Wednesday, November 05, 2008
A New Day
Well, good for Obama. I am an optimist, and will expect the best from a talented and smart man. If he governs responsibly and well, it will be a magnificent step forward for the country. It will help to solve and unlock many vexing challenges the country faces which in someway can only be solved by a man of the left, who chooses to govern conservatively (as Clinton largely did for the last 6 years of his Presidency).
17 Comments:
By 
Anthony, at
Wed Nov 05, 10:09:00 AM:
Optimism is a wonderful thing, but I really don't think you should be drinking this early in the morning.
Wait at least until he appoints John Kerry to State....
By TigerHawk, at
Wed Nov 05, 10:13:00 AM:
CP is one of the most optimistic people I know, if that was not obvious from his posts of the last few days.
By Anthony, at
Wed Nov 05, 10:17:00 AM:
I agree. I was just trying (and perhaps failing) at a little wry humor on a dreary post-Election Day morning in California. :)
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Nov 05, 10:49:00 AM:
I hate to throw water on this, but the reason that Clinton began to govern conservatively was because he began his term governing radically, and the Democrats paid for it in Congressional midterm elections in 1994.
In 1993, the Democrats had 57 Senate seats and 258 House seats. In 1995, they had 46 Senate Seats and 204 House Seats.
Pelosi and Reid have been biding their time, delaying and delaying until they could get their boy into the White House. Once he's there, I expect that they'll go nuts. And I expect Obama to go along with them.
By Hamster, at
Wed Nov 05, 11:10:00 AM:
This election was as much vote against the conservative movement as it was for Obama.
More seats in Congress that were once Republican fell to the Democrats.
Even some the seat in once solidly Republican districts just barely survived a Democratic takeover.
Conservatives need to rethink their brand.
They have branded themselves as the "largely white, largely uneducated, largely Christian party"
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Nov 05, 11:19:00 AM:
No, that's how they are branded by their opponents. The Democrats don't brand themselves as 'largely weak, largely effeminate, and largely unprincipled,' after all.
They got a majority in 1994 and held it for 12 years. They got spoiled and careless and corrupt, and they finally paid for it in these last two elections.
I saw something interesting a bit earlier... It turns out that the turnout (hah) for this election wasn't significantly larger than in 2004, when Bush won. The difference seems to have been either a number of moderates switching tickets or conservative apathy. I think the former.
By 
, at
Wed Nov 05, 11:39:00 AM:
Once again, McCain becomes W's collateral damage. McCain could have been outstanding had he been elected in 2000 ... but in 2008 he was past his sell-by date. Because of his military background, McCain couldn't make a clean break with his commander-in-chief. Palin only made sense as McCain's VP pick if he used her to appease the Republican base so he could move to the middle. Steve Schmidt ... an ex-Bushie ... was the wrong campaign manager to lead that charge. The middle mattered, unlike 2000.
McCain was competitive until the financial meltdown ... any other available Republican nominee would not have been. Had Hillary been the nominee ... with the financial meltdown ... she would have won by over 10% and carried over 45 states.
McCain would have given us a divided government, which I thought would be the better alternative right now. My principal overriding concern continues to be the unbridled growth of our federal government. Both parties feed off this ... to our collective detriment. It's not just money ... the federal government is encroaching on our liberties. Joe the Plumber is an important symbolic character in this.
The Republicans will likely blame McCain and not see that they've become a party in the wilderness. A party dominated by Rush and his ditto heads ... and the religious right ... is a permanent minority party. The first step in recovery here is to acknowledge that W has been a disaster as President ... a traitor to true libertarian conservative principles.
By joe buz, at
Wed Nov 05, 12:51:00 PM:
c'mon yall..Nancy is just trying to save the world and now she will have the help that she needs. The rest of the world will love us now and after last night the earth is healing and the seas are receding a little more than they did during the acceptance speech in Denver.
By sleeper, at
Wed Nov 05, 02:25:00 PM:
I am no expert on this, but don't the ascendant Democrats resent Clinton for exactly the governing that is now considered quite successful by many? In Audacity of Hope the (limited) praise Obama accords to Reagan sounds more honest than the credit he gives to Clinton.
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Nov 05, 03:21:00 PM:
Look, Obama and the Dems will be pretty constrained by the severity of the recession, the challenges of the credit system, the collapse in tax receipts and so forth. They will face an unprecedented deficit next year which could approach $1 trillion. They will have no choice but to cut spending - and they will have a hard time attacking the defense budget (though they'd like to) given our commitments, threats frmo the Russians, the Middle East, and terrorism.
