November 05, 2008

11/5: Yes, He Did

While most liberal bloggers expected Barack Obama to defeat John McCain by a sizeable margin, they were still thrilled when it happened. Lefty bloggers described Obama's victory as "overwhelming" and "extraordinary". Many felt "an immense sense of relief" that Americans chose to elect a Dem president to follow George W. Bush. John Aravosis echoed the feelings of many liberal bloggers when he declared, "The long national nightmare has come to an end."

Conservative bloggers had a rough night, obviously. While most of them congratulated Obama on his victory, many were frustrated that Obama had managed to win in spite of his "radicalism" and other alleged defects.

Meanwhile, lefty and righty bloggers have already begun arguing about the degree of public support for Obama's agenda. Several conservative bloggers are arguing that Obama's resounding victory does not give him "an unfettered mandate for left-wing policies across the board", since the U.S. remains a "center-right country". Liberal bloggers, on the other hand, believe that this election was "a repudiation of Republicans and of conservatism" that demonstrates the electorate's desire for progressive change.

OBAMA: And The Landslide Brought Me Down...

Needless to say, liberal bloggers were pretty excited about Obama's victory:

• Atrios: "Holy. Fucking. Shit."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "I am still in shock. This was a damned landslide."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "...I just want to say that I feel, well, humbled at the sublime face of promise and history. Something very good happened tonight. I'll write about it for ages. Right now, it is too overwhelming."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "I'm not embarrassed to admit that I'm at a loss for words. Eleven months ago today, Obama told a group of Iowans, 'You know, they said this day would never come.' And yet, he we are. It's an extraordinary moment to savor."
• TAPPED's Adam Serwer: "President Barack Hussein Obama. Get used to it. The former seat of the Confederacy just picked a black man for President of the United States, and this election is now over."
• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "This is a smashing repudiation of the hideous right-wing faction that has wreaked so much damage on the country, and an obviously historic night as well. But this is merely the first step, with much work remaining, for reversing what has been done over the last eight years."

Another common sentiment in the liberal blogosphere was relief:

• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "I guess I should be feeling a sense of excitement, but what I mostly feel is an immense sense of relief. Just a complete, unmitigated, totally drained sense of relief that George Bush will finally be packed up and sent home to Crawford. For just this moment, I don't even care whether Barack Obama will be a great president. I'm just grateful that for the next four years our president will be at least minimally competent and grounded in reality. Thank God."
• Ezra Klein: "My basic emotion is relief. The skill of an Obama administration has yet to be proven. The structure of our government will prove a more able opponent of change than John McCain. But for the first time in years, I have the basic sense that it's going to be okay. Not great, necessarily. And certainly not perfect. But okay. The country will be led by decent, competent people who fret over the right things and employ the tools of the state for recognizable ends. They may not fully succeed. But then, maybe they will. At the least, they will try. And if they fail in their most ambitious goals, maybe they will simply make things somewhat better. After the constant anxiety and uncertainty of the last eight years, maybe that's enough."
• AMERICAblog's Aravosis: "I'm exhausted. That's the overall emotion I have right now. Utter exhaustion. With an undercurrent of relief. [...] The long national nightmare has come to an end."

OBAMA II: Credit Where Credit's Due

A number of conservative bloggers complimented Obama and paid tribute to the historical significance of his victory:

• NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru: "[Obama] had a lot of things going for him this year...but it is remarkable how few mistakes he made, how disciplined and unflappable he was. I do not agree that running a campaign well is much of a qualification for office, but it is nonetheless impressive. And, of course, the fact that a black man has won the presidency is genuinely thrilling. Now I hope he proves to be more moderate than his record indicates."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Congratulations to Barry O on a race superbly run and to our country for not having let the wrong reasons deter it from making the wrong choice. I'll never be a fan, but I swear I'll never take a nutroots posture either in relishing his failures because it helps my party. Like it or not, he's my president. As a great man once said, country first."
• NRO's Jim Manzi: "Legal racial segregation was prevalent in America within living memory, yet we appear to have just elected a black man to the position of maximum honor, authority and influence in the country. The manner of this political victory is important, as well. This was not some prize bestowed upon him, and Barack Obama didn't just buy a winning lottery ticket; he out-smarted and out-worked both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. [...] There are about 1,460 days until the next Presidential election, and I assume that I will spend approximately the next 1,459 of them opposing Barack Obama. But I'm spending today proud abut what my country has overcome."
• NRO's Jonah Goldberg: "It is a wonderful thing to have the first African-American president. It is a wonderful thing that in a country where feelings are so intense that power can be transferred so peacefully. Let us hope that the Obama his most dedicated -- and most sensible! -- fans see turns out to be the real Obama. Let us hope that Obama succeeds and becomes a great president, for all the right reasons."
• The Atlantic's Ross Douthat: "Obama has just been elected President of a nation in which he could have been bought and sold as a slave just seven generations ago. I don't think there are any words adequate to the occasion of America electing its first black President, so I'll just say this: This may be a bleak day for the Republican Party and for conservatism, but come what may in the years ahead, it's a great day for our country."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "I would have preferred a different result tonight, but I need to comment on the obvious -- the fact that a black man can be elected President of the United States is a great development for our nation."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Although I would have certainly preferred to have John McCain in the White House, it will at least be nice to finally see a black American become President. Conservatives have been saying America isn't a racist nation for a long time. This proves we're right. Conservatives have been saying that we don't need Affirmative Action in this country. This proves we're right."

OBAMA III: Bah, Humbug!

Other conservative bloggers were in no mood to praise Obama:

• NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez: "What freaks me out about this election is how oblivious to facts people have been. Everything about Obama's judgment and radicalism -- whether Sean Hannity or Stanley Kurtz or Andy McCarthy etc. is telling you about it -- was essentially deemed irrelevant (including largely by the McCain campaign, save for [Sarah] Palin eventually talking about [William] Ayers). Abortion? Near no one outside a handful of conservatives were talking about his record on infanticide -- beyond abortion. People are in for a rude awakening."
• NRO's John Derbyshire: "It is of course a great thing that we are (it seems pretty certain) electing a black President. It's just a crying shame it had to be this shallow, empty man, who has never shown a flicker of interest in wealth creation, whose head is stuffed with all the vapid nostrums of 1980s student leftism, and who seems -- putting the most charitable construction on it -- not to mind the brazenly thuggish tactics of his supporters."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "From Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright, to 'bitter-clingers,' to 'spreading the wealth,' to giving McCain the middle finger, to Black Panthers with batons on Election Day (just to name a few) -- there were plenty of things that popped-up which might have hurt Obama. ... None of them did. [...] Barack Obama was the teflon candidate. Will he be a teflon president?"
• RedState's Neil Stevens: "Point one: There's no need to start pointing fingers within the party. This election was on style, not substance. No faction's to blame, and no policy is at fault. We know this because Obama won. He ran on no ideas at all. [...] Point two: This isn't the end of America. Our values are more resilient than Obama is strong. Our civil institutions are stronger than Obama is socalist. Our nation is greater than any one man, including the President. We will endure anything that happens under his Presidency."

Townhall's Amanda Carpenter finds a silver lining in Obama's victory: "It's going to be very liberating to be able to fight bad policy from a completely honest standpoint. Meaning, conservatives would be able to confront terrible ideas, like the bailout bill, head-on without having to worry about what the Executive branch might do to undermine the concerns."

OBAMA IV: Mandate? What Mandate?

Several conservative bloggers are arguing that Obama's victory should not be seen as evidence that the country has moved left:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "This country is still very much a center-right country. Despite an economic crisis, two wars, wrong track numbers that have reached nearly 80%, a Republican President whose popularity rating is at about 25% or so and a massive fundraising machine for the Obama campaign that was made possible by Barack Obama's decision to break his campaign promise and opt out of the public financing system, as of the time of this writing, Barack Obama is only ahead by a mere 3% in the popular vote -- a margin of about 3 million votes. He is, at the time of this writing, a 51% President. Is this impressive? Sure. Is the Electoral College margin impressive? Absolutely. But the popular vote shows no landslide whatsoever for Barack Obama."
• NRO's Lisa Schiffren: "There has been a lot of preliminary chatter tonight about whether we remain a 'center-right' country, or have we gone 'center left'? We'll have to see. It's shaping up as a strong electoral win for Obama. And GOP Senators are going down right and left. (Right. Not left.) But for the moment I am seeing a popular vote tally of 50% D to 49% R (on Fox). The popular vote is the better indicator of the state of ideological division in the nation. Unless the popular vote becomes much more disparate, it looks to me as if we have the same very clear, very even division we've had for the past almost two decades. What may be changing is the composition of the left side of the country. They are going further left. Since they will have the power, that's a problem. But it doesn't mean as much for the future of the country as the lefty commentariat would like."
• Michelle Malkin: "Obama's popular vote total is a lot smaller than most polls showed. [...] Democrats won the White House, but they do not have an unfettered mandate for left-wing policies across the board."

