So the elections over (give or take). And it was unquestionably a good election for Democrats, and perhaps even for liberals.
So what effects will it have?
1) So: Four more years. On the bright side, Obama starts his second term with an economy on the way up, and with our war commitments on the way down. On the dim side, Obama starts his second term with Republicans in congress dedicated to obstructionism above all else.
2) Speaking of which: Filibuster reform? Will it happen?
3) Ezra argues that merely by being reelected, Obama has achieved (or, rather, secured) some major goals.
4) Screw Obama. The most exciting election result of the night may have been pot legalization in Colorado and Washington. This seems huge, and I can’t even begin to predict how it’ll play out (except that I’m sure that I’ll be furious at the Obama administration before it’s through). But for the first time in my life, I feel hope that things can improve in this area, that we’re not just doomed to have more and more lives destroyed by the anti-drug zealots.
5) Another possible effect: “Legalisation could, in short, deal a blow to Mexico’s traffickers of a magnitude that no current policy has got close to achieving.”
6) America’s voting system is a disgrace.
7) Any chance that the US Government will start treating global warming like a serious and urgent issue?
So those are my initial thoughts. Yours?
I am, and have always been, strongly opposed to any recreational drug use. I have in the past, and will in the future, do my best to persuade people not to smoke, eat, or otherwise consume pot (medical uses excepted). This is one topic in which I’ve never wavered from the most staunchly conservative moral view that I’m aware of.
But I support legalisation. Because no matter how firmly I believe that pot use is the wrong moral choice, I believe there’s no reason to disallow people to make that choice. And plenty of harm that has come out of criminalization.
So I can’t say I’m glad about the result in Colorado and Washington, but I know it was the right result. And now I’m going to do my best to stop thinking about this topic and focus on the marriage equality votes, and all the other results that I am genuinely overjoyed about.
Hail to the victors – Democrats in the Senate, Republicans in the House, and Pres. Obama. All of them should do what they were elected to do. I found the Senatorial result in Massachusetts interesting – people said they liked Brown a lot more than Warren, but they were voting the party, not the person, to keep the GOP from taking the Senate.
I approve of the marijuana initiatives. People should be free to go to hell in their own fashion. If this was done nationwide it would drop the profits for smuggling weed tremendously, taking out the money and the motives that fuel much violence and death. See “Prohibition”.
I note that in the article comparing America’s electoral system to European ones the author left out the fact that foreign observers were astonished that voters are not required to show IDs to vote.
Do you live in the same state that I live in? Pretty much all the Warren supporters I know–and almost everyone I know is in that camp–voted for Warren because they liked her far, far, better than brown. Only a very few people voted on the basis of overall senate #s.
Your post sounds like Brown-camp spin: “we would have won if people had actually been able to vote their hearts.” Um… no.
“Everyone *I* know says…” is almost always wrong.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/259439-poll-warren-leads-sen-brown-but-faces-challenges-in-mass-senate-race
Brown was seen as much more likeable; I don’t know if Ron’s theory is right or not but he is correct about the pereeption of the candidates.
While I am sure it will not be the last we hear from those who wish to minimize sexual violence and women’s health and autonomy, it was nice to see those views didn’t seem to win Akin and Mourdock any more supporters, since they both lost their races.
Regarding #4:
Amp:
I don’t know why you feel so optimistic. If the pot measure couldn’t pass in your own hippie-homeland of Oregon, what hope is there for the rest of us. Whatever you’re smoking (and not supposed to be), I hope you brought enough for everyone!
Seriously, though, I am glad these measures were about recreational use. That whole medical marijuana qualifier annoyed me. It made the medical profession in California look silly. The measures that just passed look a lot more honest.
The big problem I foresee, though, is that the immigration case decided last summer could be strong precedent to try to nullify these measures.
However, I take some solace in the belief that, eventually, the federal government is going to learn that, while it can pass all of the laws it wants, it can’t force the states to enforce them, especially if these sorts of measures become more widespread.
