There was no conspiracy to keep Democrats down, and there is no secret explanation for why Obama is winning. He is just running an incredibly good campaign. The idea is so rusty for Democrats and Republicans alike that it just seems like magic.
I believe in competition. John Kerry wasn’t swift-boated–he was beaten by a superior campaign. I guess Al Gore lost because of Nader and the Supreme Court. But why was it ever even that close? What is the use of being a Southern senator when you can’t carry a single state in the South? I mean no disrespect to any of those guys, I really don’t. But this notion that mystical and nefarious forces deprived them from claiming what was rightly theirs is odious and self-serving.
No one has conspired to deprive us of power over the past few decades. The American people aren’t stupid. We’ve sucked at articulating our message. If you have any interest in a more progressive country, we need to be honest. At the presidential level, at least, conservatives have hammered us. Give them their due. Don’t blame Rush. Don’t blame Kristol. Don’t denigrate states you’ve never visited. Give them their due. Give them their respect. Study them, and then get better.
Denial is bad for two reasons. First, if you can’t accept that you lost, you don’t have a prayer of getting better. If you think Kerry and Gore lost because they were too “high-minded,” then you miss the basic fundamentals at work, and spend your days congratulating yourself for being up on the latest Paul Krugman. This is a war, and you don’t lose wars because of abstract principles, but because of hard immovable facts. Is your army bigger than theirs? Are you attracting more recruits? Are you deploying in the right places? Who has more resources? Who has the technology edge? These are the reasons I voted Obama in the primary. I didn’t think he was “more principled” than Clinton, nor did I really care. I thought she was tough, but I knew he was tougher. I thought her campaign was smart, but I thought his was smarter. I thought one person was talking about being a fighter, and another was out there actually being a fighter. The general is bearing all of this out, because right now, Barack Hussein Obama is beating John McCain like he stole something–from Toot, no less.
Democrats are luckier than we have any right to expect thanks to the convergence of two independent events. First, the grisly suicide of American Republicanism is finally reaching a climax. Second, Democrats somehow found a candidate with the raw political skill to make the most of it. Either one would spell a good year; together the two could be an epoch making event.
gwangung
Say it again, dude.
There ain’t no magic elixir–except run good candidates. Explain your program clearly. Don’t talk down to voters. Show how your program aids THEM.
LarryB
That’s what got the whole MoveOn –> Dean Candidacy –> Netroots deal started: Grassroots disgust at Democrats who wouldn’t talk or act like Democrats. As the saying went, "why vote for Republican Lite when you have the real thing?" It’s starting to get better, but watch out for the 2010 primary season. I expect it to be entertaining.
Far Left American Hater Incertus
About Gore–it’s important to remember that 1) he won the popular vote pretty handily and 2) Florida wasn’t close because of a poor campaign. It was close because Jeb! and Katherine Harris dumped tens of thousands of legitimate voters from the rolls. If they’re allowed to vote, Florida never comes close to a recount. Most of the networks called Florida relatively early in the evening because the exit polls told them Gore was going to win–and if the rolls hadn’t been purged, he would have. SCOTUS just delivered the kill shot.
r€nato
I get Coates’ point, but I think he’s engaging in a bit of triumphalism.
Did Gore run a mediocre campaign? Yes. Should he have taken Tennessee? Yes.
But jesus christ, it took a crooked election in Florida and a crooked Supreme Court to beat him. You don’t go up against that every year.
D. Aristophanes
Kerry flat-out lost. Gore didn’t lose because of Nader, that’s just ridiculous.
But Florida and the Supreme Court in 2000 is a different story, and Coates does us a disservice by whitewashing that con job.
ddjango
Bingo! And don’t blame Bush or Cheney, either. Snakes are snakes. What the hell did we expect of them, the NeoNew Deal? They were not incompetent or crazy – they were paid to dismantle the country and give it away to the mega-rich. They’ve done an excellent job and they’ve gotten away with it. They cased the joint correctly and stuck to their plan.
The next two or three months are going to be interesting . . . interesting, indeed.
Duncan Watson
I am glad that TNC posted this. Now if we can take these lessons and get more Democrats who don’t retreat from democratic ideals. Stop trying to appeal to the republicans. We need to enlarge and energize the base.
gwangung
No, Coates is saying you expect snakes to be snakes and you plan around it by smashing the muthas into the ground before they get to be snakes.
