What we won

Rachel Maddow lays it out:

What we stopped:

We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this Court.

We’re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance. […]

We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kids’ health insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.

We’re not going to make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan you’re on. We are not going to redefine rape. We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo. We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or housing at the federal level. We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.

We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country’s new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents.

We are not vetoing the Dream Act. We are not self-deporting. We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January. […] We are not going to have a foreign policy stocked with architects of the Iraq War.

We are not going to do it. We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country. And we said no, last night, loudly. […]

What we gained:

So last night, the Democratic senator who was supposed to be the most endangered incumbent in the country not only won, she won by 16 points.

Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who was so stuffed with hedge fund money that he burped credit default swaps […] lost by a lot to the nation’s foremost authority on the economic rights of the middle class.

After marriage rights for same-sex couples were voted down in state after state after state for years, more than 30 times in a row, this year, all change. In Maine, they voted on marriage equality and they voted for it. In Maryland, they voted on marriage equality and they voted for it. In Minnesota, they were asked to vote against marriage equality, and Minnesota refused to ban it. […]

Nevada elects its first African-American congressman this year. America gets our first openly gay United States Senator. America gets our first-ever Asian American woman senator from Hawai’i. Her seat in the House, I should note, gets filled by this woman, a Democratic Iraq War veteran. […] Speaking of Iraq War veterans, Tammy Duckworth, veteran helicopter pilot, she lost both of her legs in Iraq — she is going to Congress, and she is sending home the opponent who mocked her for her war record […]

California relaxed its “Three Strikes You’re Out” law and rejected a law to cripple the political power of unions. Decriminalization of marijuana was approved in Washington and in Colorado. […]

All of those states that went so red in state government in these past couple of years and that then had these big fights inside their states over how Republicans were governing there — in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and we will see about Florida, last night not only did Republicans lose the presidential election in every single one of those states, Republicans lost the Senate race in every single one of those states too. […]

Last night, Democratic women swept every major office in New Hampshire. Last night, California Democrats won a Democratic supermajority in the state house and in the state senate. Not just majorities in California, but supermajorities, wherein, if the Republicans don’t turn up […] they’re completely legislatively irrelevant. […]

More women got elected to the U.S. Senate than at any time in U.S. history. […] West Virginia chose its first gay state legislator. So did North Dakota. […] The proportion of young people voting compared to 2008 […] went up. Same with African-Americans, up from 2008. Same with Latinos, up from 2008 […]

And, oh yeah, this happened. President Barack Obama, yes, will go down in history as our nation’s first African-American president. But he will also go down in history as the most successful Democratic presidential candidate since FDR. President Bill Clinton got re-elected too, I know, but only Barack Obama got re-elected with not just big electoral college margins, but also with majority wins in the popular vote — twice.

As substantial as this list is, there’s more. Watch the whole thing to see Maddow’s take on why the country needs Republicans to come to their senses, burst their bubble of self-delusion, and join the rest of the country in proposing real solutions to real problems.

Big night, indeed.

“Ripples of hope”: The President thanks his campaign volunteers

This is the man that Republicans think is a cynical, divisive, un-American, anti-American socialist redistributor hell-bent on destroying the nation and everything it stands for? This man?

Clearly, the modern Republican Party has gone utterly insane. Thank goodness most of the country hasn’t.

Whatever people think of his policies, whatever his failures and victories in the last four years (and the next four), this video should make it absolutely clear that President Barack Obama is a good man with decency, empathy, and compassion at his core. That’s important in a leader. I’m very glad we have this one.

Each time a man stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

– Robert F. Kennedy

The country we carry in our hearts

Springsteen wrote about it a few years too early, but last night was a glorious chance to see that envisioned country, to grasp the promise of that hoped-for America made real. This wasn’t just a victory speech. This was a magnificent affirmation of that shining ideal of E pluribus unum towards which we always look: the beacon, in any and every storm, that guides all our ships home.

Are we divided? Perhaps. But Obama, like Christopher Hitchens, gets it — that debate and argument, even vigorous and bitter ones, are the crucible in which you test the mettle of ideas and eventually (painfully, tortuously) arrive at truth. (“Heat not light” is a misguided dismissal of conflict and confrontation; “heat produces light” is more accurate both as science and as metaphor, as Hitchens often observed.) Yes, this campaign was long, brutal, and sometimes petty and ridiculous — and it was frustrating for all of us who think that our own beliefs and values are self-evidently true and should be universally accepted without complaint. But it’s never a bad thing to revisit first principles — to be forced to settle (or at least reconsider) the existential questions that determine how we treat each other and how we make a nation together. In the President’s words:

That’s why we do this. That’s what politics can be. That’s why elections matter. It’s not small, it’s big. It’s important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy. That won’t change after tonight. And it shouldn’t. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty, and we can never forget that as we speak, people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.

The President, of course, points out that argumentation can only be the beginning; that our national debates must never lose sight of the need to seek and find common ground, in order to move forward together. “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection,” said Lincoln after his reelection — and there’s more than a conscious echo of that here:

Now, we will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get there. As it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts. It’s not always a straight line. It’s not always a smooth path. By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won’t end all the gridlock, resolve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move this country forward.

