The GOPers sure didn't try as hard as we expected them to, did they?

Where were the 527 ads? Even FOX News held their fire, and they are all but officially the GOP propganda network.

And for anyone who say Obama accomplished something by winning this election, what he did is like someone winning American Idol without ever singing a song.
 

Ah'm tellin' ya, Joe, it's posts like dese dat'll cause your name to be dropped for consideration of the position of consigliere.
 

Thanks for a cycle of great observation, and analysis!
 

I've wondered along the same vein-- where were all the Sinclair stations with their hired ass Hyman touted the O'Inadequacies? Hmmm. Nowhere. The GOPers didn't want McCain. The same people who brought you George Bush the Uncluttered and the Iraq war lined up behind the Precious. And yes, curious all that stock market trouble just in time to prevent an O'Tanking.

And like magic-- the stock market rebounds and flowers grow from the concrete on the South Side.

My, o my, what a wonderful day...
 

The main reason I did not vote for Obi was that I wanted, really badly, for the Republicans to be forced to clean their own mess. I practically salivated over the thought of any one of them having to actually "regulate" something!!

I am dismayed that many African Americans in this country appear to have voted for him because he is black and not necessarily because he is worthy (the statistics kind of support this view). Isn't that racist? But I think it is probably good in that maybe some excuses will stop.

I agree on the orange alerts. And I think McCain was a little too comfortable about losing.

I did read a mainstream PROG article before the election pondering whether Americans were going to "turn into klansmen" in the voting booth. I've never been so disappointed.

Anyway, I learned recently that CEO's like to join corporations when they are at their worst because there is no place else to go but up. So for the success of the Democratic Party, I guess it depends on whether we've hit bottom yet.

Miss P.
 

This is my take on what happened.

In some ways I think the Republicans allowed McCain to lose. Normally they are much better campaigners than we saw in this election. McCain was never very popular with them anyway. So I think he was their sacrificial lamb.

Republicans are far better STRATEGIC planners and thinkers than Democrats. Let me try and explain.

In may ways 2009 will be like 1929 and Obama is the Democrat's Herbert Hoover.

This President will be a one-term Presidency. Because the economy is so bad that no matter what the next President does it won't help matters and the economy won't get better and so they will piss off more than half of the country. And if Obama and the Dems do raise taxes then what happened under Hoover will happen again under Obama. He will be hated. Then the electorate will turn to Republicans again. And, like FDR was the 'savior' for the people and kept Dems in power for 30 some years, I think the same will be true in 2012 for Republicans. I think Republicans saw this and thought we'll give the Dems this one and we will come back to win the day in 2 and then 4 years. Strategic thinking at its best.

The very same scenario would have been played out if McCain had won, only in reverse. He would be the new Herbert Hoover and no matter what he did it would not work and the electorate would be pissed off ushering in a 30 year Democratic rule. If they were smart they would have let McCain win and go for the bigger prize. But Dems are so stupid and they do not think long term let alone strategically.

They only wanted to win win win with no long term strategy in mind. And Obama's ego only wanted to be the first black elected. They may well rue the day they selected Obama and got him elected.

You know the Greeks used to say be careful what you wish for, because when the gods want to punish you they give you what you want. There is a lesson in there for Democrats.

bert in Ohio
 

Joseph and myiq2xu, exactly!

Remember, Karl Rove helped Donna Brazile over a year or two scheme how to launch Senator Obama.

I suspect his thinking was that this would be a hard year for Republicans, with President GW Bush and a Republican Congress having so badly tarnished the brand. The country is in a mess, as Miss P points out. Let the Democratisc party win, over-reach, screw up, throw the country into the toilet -- and the right wing of the Republican Party can make a come back. Who better to do this than a charismatic, but wholly inexperienced Democratic President?

Also, if McCain lost, it would weaken the more reasonable side of the Republican Party, as it has.

