On Monday, the day before the election, I wrote this:

Kerry will win, and America’s soul will be restored. There is no place in my world for the alternative.

Well, I give myself full marks for putting my balls on the table, but sometimes when ya do that, they get stomped on. Hard.

I hurt inside. I feel the way I did after 9/11, kind of stunned and punched in the gut. I’m generally optimistic, and hopeful that this will be a good thing for our party and our country in the long run. We’re going to have a rough patch, but we will come out of it a stronger nation. But right now I feel like something’s died.

I made a pledge to support whoever the President turned out to be, and I stand by that pledge. I also made a pledge to criticize whoever the President turned out to be, and I will honor that as well.

I intend to write more of my thoughts later, but for today, here is a collection of the rants and reactions I’ve been ingesting for the past couple of days. I imagine that the really useful analysis will show up once the pain wears off a bit, but it’s been helpful for me to read all the great writing that’s been pouring out of the blogs lately. Some really intelligent people are turning things over, figuring them out, dealing with their pain and trying to put it in perspective. It’s very hopeful. It gives one hope.

Election Theories & Random Thoughts

• As usual, Josh Marshall has a very good take on what this election means.

• Sid the Fish has the shorter election.

• Xeni at Boing Boing has a good collection of reactions from the Left.

• I think Al Franken pretty much hits it on the head in his usual style. After telling us what Kerry should have done better, he says:

You know I wouldn’t mind losing an election if it were an honest disagreement, based on facts, over values and policy. But that’s not what happened. A large majority of Bush supporters went to the polls believing things that were false.

• Jason Kottke says we’re all stupid.

• Functional Ambivalent crunches the voting numbers. Bush has no mandate.

• Digby agrees, and reframes the election. Read this. Don’t get gamed by Rove’s strategy.

Red versus Blue

• First of all, I think the newsies got a little dazzled by the primary red and blue flashing at them from their state maps. Those binary maps really don’t tell the story. Many of the races in those states were closer than they appeared on the winner-take-all electoral map. At Boing Boing we get a map with various shades of purple, representing percentages of Democrat and Republican votes by state. They also point us to a telling map at USA Today which breaks down the red/blue by county. UPDATE: Here’s another by-county data map. (DeLong) Compare it to this map from 1860. (Washington Monthly)

• Riding Fear to Victory – Republicans got out the vote by getting gay marriage on the ballot. (The Talent Show) [Has anyone seen evidence that this actually helped?] Edward at Obsidian Wings has an answer, though: Create a Defense of Marriage Act with some real teeth to it.

• Functional Ambivalent suggests we should give the Red States exactly what they want.

Looking Forward

• Tena at First Draft says, Never Give Up.

• Athenae, also at First Draft, sparks a really good conversation in this post, in which she asks what the Democratic Party stands for. Her commenters thrash this out pretty well, but I think she actually says it best. We’re the “party of individual freedom working for the common good.”

• Atrios also says we need to figure out who we are.

• On the other hand, The Poor Man says that we know who we are. We need to stop soul-searching and start building infrastructure.

Bitter/Never Surrender

• It’s not a contest, but TBogg would probably win “Most Bitter Assessment of this Election.”

• Orcinus doesn’t hold out much hope that the conservatives are really looking to build any bridges.

• At The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel says that our precious democratic institutions are under attack, and we must start thinking about how to resist.

• James Wolcott is ready to hang himself, but vows to carry on.

• Thomas at Seeing the Forest urges us to call our congressmen and tell them that we “expect them to fight tooth and nail against the Bush agenda.”

• Via Sisyphus Shrugged, Teresa Neilsen Hayden refuses to accept the results.

• From Boing Boing, Rich Malley says, buck up kiddos, and take a lesson from the other side.

• Hugh MacLeod has a pithy comment.

The Media

• The media in general may be broken, but CNN certainly is. (Joi Ito)

• Some great insights on the press and the election from PressThink. Also, where does the press go from here?

Voting is Broken

• International election monitors in the US find it extraordinarily difficult to monitor for fairness. (Joi Ito)

• And, I’ve lost the link now, but as someone pointed out, making voters wait in line for hours to vote amounts to voter suppression. There’s no excuse for this. Voting needs to be fixed.

International Reaction

• I have some contacts overseas, and I’m afraid Joi Ito’s reaction is pretty typical: “The people of America have failed us today.”

Bright Spots

• From The New York Times’ article on Bush’s press conference:

“Mr. Bush’s victory appeared to clear the way for a reshuffling of his cabinet, with John Ashcroft, the attorney general, and Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, likely to leave for personal reasons, according to administration officials.”

• The youth vote actually did turn out, and in higher numbers than ever before. (The Regular)

Digging In

• Bob Beckel isn’t ready to shake hands. From the sounds of this, he won’t be ready anytime soon. (News Hounds)

• God Bless Molly Ivins. She tells us how to cure a chicken-killin’ dog. (Working For Change)

• Maureen Dowd gets pretty damn blunt about what she thinks about the Republican’s conciliation.

Republican Reactions

I honestly can’t take too much of this. For all the righteous indignation over the actions of the Left, the Righties seem to think they have license now to behave badly, and with impunity. Last night I watched a bit of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. One of the so-called comedians actually said that he thought Muslims should be thankful that we even allow them on airplanes with us after 9/11; they should be begging us to fly on “our” airplanes. Jesus, man; could you be an uglier American?

In fairness, some Democrats are overreacting, too, (This Blog Sits At…) and not all Republican reaction has been of the shit-for-brains variety, of course, but it’s a little tough to take nonetheless.

• Shark Blog has a breakdown of why Kerry lost. I take issue with most of it, but especially points One (What the hell does being a “regular guy” have to do with being qualified to be lead the country?) and Four (Kerry’s “global test” comment was taken out of context and cynically manipulated).

• The Talent Show links to a Bush supporter who’s basically giving 48% of the country the finger.

• Functional Ambivalent also samples a few choice words from some gracious and humble Republicans.

• Right on Red perplexes me. Johnny Walker Red seems like a sane and reasonable guy, but he says stuff like “Kerry has made a lot of divisive, destructive statements in this campaign,” and, “After decades on the wrong side of history, John Kerry has finally made the right decision.” I have no idea what he means. Further, a commenter says, “Kerry has shown himself to be an unprinicpled, traitorous, elitist, poser jackass.” To which JWR replies, in part, “the war on the moonbat Left is still on, 100%. Now they’re really gonna get wacky.”

There’s your conciliation, right there.

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Thursday, November 4th, 2004 @ 2:47 pm Politics Matters
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