If I am reading the results correctly, in the precinct where I worked as a poll judge yesterday, turnout was high. We had a ten minute lull of no voters at midday in a day that began when the doors opened at 6:30 and went until the doors were locked at 7:30. None of us had seen anything like this before. People came out to vote. And Ohio had early voting.
Based on my precinct, I’d say the 47% that Romney spoke about turned out in force, as did blue-collar voters. Call that the blue-collar and no-collar vote that pressed Obama’s victory home? There were union buttons and badges very much in evidence. There is a trailer park, a big one, in the precinct and at one point a woman in line turned around and said, “Is all of ————— Trailer Park here?” This morning an email asked, “Isn’t America rational anymore?” and I think it is, but being rational can be about self-interest. Republicans were asking people to look to the future and that is a very personal prospect for most of us. The issues were clear and the majority voted for a government of dependence.
Do we know this, that we will have at least two more years of the kind of government we have had for the last two? My husband’s favorite comment this morning was that John Boehner now becomes the last statesman of the Western World, the bastion of reason. What Pete says below about the mindset conservatives must adopt in the future has been true. However, given the results of this election, the president will have a Republican House of Representatives, and especially Boehner, to kick around and blame when disastrous presidential policies become — well, disastrous. What is this coalition I keep hearing about?
Republicans are a minority, but not by much. Last numbers I saw show a difference of a about a million votes nationally. That’s what, 1%? That’s not that much, though it is the margin for defeat. Maybe it is a time to snooze and let the politics of the Left create enough problems (as in the late 70s) that America gags on them. I wish I could not look at our politics for the next couple of years. Yet I was never able to snooze when I was hiding my head under the covers. Good luck with that for you, Pete.
November 7th, 2012 | 2:56 pm
As a chastened polyana in this election there is possibly a middle way woth consideration.
Winston Churchill wrote a history of WWII in which his first volume “The coming storm” was about the events leading up to the conflict. The volume consisted mostly of Churchill quoting himself from the 30′s warning of the coming calamity to Englands deaf ears.
His anticipation of events gave him credibility once the collective conscience of England finally acknowledged the inevitable.
It seems to me, among the possible avenues forward, somewhere between political trench warfare and complete appeasement, there is room for a Churchillian posture that, though failing to move minds in the moment may suddenly have credibility as the day of fiscal reckoning approaches sufficiently closer.
November 7th, 2012 | 2:57 pm
The American people haven’t got the message yet that the gravy train is over. Some of this is the GOP’s fault for not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, and some (most) is the fault of the Dems and the MSM for suppressing said bad news. But regardless of blame, it’s over. To use the favorite term of the last decade, the current fiscal path is nowhere near sustainable. One might hope we can “only” fade into malaise and stagnation, but history says that’s not what happens next.
November 7th, 2012 | 2:58 pm
BTW, thanks for the nice embedded account of events on the ground. Depressing, but nonetheless enlightening.
November 7th, 2012 | 4:45 pm
Part of the problem for the GOP is a sense that all these “47%” are simply riding a gravy train of government dependance, and that the “government” is blowing all its money on subsidizing laziness. This doesn’t understand either the real source of our budget problems, the real sources of our un- and under-employment (not simply laziness) or the right balance between rugged individualism and collective care and concern. The Left may have its false narratives about the threat from the Right, but I see the same, delusional narratives from the Right about the realities of todays complex world. Until the Right’s narrative (and understanding) of reality get’s closer to the world as it is (more of a Burkean conservatisim), it will struggle to attract a winning coalition.
November 7th, 2012 | 4:56 pm
Just out of curiosity, Kate, can you give us any real reasons why all the people from your county’s trailer park shouldn’t have been there? They are all citizens with the right to vote, correct? And they were all compliant with the law, bringing valid ID and signing reasonably close versions of their previous signatures, right? Is there some problem with that?
November 7th, 2012 | 5:37 pm
Tim, how would you contrast what you call a Burkean conservatism to the existing brand of conservatism?
November 7th, 2012 | 5:50 pm
JM, my mom used to live there, in that trailer park, for about 12 years. I know several people who live there, still, and the last time I was there noticed a mix of political signs from Tea Party/pro-life signs to the majority, which were for Obama/Biden to a greater percentage than in the rest of the county which is mostly Republican. Trailer parks are some of the most densely populated parts of our county; there is not much low-income housing in the area and few apartment buildings in town. Many people there are on public assistance. Do they have a right to vote? Absolutely.
