US Election 2008

Good luck guys, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you!

We'll do our best. The really, really early results look promising for the candidate most of the world is probably pulling for.

Thanks for two fingers and not just one.

I'll do some crossing of fingers as well (toes too if it helps) in hopes that all the states that matter do their part to put Obama in office.

I can't fathom why/how someone would vote Republican right now, but I also couldn't believe GW made it in the first time and then got propped for a second term. Definitely the two most epic fails of the past decade.

Well, I voted down here in Florida (Broward County). New optical scan system in use. Fill in the circles and feed the sheet into the reader. No confirmation, just that the ballot was read and no blanks or double votes were scanned. The machine did have a printer built into it but us voters got nothing.

Polls opened at 7:00AM I got there at 6:45 and waited for about 1 hour before I was given my ballot. There were tables set up for about 30 people to fill in the ballots at a time. Only two optical scanners were visible. One seemed to be only for use for those in a wheelchair as it wasn't used at all while I was there. The line at least in the morning wasn't too long about 50-70 people in line.

I voted Obama/Biden.

Umm remember that here in the UK we use two fingers to salute

Cheers

Cris

As well I can't understand why voting Republican seem unfathomable to democrats. Being a republican I can understand why someone would vote for the democrats. I see the democratic point of view however I just don’t agree with it.

I lived in Ft. Lauderdale for about a year. Seemed like everywhere I went I was standing in line.

I just got back from voting. In and out in 10 minutes. It's good to live in nowhere land, sometimes.

Because we can't find any Republican policies that have stood the test of time. Also, many of the stated platforms are disingenuous or contradictory. Especially, in both cases, Republican economic policy.

It was about trickle-down economics. This didn't work, and produced one of the largest redistributions of wealth in US history, conglomerating in the upper class. It was about reducing taxes and reducing government spending. But under Republicans, taxes are reduced, mostly on the upper class and businesses, but spending continues to increase. It was about reducing regulation, but that only ever ends up creating a crisis. (Do I really need a link for this one?)

The social policies I (vehemently) disagree with, but understand. But many "technical" policies, the economic ones in particular, have been shown to simply not work.

Party politics and affiliations aside, you're telling me that you can look at the candidates and their running mates with an objective eye and still come out leaning toward McCain/Palin?

How many conservatives have already publicly endorsed Obama? I can't see a McCain vote as anything but sadomasochistic. It's either a vote to try and screw with someone else or asking for a second helping of a relentless beat-down.

I also hope the US has a higher turn-out than Canada did last month. We had only between 56 and 59% of eligible voters come out. Pathetic. But what the conservative party was hoping for when they called the snap election in the first place.

To restore some (of my) faith in the US population, I'd like to see a 9 to 1 margin of victory for Obama. But I still don't trust that there isn't any voting fraud in the US electoral system. It's the only way I can honestly believe GW won the past two.

It will probably be a lot closer than that, unfortunately.

I am glad to see that a few states outside the Urban Archipelago are going Dem this election, though. It's the only thing saving us right now.

I was going to reply to this and say what an interesting commentary it is on the entrenchedness of US political positions, that people are talking of a 55%-45% victory as a "landslide". That sounds actually like quite a close election to me, and I dug up some UK figures to provide a comparison -- only to find that even the landslides of 1987 (Tory) and 1997 (Labour) were only slightly more dramatic at 58%-42% (of those who voted for one of the two main parties).

Peter

It's almost impossible to have a 9-1 victory given the US electoral system. I'm curious to see how the popular vote will turn out in addition of course to the numbers that count.

Your story is consistent with lots of other stories. A one hour wait isn't that bad, all things considered. I'm guessing the bottleneck wasn't at the scanner but rather with either the check-in desk or with the number of voting booths. Certainly, scaling to more booths is very straightforward. Scaling the throughput of the check-in desk is much more complicated.

That printer is for the end-of-day tallies. The only sort of receipt you could ever get would be a "thank you for voting" sort of thing, unless we start getting into the more sophisticated cryptographic voting systems, but nothing of that sort is offered for sale, much less certified for use.

Exactly. There were only enough tables set up for 30 people at a time. There was a short line for the scanner itself, but that varied. It all depended how quickly people filled out their ballots.



Why is that? What would be wrong with a short printout that just gave you list of your votes? As it stands today, I don't know how the machine read my ballot. I just got a thank you for voting after each sheet I inserted into the machine. It didn't seem to matter in what order you inserted the sheets. I don't even know if you needed to insert all of the ballots. I guess I could have taken a few of the ballots with me...

Because we do the secret ballot, to prevent situations like this one.

Because as soon as you get a receipt you can be coerced into voting a certain way and be forced to prove it with your receipt.

Absentee ballots are kept with their envelopes until they're ready to be counted, so they can be thrown out if need be. Polling placed mix all ballots together so there's no going back.

The optical scan machine is simply a convenience. Your registrar should be doing a manual count of a random sampling of the ballots, and any close race should trigger an automatic hand recount. On top of that, any candidate can chose to pay for any hand recounts they want of the actual ballots, not the optical scan machines memory card.

Makes sense I suppose.

But you could add a shredder to use after you review your votes.

I guess I'd just feel a bit better with some sort of review of how my ballot was read by the machine. This just boils down to a matter of trust in the end.

Some of the newer optical scan systems, not yet certified for use nationally but used in odd corners like Florida, have a full-blown screen on them to display the scanner's interpretation of your vote and even have headphones for blind voters. Our research suggests that voters would be unlikely to catch any scanning errors. Once you allow the possibility of tampering, then all bets are off. The machine could show you who you legitimately voted for while recording the opposite.

Not speaking about any of the current candidates in particular, but just about the party platform in general.
There is a dawning realization among "intellectual conservatives" (esp. several prominent newspaper columnists) as well as among those who classify themselves as independent, that the "Republican Party" in office in recent years actually holds to very few of the "traditional" Republican party planks.
In particular:

• Small Government
• Reduced Spending
• States Rights
• Isolationist Foreign Policy
• Personal Privacy

These have been traditional positions of the Republican party, but you can see that the huge budget, giant growth in government agencies, nationalization of the banks, refusal to let California go its own way on some environmental issues, two wars overseas initiated by the U.S., and the rampant loss of personal privacy all go against the traditional stated goals of the Republican Party.