-Jut
Eytan wrote:
Although I recognize that we agree on the more important policy question, I still hope you’ll expand on this – why are you so against people having fun by lighting a joint? I’m especially intrigued because this is the most I can ever recall disagreeing with something you’ve written. :-)
If that’s so, then that’s great! People should vote based on policy outcomes, rather than based on likability.
That’s interesting! Got a link?
To know if the two are really comparable, we’d also have to know how hard it is for people with disadvantages (such as being poor or elderly) to get an ID in those countries, compared to in the US.
I wouldn’t oppose a voter ID law if it were combined with creating a government agency in charge of vigorously, actively finding non-IDed citizens and getting accurate government ID to them.
ETA: On second thought, I’d still be slightly against it on good-government grounds; it’s a waste of money to create a solution for an almost non-existent problem. But I’d certainly be less opposed to voter ID laws, anyway.
I thought this comment from Ethics Alarms – not from Jack, from one of his readers – illustrates just how far gone some folks on the far right are. He’s responding to Jack calling Obama a good American:
Wow.
In other news, after 3 years of incredible growth at our company (for example, freight sales are up 30% this year after being up 20% last year) and the steady hiring to fill the need (from 60 people on the payroll in 2009 to 83 today), the owner has decided that we have too many people on our payroll and we will begin layoffs in the near future.
I’m sure that it’s purely coincidental that he loathes Obama, predicted that businesses would shut down right and left after Obama was elected in 2008 and it’s the day after Obama won a second term.
I’m sure glad that men are such creatures of logic. Imagine what would’ve happened had he been a woman. We would have hired another 83 people tomorrow and been out of business by next Tuesday!
Eytan Zweig:
This is an interesting formulation. Using pot is the wrong moral choice.
Moral.
Why do you choose that word? What makes it a moral decision?
I can see the argument that use of any illegal substance is immoral, if you put obedience to the law as a strong moral obligation, but that argument would seem to be inapplicable if what’s under discussion is legalization.
—Myca
Akin’s statements were ignorant and disgraceful and he deserved to lose.
Amp, look here:
Amp, what kind of commentary do you think was out there on the extreme left when Bush II was elected? This is nothing new, or even particularly remarkable.
Eytan, does your opposition to recreational drug use extend to nicotine, alcohol and caffeine?
Imagine if caffeine was illegal. The smuggling that would go on would make what goes on with weed look small-time.
Amp – People get so worked up. (A mutual friend on Facebook posted that, while it’s too bad that Obama will continue the war crimes of Bush (drone strikes, Guantanamo, etc.) at least he isn’t a worse-than-Hitler-psychopath like Romney. I kinda wish we could have a quick replay of the 1940s; people really apparently need to have their context sensors recalibrated regularly or they go stupidly insane.)
Jake – Could be worse. He could be instructing you all to fortify the building and await the coming armageddon-like battle when Obama sends his deathtroopers to storm the place.
Myca – Drugs are bad. You must be a communist Obama deathtrooper, or you would already know this.
I can actually make a drugs=immoral argument a lot more easily from your point of view than from mine. With very few exceptions, drugs are bad for people’s health. Drugs are also, broadly, statistically associated with reduced economic productivity in, broadly, convincing ways. My health is partially the responsibility of my fellows, and the work that needs to be done by society is not diminished when I get high. Ergo, me getting high damages my health and imposes externalities on my fellow subjects in the Obama thanatocracy, and also reduces my own contribution to the social good. Those are both obvious moral harms.
Those harms are nonoperative in my worldview, in which my health is my own concern and problem and I can damage it if I like, and my productivity is similarly my own concern and none of your damn business at all, but I don’t think that you have similarly immediately-obvious tools with which to dismiss the harms.
Sure, sure, sure, sure … but in that case, cigarettes, whiskey, fried foods, and white sugar are all just as immoral, and the way Eytan phrased it seemed to give a special moral status to pot as opposed to, say, fluffernutters.