So, yes, no 527 ads, nothing much from Fox News, Republican spokes-people denigrating both Sarah Palin and John McCain and throwing in the towel before the vote. Not to mention Bob Barr and Libertarian candidates siphoning off support.

But I would expect the gloves to come off shortly, say May or so.

djmm
 

I think it's simpler than that, the media tired of its old toy (Bush) and wanted the shiny new toy (Obama).
Most republicans would like to keep their cushy jobs in the Senate and House and could read the teal leaves, so it was don't rock the boat.
Orange alerts would have endangered Chertikof's post administration job prospects and since Bush couldn't run again he didn't really care.
The two pretanent questions will be Patrick Fitzgerald and the lenght of the media honeymoon.
 

Well, I'm here on the South Side, and I can report that there are no flowers springing from the concrete, it still looks just as blighted as yesterday. The populace seems pretty jubilant. There was some gunfire last night, but then there's always gunfire here at night. (In fact, some friends and I heard gunfire during the morning and wondered if it would affect voter turnout.) I guess it was a bit more gunfire than usual. The school kids passing by my window seem excited. However, it's nothing like the reaction we got when the Bulls won their championships.

I'm glad my neighbors think that Obama's 'election' means that the system is working for them, because not much else is. The unemployment rate for black males here is sky high, and illegal immigrants have grabbed all the entry level jobs. I'm afraid the black community will be the first to be disappointed by the Obama presidency. At least now we might find out who paid to make Obama president, and who will be pulling his strings.

Therese
 

Well--O was signally like mad who he thinks his masters will be: red and black, color coordinated appearance. It all but screamed "Bill Ayers, thank you."

And Obama will do what Rove never could: fire Patrick Fitzgerald.

It's not a Democratic thing, it's not a Republican thing: it's a Combine.
 

Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Bilderberg Group and the CFR own and made Obama president. The only thing I like about Obama is the fact that he is black. Get ready for the new world order.
 

10 million GOP-ers who voted for W in 2004 stayed home. McCain was as betrayed by his party as Hillary was by hers
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/the-bipartisan-candidate-not-enough-pumas-bwa-ha-ha/
 

Don't forget - Bush Sr. offered Bill Clinton an easy to ride to the White House in 96 if he just wouldn't pursue the presidency in 92. Clinton turned the deal down and the rest is history.

Now, the media and the establishment are treating Obama exactly as they treated Bush (and completely unlike how they've treated every other Dem since 1972), and he's getting a lot of the same endorsements Bush got. I think you should assume that he is making the same deals that Bush made - why else would the media go to such lengths to make sure he gets elected? Why else would Colin Powell endorse him?

The first thing Rove says he did as Bush's campaign manager was to go to the media and promise that a Bush admin would increase the amount of any single media market that a media corporation could own. That worked out well for Bush but leaves me wondering what Obama promised to get equivalent treatment.

We know that both Gore and Kerry were better candidates than Bush. Yet the media preferred Bush. Does their preference for Obama mean that, ultimately, McCain was a better candidate than Obama?

What this election makes crystal clear is that the media is the predominant political force in this nation and that the parties are irrelevant. I don't know how we get out of this mess. We'll never have a worthwhile president again if we don't figure it out.
 

Many blacks voted for Obama out of hope. Hope is not racist. Fear and hate is racist.

What happened to the Biden infedelity scandel Joe?
The Whitey tapes? What happened to all the trash you have been promoting? I thought you trusted with your life the info on Biden's affair?
 

I was amazed that the Republicans didn't make use of the picture of the adult Ayers standing on the flag.

The Republicans got what they wanted -- no prison time and a chance to regroup and come back in two and four years.
 

Really, with the Greatest Depression ever upon us, do you think the GOP really wanted to be stuck with that?

Stuck with their fruits - the Greatest Depression we're in?

They may be immoral, but they are not stupid.
 

Both Carter and Clinton had meteoric rises from obscure southern backwater states, and yes, they had powerful backers helping them to achieve their eventual top positions.

