Category: Old Dish

Not too encouraging:

The Bush administration announced Wednesday that it will run out of maneuvering room to manage the government’s massive borrowing needs in two weeks, putting more pressure on Congress to raise the debt ceiling when it convenes for a special post-election session.

Oh, well.

MARY’S BACK! With her wife on the stage with the Cheneys and Bushes.

WAR WAS NOT THE ISSUE: I have to say it’s almost funny that for the past few months, I’ve been harangued about the selfishness of gays who put their issues ahead of pressing matters like the war, and yet the exit polls show something rather different. The gay vote for Bush was – amazingly – only slightly down on 2000. Many of them obviously thought the war or the economy was pre-eminent. But for evangelicals, the issue of “moral values” trumped the war! It wasn’t about the war on terror for the Bush base. It was about the war on gay unions. Oh, the ironies.

“To hell with being gracious, EAT SHIT SULLIVAN! Despite all your oh so noble commentary today, when things started getting rough, you bailed. I hope Soros eased you pain with a little green.”

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “I am a 25 year-old gay man, and I can’t even describe how saddened I am today by the re-election of President Bush and the numerous state amendments banning gay marriage that were passed on election day. I’m not really angry… just very sad and afraid. I don’t know what country I live in anymore. I thought this was the land of freedom. I thought I was free to pursue my own happiness. But right now I feel like my country hates me. What is going on?”

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “So, George W. Bush won. And he’s done so by a solid margin. The Democrats’ attempted coup managed to last all of eight hours. Not only is the President the first candidate to win a majority of the vote in a Presidential Election since 1988, but he also won more popular votes than any other candidate in history. The Democrats spent months telling us that high voter turnout would equal a win for them but, as it turns out, when 60% of the electorate showed up at the polls it translated into a Bush lead of nearly four million votes. In short: take that, you sons of bitches.
The Democrats are now talking about how this is a signal that Bush should ‘bring the country together’. Translated into American, this means ‘now that you’ve won, you should surrender to us.’ The hell with that. We’ve won. Winning means not having to say you’re sorry… Those who didn’t support Bush can go and perform a certain anatomically impossible act. They lost, now they can sit in the back of the bus. Thank God Almighty.” – Adam Yoshida, calling it as he sees it, on his popular blog.

That’s Bill Bennett’s conclusion. He won’t be the only one. What we’re seeing, I think, is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well. It is unsurprising, of course, given the uncertainty of today’s world, the devastating attacks on our country, and the emergence of so many more liberal cultures in urban America. And it is completely legitimate in this country for such views to be represented in public policy, however much I disagree with them. But the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful. Our safety valve must be federalism. We have to live and let live. As blue states become more secular, and red states become less so, the only alternative to a national religious war is to allow different states to pursue different options. That goes for things like decriminalization of marijuana, abortion rights, stem cell research and marriage rights. Forcing California and Mississippi into one model is a recipe for disaster. Federalism is now more important than ever. I just hope that Republican federalists understand this. I fear they don’t.

Here’s an email with which I concur entirely:

I didn’t vote for Bush for lots of reasons. But it seems to me that maybe the result, much as it was not what I wanted, will be good for the country. We are in the middle of a war whose outcome is very much in doubt. We have a fiscal policy that may or may not prove successful. Issues that have seemed remote to many like abortion and the Patriot Act’s definition of rights and privacy are likely to become more immediate over the next few years. Had we changed leadershop now, it would have been difficult to assign accountability, for good or bad, for these policies and decisions. I always feared, in fact, that Kerry would have had little chance of success in the face of a conservative chorus of “everything was going in the right direction in Iraq when we handed it over to you”. Whatever the result, over thee next few years we all will be better able to asses the success or failure of many things that are unfinished now, and hold one team accountable.

Exactly. My main fear with a Kerry victory was that the hard right would never have given him a chance in the war, and would have savaged him as commander-in-chief in order to pave the way for a victory in 2008. Ratcheting the country back to fiscal sanity would also have been a thankless task. Now, Bush will face the consequences of his own policies and we will be able to judge him on that. He has no excuses any more. I hope he succeeds in Iraq, in reforming social security. But no one should give him an easy pass if he fails.

