Tag Archive for 'US election 2008'

“The Tyranny of the Now”

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Kim
12 months ago
in Culture, Economics, Media, Sociology and USA
. 7 Comments

With Kevin Rudd in Washington meeting Barack Obama, and the new Geithner Plan seemingly hostage to the insta-reaction of the markets, punditocracy and economists alike, it’s worth pausing to cast an eye over an argument by Ian Leslie in The Guardian:

In an attempt to capture the experience of living in the age of mass media, the cultural critic Frederic Jameson talked of being trapped in a “perpetual present”. Bombarded with endless information, images from the past and dreams of the future, we live each day as if it’s our first and our last.

Jameson’s diagnosis may be hyperbolic, but those who followed 2008 election will have at least an inkling of what he was getting at. During the primaries and the general election, it was difficult to discern the underlying state of the race from the media coverage, because all that seemed to matter was WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

Almost every day, a new story would tear through the media ecosphere, gathering velocity and heat as it went, dominating the chatter on the web and on TV and radio. Hillary didn’t tip a waitress! Obama said something about lipstick on a pig! SARAH FRICKIN’ PALIN! Within hours of any “incident”, headlines blared, pundits pronounced, bloggers unloaded, campaigns sniped and counter-sniped. Each media node would feed off every other node, creating what scientists call “positive feedback”, the most familiar example of which is what you get when you move a live microphone too close the speaker: an ear-splitting noise.

Leslie argues that, actually, not much happened in the US general election campaign. I think that’s right – there are probably only a few events which could be pinpointed that actually shifted the dynamics and momentum of the thing. Leslie concentrates on the “media ecosphere”. But I wonder if what we’re seeing here is not also “fast capitalism” – the speeding up of the circulation of money, the value cycle, and the short termism that drives both share markets (often very short term indeed – as with short selling) and all the craziness that led to the bust of the boom. Maybe this phenomenon is the underlying cause of the crisis. Since Leslie invokes Fredric Jameson, one might well surmise or propose that the contemporary mediasphere reflects the “cultural logic of late capitalism”. If that’s the case, what is to be done? Take a deep breath and a longer view? That’s in essence the Keynesian road. But is it enough?

John Hewson discovers excitable punctuation, anti-political fantasies and other stuff to do with the end of political year 2008

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by
Kim
1 year, 3 months ago
in Activism, Christmas, Climate change, Economics, Energy, Federal Elections, Foreign Elections, International, Markets, Media, Policy, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 12 Comments

End of year reflection on the state of politics and the nation type articles can be interesting. They can be tedious rehashes of trivia and reinventions of an already distorted reality to prove punditarian narratives r us and are ace (read any column in the Opposition Organ for an example). They can be quite thoughtful and rise above the usual trivia and actually say something. Or they can be quite weird.

John Hewson’s contribution in today’s Fin falls into the latter category. I strongly suspect his article is the first time evah a columnist in the venerable biz organ has written the sentence: “Whatever!” – indeed, Dr JoHew has been rather exuberant with his punctuation for emphasis in what is a sustained attack on the Reserve Bank. He may have a point that Glenn Stevens indicating that he’ll be taking a rest over January isn’t the best idea – as he points out, the Fed has rates heading down to a range between 0% and 0.25% and UK rates are at 2%. Perhaps Stevens thinks that in the month or so of the Great Australian Stupor, we’ll all spend the economy back to health by splurging on alcopops and sunscreen. On the other hand, Hewson is probably right that Aussie parochialism can’t be afforded anymore – the rest of the world may not understand that we’re all at the beach.

But Hewson’s paradox is that his solution is typical of what got us here in the first place – better “governance” and a more “independent” board – which sits uneasily with his own complaint that no one is allowed to complain about the independent Bank. This is the sort of neoliberal managerialist fantasy that landed us in this mess (in part) and the proscription is even more technocratic wonkery!

Speaking of which, that takes me to my segue about Kevin Rudd, political reality, climate change and technocratic wonkery.

