Liberal. Leftie. Democrat. Progressive. Whatever label is appropriate, part of being on the left (and therefore, the right) side of the spectrum is that you have a natural openness and willingness to hear all sides of the argument. You're not like them; you don't want to shut opposition out, control information, or spin facts-you want to make the truth plain and clear so people can see it past their whitewash. But therein lies the problem, fellow progressive, fellow liberal: in the process, you're very tolerant, and very..well..humble. Don't bother with that here.
There's no need for you to be humble here. No reason for you to be apologetic. No reason to hold back your vitrol, your venom. We like it. We're all passionate here, including myself, and not afraid to hide it. We don't put up with the people who tell us to settle down-because no movement ever got anywhere by not being uppity, by not being passionate. I tell it like it is, I'll show you the facts, the articles, the talking points, and expose the agenda for everyone to see; regardless of whose agenda it is, including our own. Our agenda is getting to the bottom of things; posting the stories you might not have heard otherwise, and giving you the kind of analysis and commentary that you should be getting elsewhere. Welcome home.
Another winner out of AlterNet this week is something else I’ve noticed: that everyone is blaming the McCain loss on Sarah Palin. Don’t get me wrong, she has her faults and damn if it’s not fun writing about them – it’s really difficult to run out of material (so much so that I actually stopped myself on a number of occasions from going on and on about how terrible she is), but Sarah Palin is not the reason John McCain lost his own bid for the White House: John McCain, and perhaps more importantly, his supporters, are the reason why he lost his bid for the White House.
It’s almost universally acknowledged that McCain’s concession speech was perhaps one of the classiest speeches the man has ever made. Listening to him speak took me back about 2 years to when I seriously and completely thought that his candidacy for the Republicans would challenge independents and Democrats to think about what it means to be “progressive,” and whether progress can really be accomplished without the help of conservatives whose mindsets are designed to keep America from “progressing” off a cliff without checks. If John McCain had been “Concession McCain” during the entire campaign, and especially during the time when he had the Republican nomination sealed up and the Democrats were still tearing each other apart during the primary season, he might have stood a chance on Tuesday.
Instead, he chose a path of negativity, he decided to appeal to the lowest common denominator of his party, and he capitulated too much, sacrificing his own centrist ideals to gain favor with the people from whom he needed it least.
Instead, everyone’s pointing the finger at “that woman” for the party failures, and while the deeply conservative still love her and want her to make a reappearance in 2012, the same people are behind the scenes calling her some of the most horrible things I’ve ever heard anyone call a woman in my life. But in the end, it’s McCain’s campaign, and even though Palin was part of the problem, adding her to the ticket was his choice – even McCain accepted responsibility when conceding the race. He’s willing to own it, folks – give it to him.
From “Joe the tax-dodging, radical third-party, completely unvetted, actually eligable for a tax cut under Obama’s plan, plumber” to the race baiting Ashley “I carved a B into my face in a mirror and thought it would fool people” Todd, Alternet has an excellent run-down of some of the biggest game-changers turned flops the right-wing had to offer during the 2008 Presidential Election.
Now that it’s over and all said and done, and now that people around the globe are basking in a new day of hope and possibility, it’s fun to look back and see some of the dirty tricks that remind us exactly what John McCain, when he says “I don’t know what we could have done differently to win this election,” could have done to change the outcome of the election.
Over the past two decades, the Right has excelled at manipulating the media’s love of shallow, scripted storylines to transform our national discourse into one long psychodrama in which Democratic candidates inevitably make some tragic gaffe that shows voters how truly out of touch they are with the Real Americans living in the heartland. These moments are usually dramatized by illustrations of blaring sirens on the Drudge Report accompanied by bold, red-lettered headlines that say things like, “SHOCK VIDEO: Kerry orders Swiss cheese on his cheesesteak.” Our press corps then dutifully reports on how Kerry’s disdain for traditional Cheez Wiz shows why Democrats are having trouble connecting with blue-collar voters who suspect that Democrats are all secretly Jesus-hating communists.
