Missing The Point Of The Game

As we enter the final few episodes of Game of Thrones, we are awash in hot takes. One that I keep bumping into (prior to last night's blowout battle between the living and the dead) is that GoT is so into subverting our expectations that the Night King should win and humanity reduced to...something.  Much of this is based on the execution of certain characters along the way, most notably Nedd and Robb Stark.  Those two men were typical fantasy heroes - noble, handsome - who turned out to be doomed because they were noble (and in Robb's case, handsome).

The point of beheading the star (Sean Bean) at the end of the first season and the Red Wedding was to point out the capricious nature of violence.  You establish those stakes early.  Think of the Omaha Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan.  While there was another similar action sequence at the end, very little of the rest of the movie comes anywhere close to the brutal first half hour.  However, that first half hour hovers at the edge of every scene, every encounter.  The death of a single character by a sniper lands a bit harder, but we are also waiting for death at every moment.

GoT set up the same dynamic.  Too many critics decided that this meant that Cersei or the Night King should wind up on the Iron Throne.  I doubt very, very much that this will happen. Martin and the showrunners are interested in how power works.  How it works when it is exercised and how it works upon those who exercise it. The Starks who died put too much faith in human decency and justice. The Starks who remain don't seem to have much of that - perhaps with the exception of Jon Snow/Aemon Targaryen. Arya and Sansa certainly don't put much faith in human decency.

The final three episodes will deal fundamentally with these ideas of what makes a good ruler and how to gain power, and the fact that they are often at odds with each other.  The Targaryens first created the Iron Throne because they had dragons.  Might made right.  Robert's Rebellion overthrew the Targaryens because they were both weak and incompetent. Danerys' claim to throne is based on heredity and dragons (and perhaps saving humanity from the Dead), but that's no different than Jon's claim.  He has blood and fire, too. For that matter, Cersei can bring blood and fire her own self.

Ultimately, the question that GoT should resolve is whether the ability to gain power is at all compatible with being a good ruler.  I'm not sure they can really resolve this issue, however.  Basically, we are headed for a few possible landing spots.

Very unlikely, but Cersei retains the throne by being the most ruthless and cunning.

More likely, Danerys finds a way to overthrow Cersei and "break the wheel."

Most interesting, Danerys and Jon overthrow Cersei and then turn on each other.  Even more interesting would be a resolution that removes Cersei in Episode 5 (Arya FTW) and then Jon and Dany kill each other in a dragon duel, leaving the remnants of the cast to piece together some sort of political order that doesn't revolve entirely around military power.

Least interesting (but maybe most likely) is Jon and Dany ascending to the throne together and complementing each other's best attributes to create a just rule.

The Night King was never going to win.  Cersei is almost certainly not going to win.  Cruelty isn't a sound governing philosophy. Even dictators bestow favors on their subjects. That doesn't mean we are headed for some saccharine happy ending. 

In the end, all that matters is that Hot Pie lives.

Footage of Harry Reid meeting with Mitch McConnell

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (standing) meets with his GOP counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

This EXCLUSIVE VIDEO to Zombieland.  I expect a frakking Pulitzer for this!

Adventures in Wankery

The ritual emasculation of a Democratic President

Sadly, my vacation has consisted of a lot of cable news being on in the background.

I hate cable news.

Right now on MSNBC they are discussing whether Obama will be a one term president.  The new Congress has not been seated yet, and we're already moving on to the next horse race story.  Because, goshdarnit, them policy stories is just too durned hard.

To make matters worse, the panel that "even the liberal" MSNBC is using consists of correspondent Karen Finney, a GOP strategist and an as yet unseated freshman GOP congressman.

Yes.

That's the panel.

The amount of wankery present in political coverage is astounding.  They're using a poll that says 48% of Americans will definitely vote against Obama. Leaving aside the merits of basing your conclusion on one poll, the political landscape for 2012 is over the horizon.

(Chuck Todd did have a good line yesterday, which I'll paraphrase: "Every night, Obama must get on his knees and pray that the economy recovers, Afghanistan becomes more orderly and Sarah Palin wins the GOP nomination.")

First, if the economy improves and continues to improve through 2012, that will do more than anything else to improve his chances.  And by the economy, I mean the unemployment picture.  There is only one President who was re-elected after a panic began in his first term, James Monroe.  And this panic began in 2008, maybe 2007.  So he needs to see the cyclical up-tick that will likely happen.  Unless we his a double-dip recession.  Then he's toast.  (Unless he can plausibly blame it on GOP obstruction in the House.)