We were not picky about signatures, except for one woman whose original in the book was nothing like what she signed. I let her try again and it was close enough. A name change — the full name — at the address, but the new name not in the poll roster, that I called in to the BOE and was told to allow a provisional ballot.
I am saying that we cannot expect that people will not vote their self-interest. Though I do agree with Pseudoplotinus that society is complex and the 47% is not an invariable voting bloc. Our family, we, I, have been desperately poor at a couple of pints in our lives, though never on public assistance. We had help from people in our church and from family. Many endure poverty and find ways out and into prosperity. Call it the American way and it is an argument I have with that last book of Charles Murray’s. But his point was that there are people who are not even looking for ways out of poverty and off public assistance, which is why we have an underclass.
Brian, the gravy train for those folks is not over, not while politicians are not responsible about addressing the debt that an entitlement class puts us in. Maybe there will be a miracle and Democrats will decide to do something about the entitlement mess and debt, but no one running on that side said anything about it. They talk about cutting defense, but the whole defense budget is not enough money to offload the debt and let’s talk about a defenseless America for a little bit.
November 7th, 2012 | 7:17 pm
Kate: No, it’s over. Within the decade. We’re a couple of years away from debt interest blowing past defense spending. By current projections the government entitlement programs alone will equal one-third of GDP not much after that. Of course, the whole system will melt down long before then, since the feds have never been able to raise as much as 20% of GDP in taxes.
As you say, the Democrat Party is STILL making promises that they have absolutely no chance of paying out. From their perspective, why not do so? It’s worked out incredibly well for them in California and other blue states where they have absolute control. And now it’s working nationally. Not for long.
November 7th, 2012 | 7:42 pm
Do they work? I assure you that no one can live honestly for very long merely on what assistance is given by the State of Ohio. They either have to work or steal. If so, what more can you legitimately ask of them than a work ethic and work discipline?
To put the matter bluntly, the food you put on the table and the consumer goods that make your life comfortable are financially subsidized by the fact that people are paid so little for their work that they actually must seek assistance to live, even though they are able, willing, and actually do work.
Do you seriously think that the price of your hamburgers at McDonalds, or even the presence of a McDonalds at all, wouldn’t change if everyone was so “prosperous” and “independent” that nobody needed to take a job flipping burgers or French frying potatoes?
This is your “underclass” and all I can say is that you are very lucky to have them under you.
And you talk of “dependence”? What you call “prosperity” is a chance to become one of the “subsidized” for the goods you buy at any big box store, rather than being one of the subsidizers working there who actually make the physical details of your “prosperity” possible and affordable.
Up here in my part of Ohio, you cannot be on Medicaid if you have liquid assets of more than $1500, which you have to prove with a current bank statement. And your assistance is cut by a “spend down” which you must pay directly to the state or submit medical bills which you have acquired to be prorated against any and all assets under $1500.
Checked the balance of your bank account lately?
To receive an individual maximum of $186 a month in food assistance you have to submit every financial document you have to the scrutiny of the State of Ohio–wages, rent, utilities, and bank statements or other asset documentation. The poor have no personal privacy whatever.
And how much a month do you spend on groceries?
“Sorry, no private trust in the Cayman Islands, or defacto money laundering in the Netherlands for you. You’re part of the dependent underclass.”
The cardinal sin of the Conservative point of view on this matter is not one of either omission or commission, but one of non-acknowledgement. It is a failure to recognize that before there can be either “dependence” or “independence” there is “interdependence” and you are just as interdependent with those who work for less than you do as they are with you.
Or, as the old song says, “The very thing that makes you rich, makes me poor.”
We’re all Americans and we all have the fantasy of being Daniel Boone, pioneering in the wilderness, free, “independent”, hard working, family raising, growing corn for moonshine (Yes, that’s what they did with it in those days to be able to market it.) and living “off the grid” in current colloquial terms.
But you know what made that possible for Daniel and all his cohorts back then? Free federal land. Free. If Daniel paid a dime for any of the land he farmed or any of the trees he cut to build a home and keep his family warm, I don’t know of it. Do you?
Daniel was just as “dependent” on, and interdependent with, Virginia planters like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as well as canny businessmen like Ben Franklin, brewers like Samuel Adams, lawyers like John Adams, and artisan silversmiths like Paul Revere. As well as on the new government they created and the excise taxes it collected.
