PLANK NOVEMBER 2, 2012
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In the final days of a presidential campaign that Barack Obama stands an excellent chance of winning, liberals are imagining all the terrible things that will happen if he does. “Liberals Fear Grand Bargain Betrayal If Obama Wins,” Carrie Budoff Brown writes in Politico. “GOP Already Working To De-Legitimize An Obama Win,” frets Zachary Roth on MSNBC. “Get ready, Dems,” urged The Democratic Strategist in late September. “If Obama wins, conservatives will try to de-legitimize his victory with hysterical, phony claims of 'massive election fraud.”
I don’t mean to dismiss these concerns entirely. I myself have urged Democrats to ignore the respectable pleadings for a quick budget bargain from Erskine Bowles (and, closer to home, TNR’s William Galston) and recognize that Democrats hold a very strong hand in forthcoming negotiations over the “fiscal cliff.” (MSNBC's Lawrence O’Donnell has since July been doing the Lord’s work in waging a spirited “Off the Cliff” campaign to educate his fellow liberals about how strong that hand really is). The Democratic Strategist has some very practical suggestions about how to counter the inevitable claims Republicans will level that Obama stole the election. (I wouldn’t put it past the GOP to wage a baseless election-fraud campaign in Democratic strongholds even if Romney wins.) And yes, Republican partisans can be pretty nuts these days. In 2009 a national poll indicated that fully 52 percent of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama. Donald Trump still thinks Obama was born in Kenya.
But can you imagine conservatives confronting a probable victory with such anxiety and foreboding? Get a grip, Democrats. The likelihood’s better than even that you’ll keep the White House, and you’ll almost certainly keep the Senate, too. The House elections will be brutal, but recapturing the House in 2012 was always a pipe dream. The economy is lousy, Obama’s opponent is a frighteningly adept shape-shifter, and the president’s greatest achievement, Obamacare, is still a hard sell in polls. Yet he’ll probably get another term. Be happy, for Christ’s sake!
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Will Republicans be graceful in defeat? Of course they won’t. They’ll scream bloody murder and vow to sabotage the Democratic agenda. But what else is new? In 2010 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Yes, that was a little unhinged, given the volume and variety of urgent public business before Congress. But if Obama wins re-election that will mean the Republicans have failed in their “single most important thing” (in addition to failing, earlier, to block Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, among other legislative achievements).
What about the “mandate” issue? Please. Let’s consider the worst-case scenario. Obama wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote. Galston (not exactly a liberal but still at least nominally a Democrat) writes, “Whatever may have been the case when the Constitution was drafted, majority rule is the core of legitimacy in contemporary political culture.” That would leave Obama entering his second term with “a relatively weak hand.” Sort of like ... George W. Bush in 2000? A lot of people (including me) screamed bloody murder when Bush won the election that year without winning the popular vote. But as Jonathan Zasloff points out on The Washington Monthly’s Web site, Bush’s popular-vote defeat wasn’t the main thing liberals were screaming about that year. Mainly they were screaming about hanging chads and butterfly ballots and questionable Supreme Court jurisprudence, all of which conspired to give Bush an Electoral College victory. And despite all that screaming and yelling, the impact on Bush’s perceived legitimacy was, within a month or two, virtually nil. Electoral-College-haters like me didn't devote much of our lives to proving that Bush wasn't really president. We were more interested in persuading Electoral-College-defenders that the 2000 election was a wake-up call to change the way we elect presidents, Democratic and Republican, in the future. If a split decision in 2012 makes Electoral-College-haters out of Republicans, I’ll consider that a net benefit. Maybe that will make it possible, finally, to rid ourselves of an antiquated, anti-democratic institution. But I think everybody understands that campaigns play according to the rules they’re given, so there’s no reason to think a strong movement to eliminate the Electoral College would harm Obama’s legitimacy in any meaningful way. Indeed, if Obama were smart, he’d join it.
So enough with the long faces. Let’s see some more smiles out there, Democrats. There are worse things than winning.
19 comments
"If a split decision in 2012 makes Electoral-College-haters out of Republicans, I'll consider that a net benefit." Yes, me too.
- Haole45
November 2, 2012 at 1:40pm
And the corollary of that is, if Obama wins the Electoral College and loses the popular vote, I strongly suggest that all Dems continue to emphasize how close the GOP came to winning by suppressing and intimidating voters, but due to the EC it didn't pan out for them.
- ironyroad
November 2, 2012 at 1:58pm
Very well said. And after Gallston's hand-wringing whining, about time too. One of the first orders of business in January should be changing the filibuster rules, to remove individual holds especially. If the Republicans want to stand up on their hind legs and talk-talk-talk, as the filibuster was originally, let America watch them filibuster in service of their "starve-the-beast" kill Entitlements, preserve tax-cuts for the wealthy agenda. After that, America will have a true choice when voting, instead of this "everyone does it" "Congress is dysfunctional" garbage. It's the Republicans preventing compromise, paralysing Government, and holding the Economy hostage to their ridiculous demands. America should see that, and the filibuster rules should change to insure that.
