Early voting.

I have voted for Barack Obama. It took about an hour, all told.

Stuck on my printer, within my line of sight, there is a sticker that says:

OBAMA
Democrat
U.S. SENATE

When I voted for the man four years ago, I already wanted this. But I never imagined it would come so soon.

Two Things

I did two interesting things today, one that felt really bad, and one that felt really good.

The first was the bad thing. Remember a while back when there was reports about how Walmart was screening videos decrying how, if Obama was elected, the fair pay act would allow unions to run rampant, and this would destroy not only poor little defenseless Wal-Mart, but America? Well, see, I work for "The Other Guy," and today I had to watch a video that was basically the same thing. Following in the standard, "the same as Wal-Mart, but classier" approach, it was just a incredibly distorted video about how unions are bad, and are evil businesses (Yes, businesses!) that ruin life for workers. The only reference to recent events was about "coming changes in our labor laws." So no direct references to the campaign or the candidates, just some anti-union propaganda before the election.

If I understood the the basic argument of the video, it was that unions are not able to make them pay you more, and joining them will break up the big happy corporate family that you belong to that pays you minimum wage. The guy across from me snortled and chuckled throughout at the videos epic failure, and at one point, to afraid to do anything overt, I just looked over, and we shared a look: the kind that says, "yeah, this is bullshit." Another guy and I shared a good laugh afterwards, as well. (Op! Just wanted to make sure there was none of those evil unions around the corner!" he said) My heart goes out to you both.

It made me feel bad. I like the work atmosphere there, but now I am going to trust the managers's there a little less.

The other thing was, after coming home and perusing the blogs to the wave of bullshit that has been rising since the Republinca Convention (and will hopefully soon crest), and just being disgusted and feeling helpless about the whole thing, I got a call out of the blue from the Local Obama campaign, asking if I wanted to volunteer. So I did. I spent two and a half hours today calling phone numbers of college students who didn't answer and talking vaguely about politics with the interns. In a way, it was an edifying esperiance, except I think all I managed to was to knock out some pages of people they would not need to call again.

A couple anecdotes, though, that I bring back to the blog world (Sir Charles, ari, are you reading this?): the PUMAs are very real, and Sarah Palin means something to them. All the interns seemed to have had encounters with women, even pro-choice women, who were voting for McCain-Palin, because they wanted a woman in office. One person was even told that "a vote for McCain is really a vote for Hillary." This was not funny to them. One person spent much time talking with pro-choice women, and trying to discuss things with a McCain supporter. Apparently, they don't like to bring up abortion over the phone (I asked, and then was forced to admit it was all outside my area of expertise), so they focus on McCain not supporting the Fair Pay Act. Many of us noted that we had encounter with enthusiastic 80-year-old Obama fans, of both sexes, and I wondered why it seemed to be more the 60 or 70 age group that was so pro-McCain. One woman opined that it's because that age group wasn't tuaght to be "rebellious" like the slightly younger ones were (read those quote-marks as signifying contempt).

But yeah, Pumas: a very real, and annoying phenomenon, people. The grunts have to deal with it day in and day out.

The Last Gasp of the Right

After reading the first little bit of this John Cole post, something occurred to me, a thought that I had had previously, but entirely forgotten about.

In the Democratic party, the base, the people who constitute the solid source of support and votes, are basically Good Democrats, normal citizens who aren't really all that involved in politics, but know which side their bread is buttered on, and show up to vote for them. Then there is the activist, politically inclined types, who are really into politics, and are always threatening to stay home or vote third party, and really claim to have no real oyalty to the Democratic Party itself (*cough*).

But in the Republican party it's basically the opposite, because the base is the Religious Right. That's where they get their votes, not from libertarians or free-market types. There's a huge chunk of the country that is basically votes on spreading an image Christianity across our apolitical culture. And like the far-left liberals, these people don't really care about the republican party itself, they want to republican party to start doing more of what they want, it doesn't, you know. And like the far-left liberals, they have no problem staying home or voting for a third party. They do not care about the party per se, they just care about what it has done for them lately. And in terms of distance from the American Center, the religious right is really just as extreme, if not more extreme, than more on the liberal left.

This basically explains the difference between the two parties, and their approaches to constituencies. The Democratic Part is always balancing between ignoring the left and doing some things in their favor, for the most part seeing how much they can just ignore them to gain swing voters without losing the election entirely by turning to many of the left away. So, the democrats often seem hesitant to embrace their left. Hence them almost never using the word abortion in ads. The right, on the other hand, can't afford to stick it to their fringe, because their fringe is their base. So that's why you get John McCain bending over backwards to court the religious right, because he automatically has no chance without them. I suspect that if John McCain had his druthers, he would be running the kind of moderate, idea-based campaign that he said he would. But the base hates him; he represents everything that they hate in the republican party, and there is an actual chance that they wouldn't show up to vote for him. So here he is turning himself into their ghoul, to protect their votes.