Second, there are demographics on his side.  If the presidential electorate of 2008 had turned out in 2010, we'd still be seeing a Democratic House.  Two years of the expected GOP wankery will likely wear on voters.  Once people stop getting their unemployment benefits, once public works projects start shutting down, once tax breaks start getting funneled to corporations... You get the idea.  Even among people who voted for the GOP this month don't agree unanimously with the GOP agenda.  Over 35% of GOP voters want to see the government do something about unemployment.  That coalition isn't really a coalition.  It's the Tea Party and the protest vote.

Finally, the GOP nominee isn't decided yet.  I find Sarah Palin a combination of laughable and dangerous.  If she wins the GOP nomination, she goes down to a Sharon Angle-style defeat.  I think - I HOPE - that this would be true even if we have a double-dip recession.

Rather than talk about whether Obama can win two years from now, a more fruitful discussion would center on how the GOP nomination process will play out.  When Clinton was left for dead in 1994, I predicted he would win easily because the GOP bench was so thin.

I see the same thing today.

Palin is a media creature with the gravitas of a mylar Hannah Montana balloon.

Newt Gingrich, well, everyone hates Newt Gingrich.  He comes with built-in negatives that would make Goering blush.  He's also "old news".  Ask Bob Dole how that works out.

Mitt Romney.  He's easy to dismiss because he's the DC media's pick.  Just like Rudy Giuliani in 2008 or John McCain in 2000.  The guy passed a health care reform bill in Massachusetts that's practically indistinguishable from "Obamacare".  There is NO WAY a Mormon, health care reformer gets past the frothing crazies that make up the GOP primary.  Ask Mike Castle.

Mitch Daniels. Another trendy Beltway pick, because he's not stupid and he's a governor.  Ultimately, however, like most politicians who don't quit their jobs to become media personalities, he's had to make tough choices, especially in this economic climate.  And he's as charismatic as you would expect the governor of Indiana to be.

Mike Huckabee.  I think this might be the guy.  He's "country" enough and "white" enough to appeal to the overwhelmingly rural and white make-up of the GOP electorate.  He's got a touch of populism in him, and a touch of bigotry, too.  That will play well.  He has a sense of humor (something Alaska Snowbilly Grifter Lady lacks).  He's the acceptable alternative to Palin for the Tea Party.

John Thune.  Who the fuck is John Thune?

The GOP establishment will try and rally around an alternative to Palin.  They can see another Angle/O'Donnell train wreck coming from that.  But the more they try and tear her down, the more the GOP base rallies around her.  She is the living breathing personification of white-grievance politics.

Right now, I'd say she's the favorite for the GOP nomination when you take into account the "base" of the GOP.  Given the winner-take-all nature of the GOP primary system, she could easily rack up big electoral totals with 35-40% of the vote, unless they find a way to sink her.

So, media, speculate on THAT.  If Palin is the nominee, Obama wins by a landslide.

147 Years Ago

Update: I apologize for the weird formatting...

                                                You can kick the asses of some of the bears

 all of the time, and all of the bears some of the time...

So, about 147 years ago, Abraham Lincoln gave a little speech in a little town.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.


Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.


It's so brief, isn't it.  Some of the sentence are so plain and unadorned.  "We are met on a great battlefield of that war."  How simple is that writing?  And how clear?

America produced two remarkable men in those cataclysmic years.  Both were born into the worst possible deprivation.  Both effectively taught themselves to read.  Both become extraordinary writers and thinkers, rising above the expectations of others and perhaps even themselves.

The other man was Frederick Douglass.  Here's a few things written by Mr. Douglass :


Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people. 

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky-her grand old woods-her fertile fields-her beautiful rivers-her mighty lakes and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked when I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slave-holding and wrong; When I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten; That her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.

We are about to enter the Sesquicentennial years of the Civil War.  Similarly we will observe many of the 50 year anniversaries of the monumental moments of the civil rights movement.

We do this at a time of fractious civil discord.  Obama rose to national prominence with his electrifying address to the 2004 Democratic national convention in which he decried the separating of America into "Red' and "Blue" Americas.  And he has endeavored to try and maintain efforts at bipartisanship.  He added inefficient tax cuts to the stimulus bill, he tried incessantly to bend the HCR bill to appeal to the Senators from Maine, he did the same with financial reform.  He recently offered to meet the GOP leadership to discuss the next two years.  They were too busy.