Continue reading ‘John Hewson discovers excitable punctuation, anti-political fantasies and other stuff to do with the end of political year 2008′

Bill Ayers talks

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Foreign Elections, Media, Relationships and USA
. 98 Comments

He was probably one of the most referenced names in the 2008 US election. But he deliberately chose not to comment on the linking of his name with Obama and “domestic terrorism”. Now Bill Ayers has given an interview to Salon. Two things I found particularly interesting – it does appear clear that his acquaintance with Obama was slight (and that Obama was unaware of his past at the campaign coffee in 1995), and perhaps more revelatory – what it feels like to be at the centre of a political firestorm and to be demonised.

Ayers says:

Continue reading ‘Bill Ayers talks’

In your gut, you know he’s nuts

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in USA
. 41 Comments

The darling of the libertarians, Ron Paul, (and to be fair there were some lefties who flirted with his candidacy too) has come out of the closet post-election as a New World Order conspiracy theorist – World Government is Obama’s secret agenda!

Continue reading ‘In your gut, you know he’s nuts’

Truthiness versus Truth

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Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Australiana, Blogging, Foreign Elections, Media and USA
. 83 Comments

The fiercely independent thinking RWDBs of the Australian media and blogosphere have been out and about reciting talking points from the discredited Republican Noise machine ever since Barack Obama won the Presidency last week. For the life of me, I can’t understand why Antipodean wingnuts take their wingnutty duties so seriously, but I’m sure that many are still firmly in the faith-based alternative universe, and thus allergic to facts. But for anyone who’s been wondering about some of the most egregious memes around the joint, here are some links to set the record straight.

Myth #1: The Obama turnout meant that Prop 8 won in California.

But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters — the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) — voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin

- Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com

Myth #2: The Democrats’ victory wasn’t comprehensive.

What happened? Overall, the Democrats gained a bit in 2004, a lot in 2006, and some in 2008. But we knew that (see the time series plot in the blog entry linked above). We also see a bit of scatter. Beyond this, yes, there are some patterns. In 2006, the Democrats particularly gained in Republican areas–see how those dots in the lower left of the second graph are way above the 45-degree line? In 2008, the swing is more uniform… Returning to the “How well did the Democrats actually do in 2008″ question, I think that one problem is that people are comparing Obama’s vote to Kerry’s vote but then comparing the congressional Democrats in 2008 to the congressional Democrats in 2006. I think it’s more appropriate to compare 2008 to 2004 in both cases. As Paul Krugman put it, “Maybe the reason people don’t see this is that the Democratic House gains were spread over two elections.”

- Andrew Gelman.

Myth #3: Obama would be politically sensible to govern as a moderate gradualist.

So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn’t listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president. He has the political mandate; he has good economics on his side. You might say that the only thing he has to fear is fear itself.

- Paul Krugman.

Obama: The predictability of right wing predictions?

Published
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Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Foreign Elections, Media, Sociology and USA
. 104 Comments

We’ve heard all this before. Remember when Kevin Rudd won, and we were told his election was a victory for John Howard?

Right wing commentators couldn’t have been quicker out of the starting blocks to proclaim “America is still a Centre Right nation”. In fact they were at it before the votes were counted – Bill Bennett’s lugubrations on CNN is one example folks here might have seen in watching the election coverage. The memes abound. McCain still got 46%! Obama’s win wasn’t big enough!

Such exciteable commentary doesn’t stop to consider, of course, that in a two party system, without the presence of a strong third party challenger, landslides aren’t that common. Ronald Reagan in 1980 received 50.1% of the popular vote, in an election which everyone agrees ushered in an “Era”. Barack Obama did somewhat better than that. And John McCain still pulled in a significant number of independent voters – it’s not too difficult to imagine how wrong the claims that a more conservative candidate would have run better are. Let’s not forget that McCain continually sounded the note that he was someone who often differed from his own party.

Let’s make a couple of quick points here. Most of this speculation – and the accompanying predictions that Obama may be a steady as she goes moderate – is just that. It’s basically worthless, except for what it reveals about the politics of those doing the predicting. We don’t know exactly how Obama will govern. We do know that he’s stated that big challenges will require bold measures. And we do know that an agenda of de facto universal healthcare, economic revival and redressing the plight of middle and working class voters is what he won on. That’s surprisingly radical in the American context. And this election saw a lot of the anti-government rhetoric Reagan ran into town with finally kicked to the curb.

