Final Blog for Election 2008

Some Random Observations on the Start of the Obama Era:
The events last evening were so remarkable that most Americans, and even many people throughout the world, will recall the experiences of last evening for the rest of their lives. It was very late for those Americans who were in Europe, like I was, but they gathered by the tens of thousands all over Europe to await, breathlessly, the results of the 2008 American elections and then to watch, in amazement, as people all over the world shared in a kind of collective joy that I cannot remember ever.

It was a very emotional evening driven by almost equally intense and opposite feelings: the intense relief that the nightmare of the Bush Administration might really after eight long years come to an end, repudiated by the good sense of a majority the American people, and the astonishment and pure delight that a talented man, of color, could rise to the Presidency of the United States, ending a much longer nightmare in American history.

I did not think at first that there was anything that I could add that would not have been stated in the last twenty four hours by dozens of other commentators, but somewhat random thoughts kept returning to me and I thought that I would share them with you as my “last Hurrah” for this remarkable election.

Young People, First Time Voters, and Older Americans:
The die is cast, as they say, for the future of the Republican Party, for at least an entire generation and perhaps longer. Young people, those under 30, voted for Barack Obama by a margin of two to one, and first time voters by a margin of nearly 70/30, in a massive turnout of these voters unmatched in modern electoral history. That is the beginning of a “demographic disaster” similar in magnitude to the one that started in 1932 with the Presidential election of Franklin Roosevelt, but which reverberated down through two full generations of American history where Democrats were clearly the Majority Party in the United States.

The demographic disaster is this. The Democrats under the leadership of Barack Obama will cement their relationship with younger Americans over the next four years. Over time, the entire electorate is always changing, with older Americans (more Republican) dying out and younger Americans (much more Democratic) replacing them. The result: the long term distributions of partisan loyalties tend to shift gradually, every year, inexorably to favor the Democratic Party, increasing the Democratic base of voters all over the United States, and for every level of offices.

This is the “great gift” from George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfiwitz that will keep on giving, long after they are gone from American politics. If Republicans need to blame anyone, these are the people to blame, along with their media supporters at Fox and on talk radio who urged them on, and defended them, every step of the way these long eight long and marred years.

John McCain came about as close as anyone in the Republican Party could to saving them, but I suspect that the “Bushites” and the evangelicals will blame McCain, and the first “blamer” is likely to be, ridiculously to most of us, Sarah Palin. She was the one truly disastrous mistake McCain made, which you can read about in my blog immediately after her nomination.

In truth, it is way too late for blame to matter at all. The Republicans nationwide have wedded themselves to the past, and they have largely lost the future, for the time being. They are now wedded profoundly with the Christian, evangelical right wing, which is a powerful but extreme minority in American life, who will be an even larger influence now in the Republican nominating processes over the next decade. In 2012, this group will almost certainly demand the loyalty of the next nominee of the Republican Party, keeping the Party visibly locked on its right wing, and that will create the “landslides” similar to Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

The size of this disaster will increase, not decrease, over the next several election cycles. First, the Democrats will have far greater control within the states over the reapportionment of election districts that will occur following the 2010 United States Census. They will use that power to increase their electoral success where they can.

Second, office holding in a minority party is a whole lot less fun than office holding in a majority party. We can expect more open seats produced by Republican retirements for the next decade, at least if it follows the patterns of the past.

Finally, by capturing the young disproportionately, the Democrats have enriched their activist base from which the next generation of candidates will emerge. The Democrats will have, on average, more and better candidates for a long time to come, and that also affects every level of government.

The Future of Evangelical, Right Wing Influence:
The Christian evangelical right wing shows no sign of going away, any time soon. They won on the issue of “gay marriage” nearly everywhere, and that will embolden them regardless of the enormous failure of the Republican Party nationwide. They will “demand” Republican Party fealty to their cultural causes nearly everywhere, and they will emerge as more important to Republican nominations because so many of the moderates and liberals have left, and will continue to leave, the Republican Party.

However, the evangelical right wing is on the wrong side of these cultural issues demographically, and they have lost their influence over the future. Younger Americans are emerging in politics, as part of a profound generational shift. These new voters are significantly different on cultural issues than the previous generations: they are less religious and less likely to attend church, much more indifferent to the issue of race, much more libertarian on all of the social and cultural issues, better educated and less vulnerable to religious arguments, and they will become more powerful as the oldest Americans depart.

The religious movement, that emerged in the aftermath of Roe vs. Wade, is today on the wane, but they do not know it yet, and it will lose slowly over the years until its sees every one of its great cultural positions – on abortion, gay rights, science, stem cell research,creationism, reversed by time and the tide of youth and change. Young Americans are not going back to 18th Century Christianity even as we face the struggle with 12th Century Islam.

All of this, of course, assumes that President Barack Obama governs as successfully and with as much class as he managed his campaign. Personally, I think he will and I think he will avoid the many problems that derail lesser personalities and intellects. He was tested many times in this very long campaign, and he made mistakes, and each time he arose he was stronger than before. Barack Obama has proved a very resilient and unfailingly positive personality, so far. That was one of the advantages to him of the long campaign.