An exception is Douthat, who believes that Obama has won a mandate: "[Obama's] campaign wasn't addressed to me: It was addressed to the constituents of a potential center-left majority, and that's the majority he won tonight. Whether this majority holds together will depend on how he governs, but for the moment he has achieved something that no Democratic politician has achieved in a generation: He's carved out a mandate to take America at least some distance in a leftward direction, and he has left the conservative opposition demoralized, disorganized, and arguably self-destructing."

OBAMA V: You're Darn Right He Has A Mandate!

Liberal bloggers are arguing that Obama's resounding victory indicates that a majority of Americans do indeed want progressive change:

• Mark Kleiman: "Note to wingnut pundits: Your candidate called our candidate a socialist. None of you pointed out that your candidate was full of it. Our candidate won convincingly. You can't come back now and announce that he country is still 'center-right' and that the winner has no madate for progressive policy."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Socialism comes to America...and yet somehow that's going to count as proof that we're a center-right nation."
• Klein: "According to recent campaign narratives, the American people have now given Barack Obama an overwhelming mandate for the following projects: (1) Socialism. (2) Putting the coal industry out of business. (3) Wealth spreading. (4) More socialism. (5) Making Joe the Plumber's life a living hell. (6) Taking away everyone's guns. Even those held by police. (7) Government-run health care. Government-run mandate health care. Indeed, a mandate for government-run health care with an individual mandate! (8) Reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine. (9) Surrendering in Iraq. ... Am I missing anything? This is going to be a helluva first 100 days."
• Bowers: "This is the progressive movement's mandate. A mandate to end the war. A mandate for universal health care. A mandate to solve the financial crisis even if it means nationalization and harsh measures against Wall Street. A mandate to repair the environment. A mandate to restore the middle class. A mandate for a truly free and open media. This is our mandate. The country is with us."
• Firedoglake's Ian Welsh: "This election is a repudiation of Republicans and of conservatism, and a cry from the American people, a demand, to do things differently. If the Democrats do that, if they return to Washington and build a new era which is not fundamentally conservative at its roots, but which is progressive, they will be rewarded with a shift in power which will last a generation."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Setting A Low Bar

The New Republic's Franklin Foer:

"It's a good to have a president again. The last couple of years we haven't had one -- or rather we have one who decided to give up after failing badly. This has been an especially painful vacuum during the collapse of the economy, and in the face of our diminished reputation in the world. There's been no one to reassure the country, and no sign that a leader was actually tending to the national well being.

Watching the tears flow tonight -- and shedding a couple myself -- the toll of the last few years came home. Of course, the historic dimensions of tonight inspired these. But we also needed a good national cry, and, more to the point, a leader. As others have noted tonight, Obama won't have to do much to look good in comparison -- a little energy, a bit of heartfelt optimism, a sense that we put a modicum of forethought into our policies. I have some hope that Obama can do more than clear that low bar. (His speech tonight struck all the right notes.) But for the time being, I'll take having a sentient being in charge."

LEST WE FORGET: Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- After emerging victorious from one of the most pivotal elections in history, president-elect Barack Obama will assume the role of commander in chief on Jan. 20, shattering a racial barrier the United States is, at long last, shitty enough to overcome.

Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.

'Today the American people have made their voices heard, and they have said, "Things are finally as terrible as we're willing to tolerate,"' said Obama, addressing a crowd of unemployed, uninsured, and debt-ridden supporters. 'To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time -- these last eight years must have really broken you.'

Added Obama, 'It's a great day for our nation.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at November 5, 2008 09:05 AM