The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

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  • Dawn Breaks

    A few minutes ago, Fox News — Fox News! — called the Presidential race for Senator Barack Obama. By now most networks have agreed, and apparently Senator John McCain has conceded the race.

    Wow.

    It’s going to take a while to absorb this. Words like “historic occasion” don’t cut it. This was an epochal moment at a critical time, and I am proud and amazed to realize that my nation once again rose to the moment. We put paid to some of the ugliness of our history and we recapture some of the promise of our future. People voted for change, for hope, for tomorrow. Against a rough and oft sleazy campaign, Senator Obama — no, President-elect Obama — ran an honorable campaign that took the high road, kept to issues, avoided the politics of personal destruction, and treated the American citizenry as adults, not animals to be cadged or corralled. Barack Obama staked his career on the premise that in a dark and dangerous time, this nation would listen to our better angels — and quite against expectation, the nation responded.

    The Reagan revolution has run its course. The Nixon Southern Strategy lies bankrupt on the dustbin of history. The wiles and vile counsel of Karl Rove and Lee Attwater has been refuted, rejected, and repudiated — we have decided that we will not be a nation ruled by fear, led by slander, demeaned and diminished by demagogy. We don’t have to agree on everything to agree that we are all Americans, we are all heirs of the great revolution, and we are all in this together.

    This campaign has lasted twenty months. It has aroused passion and resistance, hope and fear. It has elevated what is right about this nation and it has exposed all that remains wrong. It has been draining and it has been exhilarating. It has overlaid a touch of the transcendental into our everyday life. And at long last, it is finally over.

    Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States of America. History has been made. The future has been reclaimed. It is finally over…

    … Now, it’s time to get to work.

  • Why Bother to Vote?

    I wrote this at the request of my friend Maureen Leming, who is also Director of Annual Giving and Communications, and who wanted to send it out to the local media. No one bit, but I like it enough that I want it out there. So, self-publishing to the rescue!

    Why Bother to Vote?

    I teach physics to high school seniors, a large number of whom are eligible to vote. Dishearteningly, many of them have decided that they won’t be exercising their franchise because, as they tell me, “It’s not like my vote counts anyway”. With polls in New Jersey showing Barack Obama with double-digit leads, it seems at first glance that they have a point. But I argue fiercely that, despite that superficial impression, they should in fact get to the polls. My argument boils down to this: Elections aren’t about winning a contest. They’re about governing a nation.

    Let’s assume for the moment that the polls are accurate. Let’s assume further that you’re an Obama supporter. (If you’re supporting McCain, there’s more for you below.) Surely there’s no motivation to get out the polls, right? After all, Senator Obama is going to win those 15 electoral votes either way. If the election were just about winning, then those votes are all that matter. But since it’s also about governing, there are other considerations — one of which, for example, is the popular vote. A president who wins the electoral college but just squeaks by on the popular vote (or loses it) can be crippled right out of the gate. Consider George W. Bush, whose first nine months in office were roundly criticized for drift and inertia.

    On the other hand, if Senator Obama wins the election and wins the popular vote handily, it would give his agenda quite the boost. For example, if he wins by an excess of 20 million votes, it would be a landslide comparable to FDR’s election in 1932. Even a more likely outcome of six or seven million votes strengthens his hands and makes rapid adoption of his program much more likely. The length of the presidential “honeymoon” is strongly influenced by the extent by which the president wins the popular vote. In that race, every vote in New Jersey counts just as much as one cast anywhere else — even if that vote doesn’t affect the electoral total.

    Obviously, if you are a McCain supporter in New Jersey, similar but reverse arguments apply: You would want to reduce the margin of an Obama victory, or (of course) increase the margin of a McCain victory. And even if Obama takes New Jersey, McCain could win the presidency — and in that case, you would want his margin of popular votes to be as large as possible. In essence, if your side wins, you want to maximize its advantage in the popular vote so as to advance the agenda with which you agree. And if your side loses, you certainly want to diminish the margin of victory for the other guys, so as to retard their agenda as much as possible. Both possible scenarios dictate that you get out and vote.