You might argue that the only truly consistent "Republican action" taken by the Bush administration in the past 8 years was cutting taxes.

"Republican" and "Democrat" are really just marketing brands at this point, and are basically a continuously varying hodge-podge collection of positions on various hot-button issues in order to try to garner 51% of the electorate at any given time.

Regardless of the results of this election, there will be a major internal re-evaluation by the party and some serious navel-gazing of exactly what "Republican" means after this election of a far larger magnitude than even that of what the Democrats did in 1994 after the Gingrich-led "conservative backlash."

Yeah, agreed. I remember back when I was a kid, when the choice between republican and democrat was about the things you listed, as opposed to the "morality" issues the republican party has made themselves about today.

Do you really think so? Really? On a national level?
I'm afraid that studied introspection is very low on the list of priorities for the shepherded masses. One can hope...

I'm not entirely understanding why there are such long lines. I helped my dad vote this morning, and we were in and out in 5 minutes. I then voted with my wife this afternoon, and we didn't stand in line a single time and were also through in about 5 minutes. My mom also went at around 7:30 and got through in around 6-7 minutes. Apparently there were really long lines at my parents' precinct when it first opened, but since then you could just walk in at any time.

Regardless of outcome, I'm very happy with the voter turnout this time. In my parents' precinct, by 10:30am they'd already had 588 voters, and there were already 500 absentee ballots. That comes out to much more than half of the precinct, and it was only the middle of the morning.

Of course, when I say "regardless of the outcome," I also mean "if Obama doesn't win I have no faith in my fellow Americans."

Just got back from voting, after a lot of confusion on where to vote. First, some quick background for this story:

Austin proper sits in two counties. Travis county is where most of the city is, and also the size of the city results in it occupying most of the county. Williamson county includes a small piece of Austin, several smaller towns that are part of the general Austin area, plus lots of sparsely populated areas. Travis county tends to lean Democratic, and Williamson Republican.

I live in Williamson, and went to vote at my local polling place, a fellowship in a warehouse building. Out front in the grass area facing the street were many political signs for Republicans running for various offices. Going inside revealed 4 people running checkin, 16 places to fill out the paper ballot, and one electronic voting machine. The paper ballots were read by an optical scanner machine, and no method to cover the ballot when putting it into the machine was provided. There was usually a guy standing right near the machine to assist people, and votes could clearly be seen by him.

Once I got to the registration desk, I handed over ID to allow them to search for my name. It wasn't in their book, nor their computer, and they didn't have an explanation. During the primaries, the same issue came up, and it seems my voter registration was never processed when I moved from Travis county to Williamson. The people at the desk recommended I try the old location once more. As I headed out to my car, someone had parked outside and was putting up a few signs for some local Democrats, along with an Obama sign.

So, I drove 10 miles to my old polling place in Travis county, a high school that was a few blocks from where I used to live. The only signs out front were "Vote Here" signs. I got inside, found 4 people here as well working checkin, and 4 electronic voting machines. They tried to look up my name, and didn't find it in the books. The lady at the registration desk then called the election judge over, and she called the county to check my status. I was marked inactive after the primaries, due to signing a statement about moving and reregistering in the new county. The election judge provided me the phone number to the Williamson county voting office. Upon leaving, one of the poll workers told a young man coming in with a promotional pamphlet for some local Democrat that he had to throw it away. When asked where he got it, it was revealed someone was standing outside handing them out, and poll workers went outside to ask them to leave. The people handing out the pamphlets were also putting up signs, that they took down before driving off.

I called the Williamson county election office, and they confirmed I should be voting where I had been earlier. So I drove back, past all the Republican signs, and noticed the earlier Democratic ones were missing. I went inside again, talked to the same registration people who once more confirmed I wasn't in their system. This time however, they had me go wait in line to talk to the election judge there. He called the election office, and they recommended having me vote on a provisional ballot. I was handed a large envelope to fill out my name and address on, along with signing to indicate I hadn't voted anywhere else. I was then provided a ballot, and a smaller envelope to put the ballot into once done. I was sitting at the same table as the judge, and he took the larger envelope to fill out some information on. A few moments later, he asked if I was done voting, and I responded by asking if he wanted me to do so right there. His response was yes. I had to use my hands to cover up who and what issues I was voting on prior to folding the ballot up and putting it in the smaller envelope.

Really a frustrating experience overall, and really interesting to see the radical difference in polling centers 10 miles away from each other, both in the same city, but 2 different counties.

Wow.. perhaps the USA really does have a need for independent election monitors. Their presence might prod the local officials into more proper behaviour at their stations. Or not.

Cheers

Studied introspection? Perhaps not, other than the aforementioned columnists.

But if the Congressional races end up being really lopsided, the RNC is bound to at least say "how come no one voted for us?"

Depends on how complex the ballot is. In California, my mail-in ballot was accompanied by a magazine-sized booklet that was, if I recall correctly, more than 100 pages, and was necessary to understand the complexities surrounding the many propositions on the ballot. SWMBO and I, working steadily in tandem, each of us filling gaps in the other's knowledge, took the better part of an hour to make our decisions (not always the same decisions, either!) and mark our ballots.

Some of those issues were important, like a constitutional amendment (California's constitution) to ban gay marriage, or a law requiring parental consent before a teenager could receive an abortion, or a 10 billion dollar high speed rail system that will almost certainly cost twice that.

So, yes, I can see why in some cases there could be long lines.

tanstaafl.

The only reason for the long lines it them, unlike you, who won't take the time to fill out the sample ballot. With that in hand, marking the ballot is quick.

Election coverage has officially jumped the shark.

On CNN right now, Wolf Blitzer is interviewing one of the other CNN correspondents. Except, he's not, he's interviewing a "hologram" of her. They're basically projecting a hologram-like image of her in front of Blitzer as he interviews her.

The 3-D pie charts were gratuitous, the 3-D images of the Capitol building were excessive. 3-D "holograms" of reporters? Ridiculous.

Update:

Yes, my California ballot contained

• 2 federal races,
• 2 state races,
• 4 local races (including some like school board where you can vote for up to 4 people per race),
• 1 county ballot initiative,
• 3 district ballot initiatives, and
• 12 state propositions

all described in 3 different booklets the state mailed me

• the aforementioned 100 page ballot pamphlet for state initiatives,
• as well as a smaller booklet containing the sample ballot and details on the local propositions,
• and then a 3rd one which contained details of one of the propositions which was replaced by a different one after the original cut-off date.