This election, however, none of the GOP’s scripted game-changing moments were able to derail the Obama campaign. Indeed, it could be argued that many of the non-game-changers (See: Palin, Sarah) actually worked in Obama’s favor. Here, then, are the five most uneventful events that did not decisively help McCain win the election:
Amidst the jubilation and glee that came with Tuesday’s election results (more on that in a later post) came the sadness that California, among other states, passed ballot measures forbidding gay marriage and civil unions, much like the 2006 elections. California’s Prop 8 was the most notorious, with money pouring in from around the country to fight the measure from petition phase to election night.
The fight was clear; there were people on one side who wanted nothing more than the right to love each other and to be protected under the law for doing so, standing alongside people who believed that constitutions were designed to protect the people from the interests of a majority lynch mob (or the exact opposite of what happened here) and people who believe that constitutions are designed to give provide rights and liberties, and it’s all but perverse to take them away.
On the other side, of course, are the religious right-wing hard-liners who would have the entire planet living under the lifestyles that they deem fit if they had their say so: people who see diversity and differing opinions as a curse to be legally rectified, and themselves as people who deserve empowerment, the camp that thinks that there’s nothing wrong with persecuting or harming people who are different than they are for no other reason than that they’re different.
There’s been a lot of talk about who’s to blame for the passage of Prop 8, and a number of people are claiming it’s because minorities turned out in high numbers to vote for Barack Obama for president. While I’ll be the first person to admit I’m sick and tired of the homophobia at least in my own minority community – the Black community – I’ll also be the first person to say correlation doesn’t equal causation. The people who voted in the highest numbers and failed to be swayed are churchgoing white Republicans.
So why single out Black Americans and Latin Americans? Because it’s easy, and those groups have always been scapegoats, so it’s an easy matter for the angry to turn to them to blame, and the real puppetmasters behind the “Yes on Prop 8″ campaign to escape unscathed for their hateful words and rhetoric.
Kathryn Kolbert, President of the People For the American Way Foundation, has some choice words on the matter:
As a mother who has raised two children in a 30-year relationship with another woman, I fully understand the depth of hurt and anger at voters’ rejection of our families’ equality. But responding to that hurt by lashing out at African Americans is deeply wrong and offensive — not to mention destructive to the goal of advancing equality.
Before we give Religious Right leaders more reasons to rejoice by deepening the divisions they have worked so hard to create between African Americans and the broader progressive community, let’s be clear about who is responsible for gay couples in California losing the right to get married, and let’s think strategically about a way forward that broadens and strengthens support for equality.
Others have taken on the challenge of looking at the basic numbers and concluded that it is simply false to suggest that Prop 8 would have been defeated if African Americans had been more supportive. The amendment seems to have passed by more than half a million votes, and the number of black voters, even with turnout boosted by the presidential race, couldn’t have made up that difference. That’s an important fact, but when African American supporters of equality are being called racist epithets at protests about Prop 8, the numbers almost seem beside the point.
Republicans and white churchgoers, among many other groups, voted for Prop. 8 at higher rates than African Americans. There are few African Americans in the inland counties that all voted overwhelmingly to strip marriage equality out of the California constitution. So why single out African Americans? Who’s really to blame? The Religious Right.
The rest of the memo is an incredible dissection of the numbers behind the vote, and why this, while it’s encouraged hundreds to take to the street in protest, should encourage every freedom loving person in California to organize to take their state constitution back in the next election cycle, starting now.
Thanks to the brilliant Wil Wheaton, I thought I should do my part and get a last word in before going dark to participate in the thrilling drama that is our democracy.
Get out the vote, everyone. I want to hope again – I want to believe again – I want my beloved country back.
A little music to lead you to the polls on November 4th and something to liven up your pre-Election Day weekend:
Absolutely fabulous. It’s a nice long mix, and definitely hip-hop heavy, but definitely a solid groove. I usually save music reviews for other blogs, but I had to share this one here. Among some of the winning lines:
Lemme hear you cheer if you loved the last eight years! -crickets- Thought so.
and He has the audacity to hope, we just need the capacity to vote.