- AllanL5
November 2, 2012 at 1:59pm
"Be happy, for Christ’s sake! " I will be deliriously happy - if for no other reasons than that whatever crap the Republicans pull in the next couple of years, it won't involve pulling the plug on the ACA, and it won't involve naming Ginsburg's and who knows who else's replacement in the Supreme court. That's early Christmas enough for me. The rest can be worked on.
- IowaBeauty
November 2, 2012 at 2:26pm
Poor Galston, Chait criticizes him, now Noah. And for an offense he did not commit. I'm not Galston's new best friend, but what he wrote was that Obama, by not running a campaign focused on policy and policy differences between him and Romney, has made it more difficult for him to govern effectively if he is re-elected. Now it could be argued that, no matter what type of campaign he conducted, he would have no legitimacy with roughly half the country, which is suffering from Obama derangement syndrome. Or it could be argued that Obama would not have a "mandate" regardless of his campaign. On the other hand, GWB "lost" the election in 2008 but went on to implement his "mandate" to cut taxes that he ran on as a candidate. What is Obama's "mandate"? To "move forward" or some such.
- rayward
November 2, 2012 at 2:53pm
I am already to grin ear to ear for a solid month, until my cheeks wear out.
- roidubouloi
November 2, 2012 at 3:26pm
Except Obama DID run a campaign based on his policies -- Obamacare, the recovery, letting the Bush tax-cuts expire on incomes over $250K, preserving Medicare/Medicaid. Now, you're right, "focusing on policy differences" between himself and Romney is difficult -- Romney changes what he says about his policies as often as other people change their shirts. But none of that "makes it more difficult to govern effectively". The Republican Tea-Party in the House has already made it quite clear they're not going to cooperate with Obama in any way. But to let the Bush tax-cuts expire, he doesn't HAVE to cooperate with them. To preserve the achievements of his first term, all he has to do is stand firm. His "mandate" will be to preserve Obamacare, preserve the recovery, reduce the deficit through tax increases, and end the wars. Which policies he's been "focusing on" since the beginning.
- AllanL5
November 2, 2012 at 3:49pm
obama has not over-promised. if reelected, that's a plus, as he could not have had much of a mandate by any means. if reelected, he already knows what the opposition is about, and...also he will have no shopping/laundry list of promises to be used against him. romney, on the other hand, already has much to answer for, along with his party, etc.
- cdmcl3
November 2, 2012 at 3:57pm
just never having to see the smug grin on Romney's face will keep me happy for months on end. And if the Mayan apocalypse comes true I will still die happy since I will have seen Mittens be forced to give his concession speech.
- blackton
November 2, 2012 at 4:42pm
I'm with blackton. I can't stand that look where Romney says something and tucks his chin in and smirks as if what he said shows the President in disgrace. I remember reading in "Angler" how Cheney responded, when asked after the 2000 election whether Bush had a mandate, "That's just silly." Of course, in Paul O'Neill's book, Cheney said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," which is pretty silly too.
- Nusholtz
November 2, 2012 at 6:26pm
"Will Republicans be graceful in defeat? Of course they won’t." Republicans aren't even graceful in victory. For a couple of weeks after their win in 2004, many of them were in the media spitting bile. I thought, what the hell would they have been like if they had lost? I got the answer in 2008. If Obama wins Tuesday, look for Republicans to be in a foaming-at-the-mouth rage. If Jon Huntsman demurs from following his fellow GOP attack dogs, I'll admire him even more than I do now.
- magboy47.
November 3, 2012 at 1:45am
You fail to talk about what WE -liberals and progressives- need to do after Tuesday. See http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/too_bad_we_cant_re_reelect_fdr/
- hkaye
November 3, 2012 at 7:40am
As my comment at Galston's essay made clear (though not my comment above), my disagreement with Obama, in 2010 as well as in 2012, has to do with the politics of Obama's strategy in the campaign, not (as with Galston) with what follows. It didn't work in 2010 (it was a disaster in 2010) and I see no reason to believe that it is working in 2012. It's the absence of clearly defined policy differences that I couldn't understand in 2010 and, after the disaster in 2010, make me wonder about the skills of Obama's political advisers. For those who see "clearly defined policy differences" in a modified Bush tax policy (Obama says he will extend the Bush tax policy, sort of, rather than offering an Obama tax policy, one, for example, that acknowledges and takes into account that we have two tax systems in America, one for the wealthy, called the income tax, and one for everybody else, called the payroll tax, each raising about the same amount of revenues), I'll offer this question to readers: in the first debate, what did Obama say about "clearly defined policy differences" between himself and Romney with regard to social security? I have commented many times that Obama did not run as a crisis candidate in 2008 (the financial crisis hit very late in the campaign) and has not governed as a crisis president. Rather than clearly defined policy differences, he has allowed the usual suspects in the pundit class and the opposition party to define him, in ways that bear no resemblance either to his policies or his approach to governing. Where Galston and I diverge is that Galston's idea of a "clearly defined policy difference" is the so-called "grand bargain". The grand bargain is the hobby horse of those in the pundit class who believe everything would be fine if Obama were to move to the center because the Republicans would follow. Of course, that's laughable given what has transpired over the past three and a half years. No, what I have in mind for "clearly defined policy differences" are clearly defined policy differences. Of course, I'm not paid the big bucks for political advice, so if I were Obama I wouldn't listen to me either. I'm like the weatherman who predicts today's weather by looking out the window and reporting what he sees.
