There are a lot of angry and confused republicans in this country. They cannot understand how Mitt Romney lost the election. I, for one, was speechless watching Fox News have Karl Rove – KARL ROVE – on its election coverage flat out denying the Ohio results… but I get it… that man spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make the republican base angry – no wonder he was in denial and the base is confused and angry.
Jump to: Republican Obstruction | What do democrats do now? The 2-4-2 Obama presidency model
What happened in the 2012 election?
Look at the Presidency, AND the House and Senate, what does the overall result tell the political world: the republican base is too extreme to win national elections. The house is the only place where the Republican Party maintained control, and that is 100% due to the fact that House races are regional elections, NOT national where the entire state is represented. Moreover, the most recent redistricting was so gerrymandered that many of those congressional districts will stay republican strongholds until after the next census.
Senate races are state-wide. They are not regional and put into and gerrymandered district maps. As such, they have to “work” for all the people in a state, not just pockets of the electorate shifted street-by-street to make them lean more left or right. Everyone knows that the republican base is shrinking, and getting much more socially extreme. It’s been said over and over: there aren’t enough grumpy white men for the Republican Party to keep on its old white-man-and-evangelical-only course. The “Party of Reagan” is NOT the republican party of today – Reagan would have been “primaried out” by the current Republican Party.
The world is changes. Societies change. Empires fall, new technologies change the world, and thousands of people are born and die every day. Conservative means resisting change. That philosophy just isn’t going to work anymore. The world is too small, the people are too diverse and too many to fence an entire political party into suburbia. The American electoral map of the south always being red, and coasts and urban area always blue – THINK about what that means, WHY people who that way. It’s encouraging AND sad at the same time – the red states fighting, fighting, fighting against change (even when the “facts” they have as reasons why they are fighting change are completely wrong – Karl Rove doing election coverage on Fox).
What now for the American electorate?
Education, education, education. The number one problem of all of the polarization is a lack of shared experience by people in this country. If we could solve that at a very you age, 90% of the gridlock could be solved. I joke with friends that every student in the county should be forced for do two semesters abroad while in high school: one in the US, but in an opposite-demographic area (city meet country, country meet city), and the second overseas. It’s needed though. I want a kid in Mississippi to experience NHS benefits in the UK and what it’s like to use the NYC subways. I want a kid from the Bronx to live in a town of 1000 people in Oklahoma, and spend some time in Tuscany. The ONLY way to get people to understand one another is through shared experience. Clearly moving all American children overseas for 6 months is not a viable solution, but I’m sure you get the point.
What about Republican Obstructionism?
Mitch McConnell was not very helpful the night of the 2012 election in showing he was willing to stop being the king of the filibuster, but let’s face it: the country doesn’t expect anything else from Kentucky. Congress can still win with its gerrymandered districts and maintain extremes in the party, but the Senate cannot. The problem for Mitch is that he might get hit in a primary in 2 years by, yet again, another extreme Tea Party candidate (which the democrats would welcome… but we are talking about Kentucky, so even with an Akin-type on the ticket it’s still a hard road for a democrat). For all the other Senators, however: can you acknowledge the vast majority of the country doesn’t like obstruction and therefore start behaving like the country wants you to behave not just like the remaining extreme base of your party? Do you change now or do you change later. Either way you will have to stop being the party of No, the question is when you’ll finally wake up to reality and start working with some honor rather than political extremism.
How money is spent is also an important lesson for both political parties to change. The only thing that a billion dollars achieved was increase the gap between the extremes. Ads piss people off, and ads bend the truth if not flat out lie – which pisses more people off. It’s time for real campaign finance reform, less money, less interest and bring integrity back to the process. Sadly, I don’t think that will ever happen. With hundreds of billions of dollars resulting from who is in control in Washington on the line, however… get crazy money out of politics will sadly never happen.
Bottom line: the country is moving forward. It’s getting more diverse. It’s getting a lot more dense in population. It’s getting a lot more liberal in its social views because of that increase in population density, and when people say “small government” it expect small government, not 70-year old senators legislating how the country wants to have sex and/or children. The country is changing – republican party: come with us or disappear and eventually get overshadowed by a third party. It’s up to you.
What do Democrats now after the 2012 election?
One thing: mid-terms, mid-terms, mid-terms. The mid-term elections are vital to progress. I see a possible symmetry to the Obama presidency: 2-4-2. In the first two years his administration got a lot done because he had a Congress that was willing to work. The following 4 years (2010-2014) very little will get done because the extreme is still in the House. Then the last two years, provided the democrats use everything the Obama campaign machine has taught them, democrats can re-balance Congress and Obama will once again have a Congress that is willing to focus more on accomplishment and less on politics.
If the Democratic Party is smart, it needs to strive for the 2-4-2 Obama Administration model; ending his second term with the same sort of high note(s) on which his first term started.
Democrats also need to keep the backbone on social issues that they discovered in the 2012 election – but they need to keep it simple: civil rights. Don’t go crazy with specifics. Keep it simple: civil rights. Whether that be marriage, sex, gender, race, property, education, religion… all rights for everyone. Pockets of the right think the democratic party wants to take away their rights… the democrats need to break through the NRA and social extreme messaging and show them otherwise. But that message will only get through if it’s kept simple: democrats stand for all rights for everyone, while republicans stand for select rights for the selected few.
It is not possible to over-stress the importance of the 2014 election: Start now, democrats. Take back the states so we can fix the election process and let people vote again. Take back Congress so legislation can begin moving again in Washington. Start now.
Start now. Seriously. Start now.