Both Roosevelt and Reagan avoided the permanent pitfalls to which lesser figures often succumb. We find in both men personalities that were positive and resilient. They were what they seemed to be, and they bonded with Americans with a sense of “trust” that persisted through the hard times, which inevitably beset any administration. Through all of the ups and downs, a majority of Americans believed profoundly that both men were precisely who they said they were, and that trust provides a deposit in confidence with the American People that both men could bank on during the hard times.

History and the Bush Administration:
I actually feel a slight bit of sympathy for the Bush family, particular the first President Bush, who now has the misfortune to have named his son after himself. The judgment of history is largely set in stone against this administration and that hostile judgment will grow by leaps and bounds as the “insider” and “self justifying” exposes emerge from the Administration’s former loyalists. The Administration of George Bush will be remembered, probably for all time, as one of the most profoundly incompetent and misguided in American history, and real stain on America that will take time to reverse.

Certainly, there will be historical revisionism later own, as future new historians try to make their “revisionist” fame by resurrecting this administration in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary. If some misguided fools can attempt this with Joe Stalin and Adolf Hitler, it will certainly be attempted for Bush. That is the way “the history game” works over time. No one gets any points as an historian for saying what everyone else is saying, and who have said it first.

There really two songs that were sung everywhere in the world after the election results became known. The first was a real song of joy, worldwide, welcoming Barack Obama -- a common chorus that I have never seen before, united people from every race, ethnic group and economic strata.

The second was the funeral dirge that mankind collectively sang for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfiwitz, who are gone even though we have to endure them for another seventy days, and their impact for years to come. I think that people everywhere were surprised and delighted that a majority of Americans joined them in the dirge, and it have renewed their belief somewhat in the basic decency and good sense of Americans.

The Internet, the Web and Elections of the Future:
The Obama Campaign changed the organization, funding, communications, and general conduct of American elections in 2008 as profoundly as any change since 1960, when television was confirmed as the dominate media for election campaigns for the first time. Virtually every expert and every “would be” politician will study the Obama Campaign to learn what they did so that they can replicate it for themselves or their clients.

However, you might recall that every lobbyist organization in America will also study and emulate the Obama campaign – the unions, the religious organizations and coalitions, the big industrial lobbies, the oil lobby, and military industrial complex, etc.

The Internet and the Web are tools and they are tools which will be adapted by everyone now to increase their competitiveness – good causes and bad. The Obama campaign got a head start with 2008, but the Democrats cannot hold on to that head start permanently. Others are already planning their efforts to “catch up” with the technology of the new organization.

In fact, when they figure it out, these tools are more useful to the "right" than they are to the "left" in American politics. People who are religious contribute much more money, per capita, than people who are not. That is a simple statistical fact. The irony of this amuses and horrifies me at the same time. The Obama Campaign will be credited with perfecting these techniques; but the tools will in the end benefit more the people that are predisposed toward “giving and contributing”, which is the religious right in American politics.

In any case, American politics has changed profoundly around these developments, and the full effects will play out gradually over the next several election cycles as the techniques diffuse throughout the political world, both in American and in Europe, and then nearly everywhere else.

The Worse Pain is Yet to Come; But Hope is Preferable to Despair
It is a terribly sad truth, but the poor always pay the price for the catastrophic errors of the powerful, whether in war or with the economy. The titans of Wall Street, who concocted this economic mess, and the powerful in Washington, D.C. who permitted it and created their own in Iraq, will suffer some embarrassment, but that is about all.

To me, the most singular fact of the whole debacle was the degree to which the leaders of Lehman Brothers looted the capital of their company to pay off themselves first at the expense of their shareholders and the public. The only creed these rich manipulators seem to understand is the creed of protecting themselves and each other – an ethical bankruptcy that they do not even begin to comprehend, sadly.

Now the poor, the vulnerable and the young get to pay for the mistakes of the greed and hubris of the powerful. We are in the very beginning of a powerful, worldwide recession, which will bring great pain to our fellow citizens, all over the world. Eventually, the world will right itself, and the emotional “righting” is already occurring with the “despair” associated with George Bush giving way to the “hope” of Barack Obama.

I am in Paris, where one of history’s most profound revolutions occurred. As an American, I always sympathized with the ideals of the French Revolution, but decried its barbarity and butchery. After watching the testimony before Congress of CEO Richard Fuld, Jr. of Lehman Brothers, who reaped tens of millions personally while looting Lehman Brothers of Billions, and the Bush crew, who give us five Trillion of new public debt and who will now go off to write their self-justifying, but highly profitable memoirs, I have revised forever my view of the French Revolution. The French got it right with Monsieur Guillotine. They cleansed France of the parasitical clergy and aristocrats who had sucked them dry for a thousand years. Now, that was real justice!