    And of course, there are issues here bigger than simple partisan calculus. Democracy depends on an engaged electorate. There is no excuse for sitting out any election, particularly one so fraught with historic import. When turnout is low, politicians know that the road to victory lies in pandering to small but focused interest groups. The key becomes energizing your voter base and ignoring the rest of the population. But when turnout is high, the game changes. Pandering to everyone is the same as not pandering. Discourse and compromise become more viable, indeed, more necessary. When you can’t tailor your message to a narrow group and still win, you feel the pressure to formulate real solutions that appeal to a wider array of voters. Raise voter turnout and you improve the entire political process.

    Think your vote doesn’t count? Heck, on the contrary — it just might save democracy.

  • About that “overhead projector”

    At the debate tonight, Senator John McCain tried to make hay out of an earmark requested by his opponent, Senator Barrack Obama:

    He voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois

    Kinda makes it sound like Sen. Obama wanted $3 million for one of those things you remember from boring sociology lectures, where the prof dragged slide after acetate slide across the glass of a long-necked, dimly-lit contraption. I mean, isn’t that what an overhead projector is?

    Not so much, at least, not in a planetarium. You see, a planetarium shows images by projecting up on the dome… you know, overhead. If you don’t have a projector, you pretty much don’t have a planetarium. According to Sen. Obama’s office:

    The projection equipment in this theater is 40 years old, and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer

    (quoted at PolitiFact)

    The projector was for the Adler Planetarium and Space Museum, which like most museums does an awful lot of educational outreach. So the question becomes: Why doesn’t John McCain support science education? Doesn’t he love America’s children? Doesn’t he want them to compete in the 21st century? Or does he dislike Adler Planetarium because they teach the newfangled stuff like heliocentrism?

  • One month to go…

    … until the US Presidential election. Barack Obama seems to have the momentum now, gaining about 1 point in national tracking polls every three days. Nate Silver at 538 has a model predicting that Senator Obama will win about 340 electoral votes — over the required total by 70, a landslide by any measure.

    So here’s my prediction, and I’m sorry if I sound paranoid, but I am increasingly worried: Major terrorist scare in the next three weeks. Depending on how badly McCain has tanked, it might only be a “rattle the voters” attempt to scare them back into the Republican camp — something like capturing a “dirty bomber” in an American city. If there’s absolutely no hope for the erratic maverick, then expect an actual event — most likely abroad, but I’m starting to wonder if even that line will be crossed. Sure, it’s risky. People could find out and then there would be Hell to pay. But if it’s a McCain administration, that’s a lot easier to cover up.

    And there is no way that Dick Cheney spends eight years assembling the most executive power in American history, only to hand it over to an upstart Democratic candidate from Chicago. Not going to happen. Not going to be allowed to happen.

    And I don’t even watch 24…

  • What’s Going Wrong

    The failure to enact the bailout bill, or indeed, any economic recovery bill, has shaken some people to their core. It’s heightened a sense that our politics is broken and that we as a people no longer have what it takes. Someone wrote something at Political Animal that stirred in me a passionate response, and I’ve replicated it below:

    Dan Kervick on September 30, 2008 at 9:23 PM

    Maybe we can now stop hearing so many pious paeans to the great genius of Our Illustrious Founders, the guys who gave us this inflexible, unresponsive, creaking tub of a political system in the first place.

    No, they’re still geniuses. They met in Philadelphia, surveyed all that was known of human history at that point, and sat down to solve the problem of human governance. And here’s the kicker: They actually did it. They crafted a system that included self-correction, that respected the minority viewpoint while empowering the majority, and that could cope with a vast expansion in people and area. They actually solved the problem — and they did it so well, they changed the world as a result.

    The irony, of course, is that by changing the world, they rendered obsolete and invalid the conclusions they’d drawn from history. History is different, and so the old rules don’t work.

    On the other hand, their system has survived (admittedly creaking) for 220+ years, risen above existential crises both foreign and domestic, expanded the definition of “citizen” (indeed, of “human”) far beyond its original sense, saved civilization (or helped save it) at least twice, while providing a standard of living so amazing that the typical person far exceeds the wildest dreams of avarice of the most powerful of old. Not so bad.