Nonetheless, both men were good presidents IMO, and substantially improved the nation's health and well-being.

If BHO's situation is comparable, he may have a comparable legacy by the time he's through, which I would welcome.

XIslander
 

I think what has happened is that party identity has become meaningless. What Rove couldn't do, Obama now can.
 

Bingo. I've thought this for a while, and so has my husband.

The "horse" could be Rahm Emmanuel. His father is a member of the militant Zionist group Irgun. There are Mossad connections there, and now Emmanuel is going to be Obama's chief of staff.
 

I think you guys are right. The GOP did not try hard. Funny enough, Palin helped save McCain and made it competitive enough. I'm sure of it. However, if the GOP cared about McCain they could have held onto FL, but they didn't.

I don't know if the political establishment (dem/rep) is ready to clean house. Maybe in four years.
 

Last Lemming: I heard the victory speech on the car radio, so I was pretty surprised to see the visual. One could not help but wonder at the message being sent.

Not that I have anything against the red/black combination!

Scott: "I thought you trusted with your life the info on Biden's affair?"

To be specific, I trust the source of the info with my life. I also am pledged not to hurt her personally, even though I could make her the focus of national attention with one blog post.

People like you wonder why I would say that Biden is having an affair if I am not certain. I AM certain. There is a difference between being certain and being in a position to convince YOU.

I cannot explain to you why I am certain without harming my source, who is someone I like. For that matter, I like Joe Biden. At any rate, I'm not judgmental about below-the-waist issues. So I'll let someone else reveal the thing.

Why did I post what posted? Because if and when someone else DOES reveal the thing, I'll be able to to tell the world that I had the story first. And then people like you will not accuse me of being a trash-slinger. You'll accuse me of being a trash-HIDER.

By the way...

"Many blacks voted for Obama out of hope. Hope is not racist."

What codswallop. You know damn well that "hope" is an amorphous catch-phrase, not a political program. Some blacks voted for Obama out of pure racial solidarity, which is another term for racism. Black voters of that variety would have voted for Condi Rice as well. Such voters would have been motivated purely by skin color, not by any other considerations. Do I think that the majority of the African American community had such motives? No. Most, I think, acted out of long-standing partisan identity -- although one could hardly blame a black person whose vote for Obama was more enthusiastic than his vote for, say, Kerry.

bert and djimm: What can I say, except you got it?

XIslander: I'm not sure who Jimmy Carter's "horse" was, if he had one. His real horse was Richard Nixon. Watergate gave Jimmy his big chance.

Clinton? He played suckbutt to certain members of the Rockefeller family and a few other powerful easterners, pure and simple. But all of that was pretty much out in the open. What did it amount to? On certain social occasions, Bill C had to listen patiently, tapping his toes and checking his watch, while Laurence R. and Pamela H. prattled on about UFOs or some similar nonsense. All of which was no secret. Even I knew about what was going on.

The problem with O is -- I don't know who his horse was and is. As was once said of Poppy, this guy is one covert motherfucker.
 

I think people like PUMA and othors who oppose Obama wasted time talking about issues that are not important ie sinclair, whitey tape and the like. There were so many big stuff the civilian guard for example no one heard of it or no it's implication either, and no one was bounding on it. The guy spent nearly a *billoin* $ that in itself should have been the biggest scandle, again they let it go. The fact he is president should looked at as failiar of all that is American
 

Who were Carter's 'horses'?

Shirley, you jest!

As the Holly Sklar edited 'Trilateralism' book explains, Carter went from being a semi-failed obscure one-term-only governor of Georgia, with under 1% name recognition among prospective Democratic primary voters, to leading the pack of primary hopefuls that included former party nominee Hubert Humphrey and other well known national party figures, all in about 6 weeks, during which time he won nothing.