That being said, I had about a 1 minute (or less) wait at sign-in, there were 4 voting booths (all empty) plus two big tables where people could sit down and spread their booklets out if they didn't mind others watching them vote. So it was geared up for a much bigger crowd than the one that was there when I was.

They had like 10 or 12 pollworkers and only 1 or 2 voters.

I went with my already marked sample ballot in hand and was in and out in 16 minutes. More on that in next post.

Just so you don't think I only complain about electronic balloting,
here's my whining about the paper ones.

Why did it take me 16 minutes to fill in my ballot even though I already had all my selections pre-marked on my "sample ballot"?

Fortunately, we ditched the electronic voting machines several elections back.
(California has another election seemingly every 6 hours.)

Well, (1) I always triple-check ballots just like I do tax forms
(according to Dan W as well as empirical evidence from the State of Florida most people can't be
so bothered to spend a little extra time on these little things like death, war, and taxes),
and (2) I had one of those "draw the line between two arrows" ballots.

Strangely, there was some interaction between the roller in the ballpoint pen and the ink on the left half of the arrow.
On every single line (drawing left to right), the pen would pick up a little wax(?) or otherwise be confused
by skipping down off the ballot ink and it would leave a small gap before the start of the line.

I.e., the whole point of this ballot is to provide an unbroken line from one side to the other.
But the pen left a small gap on the left side of every line.
So I had to go back and ink in the gap.

Kind of weird. And I assume this is not at all a common problem.
Just worth whining about a little bit.

Further complaints, as I have mentioned here before, all of our ballots go into an unlocked cardboard box!
I suppose that's better than the false sense of security I'd get if they went into a locked metal box to which every single pollworker had the key....
But still, paper ballot security is non-existent at my polling station, other than that I got to tear a numbered receipt off of the end of my ballot.

I think I had mentioned here that in previous elections, the pollworker would look at your ballot as he placed it into the cardboard box.
That was remedied a while back with a confidentiality sleeve that you wrap around the ballot as you personally drop it into the cardboard box.

Now the pollworkers have to wait to read and/or modify your ballot until after you leave!

It ain't over 'til it's over, but the networks are calling Ohio for Obama, and McCain can't win without Ohio unless there's some sudden influx of conservatives in California and the Pacific NW that I'm unaware of.

TV projections have certainly been wrong before, but if they're right, this one is over. I will not be cracking open my celebratory beer until I see some 100% reporting numbers in the close states, tho.

Looks to be over now. Concession speech from McCain, and clearly not a repeat of the disaster that was the 2000 election process.

Well, I stand corrected. States I was sure would go to McCain, like New Mexico, went blue. Ohio? Who would have thunk it. This is about as close to a "landslide" as you can get in our electoral system.

I'm unhappy that California passed its poorly-named gaybasher law, but I don't live there anymore so I can just pretend I didn't know about it.

It was a great speech, and I'm delighted to have experienced this day. I'm left with a lot of hope for our country's future.

So you're calling that one with only 20% of the voting precincts reporting?

Well, looks like the fantastic joke that was Sarah can now go back to her town hall in Wasilla. Oh, you say she's still governor? Ouch!


Yeah, not exactly the party of Lincoln, is it? I have to remind myself that the Democrats were just as bad or worse through most of the 20th century.

I don't know if I can generalize about current-day Republicans but it is clear that a good chunk of them are stuck celebrating ignorance and "averageness". Heaven forbid that we should have a president who is *smart*. I would say that I was being harsh and snooty if not for the comments of conservatives like David Brooks:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/08/david-brooks-sarah-palin_n_133001.html

I can remember a time when the notion of conservative Republicans wasn't a cruel joke. Like 1964. Barry Goldwater. Seriously. You might not have agreed with Barry, but he wasn't an ignoramus.

I was so caught up by the notion of having somebody smart elected as president that my hand slipped -- my pen tried to mark down a vote for the Green Party candidate but it made a mark for Barack Obama instead. I hope he appreciates that. This man has his work cut out for him. He now has a lot of people who will be waiting for "Change" and who can be easily disappointed.

Strangely, as much as some folks decried left-wing Bush "haters", I never heard about radicals who were stalking the ignoramus-in-chief. By contrast, I fear that the inbred enemies of a President Obama won't be quite so subtle. I really, really hope that we can celebrate this victory but I expect that the Secret Service will need to be in top form.

Why celebrate? Not sure I can celebrate, really, but an Obama victory does provide a small amount of reassurance....that, unlike 2000 (or 2004?) that the election wasn't stolen. This time.

Ah yes, thank. I never really put it together before. Hatred toward all… condescending attitude… blaming them for all your problems … scapegoats, got it.

So here's a question. It took forty-five years' civil-rights work to get from MLK having a dream, to Obama living that dream. How long will it take from California Proposition 8 until the first LGBT president? These exit polls by age group seem to indicate that, again, it'll take about a generation.

Peter

Huh?

He must be refering to the official gay-bashing in California.

The results still indicate to me that the US is rife with bigots and idiots. Don't get me wrong, Canada is too, it just doesn't have as visible (and loud) an election process.

I still can't for the life of me wrap my brain around how anyone with a right mind would vote McCain unless they were paid large sums of money to do so, blackmailed to do so or threatened with serious bodily harm to do so.

Fear I think motivates many. That can lead to hate and all sorts of nasty things.

Yeah, exit polls said that the biggest indicator of voting for McCain was if terrorism was your primary concern.

With the CA gay marriage ban likely to pass, it's certainly a bittersweet day for American equality. Yes, we just elected a black man, but Arizona also banned gay marriage yesterday, and Arkansas passed a ban on gay adoption.

It will be interesting to see if the GOP chases this micro-trend over the next four years, selling out to the social conservative wing of the party, or if they try to reinvent themselves with more paleoconservative rhetoric. We should get a clue based on who they put in the Congressional leadership positions for the 111th Congress.

Yup. Again, they're mostly outside the urban archipelago.



A friend of mine spoke very eloquently on this topic four years ago. They voted for McCain because the democratic party represents things that, to them, are utterly alien and terrible.

Now, as much as ever, we absolutely need to understand why someone would have voted for McCain. Obama himself more or less said so last night; he needs to be everyone's president, not just the half that voted for him.