    The failure isn’t in the system. The failure is in us. We live in reduced times, where we accept corruption and ignorance, where we sit back and watch cable news like it was no more significant than sport (when we can bothered to watch it at all), where we avoid the person of differing opinion and where we trust only those who already agree with us. The Founders have not failed us; it is we who have failed them, and ourselves. We have allowed ourselves to be lulled into a stupor of reality TV and Fritos; we celebrate the ignorant and mock the educated. We would rather have a President to share a beer than to solve problems, and we would rather believe the cynical testimony of implicated cronies than do the legwork to understand what’s really going on.

    The system hasn’t been tried and found wanting. It’s been found hard and left untried. American citizenship is advanced democracy and it’s hard work … too hard for too many.

    The failure lies in us.

  • A devestating campaign ad….

    … even if it’s one we’ll not see on TV. (It’s not from the Obama campign.) It makes the right connection between the mess we’re in and the so-called “maverick” who’s done nothing in 26 years to help fix it.

    http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=wJThPjvscFs

    It’s on YouTube and I’d embed it if I had time to figure out how. 🙂

  • Memory in Song (II)

    More oddly-prescient musings of Jackson Browne.

    “Lives in the Balance”
    Jackson Browne
    Lives in the Balance

    I’ve been waiting for something to happen
    For a week or a month or a year
    With the blood in the ink of the headlines
    And the sound of the crowd in my ear
    You might ask what it takes to remember
    When you know that you’ve seen it before
    Where a government lies to its people
    And a nation lies drifting to war
    There’s a shadow on the faces
    Of the men who send the guns
    To the wars that are fought in places
    Where their business interest runs…

    On the radio talk shows and TV
    You hear one thing again and again
    That the USA stands for freedom
    And we’ve come to the aid of a friend.
    But who are the ones that we call our friends,
    these governments killing their own?
    Or the people who finally can’t take anymore
    So they pick up a gun or a knife or a stone?

    And there are lives in the balance
    And there are people under fire
    And there are children at the cannons
    And there is blood on the wire…

    There’s a shadow on the faces
    Of the men who fan the flames
    Of the wars that fought in the places
    Where we can’t even say the names.
    They sell us the President the same way
    They sell us our clothes and our cars
    They sell us everything from youth to religion
    At the same time they sell us our wars.
    I wanna know who the men in the shadows are
    I wanna hear somebody asking them why
    They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
    But they’re never the ones to fight and to die.

    And there are lives in the balance
    And there are people under fire
    And there are children at the cannons
    And there is blood on the wire…

  • Memory in Song (I)

    It’s still surprisingly hard to write about 9/11. It galls me to see, again, our national “leaders” exploit this tragedy for political ends. And it saddens me that we don’t seem to have learned any lessons. So it’s really not in me to pen something deep and insightful. Instead, I’ll fall back on the melodic musings of Jackson Browne, writing long before today but seeing, apparently, the same sickening game.

    (more…)

  • I am a Values Voter

    After the election in 2004, we were preached at that George W. Bush won election (not re-election) due to the rejection of John Kerry by “values voters” .. as if the millions who voted for Kerry had no decent values. That spurred me to write the following, which I still embrace today. In this election, even more than that one, it’s important to recall that we on the left have values as well — values which I, personally, think are better than those evidenced by the rabid right.

    I am a “Values Voter”.

    I value

    * compassion over condemnation

    * debate over demagoguery

    * reason over rage

    * freedom over fear

    * truth over lies

    These are American values.

    I believe

    * that real patriots ask questions

    * that government should not decide who I am, or who you are

    * that a sound safety net serves the interest of us all

    * that people should be judged on the content of their character, not the content of their wallets or the color of their skin

    * that justice everywhere is threatened by injustice anywhere

    * that labor has dignity and diversity has worth

    * that each person deserves a fair deal and a true opportunity

    These are core American beliefs.

    I am a “values voter”…
    … and this is my country, too.

  • Lying Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

    In case you — like me — watched Sarah Palin’s speech from the Republican National Convention and keep saying — like me — “I know that’s a lie”, but were unable to point to a source, let me offer this post by Hilzoy over at Political Animal @ the Washington Monthly. It sums up the lies and points you toward the evidence.