But that common bond is where we must begin.

And more than an echo of Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech as well:

But that doesn’t mean your work is done. The role of citizens in our democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us; it’s about what can be done by us together, through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government.

He cuts through the clutter and noise to get at the very essence of American community:

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores. What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth, the belief that our destiny is shared, that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, so that the freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights, and among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

And, like many others, he compellingly makes the case for optimism — not idle Pollyannaism, but clear-eyed hope with a spine of steel:

I’m not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the road blocks that stand in our path. I’m not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.

And in a rousing finale that recalls both his own electrifying 2004 keynote speech and Lincoln’s invocation of “the better angels of our nature,” Obama calls us to be our best and highest selves:

I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America.

This speech gave me chills, made me weep, made my heart soar. But don’t take my word for it! Read the entire transcript here. Watch it again. And cherish it. This is one for the ages.
_____

Adding: Here’s Andrew Sullivan’s take — nearly as eloquent as the President himself, and always worth reading:

As for the next four years, there is time enough for that. But I stand by these words. And one felt something tectonic shift tonight. America crossed the Rubicon of every citizen’s access to healthcare, and re-elected a black president in a truly tough economic climate. The shift toward gay equality is now irreversible. The end of prohibition of marijuana is in sight. Women, in particular, moved this nation forward – pragmatically, provisionally, sensibly. They did so alongside the young whose dedication to voting was actually greater this time than in 2008, the Latino voters who have made the current GOP irrelevant, and African-Americans, who turned up in vast numbers, as in 2008, to put a period at the end of an important sentence.

That sentence will never now be unwritten. By anyone.

_____

Also adding: Greg Sargent thinks, as I do, that this campaign wasn’t as petty or trivial as it sometimes seemed on the surface. Rather, it was a consequential battle of ideas about the very nature of American society:

1) What is the true nature of our collective responsibility towards one another?

2) What is the true legacy of the great progressive reforms of the 20th century? Should their core mission — and the safety net they have created — be preserved and expanded upon to meet the needs of those who are still being left behind by the private market? Or does that mission need to be readjusted to deal with dramatically different economic circumstances in the 21st century?

3) What is the best way to guarantee shared prosperity and economic security at a time of rapid economic change? Should we take collective action, via democratically elected leaders, to try to guarantee a good life to as many people as possible, and to defend those who are suffering economic harm at the hands of the free market? Or are we currently at risk of overreaching in that direction, doing people more harm than good?

There were many petty-seeming battles throughout this campaign, no doubt, but you can find these questions lurking just beneath their surface. The battles over so-called “gaffes” and controversial remarks on both sides often turned on deeper questions about the nature of the society we want to live in.

More here.

Yes.

(via President Obama)

Come on this train

A song for Election Day. And every day.

Know the history of the vote, and be part of it.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Find your polling place here.

Swing state or not, your voice matters. Make it heard.

Vote.

The stakes, cont’d

Another must-read from Bob Cesca:

This is the marquee election for the anti-choice movement. Anyone who can count and anyone who can look up the status of the Supreme Court justices knows full well that the next president will decide the fate of abortion rights and an entire array of issues.

Justice Scalia is 76 years old, Justice Breyer is 74 and Justice Ginsburg, well, she’s a 79-year-old cancer survivor. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that the next president will appoint a justice to replace at least Ginsburg, if not both Ginsburg and Scalia. Reasonably speaking, Ginsburg is almost certain. If she retires or passes, and Mitt Romney appoints her successor, the ideological balance of the Bench will shift to five conservatives, one swing vote (Kennedy) and three liberals — more than enough to decide conservatively on a variety of critical issues. Even if Kennedy were to magically swing left on every decision, it still wouldn’t matter. Conservatives would win the day for an entire generation.

However, if President Obama is re-elected and he appoints Ginsburg’s successor, the balance remains the same as it is now: four conservatives, one swing vote and four liberals (presumably, Obama would appoint a justice with a liberal record). Better yet, if the president is re-elected and replaces both Ginsburg and Scalia, the Bench would be tipped to five liberals, one swing and three conservatives — for a generation.

So this isn’t just about replacing a justice or two. This is about replacing a justice or two and defining the ideological composition of the Court for the next 10-20 years.

[…] I sometimes wonder if everyone else, including many of us who follow these issues closely, is aware of the potential human cost amid the ongoing horserace drama of the political campaign. These are our daughters, mothers, wives, sweethearts, partners and business associates, and I worry that too many voters are unaware that more than half of all Americans are being slowly and deliberately suffocated of their rights and physically targeted by their leadership simply because they have two X chromosomes. This election is the hinge upon which those rights hang in the balance. It might be the most important election of our lives so far, and not because of some relatively disassociated issue thousands of miles away, but because it will determine whether women — American women — will retain purview over their own bodies.

Cesca makes many more salient points and the whole piece is worth reading here.

(Photo via Associated Press)

Romnesia!

Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant.