Playing victim without having a plan in place is a sure way to lose.
liberal
There’s an excellent essay in the current Harper’s saying similar things, by their editor Hodge.
kommrade jakevich
1. If Obama wins, yes, he will have set the new standard for campaigning. Good luck following that act.
2. For the rest, I’ll have to check back with Mr. Coates after the 4th. Or possibly the 5th.
Dennis - SGMM
The late Lee Atwater’s insights into the media put the Republicans light years ahead of the Democrats in terms of getting their message out. Atwater understood that the media is a hungry beast and that it cares less about the amount of truth in what you feed it than it does about how compelling it is. In many ways that still holds true and it still works.
demkat620
Hear, hear. Stop listening to the asshat media.
Obama is kicking ass. ‘Nuff said.
JL
Let’s not forget about the Atlanta circuit court that let it proceed to the Supreme Court. There are some that still believe that was the set up. Florida was stolen! FYI I voted for THATONE today in GA. Not counting the twenty minutes that it took to find a parking space, the wait was 2 hr and 50 minutes. I have a son who moved and registered in his new precinct in 2002. He asked me to verify his polling place on line and they changed his address and polling place back to the house we lived in when he was 18. The last time he voted in 2006 they had accurate information and now the state doesn’t. GA has a photo law and they match your license to the address which his will not. I asked a poll worker about the error and she said there are lots of those errors because after 2006 the state tried to match up using different guidelines. He is going to vote early so they can fix it but if he showed up on at his polling site on Tuesday, they would not be able to fix it. Tuesday is going to be a mess in GA because it is only a fluke that he discovered it before hand. He has his registration card and his photo license but it does not match the info the state put in their computer. Sounds pretty screwy, huh….
Cris v.3.1
Kos said something similar the other day —
but I like Ta-Nehisi’s style better. (Though I’m not sure if he ever filled in the "second" part of why denial is bad.)
Comrade Stuck
I think Grisly is the right descriptive choice for the suicide of republicanism. It seems to be reaching a climax over the LA Times tape wingnuts are clamoring for showing (they say) Obama once again in the same building as a GOP boogyman. What word would suffice for the current collective scream of fools as their world swirls the toilet bowl. They want to brand Obama a terrorist, or sympathizer of terrorists for knowing a man, Mr. Khalid, whose organization recieved 100’s of thousands of dollars from (cough cough) John Mccain’s very own organization, the ISI.
—
I can’t think of a word that does that justice, although there are some that come close.
BombIranForChrist
I was telling my wife the other night that there are two reasons I like Obama.
First, I agree with a lot of his policies, especially with those that focus on higher pay but also accountability for teachers.
But second, he is just a bona fide ass-kicker. He really is the Muhammad Ali of politics. He just floats around (seemingly) effortlessly, popping his competition in the mouth every once in a while, but mostly just watching as the opposition wears itself out, incredulous that it was beaten by someone who boxes, not punches.
Obama beat Clinton and soon he will beat McCain and the Republican Revolution. That took an incredible amount of skill, and as a great lover of politics, I have really enjoyed it. It’s about time a Democrat started playing this way. You don’t have to be a sleazeball to play good, tough politics.
Steve V
If Obama wins he’ll go down as a great candidate who ran a great campaign. For whatever reason, today I’ve started to feel some queasiness about the likeliness of this result.
The Grand Panjandrum
If Gore wins his home state he’s President. George Bush became President because Al "Bolt in his Neck" Gore couldn’t carry his own fucking state. The EV count was 271-267. He was robbed in Florida. So what. Had he carried Tennessee he would have been President. End of story.
Geeno
Great band name!
kth
OT, but Junior fucking Johnson, godfather of stock car racing, one of the first generation titans who took their bootlegging rigs to the tracks to race, and subject of epic Tom Wolfe piece titled "The Last American Hero", has endorsed Obama for President. (apologies if this has already been covered)
TheFountainHead
Good lord, I thought i could watch Hardball again, but I guess not. Tom DeLay is on and I want to strip my skin off with steel wool.
The Moar You Know
Nope, nope and no fucking way. Had Gore run an even halfway competent campaign, what happened in Florida flat-out wouldn’t have mattered. His organization was lazy and focused on achieving the minimum electoral votes needed to win (so was the entire Democratic apparatus at the time). We can thank Obama for being a hell of a candidate, and his organization for being on top of things and reactive – but the real unsung hero of this election is Howard Dean and his fifty-state strategy. I knew eventually it would pay off. Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that it would pay off like it has.