Before the Civil War started, Lincoln - a man Obama clearly wishes to emulate - said the following to the seceding South at the conclusion of his first inaugural address:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

34

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. Now we have the governor of Texas is talking about seceding from Medicare and the new Health Care Reform. We have an Alaskan snowbilly grifter who could possibly ascend to the nomination of the GOP in two years.  We have a major party in Congress who have openly stated that their job is to "insure that Obama is a one term president". In effect, the GOP has seceded from governance.  They exist now, almost entirely as a party in love with power as opposed to governing.  The similarity is clearest to the PRI of Mexico that existed not to serve any policy goals, but simply to maintain the status quo and stability.  The GOP wants no forward change, only to return to the same policies that screwed over the economy, the military and our place in the world. Several critics have referred to the modern GOP as the Confederate Party.  Indeed it is overwhelmingly, white, older, Southern and rural. As we ponder the significance and remember the legacy of the Civil War and its final chapter written in the streets of Birmingham and Selma fifty years ago, it's worth remembering who seceded and why.  It's worth remembering that democracy requires cooperation and a common purpose.

Charts and Graphs

This chart accompanied a NY Times piece evaluating the Bush Tax Cuts.

Basically, there is very little evidence that cutting taxes for the wealthy increases GDP growth, much less increases standard of living, the fiscal situation of the federal government or does anything but increase economic inequality.

We knew this.  We now have a nice chart.

Why in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster can the Democrats not win on this issue?

Oh, yeah, because they are Democrats.

The GM Bailout

So, General Motors will emerge from its government run bankruptcy soon.  It will issue an IPO and people will buy it and the government will get out - at some loss - and presumably GM will return to being a competent automaker now that it's free from some legacy costs, poor past management decisions and overwhelming debt.

Tens - if not hundreds of thousands of Americans will be able to keep their jobs because of this.

In an environment where official unemployment is around 9.5% and the number of non-job seekers and underemployed probably creeps close to 25%, this is an objectively and authoritatively good thing.

The Randian super-geniuses who genuflect before altars of Adam Smith that look suspiciously like mirrors rather than ikons were aghast at the government's involvement in the markets.  We were told that this was the death of capitalism/freedom/puppies/the Amurican Wayoflife.  This - crowed the Galtian crowd of "producers" - was socialism in its most blatant and this was how freedom dies.

Via bankruptcy restructuring?  That prevented the collapse of a major American industry?

Don't buy into the argument that Americans can no longer make things.  Ford has been doing great, because they happen to have had very good long range planning.  Ford is ahead of other American automakers in LEV and hybrid technology and they make a solid product.

Now, ironically, it was those "producers" that Ayn Rand fellated in her noxious tomes of narcissistic, arrested adolescence that screwed over GM.  It was the suits in the suites who thought doubling down on the Suburban and the Yukon were the way to go.

The engineers all along have been able to solve problems if given the mandate and resources to do so.  Remember, the suits in the suites argued against CAFE standards, seatbelts, airbags and catalytic converters. All of which have made the air cleaner and the roads safer.  All of which American auto executives said couldn't be done.  All of which foreign automakers did before us.

If GM really has turned a corner and can now make reliable, fuel efficient vehicles (in addition to their large market share of trucks), it will be because the government acted.

When Ronald Reagan uttered the sound bite: "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" he unleashed a philosophy that effectively neutered the government from doing anything of consequence.  The droids that have assumed his mantle have taken as orthodoxy that government fails simply by being the government.

What that does is create a climate where government ceases to function.  Which reinforces the idea that government CAN'T function.

I think Obama's entire operating philosophy is to prove that government CAN act when required of it.  And therefore the GOP's plan of denying him ANY victories makes a sort of tactical sense.

But ultimately, we as  a nation suffer.  Just as we would have suffered if GM disappeared into oblivion, taking the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Americans with it.

The Simpson-Bowles Report: Deficits are the little people's problem

The Simpson-Bowles Report on deficit reduction has not technically been released.  The report that came out today was just Simpson and Bowles recommendations.  The Committee has to agree to recommendations, so it will likely include three concrete proposals in the end: Cut no programs, Raise no taxes, End "waste".

So it will likely be adamantly anti-waste.  Yippee.

But the main issue I have with the report is its focus on Social Security.  It has three main proposals: Raise the retirement age, raise the maximum income that can be taxed and cut benefits.

