So, by now most of you have heard Obama won. I’m not American and have been moderately ambivalent about this election; a moderate conservative like Romney is not what America needs at this time.
Despite my ambivalence about which Republicrat won, I think in retrospect this election was very important because of the issues at play and how they were handled. In particular the narrow-minded childishness of it all.
Right now the US is drowning itself in debt, its social security program is unsustainable, entitlement programs are growing and becoming unsustainable, unemployment has been stuck at a high level and the economy is still suffering, the upcoming generation is drowning in student debt and are unable to find gainful employment, one in seven Americans are on food stamps, the fed has a policy of printing $40-billion/month to create inflation, the US is engaged in two wars and a massive assassination program, and Obamacare represented a takeover of a large portion of the economy (along with the attendant side effects). Essentially, America is nearing the end of the process of moving from a (somewhat) free market economy to a broke European cradle-to-grave welfare state.
Whatever side of the issue you fall on (and most of my readers are probably opposed to Europeanization), this is a huge change that deserves debate. Even if you agree that the US is on the right course and should become a European-style welfare state, it is still something that should be debated, voted over, and planned so the US welfare state can become a moderately sustainable one like Germany or the Nordic countries rather than a fiscal disaster like the PIGS.
So, with all these important issues of war, America’s future, the economy, etc. what were the issues that got traction?
Muppets and “binders of women”.
Think about that for a minute: with America’s economic and post-secondary education problems almost literally destroying an entire generation and America’s future in the balance, the issues everybody talked about and that got the most traction were about was a few million dollars of funding for a TV station and whether 30-something women should have to pay for their own contraception.
Really? Fucking really?
What is wrong with you America?
Are you a bunch of fucking children?
****
I’m not exaggerating the muppet thing one bit, but I might be being somewhat unfair on the “war on women” thing, so let’s analyze it a bit more.
The war on women has revolved around the following:
- Defunding planned parenthood
- Fluke wanting religious organizations to pay for her contraception
- State laws restricting abortion access.
- A few dumbasses saying stupid things about rape.
- “Binders of women” and the pay gap.
The first and second restrict nothing and are no more a “war on women” than defunding Big Bird is a “war on literacy”. Whatever your opinion on contraception and abortion, paying for your own shit is one of the hallmarks of being a responsible adult. That who funds contraception can even be debated by supposedly “serious” people is proof of the childishness of American politics.
As for the third, it is a major issue but not a presidential or federal one.
I’ll write it clearly so all the idiots on both sides can hear it. I don’t care whether you are pro- or anti-: abortion is no longer a federal issue. The courts have decided and are supported in their decision by enough of the population that no president will be able to restrict abortion no matter how much he may want to. There may be some fights at the margins at the state level, but only at the margins and only at the state level.
Any “war on women” rhetoric saying there are threats to abortion at the federal level are simply fear-mongering. Any anti-abortion activists that are are trying to limit abortion at the federal level are frivolously wasting their time, it would be much more productive to focus on changing the culture than the law. Debating abortion on the federal level is about as relevant as debating abolitionism.
Nothing short of the second coming of Christ is going to result in the banning of abortion in the US at any point in the foreseeable future.
As for the fourth, any group of 535 people will have its share of dumbasses. The opinions of these particular dumbasses matters, but only for their congressional districts. Their idiocy is a local matter. Unless the presidential candidate and/or the party as a whole holds these views on rape (which they have disavowed). It is a non-issue at the presidential level.
The fifth may matter if it exists (although, the existence of an actual gap is empirically dubious). But assuming it does exist, a 17% (or whatever the current number being used is) wage differential pales in economic significance to the other economic woes facing the US. The near doubling of the unemployment rate since 2008 combined with a full 2% of the population dropping from the labour market. The 50% unemployment and underemployment rate of an entire generation. The wage gap may be something to debate at some point in the future, but the overall state of the economy is hurting women much worse than any potential wage differential. Act like adults and shoot the tiger in the living room before fretting over the house cat.
In other words, the entire “war on women” is one big non-issue for a presidential campaign.
****
The most important part of this election was simply the frivolity of it.
Elections have always had mud-slinging, character assassination, and stupid political games, but this election was special. There were/are major obvious structural problems with the US and its economy that need to be addressed (whatever the solution) and this election was fought on none of them.
It was fought on frivolities and non-issues.