Later, in retrospect, the other candidates were stunned by such a meteoric rise to national prominence. Carter's name and recognition ID were splashed upon front-page profile after feature article by the various editors and publishers who belonged to the nascent Trilateral Commission.

TC founders David Rockefeller and Zbieg (the same guy people find creepy as to BHO's affiliation with him) HIRED Carter to be their presidential candidate, and put him on the TC himself.

Later, during the transition time, Carter's chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, said, if you find we've appointed a Cy Vance at State, or a Mike Blumenthal at Treasury, I'd say we failed, and I would resign. (Both men were TC members.) Both those men WERE appointed to those positions, and Jordan didn't resign.

XIslander
 

I have the same feeling about Obama that I had about Bush in 2000--profound disappointment in voters. At the time I thought to myself that he can only do so much damage within the next 4 years before getting reigned in by checks and balances. Sadly, no.

I'm still shocked by the naivete of the Democratic leadership and voter base after all that's happened. After 8 years of incompetence, here we are again. Obama's inexperience, lack of intellectual depth, and nebulous hopey changey ideology can't possibly deal with the level of disaster the new adminstration is about to inherit. In 2000 we learned that such people can't even deal with peace and prosperity.
 

By “Orange Alert” what you are really referring here is “fear mongering” in order to coerce a sheeple populace to vote for the one side perceived to be the most able and likely to save them from impending disaster.

We did not have an Orange alert. But we DID have a bright RED ALERT, did we not?

Where is that panic today? Where, in fact, is the $700B today? And who was in bed with the Bush Administration during the entire panic attack? And whose momentum and rise in the polls was cut off at the balls by the disaster mongering, never to recover again?

Obama is the new Bush. The Democrats are the new Republicans. Nothing has changed.
 

lori is right about the media being the "predominant political force" (and the pre-eminent one also). Hands up if you still believe the Executive Branch respects and observes the US Constitution. Hands up, same thing about the US Senate and the House. Same thing about the Judiciary.

Today the price at the pump was $2.539 for premium grade. How about that?

In '12, along with the Democrat, the Republican, and the Media, see if you can get a Puma to be included in the (cough) debates.
 

I think you're right. It's going to be a short honeymoon. The economy will continue to tank as the secular deleveraging continues; Barky is singularly unprepared to deal with such things. Hard decisions await and he has never made any in his life. Hope and Change will quickly turn to Despair and Bitterness as the scales fall from the eyes of the masses. And don't forget Biden's prediction that a stern test will come very soon and the public may not like the way Obama deals with it. It's gonna be a long 4 years.
 

First - just a reminder that two different people post comments here under the tag 'G' - my posts use a grey 'G' and the other guy/gal uses an orange (Google blogger) 'G'.

You cannot understand the Obama phenomena unless you understand NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) and its effects on interpersonal interactions. Conversely, given sufficient understanding of NPD (and personal experience with it), what has happened is utterly predictable.

I've never posted an injunction online (I don't like injunctions). But I'll do it now. Read this article:
http://www.lynettelong.com/my_weblog/2008/10/anatomy-of-a-di.html
I don't agree with everything Artemis March (the author) writes. But most of it is directly on target. I'll also note that it's only a beginning - a great great deal more remains to be said on this topic.
If you want to read a bit more, here are two more items:
http://prorev.com/2008/02/just-when-clinton-obama-debate-was.html
http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0146167208324101v1
The latter is a paper that you'd need to pay for (only the abstract is free), unless you're at an academic institution that subscribes to the journal.

And mere NPD is insufficient. As Artemis notes, NPD "comes in variable degrees and with different overlays". The way in which NPD plays out in the individual, their manner, and the social skill set has to be correct. A pedigree of elite schools (e.g. starting with Punahou), use of language and gestures that mark one as a member of the elite, and so forth are necessary.

