Just took a look at European newspapers. The main mood is that of bafflement. Europeans are wondering why Americans are not more appreciative of the economic miracle worked by Obama in the past six years.
Of course, the answer is that Americans don’t perceive it as a miracle. Anything even a hair-breadth short of paradise counts as hell on this side of the ocean.
Clarissa's Blog 
It’s mummy’s job to bring me cheeseburgers, because I am not yet fat enough as it is. Why didn’t she bring them quickly enough??!!1
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😀 The nanny will bring your cheeseburger, little girl, it’s too complicated for your mommy to prepare it. She needs support. You know, it’s sooooo haaaaard to raise a kid in one of the richest country in the world. Please be patient, otherwise mommy will take away your electronics for at least 20 minutes!
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Europeans are by and large more secular-minded. Too many Americans believe in a Sky-Daddy who will magically make things better for them. These Americans are mustered to vote Republican by their pastors who shout about Teh Eeeevil Gayz and about Pre-Born Babies and their Eeeevil Containers (AKA women), while the pastors angle for the government handouts for “faith based organizations”.
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You are right in everything you say but I still believe that this particular election was all about Obama. In terms of the larger picture, you are right, though.
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One of the problems is that politicians, and especially presidents, are viewed as symbols and not as employees of We The People. Obama is still seen as The Scary Black Guy by a large percentage of the rural and suburban populations of Southern, Western, Midwestern states. Nothing Obama does or doesn’t do matters to these people more than the fact that he is black and in the position of power – to these voters’ minds, he is an illegitimate usurper of Any White Man. By extension, the Democratic Party, having some black politicians and many more women politicians than the Republican Party, is seen as illegitimate.
There’s a lot of disconnect here. One example given by a NYT front page article was of a Kentucky woman receiving health care for the first time for a chronic illness – she loved getting the healthcare through Kynect (the Kentucky state brand name for their Obamacare exchange), but would gladly vote for McConnell (R) even though he promised to eliminate Obamacare and her own personal health care access.
I dread to think of the confusion ahead, as the Republicans attempt to roll back health care access. This has been a turbulent enough transition into the modern health care model of all other highly developed nations.
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“Nothing Obama does or doesn’t do matters to these people more than the fact that he is black and in the position of power – to these voters’ minds, he is an illegitimate usurper of Any White Man.”
– I’m encountering this attitude literally every day in the area where I live. It’s like a mental block people have that nothing can penetrate. Scary shit.
“There’s a lot of disconnect here. One example given by a NYT front page article was of a Kentucky woman receiving health care for the first time for a chronic illness – she loved getting the healthcare through Kynect (the Kentucky state brand name for their Obamacare exchange), but would gladly vote for McConnell (R) even though he promised to eliminate Obamacare and her own personal health care access.”
– I’m meeting such people all the time. And they are good people but it’s like they are not seeing the connection between their lives and their voting choices.
“I dread to think of the confusion ahead, as the Republicans attempt to roll back health care access.”
– And what is about to happen to public education is too sad even to contemplate. 😦 😦 Today, I saw several groups of people on campus celebrating loudly the results of yesterday’s elections. I’m sure there is some logic to that but it isn’t the logic I can understand. 😦 😦
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Eeeevil Containers (AKA women) 😀
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Actually, there was an econometric model developed back in the 1970s relating economic performance and voting. The general pattern is that when the economy is improving, Republicans win. When the economy is declining, Democrats win. This election simply follows the pattern.
The fundamental problem is that the young and poor don’t vote. We would have a very different political set up if we had anything close to 80% participation in local elections.
As depressing as they are, stats on voting may not be accurate.
Corruption in elections has a long history in the US. For many years Houston was famous for one precinct whose boundaries exactly matched the borders of a large cemetery. The cemetery consistently generated 2,000+ votes. Louisville had its “floating” precincts. An early voter would exchange a blank paper ballot for a bottle of cheap whiskey. Thereafter, voters would take pre-marked ballots into the polling place, and return with blank ballots which they traded for booze. Now we have the ID rules and police presence designed to intimidate minority voters.
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Vic Crain: brilliant comment, thank you.
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I’d say the reasons for the crushing democratic defeat are multifold (too lazy to check if that’s a word or not, though I’m not too lazy to write that I’m too lazy to…. go figure)
Anyhoo, from reading across the narrow band of the US political spectrum and from what I know of my countrymens’ voting habits (which often puzzled me) here are some things to remember:
Individual issues never matter, much, voters mostly vote on identity grounds, the candidate or party that reflects who they want to be or be around.
As the often brilliant Tom Tomorrow said: “All else being equal, America’s best-loved leaders are always optimistic alpha males with will-do attitudes who project comfort with their own power and a touch of self-deprecation — in other words, embodiments of the projected self-image of the country.”
This is why voters almost always go for the presidential candidate who seems to have some kind of positive “vision” for the country (even if all the pieces don’t fit).
Midterm elections are broadly speaking a national referendum on presidential policies and voters unhappy with the incumbent will vote for the other side to make this clear and the issues can go fuck themselves. Note that Clinton’s peak performance as president came after a similar republican shellacking of Congress in 1994 amid talk that Clinton would certainly lose 1996…
Some reasons (not race related) that voters no longer see Obama as a fitting president, include
He has not positioned himself as a leader (of anything, his personality is about as wrong for the US presidency as it’s possible to be, he belongs in a think tank somewhere or on the stump giving motivational speeches to underperforming minorities).
He does not seem to prioritize UD interests in terms of foreign policy. He’s impotent against Putin, vaguely hostile toward Europe and apathetic about everywhere else.
He does not seem to prioritize citizen interests over those of random foreigners who happen to find themselves in the US. He seems to want to legimitize illegal immigrants (against a large majority of citizens’ wishes) and ensure their continued flow into the country as an unending source of demi-slave labor turning much of the US into a demi-slave economy (which debases the idea of work for everyone).
Also see his laxidasical response to Ebola guy in Dallas. There needed to be some kind of symbolic statement of principles and instead there was a lot of hemming and hawing, the administration’s public performance during that debacle was classic “gonna get carpet bombed in the next general election” behavior.
Finally… this too shall pass. US voters on the whole prefer some kind of deadlock and any talk of one party having a “permanent majority” is the inevitable prelude to major electoral losses for as long as I’ve been watching US politics (several decades now, never mind exactly how many).
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Thank you for this great post, Cliff Arroyo!
“Midterm elections are broadly speaking a national referendum on presidential policies and voters unhappy with the incumbent will vote for the other side to make this clear and the issues can go fuck themselves.”
– It seems that, for the most part, issues go fuck themselves on a regular basis.
“He does not seem to prioritize UD interests in terms of foreign policy. He’s impotent against Putin, vaguely hostile toward Europe and apathetic about everywhere else.”
– Apathetic is precisely the word. He just can’t seem even to fake enthusiasm for foreign affairs. But I’m wondering if any future candidate will be better at this. The last one with an interest in foreign affairs was McCain until he slaughtered any chance he had with we-all-know-what.
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