So here we are: November 3rd (or 4th in Shanghai). The dust has cleared, or at least settled enough to get an idea of all that happened. And oh, no! Obama Chastened! Democrats Routed! Obama Takes a Shellacking! Democrats Bent Over a Tree Stump and Sodomized! What will this mean for 2012? Does this signal a paradigm shift in the American electorate? Was the John Cusack movie 2012 right, and are we going to be swallowed up by the Earth thanks to those damn Aztecs?! Will we finally be able to believe it’s not butter?!
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?!!?!?
So, in the wake of – what I could only assume from news reports – this sign of the end times, or at least Democratic end times, I wanted to pull back a little bit. Maybe it was a lingering aftereffect of the Rally to Restore Sanity… after all, nothing that weird and trippy can be without the risk of flashback. Whatever the reason, it seemed that the hivemind mentality that had seized control of most media outlets and commentators maybe, just maybe could have been overblowing this a little – difficult to believe, I know.
And so, amid the shouting matches between outlets such as CNN and Time, seeing who could make the biggest mountain out of this molehill, I wanted to find out for myself… was it really that bad??
Well… no, not really. Getting past the attention-grabbing and thoroughly sensationalized headlines (“Obama Forced to Wear Leather and Become GOP’s Gimp!”…. alright, I’m making that one up), the news organization tended to cop to the fact that, in actuality not a whole lot had changed. If played correctly, this could even help Obama by allowing him to deflect responsibility for the state of things, rather than owning all of it. Being able to say, “hey it’s not all my fault!” certainly can’t hurt when contemplating a re-election bid.
A certain CNN article called this a “rout,” which is defined on Wikipedia as “a chaotic and disorderly retreat … resulting in the victory of the opposing party, or following defeat, a collapse of discipline, or poor morale….[and] provides the decisive victory the winner needs to gain the momentum with which to end a battle (or even campaign) in their favor.” Makes me wonder which dictionary CNN was using… losing ground is not the same as being so utterly defeated that people simply break and run for their lives. I’ve yet to see videos of Democrats fleeing the Capitol building, stampeding over their fellow senators all pell-mell.
The fact of the matter is that, while it certainly wasn’t a great day for Democrats in Congress (or the White House), it also wasn’t some massive shift in power. The House was taken by Republicans, yes, but Boehner hasn’t exactly acquired a rubber stamp. 55%’s a solid majority, yes, but by no means some enormous popular mandate. Contrast that to the Senate where, thanks to the Tea Party’s and Christine O’Donnell’s kooky efforts, even the “immortal undead” Harry Reid retains his majority leader status. Both houses were the Republicans’ to lose and, well, 50% isn’t exactly spectacular. Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (oh the puns are just too easy there) can talk as much as he likes… but even he knows how little power the House has even in the best of times. Not to mention when it’s your party’s sole foothold.
But let’s take another tact: history. Is this some tidal wave of incoming Republican power, ready to sweep Obama and his “hopey-changey” stuff away in 2012? Again, not really. Look back at the midterm elections of yesteryear, and it becomes obvious that this was almost inevitable: in 2006, George W. Bush saw both houses revert to Democratic control, losing 30 seats in the House, and 6 in the Senate. Bill Clinton (in a much more apt example, given his situation at the time), saw in 1994 a 54-seat loss in the House, and waved farewell to 8 seats in the Senate. 1982, Reagan saw 26 House seat go D, and then 8 Senate seats in 1986. 1974, Ford: -48, -4. ’66, Johnson: -48, -3. In 1954 Eisenhower lost 18 and 2, but then lost another 48 and 12 in ’58. Truman, Roosevelt, Hoover…. on and on it goes. The thing to take away from this election is that it’s perfectly normal. You’d almost go so far as to call it the “rule.” 2nd year of presidency? Be prepared to lose one or both houses of Congress.
It’s the exceptions that one needs to watch out for. If you’ve suffered minimal congressional losses, you are either headed for an early exit from the White House (George H.W. Bush: -8, -1; Carter: -15, -3; Nixon: -12, +1), are about to get shot (JFK: -4, +2), or just had planes fly into buildings (2002, George W. Bush: +8, +2).