And I'm amused at this, too.

Interestingly (or perhaps ironically) the local news has stated
that the high turnout of older African Americans and various
immigrant and minority groups to vote for Obama was a major
contributing factor in the passage of Proposition 8
(the anti-gay-marriage proposition).

Those groups tend to have very "traditional" views toward marriage
and supported that proposition.

Rather a bittersweet result there.

And this one's rich:

Damn Celestials.

This is as good an occasion as any to return to life here

So, congratulations, my dear American friends, on regaining your great country! Pete Seeger comes to mind, singing "This Land is Your Land" (after having overcome, of course).

Cheers!

Bonzi

Well, if you count that strange American invention, electoral votes, stranger things have been seen, say in 1964, 1972 or 1984.

Bonzi

Yeah, like being strong supporters of apartheid (err, segregation) on the "traditional South". But, let me again paraphrase Pete Seeger, "We Have Overcome"!

Cheers!

Bonzi

Yes, Senator Obama, congratulations on being elected Captain of the Titanic.

(Sorry to be such a downer, but I'm afraid the damage already done by Bush over the past 8 years, and the immense damage he will attempt in the next 25 days, have put the US into a desperate situation from which recovery will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.)

tanstaafl.

Wow! You've not posted in years! Where have you been?

True, but the first step for any possible recovery is to get a captain who has the sense to stop ramming the iceberg after seeing how bad it went the first time. Stay the course!

Hi Bonzi!

Glad to see you're ok. I wondered what happened to you.

I think if you and I ever meet up for that big "Who's the *real* pessimist here?" arm wrassle, there's a good chance I could easily walk away with the title and the belt.

I think I am pretty clear-eyed about our current predicaments and the limited value of traditional American politics. I don't tend to be a groupie.

Funny, though, the past day. Watching video from Grant Park and from downtown Seattle and from Nairobi. November 4, 2008 was frickin HUGE. It is almost a pleasure to watch the BBC reporting now that we know "it's safe". Barack seems pretty well grounded and, dang!, he is actually SMART!!!. Michelle seems pretty normal and SMART too!!! (I pray that we don't find out that she is actually some harpie from Hell.) And he has 2 kids who are cute and maybe normal. And who get a puppy.

Anyhow, you have folks gravitating to the Lincoln Memorial to reflect on this day. This is not stage managed. It is people. So I hope there is some cause for optimism.

You want to talk about the global impact of this election? Well dig this:

It woke Bonzi up from his slumber.

So there.

(formatting is my own)

No, we voted McCain trying to avoid paying large sums of money to provide health care and other life support to ILLEGAL immigrants among others. Government sponsored slavery of the "day laboring" illegals does not get my vote.

It's a shame that many people so eager to blindly support Obama. Yes, McCain was a bad candidate too, but at least he won't sell America into Socialism.

Now, when can I quit my job and get some of those handouts???

Because that's definitely the biggest problem facing the United States today. Come on, get real.

Wow. Obama is going to sell America into Socialism?

I pondered for a while even responding to this. And to start out, I do appreciate hearing your side of it, as I am always curious as to why people vote for someone.

With that out of the way, I'm going to be a bit blunt. Feel free to tell me off for this, but I would hope that this discussion remains in a civil format, and can proceed in a way that allows people on both sides here to understand the other side a bit better.

First off, I find myself a little disappointed with people who vote for a candidate based on a single reason on either side. To me, I don't want to ever apply a political label to myself, as they constantly shift anyhow, and one label never seems enough to properly describe everything a person stands for. My biggest complaint with our process today is that the election does come down to just two viable candidates and parties. That system just allows for very black and white campaign promises in a world that isn't that simple.

But clearly, many people including yourself are happy to just stick a label on a person and vote against them because of some notion that the label is bad. Socialism is a complex topic, and using it as a label really doesn't have much effect without proper context. To me, the $700bn bailout could be seen as a form of socialism. The public school system could be seen as socialism. Hell, get right down to it, and the interstate system could be seen as socialism. So why exactly is it a bad thing that Obama wants to spend $50 to $65bn on improving healthcare of Americans, to allow them to be healthy, lead productive lives, and overall improve the workforce of this country? To me, thats a great idea, compared to throwing $144bn at Iraq every year. War money that is either coming from our taxes now, or being piled on the debt for future taxes to pay off. If he manages to end the war somehow, his "scary socialism" healthcare plan is more then paid for without changing a thing in the tax system. Oh, and I can't find a single place that says Obama's health care plan will be extended to any illegal immigrants.

McCain just didn't convince me that he would distance himself from the decisions that have led us here today. With his voting record on the war in Iraq, Bush's budgets, and many other issues, those actions spoke louder then his campaign speeches. If he was truly opposed to out of control government spending, he should have voted against the budgets, and chosen to criticize them much sooner then when he was running for president. Obama didn't seem to contradict himself nearly as much when comparing his voting record to his campaign promises.

With that said, just because I voted for Obama (on a provisional ballot in a very shady polling place) doesn't mean I'm giving him a blank check. I will be just as critical of him and his actions in office as I have been of the previous administrations.

Observant as ever, Jim summed it up nicely

Thanks for the welcome, people. Nothing new on my side, actually. I kind of drifted off; a month or two of too hectic work when the BBS stops being daily routine, then return as a lurker... Well, perhaps a touch of middle-age depression; nothing unusual, really.

More to the topic, seeing Jim allowing himself a bit of optimism really raised my spirit!

Cheers!

Bonzi

Well, obviously, in several months. Be sure to let us know and report how is it to bask in splendor of welfare while poor managers of Goldman Sachs toil for you.

Cheers!

Bonzi

His “catch word” was much better – “Change” as opposed to “Maverick”

Maverick congers up thoughts of an old 70’s crap ass Ford, a cigarette or an old “B” western.

Plus old white dudes just aren’t cool anymore, if they ever were.

Looks to me like they were cool for, oh, 219 years or so.

I'm not sure I'd call any of JGK, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or Dubya an old guy when they were first elected as POTUS.

Reagan? Cheney? McCain? Definitely!

I thought of a few different ways to reply to your comments about where your tax dollars go, but as I was getting ready to post, I came across this blog entry which says it better than I ever could.

I have a problem with this part


That's a pretty black and white statement and it doesn't always play out so simply. Even if it did, the government doesn't always do what the people who put them in place want them to do. But the piece on a whole is decent. I don't think it will make any difference for the people you might want to target though.