JL
Hello, Please read my comment at number 13 about how the state of GA is changing the addresses and polling sites of people in their purge to clean the roles. It’s screwy. My son has his own residence and has since 2002 and registered and voted at the polling site where he lives. The last time he voted was 2006 and since then the state changed his address to his previous address and his photo id no longer matches.
JL
@The Moar You Know: But it did matter and no matter what you think about Gore’s campaign it was decided by the Circuit Court and then the Supreme Court.
Dennis - SGMM
It seemed to me that Gore’s campaign was based on "How can you fail to vote for me?" rather than "Here’s why you should vote for me." The wooden persona he assumed on the stump didn’t help either. It was reminiscent of the way the self-deprecating and often funny Bob Dole looked much like a robot in his run in ’96.
Comrade Darkness
McCain and the Abel Republican Revolution
–fixed
MattF
I’m looking forward to watching foreign leaders try to deal with an American President who is smarter and more popular in their own country than they are.
Commie-rade Rommie
Tina Fey may have steady work for the next few years:
SP leaving the ranch
Danton
Let’s not forget Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy (or those who pushed in the netroots). Dean deserves a helluva lot of credit for building infrastructure as chair of the Party at a time when prominent Dems were publicly questioning his leadership and decisions.
Dean got the ball rolling. Or, as my wife likes to say, "Yeraaaaargh!"
ppcli
"But Jesus Christ, it took a crooked election in Florida and a crooked Supreme Court to beat him."
.
Look, the Supreme Court’s behavior was disgraceful, and Bush v. Gore will go down in a special place of shame in Supreme Court history. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Republicans sent Ted Olsen and James Baker down to Florida to win at all costs. The Democratic lawyers were smart enough as lawyers, but completely out-organized and nowhere near as ruthless as their Republican adversaries. Instead of whining about the Brooks Brothers riot, we should blame the Democratic side for not being prepared for it. Republicans did some funny business in Ohio in 2004? Well, they always do something like that: why weren’t we prepared?
.
I am reassured by watching the Obama camp that they really have their act together. They have lined up the lawyers they need and they are prepared to play hardball. This time it will be different, and not because we are going to wish extra hard this time. This time some ass will be kicked when it needs to be.
Jay B.
Beyond the Supreme Court and Nader’s equivalency between Bush and Gore, I think Coates’ disappearing of the endless media campaign against Gore is still a huge part of what ails America.
We’re too ignorant a nation — and it’s not because that people are innately stupid, or lazy — but because those who we most rely on to give us information, namely the media, is funneling us shit, drowning us in trivia and getting basic points of facts wrong. Idiocy in, idiocy out.
Gore’s personality was a problem sure. And few political organizations on Earth have matched Obama’s brilliant one (raised and weaned on Saul Alinsky). And Gore lost a few points to Nader which, in Ralph’s absence, he probably would have gotten. And, naturally, a honest election in Florida would have sealed the deal anyway.
But HOW people saw and responded to Gore was completely shaded by the media’s mendacious reporting, their aggressive ignorance of the issues and their complete loathing of the candidate himself. It’s beyond stupid to pretend that the war against gore on behalf of the media never happened.
Because if you do, you’ll be surprised when it happens again.
LarryB
@Danton:
You can also thank HRC for fighting to the finish through that endless primary. It’s pretty clear that Democrats up and down the ticket benefited from the early infusion of cash and energy. Double-props to Hillary for shutting down her campaign about as graciously as it can be done.
HumboldtBlue
Uhh, yes he certainly fucking was swift-boated, in one of the most despicable and dishonest campaign stunts I’ve ever seen.
El Cid
I think we have had a huge confluence of positive factors, tied together by the quality of the candidate and his campaign, but by no means created by him.
El Cid
@LarryB: In retrospect I am now very grateful for the long primary slog. Of course, we might be in a totally different situation if the economy hadn’t collapsed on a level which prompted even ordinary people to stop being fascinated by the Republicans’ bullsh*t, and who’s to say what my retrospect might have been then?
Duke of Earl
Not according to Vincent Bugliosi..
David Boies, Gore’s lawyer at the SCOTUS only made an equal protection argument because Rehnquist gave him an extra two minutes (not at Boies’ request either). If not for that Boies would have made no equal protection argument at all.