—Myca
Myca,
At the risk of sounding obscene, they will have to pry my fluffernutters from my cold dead hand!
-Jut
RonF @14 – Yes, yes, and (hypocritically) yes.
Amp @7 – So, I could give the long intellectual answer, but it’s been a long day and I’m tired, so I’ll skip to the honest answer.
Recreational drug use scares the hell out of me. It always has. I have plenty of rationalizations (see above re: long intellectual answer), but the truth is, the idea of having fun by lighting a joint is repulsive to me. I can feel my heartrate increase as I write this because just thinking about drug use is disturbing to me.
I assume this is the same thing that many homophobes feel when confronted with the idea of a same sex relationships, or many racists feel when confronted with the idea of a black person with authority. There’s just no way I can reconcile my mind with it. I can make excuses for this, I can try to justify it, but the truth is I’m irrationally prejudiced.
As to Myca’s question – that’s a very good one. Why did I use the word “moral”? Well, because that’s what it feels to me. To me the idea of smoking a joint is repulsive in the same way as the idea of committing a murder or rape. I realize that this is ridiculous as at worst, drugs are a victimless crime (at least, in those cases where the source of the drug is known to you and exploitation free). But that’s an emotional truth for me. And what are morals but emotional truths? I don’t believe in a divine or otherwise external source of morality; morality arises from social pressures, and I can’t subjectively distinguish between my moral instincts that make sense and those that do not. I can objectively distinguish between them, by taking a step back from myself and thinking about the issues. But when I don’t stop to think, and just write a hasty blog comment or whatever, then this distinction doesn’t really exist for me.
Which is why, by the way, I distrust any self-appointed guardian of morality. I know how difficult it is for me to separate my fear-based responses from my moral responses. It is only because of several key life experiences that I even know there is a difference. I think a lot of people in power have not learnt that lesson.
They really will have to, unless they want a closed-casket service.
I want to see what happens to the Republican party. Will they get it, that the politics of racial resentment, religious repression, fear, and pandering are less and less effective?
When a 40-year member of the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank that birthed Newt Gingrich among others, says of the Tea Party
it’s really the – almost the radical wing of the Republican Party. At one level it was pretty devastating. If you think about the fact that Republicans have now in several instances snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Senate races where they had surefire winners – 2010 with Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, this time in Indiana with Richard Mourdock, in Missouri with Todd Akin – this was not a good night for them at that level.
then I have to say that I hope the racists and the homophobes and the moral “purists” will break off and form their own party, and maybe let the Republican party move back to the center without fear that bipartisan work with Democrats (like confirming the President’s nominees, never mind crafting legislation) will mean their death in the primaries.
I remember people on the extreme left saying that bush probably would end free elections and just be President for life; and I recall lots of people talking about moving to Canada. I don’t recall anything that was even close to a call for violent resistance. Maybe because on the extreme left, it’s widely believed that the conservatives have all the guns. :-p
Thanks for that quote, that’s interesting. I wouldn’t be strongly opposed to Virginia-style Voter ID laws (which include mailing acceptable ID cards to every registered voter, for free). However, many Republicans seem to want Texas-style voter-ID laws, which really do seem to be thinly-disguised attempts to make sure that fewer Democrats vote. For instance, a photo student ID isn’t acceptable ID for voting purposes but a gun permit is. It’s hard not to see that as having partisan intent.
I found it extremely disconcerting, the first (and so far only) time I went to vote in the UK, when no one asked me for any form of ID. I asked the guy at the polling station if he wanted my ID, he said no. I pointed out to him that I’m obviously not British, and he said that my name was on the list, so it’s ok, and still had no interest in looking at my ID or even at my voter registration card.
On one level, I liked the atmosphere of trust that this implies. On the other hand, I found it somewhat worrying that anyone who knew my name and address (and thus my likely polling station, which is literally just across the street from my apartment) could have voted in my stead.