Secondly, let’s consider the fact that the “liberal” scare didn’t work (and the sorts of voters who were ready to believe Obama to be a “socialist” were always going to be in the GOP tent):

Perhaps the most revealing post-election data on that question came from within the defeated McCain campaign. In an interview with Roger Simon of Politico, the Republican candidate’s speechwriter and friend, Mark Salter, disclosed that in the campaign’s own internal polling data, 60 percent of Americans regarded Obama as “liberal.” The campaign thought that would be enough to defeat him, which is why it hammered on the “left-wing” themes.

Baiting the liberals didn’t work this year. Disgusted with the Republican right, voters wanted something different and weren’t afraid to look leftward. That is what “realignment” means.

Continue reading ‘Obama: The predictability of right wing predictions?’

US election: The hangover!

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Foreign Elections, Life and USA
. 28 Comments

Photo of the Obama event in Chicago courtesy of bcbeatty – licenced under Creative Commons.

So, since there was so much discussion before election day of where folks were going to meet up to watch the count in convivial style, how did everyone enjoy their election celebrations? Where did you go? What was the mood? Any good drinking games?

And how’s everyone feeling today?

Meanwhile, back in Australia

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Activism, Australiana, Economics, Federal Elections, Foreign Elections, Media and USA
. 56 Comments

I didn’t get a chance to link to this post during the American campaign, but I thought that Scott’s piece at Grodscorp on why a lot of Australians get into American elections with so much fervour was a top class piece of work. Other cogent explanations were offered, but the comparative level of excitement – and entertainment – is certainly one of them:

Conversely, can you imagine Kevin Rudd standing in front of 50,000 people in a sports stadium, making a stirring speech about his dreams and aspirations for Australia, causing every person in the audience and the millions watching on the telly to feel a tingling sense of national pride and hope for their country? Can you imagine John Howard visiting an army base, attracting tens of thousands of supporters, and bringing tears to the eyes of those assembled as he spoke of patriotism and sacrifice for an ideal? Can you imagine Steve Fielding being interviewed by a news program and looking dumbstruck when asked what newspapers he reads? “Well, just the Bible, Katie,” he’d say. “It’s got all the information in it that I’ll ever need.”

Of course, just as it’s true that many Americans rightly vote not on the basis of the putative celebrity status of candidates but for compelling public reasons, we Australians do get passionate about what matters to our collective future and our lives in the political sphere. But, I think, the point retains its force.

So yesterday, Wayne Swan was accused of releasing the midyear budget review on Presidential election day to draw attention away from the projections on growth and unemployment, the media tut-tutted because he couldn’t instantly recall the inflation number and had to consult notes, and Malcolm Turnbull accused him of lacking credentials on “economic management”. Just another day in Canberra…

Elsewhere: Gary Sauer-Thompson on the mid-year economic outlook.

US election: the demographics

Published
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Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Culture, Foreign Elections, Polls, Race, Religion, Sociology and USA
. 22 Comments

The big note of caution should be that this data is drawn from exit polls which don’t take into account the very large early vote, and that exit polls have certain problems of validity and reliability.

However, there’s some interesting reading at both RedBlueRichPoor and FiveThirtyEight. I suspect the absence of the early vote in the sample diminishes the increases in youth and African-American turnout. And it’s just as well to remember that the election was actually reasonably close in the popular vote, and that the electoral vote map has been tweaked rather than transformed. Trends which were operating this year need reinforcing through the upcoming electoral cycles, and much will depend on Obama’s performance in government. You can never claim that there’s a realigning election on the basis of one cycle (06-08), though my bet would be that this will turn out in retrospect to have been one, for a whole host of more qualitative and interpretive factors.

I haven’t seen any comprehensive data as yet on Hispanic and youth votes’ partisan composition, but some evidence presented during the CNN coverage suggested very strong 60+% Obama votes in both populations. It’s worthwhile noting that the demographics of many states which are swinging to the Democrats strongly – or showing signs of such swings (ie in Texas, Arizona and South Carolina) – are fast changing to a much more heterogenous composition. And that generally, the younger cohort is more socially liberal and less hung up on racial barriers and all the baggage of the culture wars – including among younger Evangelicals.

