Off Off Analysis

Since this is an Off Off Year election, I offer a quick Off Off Analysis.

The first thing I think we all need to realize is that the situation for the Republicans was so awful in 2008 that there was little reason to think it could get much worse.  It had to get better for them.  In the stock market, they call it the Dead Cat Bounce.  As in, even a dead cat bounces when dropped from high enough.

Thus, I think it's inevitable, but silly to over-interpret the victories by Republicans in narrowly held states like the Virginia governor race.  Deeds was long thought to be not such a great candidate on the Democrats' side, and thus the "intensity" was higher on the Republicans' side.  So the Republican wins.  The New Jersey governor's race was, I think, more meaningful and encouraging to the Reps.  But we could come back with counterexamples, such as the CA 10th district, where the Great Republican Upset just didn't come close to materializing.  And, of course, there's NY 23, where Republican party dynamics have been shaken, but the result is the election of a Democrat in a seat that has been held by the Reps since the 1870s.

So, just like sports teams never are as good as they look when on a winning streak, nor as bad as they look on a losing streak, the Dems' advantage over the Reps that gave us the 60/40 senate and the current House is not as large as that "winning streak" - based largely on the bad economy and Bush-hatred - would imply.

The result in Maine on Question 1 is very disappointing of course.  While there are no moral victories, the race is getting closer and closer.  Same sex marriage has won.  The only question is whether that win will come 2 years from now or 20.  How many more years must we wait for generational change, or will enough people be actually persuaded to move that issue now?  In Washington, where the question was not explicitly over same sex marriage, but in reality was, there was a narrow victory.  (The Washington measure assured full state rights to unmarried domestic partners, obviously mainly targeted at same-sex couples.)

Political Cynicism 101 - McCain/Palin

There's really nothing more I need to add to this, other than the remark that it shows to what lengths people will go to elect their guy.

I've been clear that I thought Palin was a disqualifying choice by McCain, who was probably not such a bad guy that would have had a better shot at winning in another year.  But the fact that his campaign leader (Steve Schmidt) shares my opinion but still defends the choice....  Ouch.

Inauguration Day, Part 1

All this reminds me...

What were people thinking in 2004?  Voting for Bush in 2000 was reasonable.  The country certainly (and reasonably) had Clinton-fatigue.

But by 2004, Bush was a known quantity.  How could half of us have missed that?

Remember, it wasn't too long after that when the scales finally started to fall from our eyes.  Maybe it was a testament to Rove, et al. that they held it together just long enough to get through Nov 2004.

Disingenuous

Socialist. Terrorist. Etc. This is an example of how rotten our election tactics have become (or still are). I am a Democrat, and it feels like the Republicans, on the whole pull, this crap a lot worse than the Democrats do. And of course, this is angering. But worse is how they do it and don't believe it. The NY Times documents how disingenuous it all is.

An election disappointment

There are people who know who their gay friends and relatives are, or at least most of them. There are people who don't know. And there are people who pretend they have none.

The case for gay civil marriage is simple and compelling, and can be summarized in two sentences: There is no compelling state interest in denying equal civil rights to gay couples and straight couples, and the benefits to those gay couples who choose to marry are paramount. Religious institutions already restrict the marriages that they recognize and sanction, and civil marriage has no impact on that fact.

The benefits of marriage need not be expounded here. We all know them.

But what is so frustrating is the pretense that civil gay marriages would somehow be an unbearable assault on the religious sacrament of marriage (to use the Christian term). Catholic doctrine already does not recognize second marriages. Many religious groups, orthodox Judaism being only a single example, do not approve of cross-religion marriages. Yet these marriages are, of course, sanctioned by the civil states.

Many, including our president-elect, pretend that the solution is to have a new word for gay marriages, i.e., "civil unions". This would be sensible, as long as all civil weddings were "unions" and homosexual and heterosexual unions were held on equal terms. We could leave the word "marriage" to religion, if we wanted to. However, that is not what is proposed: Civil Unions are always a lesser option.

Thus, I find it crushing that California, the state I grew up in and arguably the most progressive state in the Union, has found it necessary to constitutionally enshrine civil discrimination. What a chance they had.