I guess that coming from Israel, where no one trusts anyone, usually for good reason, this was an odd culture shock.
Ampersand asked:
I’m not against anyone having fun, and I do think that legalisation of some drugs (including marijuana) would be incredibly beneficial to society. If you’re going to take drugs though, setting them on fire and breathing them in is not really the safest way to go. There is an established link between smoking joints and lung cancer.
Your body, your choice, but having seen so many of my relatives die of cancer (it runs in my father’s family) the thought of skinning up fills me with horror.
I know when medicinal marijuana was legalized here, the cities/counties were more active in shutting down dispensaries in some cities than the feds were in enforcing the law. They use code enforcement laws and teams to do that and then sue the dispensaries. They take landlords to court and try to get their buildings taken away from them. We’ve got a case that started in my county that the city lost (!) and you would have thought the gates of Hell were coming. I think it’s going to the Court of Appeals now.
Anyway, I loved this election mostly for getting the president’s race out of the way quickly. After having to listen from Romney etal how insignificant women and their issues were (and reading some outstanding articles about Republican woman on this factor), it was nice to see that he kind of lost a bit on the women’s side.
But the best thing about it is realizing that the white men in this country (no offense) who are well in the minority now are not deciding elections. That leaves the Republicans in a bit of a quandary. As it stands now, their base is shrinking while Democrats is growing. Totally not to trash the GOP because I’ve got friends in it but it’ll be interesting to see what they do.
Locally, I’m “red” county in a “blue” state and Democrats swept most everything. Bono Mack went down in the eastern county, i.e. Palm Springs and the new district we got, the democrat won by double digits. Absolutely amazing. Assembly, a Dem. friend of mine won that handily. One of my neighbors also a Dem won state senate. And my ex-boss, huge Dem won assembly by a landslide in the other county. Not seen anything close to this since 1992. Two out three congress peeps in my county being “blue” is something thought would never happen.
The mayor race sucked b/c the weasel won despite fleeing the room when a woman was handcuffed on the ground and arrested for speaking sixteen seconds past the time limit. Despite making fun of a bunch of us women who spoke at one meeting in his class as a “lesson” in government. So nothing’s perfect.
Anyway, also too…20 female senators now. My state has had both female senators since 1992.
To imagine that scenario makes me hyperventilate and I haven’t had my morning caffeine injection yet. Horrors!
What did Charlton Heston say at that NRA meeting about his cold dead hands? That’d be me and caffeine.
“Molon labe” has a better undertone of vicious belligerence.
Amp:
It’s actually not hard at all if you understand the intent of voter ID and do some research into why the requirements were set up in that fashion. At that point you’ll find that it has nothing to do with partisan intent and everything to do with the purpose of voter ID.
The intent of requiring someone to have an ID to vote is to ensure that they are a citizen (as well as a resident, obviously two different things) and are thus eligible to vote. You do not have to provide proof of citizenship to get a student ID, which makes sense because there’s no requirement to be a citizen to be a student. So possession of a student ID does not prove that you are eligible to vote.
OTOH, you DO have to present proof of citizenship to get a gun permit in Texas, and you also get checked to ensure that you don’t have a felony on your record (which would also disqualify you from voting). So a gun permit is acceptable as voter ID, and a student ID isn’t.
You’re supposed to ensure someone is a citizen when they register to vote in the first place, RonF. Not when they show up to exercise that right. Otherwise, what you’re saying is that once my state has registered me – that is, has accepted that I have the right to vote – I have to prove myself again in every election. That’s just silly.
Also, it’s completely untrue that the point of ID is proof of citizenship; if it were, no state would accept a driver’s license as acceptable identification. Ohio, for example, has an ID requirement, but allows green-card holders to get a driver’s license. Ditto Colorado, Indiana, Florida, Pennsylvania…I’m actually not aware of any US state that requires citizenship for a driver’s license and denies driver’s licenses to lawful permanent residents (who aren’t eligible to vote).