There’s a lot here for Obama and the Democrats to make hay with in terms of partisan and geographic realignment, if they play their cards well.

Continue reading ‘US election: the demographics’

US election: Yes we can!

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Activism, Blogging, Elections, Foreign Elections, Media, Polls, Sociology, Technology and USA
. 16 Comments

Image of spontaneous street celebrations in Harlem courtesy of matt semel at flickr – reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.

No doubt one of the big stories about the US election will be the influence of the blogosphere and the netroots. In many ways, the rise of the intertubes in politics was an unintended consequence of the Rove approach to politics, as Publius perceives:

The bigger story is that this same anger – this same frustration – has led liberals to organize in more numerous and consequential ways. In the last few years, we’ve seen new think tanks. We’ve seen blogs flower. We’ve seen the rise of media sites like TPM and Huffington with real journalistic chops. We’ve seen unprecedented efforts to register and canvass voters.

In short, we’ve seen a new energy driving liberals back to politics.

In an opinion piece at ABC Online, Barry Saunders sums up the changes that net based activism and citizen journalism have wrought:

The impact of social media on this election has been enormous. Whoever takes office will have to deal with widely available factchecking data, embarrassing videos, rabid wingnuts, opinionated bloggers and TV hosts, and a massive number of new voters and donors who feel they have invested in the American political process – as well as two wars and a collapsing economy. Here’s hoping they know what they’re doing.

Continue reading ‘US election: Yes we can!’

Guest Post by Miriam Lyons: What does an Obama win mean for Australia?

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by
Guest Poster
1 year, 4 months ago
in Australiana, Climate change, Developing world, Economics, Environment, Foreign Elections, Foreign policy, Government, Immigration, International, Markets, Policy, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 12 Comments

Director of the Centre for Policy Development Miriam Lyons writes:

Barack Obama’s victory represents a watershed in American history, but it will also have ramifications around the world. Before I head out to celebrate I thought I’d just bash out a few quick notes on some of the policy implications for Australia of this momentous turnaround in the state of US politics:

Climate change

Today’s election result heralds the rise of Green Keynesianism. The US economy is in the toilet and smart economists are advocating direct investment over a more consumer-based fiscal stimulus. Democrats in Congress got a head start last year with the Green Jobs Act, and elements of the President-elect’s energy and environment policies look a lot like a ‘Green New Deal’. This from Time Magazine:

He wants to launch an “Apollo project” to build a new alternative-energy economy. His rationale for doing so includes some hard truths about the current economic mess: “The engine of economic growth for the past 20 years is not going to be there for the next 20. That was consumer spending. Basically, we turbocharged this economy based on cheap credit.” But the days of easy credit are over, Obama said, “because there is too much deleveraging taking place, too much debt.” A new economic turbocharger is going to have to be found, and “there is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy … That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.”

Calls for a Green New Deal are also starting to gain traction in the UK – and the UN. This can only help the chances of Australia’s version of the Apollo alliance, which released the ‘Green Gold Rush’ report last week calling for investment in green-collar jobs growth.

The Obama campaign’s target for emissions cuts was 80% by 2050 – a fair way ahead of Oz Labor’s as-yet-unaltered election promise of 60% by 2050. With the Arctic ice-sheet melting rapidly even an 80% target is too low for a developed country like the US, but it should certainly give Professor Ross Garnaut reason to revise his pessimism about the likely outcome of the Copenhagen round of climate negotiations. It’s worth noting that the Obama campaign’s climate and energy platform specifically called for 100% auctioning of permits.

Continue reading ‘Guest Post by Miriam Lyons: What does an Obama win mean for Australia?’