That means that, unless they want skyrocketing interest rates (which Rubin and Buffett and Volcker will advise against), they will have to pick priorities and cut spending. Good luck to them if they want to raise taxes. I think they will get rid of the AMT and maybe raise cap gains and dividend taxes. But the revenue picture looks bad, they will need to cut spending. And the Dems are the only ones who can do it. Ha.
By , at
Wed Nov 05, 05:00:00 PM:
I don't think Barney Frank was kidding about cutting th DoD budget by 25%.
1) Cut SDI to the bone, or eliminate completely.
2) Halt or curtail all new hardware/systems aquisistions
3) Reduce the number of Carrier Battle groups now operational; cut Navy personnel.
4) Draw our forces in Iraq WAY down in the next year. (< 30K troops by end of 2009?)
5) Close more bases
And that's just for starters. I can think up lots more.
-David
By Escort81, at
Wed Nov 05, 06:07:00 PM:
CP -
I do admire your cojones for predicting a McCain win in a post a few days ago, but you now have to step up and say, "my bad." Fair is fair. Be a man and admit your error. I respected (and continue to respect) your optimism, which I will try to share. I would like to see this President succeed, because that means that the country is probably doing well.
The Democrats will have to "own" (in the psychotheraputic sense) governance fully now, and as you point out, they don't have a great deal of room to maneuver. It will be hard to blame everything on W much past the 2010 midterms. That said, given the electoral map last night (number of states and margins in key states), it is hard to see a path to a Republican victory in 2012 for the White House. Exogenous events may dicate things, as they did in this election, following the Lehman meltdown.
This may have been a transfomational election, though of course we won't know that for some time.
By , at
Wed Nov 05, 06:25:00 PM:
I'm optimistic too. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only Republican who thinks that Obama is probably going to do a solid job. Even if I disagree with some (but not all of his) policies, I think that his diplomatic skills (they are there somewhere) are going to do wonders. Never underestimate a man's ability to talk bullshit, and he is GOOD at that. This might be one of those presidencies where charisma has much more effect than policy.
-Carl
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Nov 05, 09:52:00 PM:
"This may have been a transfomational election, though of course we won't know that for some time."
Nope. Republicans did too well at large for that. Given the hyped and expected tsunami of Democratic conquest, Tuesday was actually kind of lame for them. Remember, they were talking about an electoral landslide and a filibuster-proof Senate majority.
Enough people are just tired of the Republicans to shift the balance of power.
By , at
Wed Nov 05, 10:57:00 PM:
I wonder how long it will take President Obama to propose a constitutional convention to correct some of the deficiencies in the current document?
By , at
Thu Nov 06, 12:13:00 AM:
@ CP: For the most part I agree with you; Obama might just be able to get away with more in certain aspects of governing conservatively because 1) conservatives sure as hell won't mind and 2) liberals will trust his intentions moreso than they would an actual conservative. As an example, take the 2008 South Dakota abortion ban. I haven't read the text, but I gather that it is boilerplate "no abortion except for health of mother and rape/incest." With a few small curtailments regarding very early term, Obama could probably get away with proposing such a thing and have a good number of thinking liberals go along with him; there are good arguments, and he could make them well. These same liberals would balk at the same ban coming from Bush for fear that it is a stepping stone toward the 2006 SD abortion ban, which had almost no exceptions. I am hoping Obama realizes this and uses his leverage to defuse some of the wedge issues in a mutually agreeable way. My point of (probably) overzealous optimism: a prominent conservative will pick up the other side to accomplish the same feat. Example line: get big government out of the sacred institution of marriage, but do create this civil contract that allows people with intertwined fates, like husband & wife (or unstated: homosexual partners) to share certain legal things like visitation and inheritance. Not only would this go toward resolving issues that people feel strongly about, allowing us to discuss new issues, but it might be a way for the Republican party to get out of the woods through a record of accomplishment. That would be change I can believe in.
By Cardinalpark, at
Thu Nov 06, 08:18:00 AM:
E and others - those of you who would like me to acknowledge my incorrect prediction regarding McCain, I am happy to do that. I was wrong. Oh well.
I was also wrong about Romney. Oh well.
But Obama is my President too, so I have to hope he does a good job. And I have better things to do than whine.