Rational arguments and thought might as well have been completely out the window for this last US election. The bottom line was that anyone who voted McCain had their heads rammed very far up their asses. Same for the last two elections with regards to Bush really. In 2004 I didn't initially think Kerry had a chance of losing unless he raped or killed someone the night before the election. Even then...

Do you really need to take this discussion to that level to make your point?

Do you think your statement will convince someone who voted for McCain to say “Boy you are so right, thanks for calling me a shit head. I now see your point and I was wrong”

Maybe you should just get your buddies together with some pitch forks and torches and kill everyone who had a McCain sign in their yard. That would show those shit heads!

Well said.


That's one thing that always puzzled me about "New Deal bashers": FDR probably prevented a revolution, and an ugly one.

Bonzi

Agreed, like I said before, like my friend said four years ago, that kind of thinking doesn't get us anywhere. Even if I might personally think they're shitheads for believing the things they believe, it's important for me to at least try to understand why they believe it. Yelling at them for being shitheads doesn't bring us any closer.

Those who are thinking, "we control Congress and the White House now, we don't need to cater to the Republicans any more, screw 'em, we'll just fix everything now and not listen to them", aren't looking at the future and are just fueling the existing divisiveness that brought us here in the first place. History will be doomed to repeat itself if the urban liberals continue to misunderstand and ignore the rural Republican mindset.

..thereby demonstrating the harsh truth behind Bruno's rather crude comments..

No, I don't. But I didn't say "shithead" - that's completely different than having one's head up one's ass.



I don't think any statement, logic or reasoning will convince someone who voted McCain to reconsider their actions. If it were possible, they wouldn't have voted for McCain in the first place. A sane and rational person would have been convinced by the last 8 years of Bush policy that voting Republican this time around was the wrong thing to do.



It's the McCain supporters that buy and sell all the pitch forks. I would just like to live next to a neighbor country that isn't *constantly* starting wars and generally screwing every other country on the planet while doing so.

There are several problems with this logic.

First off, the idea that somehow divisiveness and hyper-partisanship got us into this mess is misguided. Divisiveness implies both sides were working equally hard at each others' throats to obstruct progress. In fact, Democrats capitulated and acquiesced to Republican demands consistently during the 109th and 110th Congresses. There are many examples of this on everything from the various Iraq war supplemental budget bills, to the hideous FISA bill, to the Defense of Marriage Act.

One perfect example of this is the Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-war Iraq Intelligence. This was Congress's half-assed effort to look into what went wrong with pre-war intelligence that led us to wrongly invade Iraq. From 2003-2006, the Senate Intel committee was run by Pat Roberts (R-KS) who stonewalled the report for years, going so far as to split it into two phases to kick the can down the road. Then, when the Democrats took over, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) took over, and what does he do? Sits on Phase two of the report, out of respect to the minority party. In other words, bipartisanship is the problem, not the solution.

One more example. When Democrats were the minority party, they used the filibuster only to block the most objectionable legislation, whereas when the Republicans were in the minority, they destroyed the filibuster record.

I'm all for the notion that "We should be the change we hope to see in the world," but the fact is, we can't fiddle while Rome burns just to pacify a minority party that's been sticking it to Democrats for years, going way back through the Clinton years. Truly progressive, liberal policies simply have not been tried in this country for decades, and believe you me, I don't see Obama and the Democrat-controlled congress reaching anywhere near where I'd prefer they reach, or even anywhere close to where the true "center" of public opinion is right now.

So, please, olive branches are awesome, and I love singing kumbaya around a campfire, but elections do indeed have consequences, and when elected representatives disagree about stuff, the best thing for them to do is fight for what they believe in (and what their constituents sent them to fight for.) Anything else is an abdication of their duty, and I will not shed a tear if a few feewings are huwt because the conservatives can't dish it in the way they dished it out.



I don't know what you mean by "rural Republican mindset" but I assume you're talking about social issues (gun control, abortion, gay rights, etc.) There are many factions in the Republican party that we've all talked about before, and the "theoconservative" bloc is the only one I identify with rural geography.

If that's the case, what exactly is it you think the scary Democrats are going to do to alienate these voters? When was the last time guns were taken away from anyone in this country? What percent of Americans do you think support a federal ban on abortion? How many of them want a federal law banning gay marriage?

I guess what I'm saying is I don't get why we're suddenly so concerned about Democrats "over-reaching" when Repblicans over-reached way beyond what a majority of Americans want (that's why they voted the Democrats in!) And, all of this concern before any of the new Dems have even taken office!

It's similarly depressing how in 2004, Dubya won by 3.5 million votes (34 EVs), which was largely hailed as a "mandate", but Obama wins by 7 million (and counting!) votes (201 EVs) and everyone wants him to govern from the center. What do Democrats have to do to get the same carte blanche as the Republicans have had for decades?

Oh, I'm not saying the democrats shouldn't fight for what's right. I'm just saying that, as a whole, at least trying to understand where the Republican *citizens* are coming from is a helpful exercise. Republican politicians? Should be fought tooth and nail.

And although you make good arguments to the contrary, I still honestly do believe that the divisiveness and hyper-partisanship (Edit: the parts of it that were created by the republicans) really did get us into this mess in the first place. The republican party, to achieve its more traditional aims, perpetuated a false dichotomy, starting way back in the "moral majority" days and leading up to today, deliberately fueling fires and drawing imaginary lines in the sand, just to position themselves as being somehow morally superior and thus electable. I believe many of the truly bad things that the Republican party did were a direct result of this strategizing and weren't necessarily because those things needed to get done. For example, I believe one of the reasons the war in Iraq was started was simply because the Republican party wanted yet another rallying cry.

Admittedly, without the deliberate partisanship, a lot of the crap would have still happened. I think there's a lot more crap and worse crap because of their twisting of the party's goals just to strategize the next election. I'm glad to see it finally backfired on them.

I see your point, but my argument is that the Democrats were not sufficiently partisan in their response. Had the Democrats stuck together and fought tooth-and-nail once it was clear that the Republicans were never going to play ball, a lot of the damage could have been avoided. And, now that Republican policies have led to disaster, it's not the time for Democrats to let their guard down and get punked again. It's hard enough for them to pull together a truly liberal coalition out of all the twisted factions of Democrats in the House and Senate without trying to appease the party that's been rejected strongly by the voters in the last two elections.