Two of those come at the expense of the middle class: raising the retirement age and cutting benefits.  The third comes at the expense of the rich.

Raising the retirement age makes sense if you're a lawyer or a doctor or an executive.  It makes less sense if you're a long haul trucker or a coal miner or a waitress.  Reducing benefits will also pinch middle class retirees the most (I think they actually increase benefits for the poor).

But from everything I've heard, all you really have to do is raise the cap on the social security tax.  Raise that, and you make social security solvent for as long as they care to project it outwards.

But if we're going to tax that segment of the population who has benefitted the most from the past 30 years, it is apparently necessary to hit those that have struggled twice as hard.

Like I said: the New Gilded Age.  If you're not rich, it's your fault.  And you should suffer for your lack of "character".

The final kicker is this: extending Social Security's solvency into the next century is a worthy goal.  But it won't do diddly to reduce the deficit.  It will help keep SS from dipping into operating revenues in a few decades, but it won't solve any of the systemic problems we have with the budget deficit.

And why do we have a problem with the budget deficit?

That's the top marginal tax rate since we've had an income tax.

Funny how it exploded around the time we cut the top marginal tax rate...

Coincidence?

Whenever someone talks about returning the top marginal rate to anything close to what it was before Reagan, they are accused of class warfare.  But the truth is, class warfare was waged and won by the very wealthy in the 1980s.  And the wrecked budget deficit is a direct by product of that.

But as the GOP takes over the House and talks about "fiscal responsibility" you can bet the farm that "revenue increase" won't pass their lips.  Ever.

So, Read My Lips: No Deficit Reduction!

Now For A New Verse, Same As the Other Verse

Three items caught my eye.

One, Rand Paul is now a convert to earmarks for Kentucky (as long as the process is transparent).
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/11/08/paul-earmarks-pledg/

OK, I don't have a problem with that position.  Representative SHOULD serve their constituents by making sure that they get their fair share of federal spending.  The problem is the glaring hypocrisy of running as a small government glibertarian and then changing your position before you've even been sworn into the office you ran for.

Two, the GOP House leadership is meeting to determine what it is they will actually do now that they control the House.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44816.html

Um, shouldn't you know already?  Cutting administrative costs of the Capitol Police?  Great!  Our multi-trillion dollar debt is as good as gone!

This continues to show that while the GOP is excellent at creating narratives that win elections, they really don't seem to be concerned with governance.  Aside from opposing Democratic initiatives like HCR and stimulative spending they really haven't laid out a single concrete plan for moving America out of the recession.  All they've promised to do is re-fight the legislative battles of the past two years.

Awesome, because that was so much fun the first time...

Three, Texas is bankrupt.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/1024dntexbudgetmess.274b11d.html

The states have often been called laboratories of reform.  Wisconsin was famous in the early part of the twentieth century for reform initiatives.

Well, we're getting results in from the most conservative large state in the Union.  Guess what?  Unbridled tax cuts don't magically solve budget problems.  Can you imagine the effects of 25% cuts in state spending?

Grover Norquist famously said he wanted to shrink government to the size where he could drown it in a bathtub.  And so we starve the government of funds it needs to perform the necessary tasks of governing: education, infrastructure and the minimal welfare state to keep Americans from starving in the streets.

The GOP loves to run on tax cuts and earmark reforms and vague but angry denouncements of the ruling party.  But they haven't had a compelling new idea since Reagan and that idea has run to its logical extreme.

And so we're stuck in an endless loop.  Or more accurately a downward spiral.

UPDATE: I should have read this before I posted.  Excellent on so many levels.
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2010/11/09/the-mandate/

Where will the new Teddy Roosevelt come from?

We live in the new Gilded Age.

There are ample examples of the extraordinary inequality present in our country today.  The Citizens United case was perhaps the slap in the face that the media needed to pay attention to the new predominance of money.  Or maybe it was TARP for Wall Street and no mortgage cramdown for Maple Street.  Or maybe the evidence just became too much to ignore.

A slow understanding crept into America towards the end of the 19th century that the presence of great wealth in America had a corrosive effect on the very institutions of democracy.  The Populist movement, in the words of Mary Ellen Lease, tried to "raise less corn and more hell."  They were routinely written off by the Eastern press, and they were equal parts Dirty Fucking Hippie and Tea Party Patriot.