Every last generation of Americans up to a little more than one hundred years ago was dependent, directly or indirectly, on the same sort of Federal land or service subsidy as the starting point for their “prosperity” and their “independence”–subsidy of everything from government exploratory surveys; outrageously large grants of land to railroads to insure that the founders of a new town had to buy the land (unlike old Daniel) from the railroad company; favorable government beef contracts to ranchers near any Cavalry Fort, and the network of Cavalry Forts and cavalry troops themselves; “land grant” colleges (such as OSU) to provide agricultural information to farmers, and even the Pony Express and the Post Office.
Interdependence, and not an underclass of parasites in any way, shape, or form. Not then. Not now.
November 7th, 2012 | 8:08 pm
Mr. Marshall: Yeah, yeah, the Lizzie Warren stuff about how we’re all connected is all well and good, and surely would make a slam dunk case against all those economic nihilists out there who don’t want there to be any government at all, but here in the real world the GOP is perfectly happy to have the government spend ~20% of GDP, just like it did way back in the Wild West days on 2007.
It is undeniably true that the GOP desperately needs to communicate better that it does comprehend & care about the poor among us. The party does an absolutely terrible job at that. It doesn’t help that the MSM is so openly hostile to the very idea, and the “compassionate conservative” moniker is a huge strike against much of it, but they do have to do better.
November 7th, 2012 | 10:16 pm
The most important point Brian is that everybody understands how they actually stand in relation to everybody else–no more “lazy underclass” nonsense. There are essentially two categories in any class level, people who work and people who commit crimes. I think we can all agree that the criminals need to be out of our hair and doing time.
But we should be able to agree that anyone who is willing to work is not a different (and inferior) person if they don’t have a lot of money. And they’re not a different and inferior person if they seek help when they can’t make ends meet.
Somebody has to flip burgers and fry potatoes or we can’t go to McDonalds and such work is not a purgatorial punishment for any lack of ambition. It’s just work. If it doesn’t get done we don’t get hot, fast burgers.
With that in mind we can look at what I also know is a real problem, but it has two ends. One of which is the restraint of entitlement costs and the other is expansion of the GDP. The conservative point of view is that spending cuts are the cure for both ills.
They aren’t. One of the most interesting things about the job drop in 2010 is what jobs were lost. There was virtually no change in the growth of private sector jobs. All the job losses were government jobs, mostly at the State level. Those jobs are a permanent loss until revenues increase and the continued slowdown of consumer demand resulting directly from those RIF’s is a millstone around the neck of all other growth that might bring in more revenue.
This is simply a downward spiral doing nothing for either the economy as a whole or for the debt problem.
The “fiscal cliff” is the perfect test case for whether spending cuts will both generate GDP and renewed revenues and will reduce the deficit. I don’t believe it will. I think that it will induce a federal RIF of overwhelming proportions as well as crunching in the high tech defense industry, generating a downward spiral of the revenues needed to make any serious dent in the deficit.
And maybe cause another Great Depression.
I’m pretty sure I know the misery it will cause, but if that finally puts the stake through the heart of this “no new taxes, cut all spending, enter the New Jerusalem” fantasy, it will be, just barely, worth doing despite the massive increase in misery this country will see.
But I insist that the “cut everything but my pet spending”, whether it is the Pentagon or Health and Human Services has simply got to cease.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
November 8th, 2012 | 10:14 am
Mr. Marshall: Yes, in the short term spending cuts have negative GDP effects. (It’d be nice if the Dems showed any sign about caring about this when they advocate for defense cuts–the missile defense cancellation by Obama literally cost tens of thousands of jobs almost overnight.) But borrowing over a trillion dollars a year does also. The choice isn’t between pain now and a glorious future. That’s not on the table. It’s between pain now and a bad future, and no pain for now and catastrophe in the future. Deferring the pain a couple of years makes no difference. The choices made (by both parties) for decades, and even in 2008/9, did nothing but kick the can down the road.
PS. Future historians will ridicule us for the asinine term “The Great Recession.” What a sick joke.
November 8th, 2012 | 2:53 pm
[...] complete … Bill Snyder, unsurprisingly, hopes to have Collin Klein back in action for … The Election from my Corner of the USA » Postmodern Conservative … Joseph Marshall November 7th, 2012 | 4:56 pm. Just out of curiosity, Kate, can you give us any real [...]
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