A lot of Republicans are even saying now that their party needs some time in the wilderness to get things together and win back the trust of voters. Democrats would do well to let them focus on those efforts rather than letting them undermine progressive change.

Agreed.

Heh.. ironically, this is because they are democratic.. at least in name.

I suppose there is no accounting for "relative objectionableness" of each party's propositions.

No, but here's a hint. Every bill that comes out of congress has to get past a Presidential veto. In most cases, the bills being filibustered by the minority Democrats during 2000-2006 were ones the White House supported (congressional Republicans have been lock-step with Bush throughout his presidency) whereas the bills blocked by minority Republicans in 2006-2008 are ones that the White House probably opposes.

Knowing that, which ones do you think were more objectionable?

Looks like Obama overshot and pulled in 53% of the popular vote....

So I suppose he over-spent getting that last unnecessary 2%.
Though "mandate margin" is probably money well spent in terms of laying some political capital into the bank.

To further stoke hybrid8's ire, I will note that if a mere 4 million of the 120 million people who voted had voted the other way, then McCain would have won the popular vote.

A VERY long way from his dream of a 90% mandate.

But to ease his pain, I will point out that, based on the Wikipedia pages that Bonzi linked earlier, it looks like
in the past couple hundred years (if you ignore 1820), about the biggest margins ever seen were about 60/40.
And that includes 1984 when Reagan won the electoral vote of 49 out of the 50 states!
And Clinton never got 50% of the popular vote.
So Obama has far exceeded Clinton in that regard.

So Obama won a (relatively) crushing electoral victory of 2 to 1, but the Democratic congresspeople are quite aware
that if they use their quite substantial mandate so injudiciously as to tick off a few million citizens, they could lose quite a few seats in the mid-term elections in 2 years.

So I'm not saying that they shouldn't absolutely go in and do exactly what their constituents elected them to do...
but those up for re-election in 2010 in 50/50 districts will tend to be a bit more bi-partisan in their approach
than the Pelosis and Feinsteins who have absolutely no chance of losing their seats no matter what they do.

(And Pelosi is even preaching the gospel of bi-partisanship at this moment. Though that may be mostly in an attempt to try to get some stuff done during the upcoming lame duck session.)

Out of interest, why is states' rights a Republican plank? Doesn't a desire for small government and reduced spending, pull against the idea of duplicating huge amounts of governmental structure? If I didn't know, I'd have guessed enthusiasm for states' rights to be a Democrat thing -- AFAICT the nearest equivalent over here, devolved government for Scotland and Wales, is less begrudged by the Labour party than by the Conservatives.

Peter

I've always seen "states' rights" as a dog-whistle of support for conservative positions on social issues (guns, gays, abortion, and friends.) In the absence of a federal law restricting gun ownership, states decide how to regulate guns. Ditto on gay marriage and abortion. It was also used as a codeword for support of segregation by Dixiecrats in the late 1940s.

I can also see the argument that states would be more efficient at handling certain governmental functions, and in those cases, your argument that consolidating things at the federal level would save money may not hold water. Obviously the feds should have a role in policing illegal immigration, but states are probably in a better position to handle the issuing of drivers' licenses, naming of state highways, etc.

Really, the term has so many meanings that it's virtually meaningless without some kind of description of what "rights" are involved.

Leadership is doing what's right, not what's required to get re-elected. Yes, of course the makeup of your district determines how much you can get away with, but with the electoral map looking like a few globs of red in a vast sea of blue, now is a great time for congressional Democrats to ride the wave and give their constituents some tough medicine. As long as their solutions work, constituents will reward them with re-election, and the districts will suddenly look blue instead of purplish-red.



I think it's clear that Nancy's going to swing things back towards the middle. She and Reid tried to do that in the 110th Congress, but Bush loyalty made the Republicans a bad dance partner. Now, I think you're going to see a lot of Republicans in purple states/districts start to suddenly remember how to reach across the aisle. A lot of attention is being paid to getting 60 votes in the Senate, but I can imagine scenarios where Senators like Collins, Snowe, Specter, and Lugar flex their own bipartisan muscle to help Democrats override filibusters.

Speaking of bipartisanship, Digby does it again with a perfect illustration of how hypocritical the media has been with their sudden demands that Obama fill his cabinet with a bunch of Republicans:

To add to Tony's response, this is a line from the US Constitution:


In particular, that is the Tenth Amendment, the last of the "Bill of Rights" that was passed at the same time the Constitution was accepted. It was a necessity to get the Constitution accepted, as the United States back then operated far more like the European Union does today, with the incorporated political entities being fairly independent.

Republicans often use that amendment as a basis for not overreaching the power of the federal government. That is not to say that they don't ignore it when it suits them, or that they would be more in favor of increased government at the state level. It's merely a cudgel. That said, it is what the Constitution says, and there has been a lot of legitimate debate about expanding federal powers by stretching the notion of other elements of the Constitution fairly thin, especially the Commerce Clause, which, to be fair, is the Democrats' cudgel.

I think it ties into the idea of a small(er) Federal government.
The idea is that states can go their own way on issues where regional consensus varies dramatically across the US.
Although, as Bitt points out, both sides have been picking and choosing on this topic for a long time.
Lately, Republicans seem to be all for states rights when you talk about guns or abortion, not so much when you talk about environmental regulations or gay marriage....

The funny thing about this is the worst aspect of socialism is the high taxes. When you count all the taxes we pay (federal, state, sales, property, car, gas, utilities, etc...), we pay far more than socialist states and get virtually none of the benefits.

I would like either the benefits or way lower taxes...

Add up all the different taxes you pay. You'll be pleasantly irritated. My cpa told me to stop doing this.

And then there's this news.

For a group that, historically, is known for having had some non-traditional views on marriage themselves, this sounds a lot like glass houses...

The marriage thing needs to be taken care of federally and with an iron fist. Period. These "religious" (I don't recognize the mormon "faith" as a religion) groups can self-delude themselves at their own places of worship instead of being allowed a voice to influence public matters.

Hopefully another supreme court fight can strike down the Prop 8 amendment. I'm disgusted with the travesty that just transpired, and I'm not gay nor do I live in California.