In the election of 1896, the issue of wealth took the forefront in the Presidential campaign.  The divisive issue of the day was monetary policy, namely would the currency expand and allow debtors a chance to escape their debts or would it remain contracted and serve existing wealth.  William Jennings Bryan and the Democrats ran on free silver and an inflationary currency.  William McKinley ran for the restrictive gold based currency favored by the wealth.

McKinley won and it wasn't close.  Despite his appeal to the debt ridden farmers, Bryan was too scary for people in the East to welcome into power.  Industrial workers were told that if Bryan won on Tuesday, don't bother coming to work on Wednesday.  Bryan would continue to run for President and lose, because he was just too radical for the middle class, too associated with the raging Populist farmers.

When McKinley - fresh off his victory over Spain - ran for re-election in 1900, Senator Platt of New York wanted to get rid of his new crusading reformist governor, Teddy Roosevelt.  Roosevelt, having won laurels in Cuba, had been swept into power in Albany and proved to be beyond the control of Platt and the Republican Party bosses.  Platt figured the perfect place to hide away this brash reformer was in the office that has been described as a "bucket of warm piss": The Vice Presidency.

Enter, Leon Czolgosz.  An anarchist, Czolgosz met McKinley at an Exposition in Buffalo and shot him.  Suddenly, hiding Teddy Roosevelt in the Vice Presidency was not that smart a move for power players like Platt.

Roosevelt was such a powerful and charismatic figure, his exploits so much larger than life, that he succeeded where Bryan and the Populists had failed.  While his reform were not of the same quality or quantity as either Wilson's or Franklin Roosevelt's, the fact is, Teddy Roosevelt made everything else possible.

He changed the office of the Presidency, making the President an advocate for the people and insuring them a "Square Deal".  He also changed the scope of what the government would consider "its business."  Grover Cleveland had said, "The people should support the government; the government should not support the people" in response to a drought that cried out for governmental relief.  Teddy created the Food and Drug Administration and broke up the occasional trust in his efforts to provide a more even playing field for the American people.

He was so popular that just a few years after his death, he was already being enshrined on Mount Rushmore next to Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington himself.

But we forget that it was all because of Leon Czolgosz, his demented ideas and his pistol.

The party of Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman and LBJ has recently elected Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  They have not been - to this point at least for Obama - transformational Presidents the way that Teddy and Franklin were.

It is pointless at this point to hope that the GOP would ever return to its Rooseveltian roots, so we'll just leave them out of it.

To be a transformational President, you have to transform things, ya know?  And to transform things, you have to have the marriage of charisma, ability and boldness that Teddy Roosevelt possessed.  Clinton and Obama possess immense charisma and ability, but boldness isn't perhaps their defining attribute.  Veteran Hillary people admit that she would have dropped Health Care Reform early in favor of jobs and the economy.  She would have muted the losses in 2010, perhaps, but lost the opportunity at fundamentally changing America.

Maybe Obama IS transformational, and I'm simply too close to see the transformation.  But I don't think so.  I think he's an important pivot point, perhaps.  But I worry that being able to win election and being able to transform the nation are mutually exclusive.  Teddy became President because of an accident.  Wilson became President because Teddy split the vote with Taft.  FDR became President because the global economy collapsed.  LBJ signed Civil Right legislation by the light of the eternal flame on Kennedy's grave.  Reagan needed another economic collapse and an unprecedented hostage crisis (and a near miss assassination) to transform the government.

From where will the circumstances arise that give us someone who can truly change America?

Obama has said he is opposed to extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires.  But he will.  He will have to in order to keep the ones for the middle class.  It's perfectly pragmatic and reasonable to do so. But it will further cement the idea that America has a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy.

And so the rich will continue to thrive while the middle and working class continue to suffer and decline.  And we will wait for the day when circumstances finally deliver us from the New Gilded Age.

Update:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/11/07/new-vocabulary-word-plutonomy/

Update II: The Germans Weigh In
You should read the whole thing (there's a link).  Here's an excerpt about the Idiocracy, but it also touches on the unsustainablility of the American way of life.
The country is reacting strangely irrationally to the loss of its importance -- it is a reaction characterized primarily by rage. Significant portions of America simply want to return to a supposedly idyllic past. They devote almost no effort to reflection, and they condemn cleverness and intellect as elitist and un-American, as if people who hunt bears could seriously be expected to lead a world power. Demagogues stir up hatred and rage on television stations like Fox News. These parts of America, majorities in many states, ignorant of globalization and the international labor market, can do nothing but shout. They hate everything that is new and foreign to them.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,726447,00.html

Ohhhh, What does it all mean?

