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irrational exuberance?
Nov. 12th, 2012 09:56 pmI'm as happy as anyone, I think, that the president got elected for another term. But I worry about the expectations I see being voiced in the press and repeated by a lot of my liberal friends.
Not just expectations of the president, but expectations for the entire country. Expectations (or assumptions) like those voiced in this piece by Maureen Dowd.
Take a deep breath everyone. Step back and look at the picture again. Really look.
The president didn't win in a landslide. He has no overwhelming mandate. Yes, his Electoral College total is more than half again as large as his opponents, but the Electoral College, as we all know (I hope) exaggerates for effect. President Obama beat Governor Romney by only 3% of the vote. If two million people had voted the other way, Romney would be sworn in in January. Two million sounds like a lot, but over 120 million people voted. In 2008, Obama won by nearly TEN million votes. If the GOP had run a candidate who did not have Romney's vulnerabilities (a tone-deaf plutocrat, with a terminal inability to stick to any political principle, with an anti-immigration platform and hailing from an offshoot sect), I am not sure that we would have been able to defeat them.
This is a victory that wouldn't have been possible without a strong turnout of female and minority voters, but I don't think that the Democratic Party has the lock on those groups that it thinks it does, not nearly the lock that the GOP has on white male voters.
I am tremendously happy about many of the results of this election: another term for one of the better presidents we've had in my lifetime, more women in Congress, more states recognizing the right of gay couples to marry. But the Democrats didn't win the House. The Senate is still split 53-47. This isn't a sea change. It isn't the end of an era. This isn't a crashing victory for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, it's a "the skin of the teeth" win for a candidate who only had to convince the voters that the person who steered America out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression should keep on steering.
And he almost lost. Against a man so out of touch with ordinary people that he boasted of the number of cars and homes he owned and repeatedly said that the auto companies, icons of American industry, should have been allowed to go bust.
If the next few years see a sharp left turn in policy, the next election will see a Republican Senate majority leader, and the election after that will see the GOP back in the White House.
Thankfully, I think the president is a little less irrationally exuberant than some of his supporters.
Not just expectations of the president, but expectations for the entire country. Expectations (or assumptions) like those voiced in this piece by Maureen Dowd.
Take a deep breath everyone. Step back and look at the picture again. Really look.
The president didn't win in a landslide. He has no overwhelming mandate. Yes, his Electoral College total is more than half again as large as his opponents, but the Electoral College, as we all know (I hope) exaggerates for effect. President Obama beat Governor Romney by only 3% of the vote. If two million people had voted the other way, Romney would be sworn in in January. Two million sounds like a lot, but over 120 million people voted. In 2008, Obama won by nearly TEN million votes. If the GOP had run a candidate who did not have Romney's vulnerabilities (a tone-deaf plutocrat, with a terminal inability to stick to any political principle, with an anti-immigration platform and hailing from an offshoot sect), I am not sure that we would have been able to defeat them.
This is a victory that wouldn't have been possible without a strong turnout of female and minority voters, but I don't think that the Democratic Party has the lock on those groups that it thinks it does, not nearly the lock that the GOP has on white male voters.
I am tremendously happy about many of the results of this election: another term for one of the better presidents we've had in my lifetime, more women in Congress, more states recognizing the right of gay couples to marry. But the Democrats didn't win the House. The Senate is still split 53-47. This isn't a sea change. It isn't the end of an era. This isn't a crashing victory for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, it's a "the skin of the teeth" win for a candidate who only had to convince the voters that the person who steered America out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression should keep on steering.
And he almost lost. Against a man so out of touch with ordinary people that he boasted of the number of cars and homes he owned and repeatedly said that the auto companies, icons of American industry, should have been allowed to go bust.
If the next few years see a sharp left turn in policy, the next election will see a Republican Senate majority leader, and the election after that will see the GOP back in the White House.
Thankfully, I think the president is a little less irrationally exuberant than some of his supporters.