In theory, this can also be seen as a case of one faith (multiple faiths actually) trampling on the rights of another - and now the Californian constitution doing the same. A State marriage should have nothing to do with religion. If your particular faith wants to promote inequality, that's its business, but the state shouldn't be following suit or enabling it.

Freedom of religion is only a good thing when it protects the interests of your particular religion according to some. For faiths that do support same-sex marriage, there's no freedom here. In addition of course to a non-faith-based civil union which would require only one's personal freedoms being respected.

I'm surprised we're not seeing motions to repeal women's right to vote.

It would be nice if that happened, but there's a fundamental discontinuity there: The state issues the marriage license in the first place, and marriage has always been generally considered a "state" thing. The federal government doesn't regulate the marriages themselves, so why should they regulate a given state's criteria for recognizing that marriage?

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see this problem fixed, and the only way it'll get done is if the federal government puts its foot down. I just don't see how it can. When the republicans tried to get the opposite thing passed, it didn't work.

Edit: Oh wait I forgot about this one.

Isn't it ironic that, of all groups, the Mormons, with their history of polygamous marriage, are the driving force behind this movement to protect the sanctity of marriage as defined by the religious right, i.e., one man / one woman?

Here's an idea... let's see if we can't get a constitutional amendment prohibiting Mormons from marrying. Let them see the issue from the other side of the prejudice line.

tanstaafl.

That's what I meant when I said glass houses.

I say the Democrats offer Republicans a law banning gay marriage as long as it also bans heterosexual second marriages. If you're gonna "protect the institution of marriage" let's go the whole nine, right, boys?

To be fair, the reason they were polygynous in their seminal stages was to increase their fecundity. Homosexual couples cannot become gravid at all, much less recurrently. So there is some measure of cogency to their contention.

(Take that, Peter.)

It's my opinion that was simply an after-the-fact retcon of the reasoning behind their reversal of policy. At least that's what it reads like to me.

It's known that a big chunk of the money (and possibly the majority of it) for Proposition 8 came from out of state.

The two biggest contributors were Utah (Mormon) and Connecticut (Knights of Columbus).

A Mormon friend of mine also spent considerable time canvassing door to door for Proposition 8. I presumed that everyone in his church was doing the same.

This issue is baffling to me from multiple directions.

Why do states have to get involved with any type of marriage in the first place? (including heterosexual)
(If your main answer is "for the children" then recall that a large proportion of children are born "out of wedlock" and we already have laws on the books to deal with custody, etc. in those cases.)
Why do churches believe a ruling on this has any impact on their faith?
Why do gay people believe a Civil Union with identical legal status to marriage in terms of property rights, hospital visitation, and child custody wouldn't be "good enough" if it wasn't called "marriage"?

Granted I have never run these questions by any of my ultra-religious fundamentalist friends or either of the two "married" gay couples I know (one lesbian couple, one consisting of two males).

I guess I just don't care enough about this to bother listening to rhetoric from either side.

Just seems like there are lots of raw emotions here and, as I said, these legal fights on this subject baffle me.

P.S. A friend from India tells me that (at least in his region), the marriage laws are even funkier.
If you are Hindu, you are allowed one wife. If you are Muslim, you are allowed four wives.
I suppose having only three would be overly restrictive. And having five would be sinful.
Or maybe you're just being greedy (or a glutton for punishment, depending on your perspective).

P.P.S. A few months back, California reinstated the terms "Bride" and "Groom" on the wedding forms by popular request.
It seems a lot of people found "Party A" and "Party B" to be insufficiently romantic.

A marriage is a legal contract. Contract law is handled by states. Rather than having a unique contract for each marriage, it makes a lot more sense to have a single contract for everyone. If you want to argue that you don't need a legal contract, feel free to not get married. I don't even see any reason why a church wouldn't agree to perform the ceremony of your choice, if you believe that you need religious certification.


I cannot speak for homosexual people, but my personal opinion is that "separate but equal is inherently unequal".


The Koran allows for up to four wives, specifically in situations of widows with children. So there is some basis for the difference. Note that polygamy is (civilly) illegal in many Muslim-majority countries.

Well, obviously: churches mostly have nothing to do with faith, but power.

As Bitt said, "state" marriage is a contract. It should be treated as such, with parties signing a form saying "we agree to support each other, share property acquired from now on, have joint custody of children..." etc. Note that, if we push this to logical consequence, there is no good reason to restrict the contract to two parties.

I think that state should deal only in civil unions, i.e. all "state" marriages should be called the same (I personally don't see why the word cannot be "marriage", but don't see why is it so important, either). Then, the couple (or group) would have the choice to have legal contract, religious (or other) ceremony of their choice, or both (or neither, of course). As a concession to churches, an arrangement could be made that in the case of religious marriage compatible with the state one (and all should be such, as people should be free to stipulate conditions of nuptial agreement as they wish), the church simply notify authorities the their members entered into the contract. OK, the state will wish some standardization, but that's technicality.

Bonzi

That's how it works here in The Netherlands. The only legally recognized marriage is the civil one - if you want to have a religious ceremony, feel free to have one, but you *do* need to have a civil servant perform the legal civil procedure for it to count.

The same or similar is true for many other countries as well. I did some research into this when we decided to get married "abroad." We ended up getting married in Portugal, where I was born.

In Portugal there is one religious ceremony that is recognized by the state, a Catholic one. Any other religious process, or for that matter a lack of one, requires a civil ceremony for legal recognition, usually at the local office of the Civil Registry for the region.

We were lucky enough to have the civil registrar come out to marry us on the beach in April, something the Catholic Church would never consider anyway. The ceremony had no mention at all of anything religious in it, so we were actually quite free to style it ourselves beyond the paperwork procedure required by the state. In fact because Portugal's changes in procedure, you don't even have to sign anything as part of the ceremony - the signatures were already taken at the time of the application for the process here at home at the consulate a month before.

Prop 8 should be thrown out on the sole basis that it was tainted by parties outside of the state.

This seems to help clear it up a bit. The main reason for the legal fighting is the portability of the agreement. Civil unions are legally only recognized in a few places (The linked document only has Vermont, but there are others), and as such, those agreements can only be ended in those states. The other big concern seems to be status under federal programs and rights laws for married couplesthat don't apply to civil unions.

Wikipedia also has a decent summary.

That's basically true in the US, too, with the qualification that religious leaders are allowed to officiate the "ceremony". They basically work as a notary public in this instance. (Note that the concept of a notary public in the US is apparently a lot more restricted than in the rest of the world; they exist solely to witness and certify oaths.)