But it was a creative attempt at an excuse, and couched in such lovely condescension. I particularly loved the bit about doing some research. You might want to go as far as googling the court decision blocking Texas’s ID law (in which the majority expressed doubt in the intent of the law) before you chide someone for not doing sufficient research, Ron.
Republicans has been quite explicit this year that the reason for ID laws is voter suppression (e.g. Pennsylvania Majority Leader Mike Turzai bragged that his voter ID law would deliver the state for Romney, and admitted that there were no known cases of fraud that the law would prevent). It takes an impressive refusal to pay attention to remain confident that the laws were written to deal with the sudden (non-existent) flood of people voting as other people.
Unrelatedly, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, which tried to boost white evangelical turnout for Romney in key states and raised $12+ million to do so, seems to have been a bit of a bust. Exit polls show that while national evangelical turnout increased by 1%, evangelicals in Ohio swung strongly toward Obama (in 2008, Obama won 21% of Ohio white evangelicals, this year he won 29%). In fact, if Romney had been able to hold Ohio white evangelicals as well as McCain did, Romney might have won Ohio (and still lost the election).
29%, huh? I’m pleasantly surprised by that. Amazed, actually, considering the ginormous religious smear campaign and the number of evangelicals who think he’s a Muslim and/or the antichrist.
Our (Raleigh NC) local weekly had an article about European election monitors who observed the process on Tuesday. They didn’t mention IDs, but they did think “voter confusion” was more an issue than voter fraud (“it’s like you need to go to university to know how to vote”).
Other comments included: “the campaigning period is maybe too long here”. Jeez, you think? I’m not sure anybody I know, no matter their political persuasion, would disagree with that statement.
(I apologize right now if my link to the article turns out to be a big mess. I think I did it correctly, but it looks a little funny to me. Sorry!).
Got to Love that Sean Hannity who says he’s evolved in illegal immigration.
In under a week too!
47%. That’s what bugs me. One of the most charismatic and moderate Presidents the Democratic party has ever produced runs against easily the worst candidate the Republicans have offered up in half a century. In the face of this atrocious mismatch, 47% of Americans still voted for Romney.
People are trying to paint this as a decisive statement against the neo-con/tea-party politics of the Republican party… but it’s hard to see that.
Without the incumbency advantage, with a Republican candidate that isn’t an absurd joke like Romney?
2016 will be hard. Unless Obama singlehandedly pulls out absolute miracles in 2016, it’s hard to see this endless conflict improving. I mean, in light of this joke of an election, the Republicans *still* control congress. That sucks.
On the bright side, yay trees! Yay lesbian senator! Yay gay marriage!
I have hope for the long-term and the short-term… but somewhere in between things are gonna suck.
Don’t worry, S-i-f. The Republicans are trying to figure out how they lost, albeit by a very narrow margin, to what they see as the most incompetent and divisive President in years. No President with unemployment figures like this has been re-elected since FDR, is what they’re saying.
Hm. Well, mythago, looking through here it appears that if you are here legally but temporarily you get issued a Texas drivers’ license that is distinct from those for U.S. citizens. If someone shows up to either register to vote or to actually vote and gives them a DL for a non-citizen, I’m pretty sure they won’t get to vote. And if you are here illegally you’ll you won’t have documents – at least, documents that aren’t forgeries – that will enable you to get a DL in Texas.
If you are here legally as a permanent resident alien I can’t tell from this if the Texas DL is marked distinctively or not. Given what they do to DL’s for non-permanent resident aliens I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. They certainly make you prove your citizenship status before they give you a license. I’ll have to dig a little deeper on the permanent resident alien issue.
According to pretty much every argument for voter ID that I’ve heard, the reason is to make sure the person entering the voting booth is the same person as the person who registered to vote. Checking for voter eligibility should happen much earlier — the people at the voting site on election day aren’t expected to determine whether you’re eligible to vote, they’re just supposed to check that the name and address on your card match the one in their book, and that your face matches the face on the card. (Though I’m not sure how good people actually are at the second part. When I give my students exams, I’m supposed to check IDs when they hand them in, and with at least a quarter of the students, I honestly can’t tell whether the photo matches the face or not.)