US election: End of the Bush era

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Climate change, Culture, Economics, Foreign Elections, Poverty, Science, Sociology and USA
. 58 Comments

There’s been a lot of discussion over the last few weeks about whether today’s vote would signal the end of the Reagan era. That discussion had two interlinked referents – the combination of militarism and small government rhetoric (if not practice) which marked Reaganite governance and the enduring electoral pattern Reagan’s win in 1980 ushered in. It may well be that these predictions are on the money, though we’ll need a few more electoral cycles to be sure (and one very useful thing the Obama administration could do would be reform of the voting process, which might make a fair bit of difference in and of itself). Certainly the red state/blue state frozen electoral map has begun to shift – with the state level strength in the West for the Democrats now translating nationally and the South becoming more competitive (and as Cliff Shecter observes, the demographics in Texas and South Carolina are heading in the same direction):

In other words, Barack Obama and the Democrats are a national party now, while the GOP has become regionalised and fallen behind the times. What a difference a few years can make. It will now be up to Obama and other leading Democrats to solidify these gains through smart politics and smarter policy. So we can all breathe a bit easier, by putting the Bush years behind us forever.

What’s a little surprising is that in the midst of these debates, there’s been little discussion of the exact significance and dimensions of the repudiation of Bushism. As publius says at Obsidian Wings:

Any way you slice it, the 2008 election should be seen as a massive repudiation of the George W. Bush administration.

And not just in psephological terms, as the Republican right may have driven Hispanic voters away for a long time. Let’s make no mistake about it. The collision of neo-con Republicanism and reality has not been kind to the latter. Publius again:

…recent events have repeatedly proven the progressive “sphere” more correct than the conservative “sphere.” Progressives’ policy assumptions seem to jibe better with empirical reality than the fairy tale world inhabited by many in the conservative sphere. In short, in the laboratory of ideas, progressives are winning.

Continue reading ‘US election: End of the Bush era’

Yes They Did.

Published
by
Mercurius
1 year, 4 months ago
in Foreign Elections and USA
. 28 Comments

Scenes from New York City, Tuesday 4 November 2008.

Continue reading ‘Yes They Did.’

US election: Obama wins – The audacity of hope…

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Economics, Foreign Elections, Markets and USA
. 127 Comments

It’s all over, red rover, and Barack Obama, with 200 electoral votes in the bag and enough in the bag to come from the West Coast and Midwest to come, has won the presidential election. Lots of interesting stuff still to come, including the all important Senate races and the ballot iniatives, and the size of the victory both in the electoral college and in the popular vote. And the turnout, which is looking huge.

What’s intriguing about this win is that Obama will exercise influence immediately. George W. Bush is the lamest of lame ducks, and arrangements have already been made for the next president to participate in shaping economic policy, and former Times Economics Editor Anatole Kaletsky thinks that influence will make a difference quickly:

If tomorrow’s election delivers a clear economic mandate to a competent new Administration, the financial markets will soon stabilise — and the US economy could recover surprisingly quickly from the blundering incompetence of Henry Paulson and George W. Bush.

Obama will be naming cabinet members and other key administration figures very quickly, and we won’t have the traditional waiting game for policy and names to trickle out before mid January.

How will he govern? One of the most interesting comments he’s made is when he told Jon Stewart that difficult times enable a President to achieve big things. There’s a bit of an FDR game in play, perhaps, with the modest promises of the campaign potentially being eclipsed by the pressure of events. We’ll see – expectations will certainly be high.

Related posts: The archive of all US election 2008 posts at LP can be accessed here.

Update [by Mark]: The text of Obama’s speech is here.

US election: Following the result! Links to liveblogging and results

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Blogging, Foreign Elections, Notices and USA
. 23 Comments

Gobama!

We seem to be getting a lot of 503 errors, which must mean either increased traffic on our server or the intertubes staggering under the weight of US election traffic generally.

But here’s a widget from MSNBC which should enable anyone checking in here to get a sense of the latest results. You can mouse over each state to get the latest count:

Other places to follow the count – Crikey has both Possum and The Poll Bludger liveblogging. At The Guardian, Anna Pickard is liveblogging the election coverage on tv (and Fox might get interesting!) while Oliver Burkman liveblogs the count. William Edelstein comments on the appalling voting process. There’s also liveblogging at Feministing, Crooks & Liars and much closer to home at Hoyden About Town.

The invaluable FiveThirtyEight.com has a post by post liveblog, and updated results graphically illustrated on the sidebar.

Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise has a twitter map of the US for your edification.

Update: I think scatterplot is right. Obama has won this thing.

Update: New post on the policy implications of Obama’s victory.