Mnemosyne
I posted this over at TNC’s place, too, but a lot of people forget what really won the election for the Republicans in 2004: they quietly put anti-gay-marriage initiatives on the ballots of 11 states to bring out their base. That gave them enough breathing room that they could concentrate on winning over the people in the mushy middle who weren’t quite sure that a "wartime president" should be booted out of office no matter what he did.
Problem with that, of course, is that it only works once, and only if it’s going to be close. The Republicans are running a 2004-style election after Dean, Obama, and the Democrats have had 4 years to study what they did and figure out how to counter it.
Danton
LarryB–
Yup. You’re right. I was just thinking about circumstances a few years back. You know, a few months after Dean said, "Yeraaaargh."
chrome agnomen
yeah maybe we didn’t run as good campaigns, as in, not as low, perfidious, fact-free, sleazy. call it what you will. the press was enormously complicit, esp in the active smearing of al gore and the passive smearing of kerry. but let it be said again, the right knows how to win campaigns; they have no clue, or desire to do anything after winning, but they can (usually) win. we weren’t so much lucky this time, as tactically superior. in large part, though, after a long binge of self-righteousness, there has been a fairly widespread case of projectile vomiting of right wing talking points, which the collective body politic finally tired of trying to digest.
Delia
Look, the goopers flat out cheated in both 2000 and 2004. Gore and Kerry both made mistakes in their campaigns, but there were blatant smears and voter suppression and neither of them knew how to deal with the techniques effectively. The fact is, that Obama could never have gotten smart enough to deal with these sorts of enemies if he hadn’t watched the spectacle of lies, deception, and theft. But the American people weren’t ready to reject the goopers before they’d brought us all down to ruination, either. So it’s quite a deal all around.
Bill
What a load of bullshit.Anyone dismissing what happened in Florida because Al Gore "should have won in Tennesse" is a fool.Either Gore won Florida or he did’nt,and clearly he did.Losing Tennesee was irrelevant.Gore won the popular vote and the electoral college.
As for Obama’s brilliant campaign,Ta-Nehisi is conveniently forgetting that McCain,throughout the campaign, has been right on Obama’s heels and even managed to pull ahead of Obama a mere month ago.It took the near total collapse of the US economy for Obama to break away.Why was it so close?!
Ta-nehisi is typical of bottom feeding media liberals.He addresses,and dismisses,strawman
complaints against Rush Limbaugh,even though it was the mainstream media that waged the war on Gore.But Ta-Nehisi wants to rise in his proffesion so he knows to keep his mouth shut.Read your Daily Howler archives if you want the truth.
zak
TNC is a very smart dude. And it’s worth remembering that since 1964, even the elections the Dems have won haven’t been all that convincing. Clinton never won a majority of the popular vote. Carter had 50.1%. Heck, set aside 1964 & you have to go back to 1944 for a thorough Democratic beatdown. So the mojo Barry’s bringing is long overdue.
dww44
I am gonna side with Bill on this. Yes, Democrats don’t typically play hardball as well as Republicans, But both Gore and Kerry were harmed by Republican dirty politics, by the media, which just loves to love Republicans, and by the voters who seem, particularly this time, to want to believe old cliches about Democrats and conspiracy theories about Obama. That is why McCain has stayed so close, even while running a campaign that has mostly not made sense, and Obama has run a superb one.
From where I sit, the Reps are gaining, as they are throwing every smear, known and unknown, at Obama and Democrats and doing it across the entire media spectrum. My gosh, every email I get from Factcheck.org is rebutting a lie the McCain campaign or a Republican PAC has distributed about Obama. I may not speak to a lot of people after this over, which ever way it goes. It probably feels better if one resides in a more progressive state.
handy
I hate to sound like some kind of mindless Somerbot, but honestly Gore was facing two opposing forces, Bush naturally and the MSM. They absolutely trashed him and just made up junk about him that, quite honestly, was very personal and vicious.
It appears Barack doesn’t have that going against him this time around, as it’s mainly the McCain campaign dishing out the hate. Even Fox has had a few people do push back against some of McGrump’s most inane memes ("Obama hates Israel", "He is a socialist.") It’s a lot easier campaigning against one bullhorn of hate than two.
handy
Another thing, observing McCain, is that there really is an advantage of going on the offensive first, of making the accusation, no matter how inane or irrational.