Up to this point I have had hope for the Republic. Obama may have been a liberal and won in 2008, but he won for some serious reasons (economic collapse). Bush won in 2004 over a debate over a serious issue (Iraq War). Even in 2000, when the US was running smoothly and the US could afford to debate frivolities, the election was mostly about serious domestic issues.
I had hope that someone the serious issues facing the US over the next few decades would be addressed, if not this election than some other one, because at some level I thought adults were running the establishment.
Even is Obama had won because voters debated over and decided they wanted a European-style social democracy rather than a free republic, I would have held some level of hope for the Republic, because then at least adults (however incorrect they might be) would have been in charge. Then when the failure of social democracy became apparent (as it has in Greece) adults would have been able to pick up the pieces.
But choosing the executive based on a puppet show and who pays for contraception (not even the legality of contraception, but simply who pays) when the US is in the midst of the worst recession in decades and the system is eating an entire generation?
Really?
It seems the US electorate are a bunch of ignorant little children.
At this point I’m just going to say, y’all deserve the decline.
I’m going to enjoy a delicious, steaming cup of schadenfreude watching you suffer over the next decade.
****
Tim had similar thoughts:
We’ve re-elected the president. I hope that those of you who voted for him get what you wanted, good and hard.
****
For your amusement, here’s some other bloggers’ post-election writings in no particular order. Doing it this way will avoid clogging up next week’s Lightning Round with only election stuff.
Jerkonomics
Jack Donovan
Rollo and Mark Minter
Private Man
Freedom 25
Empathological
CMD-N
Sunshine Mary
Ian Ironwood
John Wright
White Sepulchre
The Captain
The Captain Again
Vox
Vox Again
GLP
Neanderpundit
Apocalypse Nowish
An Instapundit Reader
Update: More Post-election Analysis – 2012/11/08
Publius
Bill
Tim (@ Matt Forney)
Carnivore
Simon Grey
Simon Grey Again
A Physician (h/t: Smallest Minority)
Update: A few more – 2012/11/09
Bill Again
Young Hunter
Mangan
Professor Hale
Frank Fleming
James Taranto
Beverly Gage
Update: One last time – 2012/11/13
Research Chicago style politics and you may understand better what really happened. Every dog or bitch got his/her bone from Dear Leader. That’s American politics, or what passes for it, in 2012.
So, should I stay? Or is China or Brazil preferable?
Great analysis. It should have been a serious election. It wasn’t. It was a fight over bullshit. The more petulant children won.
God, you’re dense even by Canuck standards. We talk about trivial things because we are not allowed to talk about the real issues. Can you look at one of these candidates and guess what it is about him that makes political candor verboten? Criticizing his handling of the economy? Racist. Criticizing his foreign policy? Racist. Mentioning unemployment or the up tick in violent crime, particularly against whites? Racist. Etc, etc. News flash for you: Obama lost the white vote, big time. America’s main problem is that it is filled with third-worlders who are incapable of generating wealth at a first world level and can only prosper as political parasites, taking other peoples wealth via the voting booth. They put Obama in office. It takes a lot of brass to blame others for avoiding the real issues when you don’t have the guts to deal with the main issue yourself. Let’s call writing articles like this Big-Birding.
:)
‘Americans’ shouldn’t have an apostrophe in it.
Haven’t been there yet, but am researching for my planned expat escape: Brazil looks GOOD!!!
You are right, a moderate is not what was/is needed.
I wish i had a “but__________”.
What we need is a dictator for a time, ah but that has its ugliness too.
There is not any way for a real conservative to win…..again…..ever….
The silly reinvent the party stuff is fantasy.
The best boiled down expression of this was something i heard after the Obama phone thing came out.
I live in Memphis, an overwhelmingly democrat and minority city. I’d be accused of, and guilty as charged of living in the suburbs to at least stay away from local dysfunction as much as possible.
One interesting but i guess expected thing is, since there is a huge black population, there is a decent sized black conservative population. And there is a black police sergeant who is conservative and hosts a radio show.
A caller of his who caller himself “black conservative” rung up right after the audio of the coarse voiced woman yelling about how she got an Obama phone up in Cleveland, and “black conservative” was crestfallen saying simply, “Andrew (hosts name)….how can we compete with that….we cannot compete with that…..ever”
That distills why the republican party CANNOT be revamped, cannot do some new outreach…..no way, no how…..the next republican elected will ONLY be following some massive disaster, a big terror attack, a war, or an outright implosion economically……no other way in normal course of business.
Good catch Will. Don’t have time to reply to the rest of you now, but wanted to fix the error.