Personally I suspect that after this election the religious right will be done. Obama's triumph will prove once and for all that they are outside the mainstream, and are lethal to electoral success, and they Republican Party will soon dump them wholecloth, and start running on small-government libertarian and civil libertarians. It will be something like the party of Goldwater again. The Religious Right will go back to not caring about electoral politics, and slowly shrink as the combined forces of modernity and liberalism slowly tear their children out of the fold. These people are simply living in an outdated social model, one that cannot really exist in the first world, and the only reason it has been useful to these people—the sense of community, the social programs and daycare— is in dealing with the hardship caused by the party they have voted for. As those causes disappear, their children will drift away, seeing their parents' culture as not one they need to hold onto for themselves, and not worth preserving for posterity.

I have been commenting

I comment I posted elsewhere that i wanted to preserve in it's entirety:

Yeah, I kind of started to fly off the handles there. I actually kept going, but realized about was about to start raging against the machine, so I chopped off the last bit and posted that.

Now, about our form of government. We have a democratic republic, not a republic or a democracy. This means that the people democratically, and for whatever reasons, selects it's leaders. (Yeah, I know, heavy handed, but bear with me for a moment.) This means that the best we can do isn't to "make elected officials aware of our concerns," it's to get rid of the ones who aren't responsive, and install ones who are. The power, ultimately, rests with the people, and elected officials are the conduit through which that power is channeled. (It would be hard to have the country run by 300 million votes on every single issue).

Now, within this system, there is some leeway in terms of how this process is run, which I think basically boils down to the state of a country's political culture. The government can be run in a more democratic manner, or a more republican manner. And it is up to the people. We can elect officials on the basis of how closely they represent the popular will (democratic), or we can elect them on the basis of them being smarter than the public, and able to make decisions that are superior to those of the people (republican).

I, obviously, generally favor the former viewpoint. Not totally, of course. I see the utility of elected people with a firmer grounding in law and economics than I possess, and people who are whip smart. In fact, I think that much of Obama's support at present stems from the idea of the philosopher-king. We don't all agree with him on everything, but he seems uniquely suited for dealing with this huge mess from the last eight years, so we aim to give him the shot. But despite this, one thing I find shocking, and shocking that others have not really picked up how shocking it is, is the degree to which he personally emphasizes how political change should be the product of the people's will, and that it is his job to facilitate that will being expressed. Community Organizer. Project Vote. Change from the bottom up. Almost all of the man's political career has been devoted to getting people to realize that the government is theirs, if they would just think to reach out and take it. Of course, no one seems to notice this, and focus on the hero worship instead. (I think you can basically sum up Obama's political career with the scene in Life of Brian where Brian is speaking to the mob outside his window.)

I digress. Anyways, One of the arguments you seem to be making, obliquely, for a more republican culture in electing officials, is that "'the "people' are no more guaranteed to be right than any other group." Well, yes, true. The people can be wrong or right. The elite can also be wrong or right. But if the elite are wrong, then there is really no reason to have them around. And a lot of the time the reason the people are wrong is because the elite are lying to them. I guess I see the elite as redundant. They either lead us right or lead us astray, but either way having them makes us less free. All things being equal, I prefer to be free. And I don't think it's equal, I think the people are generally, except when lied to, right.

And I don't think your LBJ example really works either. People were not as far forward as LBJ. Because of Civil Rights, right? It lost the south of a generation. But LBJ didn't run for reelection because of Civil Rights. It was Vietnam. Take out Vietnam, and LBJ would have coasted to reelection, becoming the the 2nd longest serving president in history. He probably would have gotten his face on some money in the bargain. He may have lost the south, but what he did became vastly popular. I just fail to see how LBJ's liberal accomplishments were far out of the mainstream. I see them as a legitimate response to mood of the country that, even if more forward than the mood of the country at that moment, were on the right track. At the most is was an example of a president acting as slightly out of step with public opinion in a good way. And sometimes presidents act step with public opinion and do really bad things. It's a wash.

Oh, and my bit about the libertarians. What I meant was, if the people are not the source of political action, but elites are, then the government is a separate entity. It is not them, and should be treated as such. Distrusted, feared. However, if the people are the source of political action, than the government is nothing more that expression of the people's will. It is collective action. A communist endeavor, if you will: the product of efforts of investing in the community. Thus there is no really need to fear the government, or shouldn't be. The government is us. (Well, we still might fear it, I find myself quite frightening sometimes, to say nothing of my neighbors.)

This is nice. Keep it coming.