Well, probably not what Cokie Roberts says it means.
Things you will hear about the midterms that are probably not true.
1) Democrats were too liberal.
Most of the losers last night were the Blue Dogs, the most conservative Democrats.  Some of them were doomed by the changing landscape, some were swept in on the 2006 and 2008 elections were bound to lose.  Pelosi routinely let the Blue Dogs vote against the party.  It didn't work.  They got hammered.

2) Democrats weren't liberal enough.
Popular with the FireDogLake crowd, this argument says that if only Obama had delivered the magical sparkle pony of the public option/DADT repeal/nationalizing the banks then Democratic losses wouldn't have been so bad.  In fact, some of the most progressive candidates (Grayson, Perriello, Feingold) lost.  But again, they lost in swing districts.

3) The Tea Party won.
Uh, no. Democrats retained control of the Senate thanks to the Tea Party.  Delaware, Colorado, Nevada...Those are races the Democrats won because they were facing Tea Party candidates.  Where Tea Party candidates DID win was in the House.  Because no one was paying attention.  Joe Miller, Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell tried to hide from the press.  House candidates didn't have to.  It will be interesting to see how the public reacts when these guys start trying to follow through on their agenda.

4) This was a repudiation for Obama who is now toast in 2012.
Partially true, in that this was a clear message that people are freaked out by the economy.  And while the crisis wasn't Obama's fault, his response has been a bit tepid.  (Thank YOU, Larry Summers!)  I did hear a commentator on NPR say that Obama has to explain himself and his policies better.  And that once Tea Party people start holding hearings on Health Care, it could probably become MORE popular once people find out what's in it.  Finally, the GOP will nominate a Tea Party candidate in 2012.  It seems inevitable.  Whether it's Palin or a Palin Pretender like Gingrich.  Remember, Clinton was left for dead in 1994.

5) It was Old White Guys who defeated the Dems last night.
Actually, that one is true.  The GOP has a demographics problem, and if they go full metal hater on brown people, it will only get worse.  Immigration could be the double edged sword that comes back to cut the GOP.

The Deluge?

Well, the polls are closed in Indiana and fittingly enough Dan Burton is the first race called.  Fittingly, because we can all anticipate the Burtonesque (and not in a cool, Edward Scissorhands kind of way) hearings that will swamp the House for the next two years.  Burton was the Guy who investigated everything about Bill Clinton.  I don't know if he'll be the Guy this time, but you know that there's a Guy waiting to start hearings on birth certificates, ACORN (just filed for bankruptcy), the New Black Panther Party, health care, BP oil spills, stimulus money, Shirley Sherrod, underwear bombers, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bo's "accidents" in the Roosevelt Room, Michelle's right to bare her arms, Sasha's homework habits and Obama's Islamic tendencies.

Eating with my friend Kathleen on Saturday, she said that she hoped we DID get a crazy-assed GOP Congress, just to remind people once again how dysfunctional the GOP is when it's in power.

Maybe, but I can't say I'm sanguine about spending the next two years with a government unable to address substantive problems for fear of upsetting the torch carrying yahoos in the Tea Party.

The Coming Election

I am supposed to feel really bad about the upcoming election on Tuesday.  The Democrats will lose the House...By a lot.  The Senate will become even more dysfunctional.  Krugman, who is infuriatingly right about everything, says that we will be in for two years of paralysis.  Two years that we desperately need to have a functioning government.

I agree that we need a functioning government.  We need a government to keep propping up insolvent state governments and addressing the overwhelming gap between the rich and poor.  We need a government to make the simple, easy fixes to Social Security.  We need a government that puts the interests of the people above the interests of the few.

And I agree that Speaker Boehner will not address any of these issues in a rational way.

Which means I'm living in denial.

Here's why:  I think the 2006 and 2008 elections were about more than a "political wave".  I think they were a fundamental realignment.

When I teach comparative government, we talk a lot about political culture.  It's not always determinative but it's very influential.

The "solid South" is a good example of this from history.

And I don't know if polls have captured the movement away from Republicans that has taken place in many sections of the country among many groups of people.

So, yeah, I'm probably living in denial and the GOP will pick up 60 seats in the House and 7 seats in the Senate.

But if for some reason I'm right, I want this thing time stamped, so I can be a genius for a day.