So, in other words, if someone has to prove their citizenship at the voting location, then whichever state agency is in charge of registering voters has failed massively.
Not that RonF’s defence of Texas’s ID laws is holding much water anyway, but just for completeness’ sake, green card holders are entitled to gun permits in Texas (specifically, the Texas Department of Public Safety does not mention any citizenship restrictions on handgun permits beyond the federal ones, and the federal government specifically says permanent residents are not a prohibited category).
So, possessing a gun permit is not proof of citizenship, either.
Texas link: http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/RSD/CHL/Legal/ago.htm
Federal link: http://www.justice.gov/usao/ut/psn/documents/guncard.pdf
@RonF, the exact link you cite says that lawful permanent residents get driver’s licenses; temporary residents are the ones who do not get regular licenses.
You have a very unfortunate habit of refusing to spend ten seconds Googling, or to read the results if you do, when you think it might say something detrimental to your argument.
RonF,
So a rule that says that people who are not lawful permanent residents or citizens get a DL with a mark and an expiration date consistent with their current residency means to you that there must be a special mark on DL’s for lawful permanent residents, just one that doesn’t show up in any google searches? 1 part research, 1 part making stuff up.
Note also that this is a 2008 law and TX DLs normally expire after 6 years, so one third of people with temporary residency status and a DL still have unmarked IDs, much less the special marks on permanent residents’ DLs that you merely imagine might be there.
And none of it still addresses mythago’s point. But it is a good effort to not look at the clearly stated intent of the recent wave voter ID laws.
When I was asked for photo ID, I had the clerk in charge of the election sending a training team within two hours to the polling site. But there were 20 provisional ballots handed out within the first hour of voting which was unusually high, that and I was handed a ballot in Spanish which is doable but I thought a bit odd. Okay, when I dye my hair red or dark I occasionally have been confused for being Latino (and I recently uncovered a branch on my dad’s side that originated in Mexico so maybe that’s why)sometimes. But while they were busy giving me a ball point pen to fill out a ballot (which at the time needed a particular type of aqua blue pen), I saw them be selective in who they asked for ID.
The team came out and investigated and the clerk told me that apparently a few of them including the head volunteer were illiterate. I saw a couple of them reading books and they seemed to be able to look for names and check them off so I’m not too sure about that. The team did retrain them essentially.
It’s illegal in my state for poll site workers to ask for ID to be shown and people properly trained for that are specifically trained on that point. I have a parent who’s an election polling site coordinator.
Charles S @41: Maybe the BSA oath was a little laxer when RonF first joined.
Please don’t post comments that have no content except insulting other posters. Thanks.
@#4:
“Likable” as a person does not equate to “like as a candidate for U.S. Senate”
Personally, as a person I like Warren better — from meeting her all of 2 times and Brown all of once.
As for liking as a Senator? Warren over Brown in all categories.
Among other things, Brown voting record does him in for me: he claims to be an “independent voice,” yet he voted with the Republican line 90% of the time in his first year, and 50% thereafter. That means his voting record is unacceptable for me, as a progressive. Voting against equal pay for equal work alone would have done the trick, but voting against contraceptive rights, and voting to work with the republicans on filibuster so much was just more of the same.
Warren I saw tell a sitting congresscritter, a head of a subcommittee, and several of his lesser-ranked congresscritters on the same committee, in the same hearing, that he was full of sh*t (look to the early hearings on oversight of the CFPB from 2011)
Plus Brown decided to pull his own version of the “race” card with his comment about “look at her – does she look Indian?” during one of the debates. He tried to duck out of one debate, and did duck out of the last one.
Apologies, Amp, you’re right; it’s both ineffectual and inappropriate.