The question then becomes: why? Why is it almost inevitable that such rapid and dramatic shifts in power take place with such startling regularity? The answer is that, despite what is constantly screamed from TV, campaign ads, and the Houses of Government, or what is blared obnoxiously through your radio… America has been and remains a fundamentally moderate nation. Setting aside the frothing-at-the mouth Tea Partiers, or the equally crazy Code Pink and Greenpeacers on the Left… Stewart’s Rally on October 30th showed us that we’re not all as crazy as we sometimes seem we are. Caught in the middle of the two screaming children on either side of us, there is a vast swath of Americans who are largely ignored and forgotten by most…. even themselves. In this increasingly polarized and toxic political environment, it pays dividends to portray your political opponent as the devil incarnate… or maybe a witch, and it looks piddling and weak to say, “maybe I disagree with your ideas, but you seem like a reasonable person.”
But that vast, silent middle-child of the American public does assert its quiet will in elections; moderating the outrageous positions of both fringes… by routinely removing the ability of a government to act as a unified body. As soon as a political party comes to hold too much power, its rug is yoinked out from under it by the electorate. America is a country that, by and large, likes two things: a divided government, and blaming the people in power. These two objectives work in remarkable synergy to keep the keel more-or-less even. Far from Glenn Beck’s crazy-Mormon prophesying that the Constitution is “hanging by a thread,” it’s in fact working as intended. The U.S. Government was designed to be an impossibly frustrating Rubik’s Cube, pleasing no one, annoying everyone… and making sure no power hungry individual or group can shove too much, too fast through it’s narrow, crooked gullet. In this respect, the Government, the Constitution, and the American public are very much working as intended… or perhaps more accurately, “broken as intended.”
The one aspect of American society which truly seems to be in a worrisome state, threatening to throw the rest out of balance as well, is the 4th Estate: the media. Enshrined and protected for the very purpose of supplying an outside foil to the machinations and self-serving platitudes inherent to government, it now operates more like the sideshow act of the local circus. Let the biggest freak win! Let he or she with the most uninformed, ignorant, jingoist sentiment take all! In a media environment in which new-Earth creationists are presented as just as reasonable as the entire scientific community, or Joe the Plumber is paired against a foreign policy expert… it’s easy to see how the aberrations start to seem possible, even normal… even, perhaps, right. A media environment which simply further amplifies those who already go out of their way to shout others down… isn’t just unhelpful to the nation and its democratic government, it’s downright destructive.
A democracy’s lifeblood is the ability of the populace to remain informed of relevant information. But when the crying clowns and dancing grizzly bears are allowed to run the show, that lifeblood is quickly polluted into a toxic sludge of newspeak: where up may very well be down, and black seems just as likely as white. The irrational fear news organizations have developed of being perceived as “biased” has become the very monster it initially sought to contain. By giving the kooks and whack jobs a far bigger platform and voice than they deserve, the new has in effect distorted the perception of reality, and the ability of the public to discern what is real from what is propaganda.
So, as we move past this long, winding headache of an election cycle… in that ever-so brief period of a month or so before the babbling bobble-heads of Fox, Time, CNN, MSNBC et al begin their coverage of the next election (after all, 2 entire years is hardly enough time to effectively cover all that baseless and ultimately pointless speculation), let’s take a moment and a deep breath. No, the world isn’t over. No, you’ve not received some incredible popular mandate. No, government/society isn’t magically going to turn itself around overnight.
And during that breath, let’s resolve to try to tune out a little more of the mindless drudgery that’s come to define both American politics, and the laughable excuse for coverage the modern media provides.
No, Democrats are not fascist-socialist secret Muslims out to eat your freedom and children for breakfast and pull the plug on grandma before setting an American flag on fire.
And no, the Republicans are not looking to enslave us to corporate interests while drilling to the center of the earth and teaching that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work after the Earth was created 6000 years ago, all the while selling us healthcare that proffers us to “die quickly in the event of illness or injury.”
By and large, we all are trying to do the best we can in these trying times. We simply have very different ideas about how to go about that. That doesn’t make us bad, or stupid, or evil, or heartless… it makes us different. And it is the recognition that, while we have and always will have these sorts of differences and disagreements, it is ultimately our commonalities that bind us together far closer than any policy disagreement could wedge us apart… that ultimately defines the American experience.
(CS) TAW Out.
The lycanthropic jottings of my fourth year prowling the Chinese moonlight.
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