I’ve been trying to think of what to say about what appears to be the enormous success the Republicans had in using gay couples’ rights to gain critical votes in key states. In eight more states now, gay couples have no relationship rights at all. Their legal ability to visit a spouse in hospital, to pass on property, to have legal protections for their children has been gutted. If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers. I’m not surprised by this. When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses. But it is deeply, deeply dispiriting nonetheless. A lot of gay people are devastated this morning, and terrified. We have seen, and not for the first time, how using fear of a minority can be so effective a tool in building a political movement. The single most important issue for Republican voters, according to exit polls, was not the war on terror or Iraq or the economy. It was “moral values.” Karl Rove understood the American psyche better than I did. By demonizing gay couples, the Republicans were able to bring in whole swathes of new anti-gay believers into their party. With new senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, two of the most anti-gay politicians in America, we can only brace ourselves for what is now coming.

FEDERALISM WORKS: At the same time, gays can still appeal to the fair-minded center. After fanning the flames of fear for much of the year, the president himself recently came out in favor of civil unions. That puts him at odds with the initiatives passed so easily across the country. I do not believe a majority exists for denying gay couples legally protected relationships. The national exit polls showed that 27 percent support marriage rights, 37 percent support civil unions and only 35 percent want to keep gay couples from having any rights at all. There are still many states where it is safe to be a gay couple or an openly gay person. We have the right to marry in one state, and in that state, pro-equality legislators were all re-elected handily. In California, we are on the brink of having almost-equality under the law. Around the civilized world, gay relationships are increasingly accepted as worthy of dignity and respect. The passage of so many anti-gay amendments in so many states reduces the need, by any rational measure, for a federal amendment that would scar the Constitution with discrimination. We need therefore to be even more emphatic about the need for a federalist response to an issue best left to the states. If we can avoid the FMA, we can live to fight another day.

STAND TALL: But one more thing is important. The dignity of our lives and our relationships as gay people is not dependent on heterosexual approval or tolerance. Our dignity exists regardless of their fear. We have something invaluable in this struggle: the knowledge that we are in the right, that our loves are as deep and as powerful and as God-given as their loves, that our relationships truly are bonds of faith and hope that are worthy, in God’s eyes and our own, of equal respect. Being gay is a blessing. The minute we let their fear and ignorance enter into our own souls, we lose. We have gained too much and come through too much to let ourselves be defined by others. We must turn hurt back into pride. Cheap, easy victories based on untruth and fear and cynicism are pyrrhic ones. In time, they will fall. So hold your heads up high. Do not give in to despair. Do not let the Republican party rob you of your hopes. This is America. Equality will win in the end.

President Bush is narrowly re-elected. It was a wild day with the biggest black eyes for exit pollsters. I wanted Kerry to win. I believed he’d be more able to unite the country at home, more fiscally conservative, more socially inclusive, and better able to rally the world in a more focused war on terror. I still do. But a slim majority of Americans disagreed. And I’m a big believer in the deep wisdom of the American people. They voted in huge numbers, and they made a judgment. Not a huge and decisive victory by any means. But at least a victory that is unlikely to be challenged. The president and his aides deserve congratulations. And so, I think, does Senator Kerry, whose campaign exceeded the low expectations of many of us.

FOR NOW: But the most fundamental fact of this campaign – and one of the reasons it has been so bitter – is that we are at war. Our opponents at home are not our enemies. The real enemy is the Jihadist terror network that, even now, is murdering innocents and coalition soldiers in Iraq. Our job now – all of us – is to support this president in that war, to back those troops, and to pray for victory. We saw yesterday, in the cold-blooded murder of a Dutch film-maker for his open criticism of Islamist misogyny, that the enemy is still at large; and aiming directly at our freedoms and security. In Fallujah, our troops are poised for a vital battle against terrorists and theocrats intent on derailing a free future for Iraq. Democracy is on the line there and throughout the world. I’ve been more than a little frustrated by the president’s handling of this war in the past year; but we have to draw a line under that now. The past is the past. And George W. Bush is our president. He deserves a fresh start, a chance to prove himself again, and the constructive criticism of those of us who decided to back his opponent. He needs our prayers and our support for the enormous tasks still ahead of him. He has mine. Unequivocally.

The whip-smart and brave Canadian Muslim, Irshad Manji, writes about the assassination of Theo van Gogh.

Yep. If Bush wins Ohio, it’s over. Here’s the official site tally.

The youth vote doesn’t seem to have turned out. Fascinating. We were all suckered on that one. I’m beginning to think Ohio may go for Bush, as the votes tick by. But I’ve learned one thing today: don’t expect anything. Carville just said that Bush now has the “superior hand” in this election. I think he’s right.

The first real bummer for Bush. How many times did he go there? Now what if Kerry wins Ohio and Bush wins Florida? It seems clearer to me that Bush is going to win in Florida. The squeaker squeaks some more.