They are wrecking the country, when it looks like a cross between Mexico, Greece, and the Sudan government will get off of our back. Just not the roving rape and murder gangs. It’s like the extinction of the passenger pigeon, everyone could get a hot meal, until they couldn’t. Only this time it’s stability in the world, without the stabilizing force of the U.S. military all kinds of nastiness will emerge from Pandora’s Box.
News flash for you: Obama lost the white vote, big time. America’s main problem is that it is filled with third-worlders who are incapable of generating wealth at a first world level and can only prosper as political parasites, taking other peoples wealth via the voting booth. They put Obama in office.
Yes and no.
Romney only got 59% of the white vote. That’s too little, really. Yes, non-whites overwhelmingly backed Obama, but because whites are still 77% of the electorate, what won the election for him was the ~40% of whites who voted for him. The issue isn’t just the non-white vote. The issue is that non-whites vote as a bloc, while whites split their vote against each other. That’s the problem. Single white women, white union workers, young whites generally, SWPLs are all happy vote together with almost all of the blacks, latinos, asians and gays *against* other whites (married couples, older whites, white guys generally). It’s the division among whites that is screwing the Republicans. If Romney even a slightly higher percentage of whites (say 61%), he wins the election, regardless of what the black/latino/asian people are doing. But he didn’t, and so he fell short.
It’s the division among whites, and the enthusiasm that ~40% of whites has for being in a political coalition with the vast majority of non-whites against the numerical majority of whites, that is screwing the Republicans at the moment.
I stayed home this election. No one even locally I was concerned about since I’ll still pay the same taxes, suffocate under the same asinine laws, and have less personal liberty and private property.
I really loved Ron Paul, but the average American whether conservatard or libtard, is pretty happy with their slave status.
@ Brendan: I am aware that Chicago politics is known for being notoriously corrupt and that Obama came from the Chicago machine, so I would not be surprised if he used similar tactics. Also, good analysis.
@ Tim: I don’t think China or Brazil would be much better. You’ll just be moving from a country that is slowly becoming third world, to an actual third world country. Try Canada, NZ, or Australia, they’re all somewhat sane.
@ JT: See Brendan’s analysis. Whites are still the large majority in the US, things could not be near this bad if the problem didn’t rest with whites. As for conservatives folding to charges of racism, that’s childish itself. Allowing yourself to be deterred by the insults of your opponents is immature.
@ Empath: We can not win unless we change the culture. With a greedy, selfish, childish people freedom, civilization, and self-restraint can’t compete with free stuff and hedonism. The only way to win without changing the culture is to start giving away more free stuff, which would make us liberal, and it is better to lose than to sacrifice your core values.
@ IAL: AS the Chinese said, may you live in interesting times.
@ sth: Yup, the choices this election were not that great.
I appreciate the link, but Tim (from Spootville) wrote that post, not me.
@Free Northerner
“It seems the US electorate are a bunch of ignorant little children.
At this point I’m just going to say, y’all deserve the decline.
I’m going to enjoy a delicious, steaming cup of schadenfreude watching you suffer over the next decade.”
Correction: 52% of the population are a bunch of ignorant children. The rest of us are just hostages.
Thank you for the link, sir.
Chicago politics has been corrupt for a century. The last republican mayor in Chicago ended his term in 1931, but first elected in 1915. He was as big a crook as any of the democratic mayors. Chicago is in Cook County, Illinois, but the locals call it Crook County, since the county is just as corrupt as the city. And as for the state of Illinois, I’ve lost count of the governors (both democrat & republican) who ended up in jail – Kerner was the first to go to jail in the early 70’s. The first Illinois governor charged with corruption (but acquitted) was a republican in the 1920’s.
Thanks FN for the linkage.
@ Forney: So it is.
@ shadow: Only 50% of the country turned out. Of those less than 50% voted for Romney. Of those, a lot of them were the type of people that agreed with the rape comments or voted on abortion or voted for otherwise stupid reasons. Less than 1% voted Libertarian (the only party actually fixing to deal with the root causes). Some probably didn’t vote for goods reason, but most probably didn’t do so out of laziness or apathy.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/07/270958/voter-turnout-in-2012-us-presidential-elections-9-lower-than-2008/
How many people really looked at the situation, researched it, and voted on the big issues rather than partisanship or stupid, meaningless BS?
Really, there’s probably a small minority of less than 20% of the population that are responsible adults.