missionaries, farmers holding bags for college professors to fill, black folks showing up to stack sandbags in exclusively white neighborhoods. it’s funny how little it resembles the red/blue america we’ve been told we were living in. the more people get outside, meet their neighbors, engage with them in common cause, the less interested they become in the old ideological wedges and abstractions: those who pitch in to help are friends, those who obstruct and drag their feet are not.

as george bush arrives in eastern iowa today, more than a week after the need for help was greatest, nobody is particularly pleased to see him. nobody that i talked to was much impressed by michael chertoff’s mealymouthed, empty platitudes after last week’s tornadoes either. but barack obama filling sandbags across the river in quincy makes an impression:

even if it is a staged photo-op, it’s clear from his remarks that obama has at least spent enough time in the affected areas to have some idea what its like for people there, and more importantly, to understand the feeling in the air and the fluidity (no pun intended) of the political situation. that’s one reason why stories like this one are happening all over the region.

and where’s john mccain? who the hell knows, or cares? people here have been too busy to watch or read anything but local news. nobody’s paying attention to mccain or his 20th-century-style campaign. until he actually shows his face here, he’s a nonentity.

meanwhile, bleeding heartland reports on some iowa GOP bloggers who are objecting to state & federal flood relief on the grounds that it’s politically beneficial to democrats. i’ll give them this much: it’s true that actually, y’know, doing the work of government likely redounds to the benefit of those politicians who are doing it. but convening a special legislative session to address the worst natural disaster in our state’s history, they complain, constitutes pandering to special interests — in this case, the people of iowa. this, ladies and gentlemen, is the legacy of the bush presidency, in which nobody ever lifted a finger to help anyone but GOP cronies. from a post-bush republican mindset, any meaningful action whatsoever is only comprehensible as political payoff — why else would you bother?

so, my fondest hope for 2008 is that iowa republicans campaign hard on this theme, that democrats are only pushing the relief effort because they want your vote — as if rewarding effective leadership and punishing incompetence and venality weren’t the whole reason we vote in the first place.