- rayward
November 3, 2012 at 8:38am
When the Red Sox would win a game (not too frequent an occurrence this past season), I would go to bed with a glow that all was right with the world. But it would only last a day. If Obama wins next Tuesday, I am looking forward to a strong long-lasting glow that would transcend the odd parking ticket, flat tire, or cold winter.
- JackR
November 3, 2012 at 9:57am
Liberals should stop worrying and concentrate on a long term agenda that I believe President Obama shares but cannot in the next four years fully achieve -- this agenda, in other words, will take a Democratic Regime, which he over eight years will have begun. And that long term agenda has the following substance: a) public investment in rebuilding the country -- for ecological and sustainable purposes; for actual physical infrastructure (roads, bullet trains, suburban light rail, broadband, bridges, etc.); public education; research and development for innovation that neither private sector corporations nor venture capital can afford to invest in; developing a strategy for competitive trade; a new national land use policy. b) putting forth a constitutional amendment to overcome Citizens United and the influence generally of money on politics; c) changing the rule governing the filibuster in the Senate; d) revising the ACA; e) coordinated planning at all levels of goverment -- federal, municipal, county and state -- for public investments described above; d) balanced and evolutionary reduction of the deficit in relation to GDP; and, finally, an end to foreign wars and continuation of the American acceptance of a world of multilateral powers in which American leadership is important but in no way hegemonic.
- seguier
November 3, 2012 at 4:09pm
magboy -- I agree. I noticed it at the time too, that in 2004 Republicans were a new category, sore winners.
- ironyroad
November 3, 2012 at 5:37pm
I am one of those people who has wanted the electoral college dumped. But this year I find myself rethinking my position because of all the talk by Republicans about voter fraud. My observation is this, without the Electoral College there is more of an opportunity for stuffing ballot boxes full of bogus votes in large states where they would not be noticed as easily. With the Electoral College no matter how many votes a single state like California or Texas casts for a Presidential candidate that candidate only gets the Electoral votes, the popular vote stops at the border of the state.
- robkneff
November 3, 2012 at 10:00pm
Long game, people. Think long. The dems have the polls on their side in the short term and demographics on their side in the long term. Win this election and run as good an administration in your second term as you did in the first. The country will catch up with you. I still think the electoral college margin will be in the 80-100 range. That's plenty big to call a mandate, especially if some prominent GOP wingnuts lose.
- gwcross
November 4, 2012 at 12:17am
Ryan says Obama's policies threaten 'Judeo-Christian values' By NBC's Alex Moe CASTLE ROCK, Colo. -- Less than 48 hours before polls open on Election Day, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan gave a firm warning to a group of evangelical Christians Sunday night: President Barack Obama’s policies jeopardize Judeo-Christian values. “And in these critical battleground states, it’s going to make the big difference as to whether or not people are worried about where America’s headed, worried about whether we’re going to reassert our Constitution, or whether or not we’re going to go down the path the president has put us on,” Ryan said speaking on a Faith and Freedom Coalition tele-townhall with thousands of voters across the country. He continued, “It’s a dangerous path, it’s a path that grows government, restricts freedom and liberty, and compromises those values, those Judeo-Christian, western-civilization values that made us such a great and exceptional nation in the first place.” A Ryan campaign spokesman told NBC News about Ryan’s comments: "He was talking about issues like religious liberty and ObamaCare - topics he has mentioned frequently during the campaign." Mitt Romney has also shared similar comments about Judeo-Christian values, such as during his commencement address at Liberty University in May 2012. The Faith and Freedom Coalition is an influential evangelical grassroots organization headed by Ralph Reed. The tele-townhall tonight was only advised by the group and never by the Romney campaign. It was a call that had been re-scheduled at least once due to scheduling conflicts. Ryan fielded questions from several callers in between campaign rallies in Minnesota and Colorado. Asked by a caller from Florida about how his faith has helped him as Romney’s running mate, Ryan said it “sustains” and “humbles” him. “We [Ryan’s family] pray throughout the day. I keep a rosary in my pocket, whatever jacket I've got, and I'm given so many prayers from people,” the Wisconsin congressman said. “I'm one of those people who don't think you can separate your faith from your public life as an official from your private life. It informs you, it guides you, it makes you who you are, and it gives you great peace. First prayer I say every morning is the Serenity prayer.” Ryan also noted he received an email from his pastor in Janesville, Wis. tonight with the words: “have no fear.” “And that's how the Lord sustains me. No fear,” Ryan added.
- JAIMECHUCH
November 5, 2012 at 11:54am