And here’s a harrowing video showing the advanced stages of this condition:

10/23 Update: It’s becoming clearer and clearer that this is not just a humorous but a very potent line of attack. And after the President’s killer debate performance last night (“horses and bayonets” — fantastic!), it’s more lethal than ever:

Obama, turning serious, saves the best point for last: all joking aside, this is all about trust. After Mitt Romney has taken all conceivable positions on every conceivable issue, I find it utterly impossible to believe anything the man says. (Unless, perhaps, it’s what he says candidly to a group of peers behind closed doors.) Moderate swing voters who ignore Romney’s shapeshifting, and who feel confident they know what his true priorities are, may yet elect this walking question mark to the presidency. But they do so at their peril, and the nation’s.

(via DailyKos)

Game on

Did the President take notes?

Yes. Yes he did. Bravo, Mr. President.

A key exchange on Libya, that shines a clear light on the difference between a political weasel and a Commander-in-Chief:

Transcript of the entire debate here.

I have no idea if this will be enough to win Obama the election. But he’s made the best case for his presidency and for a second term that I could have hoped for.

Also: Mitt Romney claims, in the space of 90 minutes, both that he would create 12 million new jobs as president, and that government doesn’t create jobs? He can’t even make up his mind about which side he’s on in the same debate. It’s absolutely indicative of his willingness to say anything to win, regardless of whether it’s consistent with positions he’s taken in the past — even as recently as a few minutes ago. And if you can’t tell what he stands for now, how can you know what he’ll stand for if he wins the White House? I smell a potent Democratic attack ad right there.

The stakes

Bob Cesca spells them out:

[I]f the president loses the second debate as badly as the first and, subsequently, isn’t able to recover enough ground to win the election, it will be seen as a major loss for Keynesian economic policy, not to mention government intervention in health care, Wall Street regulation, student loans, climate, energy and so much more. In spite of his record of successes, the president will likely be viewed as a failure — for reasons that confound logic. After all, if the president loses, he will have ended his presidency will deficit that’s hundreds of billions of dollars lower than when he took office, he will have saved senior citizens $4 billion in health care costs, he will have extended the solvency of Medicare to 2024, he will have rescued the economy from a global financial crisis, he will have created 5 million jobs in the wake of that crisis, he will have rescued and reinvigorated the American auto industry, he will have cut unemployment and he will have presided over a near-doubling of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Worse yet, all of the legislation that made a lot of these successes possible will be repealed by Mitt Romney.

Furthermore, the effort to eradicate the Reaganomics virus that’s infected our politics for more than 30 years will be stopped cold. It isn’t often discussed among hipster liberals who myopically see Obama as a centrist or even a moderate Republican, but for the first time in more than a generation, the president has made repeated cases for the positive role of government. Gradually throughout his first term, the president has worked this pitch for the restoration of government as a force for good into major addresses, many of which were prime time joint session addresses to Congress. Within this pitch, the president has made effective cases against tax cuts for the super-rich as well cases against de-regulatory policies that have resulted in health insurance abuses, corporate out-sourcing and the nefarious Wall Street noodling that sparked the Great Recession. It’s a far cry from the “era of big government is over” talk from Bill Clinton or the “government is the problem” mantra from Ronald Reagan.

With an Obama loss, it’s very unlikely another Democrat in the near future will be able to successfully pick up the same goals and be victorious while doing so. And there’s always a chance that the recovery will continue into a Romney presidency — at least for a while — and the conventional wisdom would divorce such a success from the policies that made it happen. Romney would get the credit. For example, the CBO projects that 12 million jobs will be created in the next four years. Romney will take credit for that — in fact, he already is by saying that he’ll create 12 million jobs. Those jobs will be created anyway due to the fact that the economy was pulled back from the brink and continues to recover. Essentially, the failed supply-side, trickle-down, de-regulatory, anti-government economic plan being pitched by Mitt Romney will be unfairly and inaccurately viewed as a successful one.

And perhaps the most devastating outcome: the Supreme Court will become solidly conservative for another generation. It’ll be a tragic turn events for women, campaign finance, net neutrality and so forth. The consequences of Romney appointing a sixth or seventh conservative justice on the Bench are almost too harrowing to imagine.

Read the rest here.

My previous thoughts on why government matters — and why I support the case the president makes for it — here.

(Image via The Sietch Blog)

For all humanity

A remix of Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator that brought tears to my eyes:

One quibble: In juxtaposing images of both Republican and Democratic leaders as Chaplin is railing against dictators and oppressors of mankind, the video seems to suggest that all politicians are alike. Not even remotely true. And it’s that kind of blanket statement that makes people give up on the electoral process — which inevitably means that those they disagree with who are politically engaged are the ones who carry the day.

If you want to make the world better, make your voice heard — not just in the streets, but at the ballot box. The street is for the (necessary and powerful) primal cry. It’s for the tearing down of systems. But to build up and reform systems, you need politics, with all its messiness and compromise. Don’t wash your hands of it. Plunge in, and work your hands into the dirt, and make something good grow.

(via Brain Pickings)