I think I am agreeing with Bonzi on this one, and perhaps agreeing with you as well.

The states should provide contracts. Evenly.

Call them marriage. Call them petunias. Call them by some long inscrutable bureaucratese name. I don't care.
But the religious aspects of it should be handled by your faith of choice (or optionally no faith),
and the legal part of the contract has no connection to your temple/synagogue/hall/church/ashram/commune.

All the state should care about is who gets the money when it goes bad or someone dies.
And who is committed to take care of whom and for how long.


Agreed. I'm not proposing separate but equal. I apologize if that is what my earlier post implied.

I'm proposing that the state provide one type of contract
and you can feel free to overlay whatever religious overtones on it that you wish.

You can get a license and not be sanctified by a church.
You can get a ceremony at a church and chose not to enter into a legal contract, though I doubt many people would want that option; it shows a certain lack of commitment.

(And of course your church can choose to refuse to perform a ceremony if you don't fill out a binding contract with the state,
submit a declaration of beliefs, or swear to eat pomegranate every second Tuesday, that's their right).



Oh I understand the religious origin of granting different marriage rights to holders of different religious beliefs.
I just wanted to point out that I think this highlights the fundamentally ridiculous nature of the state weighing in on this.
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't sign up for "Separate But Unequal".

If I hold religious beliefs saying I can split my assets and commit my support to a harem of 25 women,
then the guy down at the courthouse should just look at me, raise his eyebrow, say "are you sure that's what you want?"
and then cheerfully write up the contract
...without caring whether or not some man in a funny hat or silly costume has said it is OK by doing a magic dance or reading some poems from an ancient book or scroll.

A small post-election footnote compliments of my sister:

My parents are 87 and 90 years old. Both 1st-generation children of Catholic immigrants from the Azores and from County Laois. Mom, one of 2 surviving sibs (out of 14) has difficulty remembering if you called 10 minutes ago; Dad's memory is pretty good but his vision is pretty shot, he is seriously aphasic and he has been in and out of the hospital this past year.

While he could no longer see Tim Russert, he was a loyal listener of Meet the Press and Tim's death was a serious blow.

Dad's back in the hospital right now, but he managed to get out for a few days around election day and both Mom and Dad got a ride to the polls in the assisted living center's van.

"The Captain" has seen a lot of this world but remained a real "townie" at the core. I think, though, that the ghost of Tip O'Neill was looking down on these two Reagan Democrats.

They both voted for Obama.

This really *is* huge. Transcendent.

Do you argue that ministers should be unable to act as a notary of the marriage contract? If not, that's basically the way it is now.


Well, you asked why gay people are not okay with a "civil union". And the answer is because the state currently calls those "marriages". If you get a contract that says "marriage" if you're marrying a person of the opposite sex, and a contract that says "civil union" if you're marrying a person of the same sex, that is separate. If you want to say that all such contracts should be labelled "civil union", I think that the gay community would be fine with that. But you didn't include that sentiment in your question.

Honestly, all of this is based, in my opinion, on an antiquated notion, which is that a pair of people who take care of each other must have a romantic relationship.

Imagine a pair of siblings. One really just wants to stay at home and be domestic. The other wants a career, but has no interest in dealing with a household. Why can they not live together and deal with a household in the manner of a traditionally married couple without having a romantic relationship? Of course, the answer is that they can. But they don't get the benefits that the state provides to married couples. Chances are that the sibling with the job cannot extend his or her health insurance to the other sibling, for example. Why shouldn't this situation be recognized?

Now, what if, instead of siblings, they're just friends who met at school? Why should that be different?

Now what if those friends also happen to have a romantic relationship? Well, now you're talking about a "traditional" marriage. (Assuming they're of the opposite sex.)

What this comes down to is that the state is determining your legal ability to be married based on whether or not (you claim) you're in a romantic relationship. Which, when you think about it, is just ridiculous.

While my own feelings about some of this are a bit muddy, the outcome of Prop 8 in California seems like a huge step backward. Imagine that; huge turnout for Obama contributes to a win for a campaign funded by out-of-state religious interests. Backwards.

I have a couple of thoughts/questions.

Since I am an ordained minister, I have offered my services to acquaintances re; weddings. But I thought: do states such as Washington and California require that I ascertain the sex of the parties? If one of the parties decide that they are "male" or "female" at any given moment, why should I question that? I need to research that.

OK, I know that this doesn't really confront the issue, and it doesn't do well on the "separate-but-equal" front, but it's a thought.

Secondly, I have been looking at the WA State AG and secretary of state's Web sites to see what the requirements are for initiative petitions. I have some thought of gathering signatures for a petition that would prohibit Mormons from getting married in the State of Washington

Well noted. I was doing the same mistake (including, say, a five-member commune, but not your, in hindsight obvious, example of siblings).

I think that's unduly harsh towards the Mormons. I was raised in one of the (non-fundamentalist) splinter groups that formed out of Mormonism, and, while I agree that the genesis of the church came about for reasons other than the claimed piety, the modern church is really a far cry from what it was in the past.

That said, I'm certainly not defending their beliefs, let alone their involvement in Prop 8. I'm incredibly proud of Paul Martin for passing C-38, and only wish that the elected leaders in the USA had as much insight into this issue as he did:

I assume this is the "Charter" to which he refers?

That'd be the one.

And thanks of course to Trudeau for it. So far the best Prime Minister of my lifetime. It would have been something else to have had experienced PET in his prime face of against GWB.

I don't believe that all 50 states treat a "civil union" as identical to a "marriage" in all legal or contract law respects yet.
I think that California has since 2000 or so, but I don't think that is yet uniform across every state.
But with that done, I certainly wouldn't care who acts as a notary.


That is exactly what I meant in my original post on this topic when I said "I don't know why the state is involved in 'marriages' at all".



Fully agreed. That was my point.
The state can deal with contracts.
They can leave the romance and religion to other parties.

Very few states have anything that matches the concept of "civil union" other than marriage at all.

I didn't realize we were having a semantics problem. You're saying that the thing that we currently call a marriage contract should be a "civil union" contract and that the term "marriage" should be excised from any civil application. Okay. I'm not going to argue with that.

Continuing on the topic of prop 8:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/justbeta/3010014488