Like this Khalidi thing Palin brought up today. Sure, the media may do some clean up and point out that McCain himself had a relationship with him. But for a lot of low-information types, the accusation sticks. The damage has been done.
How do you fight that? Does Barack suddenly start sending out coded messages that McCain blows gay Mexican Islamic goats? All kidding, it is the most effective campaign tactic the Repugs have and the Dems are always catching up that stuff.
BTW, Big Dog is on fire right now! Man, how come why can’t have this guy running for President again?! Blue dress be damned.
lethargytartare
@Jay B.:
spot on – I’m as happy as any lib to see the Dems running a better campaign, but ignoring the the other factors that contributed to those losses is just as blind and stupid as it would have been to keep using the same campaign tactics.
Mike G
The American people aren’t stupid.
This Texan woman who didn’t want to give Newsbeat her name is one of them.
She said: "I really don’t care what Obama says because I don’t want someone with a Muslim background running our country.
"He’ll be letting them all come over here and he’ll be buddy buddy with them all.
"We’ll be giving them nuclear arms. Next thing you know they’ll be attacking us again."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/the_p_word/newsid_7695000/7695727.stm
eyeball
I’m a believer too in the "just win baby" theory of prez elex.
Gore could have sent Bubba to WestVa the final week and turned it around there and won despite Fla. (Gore lost by 15,000 stinking votes in WVa.) That was stupid, bad planning. Kerry should have had a backup behind Ohio. He flubbed Iowa and New Mex. Same problem.
What is so brilliant here is that Barack has 5 backup plans in case the Repubs steal Fla. & Ohio – and don’t think they won’t. This is the new model. This and of course the mega-dough.
fkvidahl
Please post a picture of the expression on Mr. Coates’ face when they steal this one. I can hear the Serious Media now: "the exit polls missed the Bradley effect… No one could have predicted the unwillingness of white and Hispanics to vote for the black candidate… I guess when they got into the booth, they just couldn’t vote for a black man".
I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not dancing on their graves until we actually bury them.
Jesurgislac
Eyeball, 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing. Anyone can now look back at what happened in 2000 and say "This is what Gore should have done to get into the White House."
Gore won in 2000: Bush lost but stole the White House. That Gore did not fight Bush’s electoral theft to the bitter end is, I think, because he believed it was better for the US and for the next Democratic candidate to run for office, to let Bush take the Presidency rather than have Gore’s administration begin with the media narrative of "the sore loser sulked till he got it", and entrenched Republican hostility because they would insist on believing that Bush was "really" the winner.
In 2000, Gore had no means of knowing exactly how bad Bush’s administration was going to be, nor that the electoral theft of Florida was simply going to be spread across the nation for 2004. Obviously we now know that it would have been better – for the thousands killed on September 11 and the million plus killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, for the good name of the US not to be forever associated with tortured prisoners – but Gore didn’t know it. No one did.
I do blame somewhat Kerry for not fighting to the bitter end: he had the opportunity to learn from Gore, and he knew how much it mattered that Bush not be permitted another four years. Still.
I hope that Obama has learned from 2000 and 2004, that he wins by a sufficiently large margin to overcome electoral rigging – and the rigging will happen, not to mention all the voters who will find themselves turned away at the polls because of circumstances already described on this thread – and that once he is in office, he takes advantage of the window of opportunity to have elections in the US investigated and reformed to prevent what happened in the past years from happening again. It’s a big job – but it’s possibly the most important task for American democracy that any President has ever had to do.
bellatrys
Hey Bill, you should ask your school for a refund. It’s space after period, in case you haven’t noticed. But I guess you don’t read much except other similarly typing-challenged – and thinking-challenged – wingnuts…
Cyrus
@El Cid:
I’d just like to go on the record as having predicted this in advance. Despite Democrats dispirited in general who focused on the long primary, it was always a mixed blessing at worst.
If things were different, then… things would have been different. This economy didn’t come out of the blue. Lots of left-wingers have been linking to stuff from 2006 and 2005 predicting the housing bubble would burst and stuff. Obama is winning (at the moment, knock on wood), and while a crappy economy is naturally bad for the incumbent party, if the economy were different then he would have been running a different campaign. The fact that it seems to have worked out well under these circumstances doesn’t mean that the party politics wouldn’t have been helpful to other circumstances as well.