One person with NPD who I know slightly is an academic at one of the top schools in the nation (I'll call him D.). A friend of mine, who knows him much better, commented to me that if D had been born as an American citizen (he wasn't) and if D wanted it, he could be President. I actually agree. People swoon. They remark that he sparkles - even that rooms continue to magically sparkle after he's left (as an aside - he doesn't have this effect on me, but he does on most others). He'll put little effort into teaching, but receives the highest teaching evaluations. Everyone clears the way for him to succeed and ascend, as with Obama.

Most of the elite backed Bush's candidacies - but the complete consolidation of the elite around Obama's candidacy is of a different magnitude. There are other social/historical factors as well (besides NPD and its interpersonal effects).

Expiating Bush and compensating for the embarrassment and guilt of having supported Bush and the Iraq war is part of what drives the storylines of the journalistic elites. There's the disillusionment and despair that resulted from the Bush years - and the desire for salvation from this.

There's also obviously guilt over slavery and the history of racism - and the desire to expiate this (on the cheap) by backing Obama. Obama invoked this guilt, this "original sin" that required expiation - e.g. Philly speech on race: "stained by this nation's original sin of slavery" (by the way, either Obama or his speechwriter appear to have lifted this clause from The Complete Idiot's Guide to the American Presidents). I was born in '61. In school, I grew up reading books like Raisin in the Sun, Black Like Me, The Invisible Man, etc. The horror and pain of the history of race in this country deeply marked my consciousness.

I'm cross-posting this comment at the Confluence.
 

I wanted to make my comment above suitable for posting as the Confluence as well - so I didn't get in the 'horse' comment.
I don't think there's any one 'horse'. Obama is just good at sucking up to and using people. There's Emil Jones in the Illinois State Senate. Axelrod was formerly an editor and writer at the Chicago Tribune, and those connections were used to engineer his U.S. Senate victory. There's backing from Daley (the connections to Daley include Valerie Jarrett). Kennedy's backing certainly helped in the Presidential race. There's been a lot of cultivating of elite journalists/newspaper editors/columnists. Then there's Soros. Arianna. Etc. And in one sense, Bush served as a great horse (through his own idiocy/incompetence).

Another minor comment. I'm in academia. The elite look for other people with elite markings. Someone from a working class background who retains even a hint of their working class origins (in their gestures and speech) wouldn't stand a chance when an academic position is being hired for (I've been on search committees and watched the process). Even someone mentioning that they came from a working class background would kill their job chances (I made the mistake of mentioning this once about someone I was advocating for, while serving on a search committee). Conversely, someone with high elite markings (both formal pedigree and their manner) is immediately seen as worthy - and Obama has all the right markings (unlike Hillary or Edwards, or McCain for that matter).
 

Joseph, great post as usual and G thanks for the comments. I think you are the G in Madison, where I live also. What you say about the elite searches and hiring of others at an academic level rings true to me, and also at all other levels in this "liberal" city. I worked in nonprofits (even did some "community organizing") in the 80's. The same phenomenon was present there as well. I remember working with CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture) and you had the college educated running and owning the farms, mixed groups working the farms (oh, I'm sorry "collecting their "shares")and then you had the University employed people running the programs. I ran as fast as I could once I figured it all out. I've found over the years that almost every advocacy or organizing group works this way in this fine city. I voted for McCain this year, first time I voted Republican in my life.
 

Hi Hildy,
Nice to make your online acquaintance (and to find that there's someone else in Madison of like mind). My vote this year for McCain was also my own first time voting for a Republican. It was a bit painful - but the pain wasn't as bad or protracted as I expected (sort of on the level of ripping off a large bandaid).
Yeah, I know a bit of the CSA scene here. A friend of mine is one of the "University employed people running the programs" (Funny scene at the base of State Street a few weeks ago - this particular friend was pointing at me and loudly yelling to all nearby "This guy is going to vote for McCain!" - partly just to give me a hard time but partly in genuine anger and incomprehension. He's actually a decent guy (we've known each other a long time), but I seem to be a bit of a pariah in certain circles right now.
 

What a whiny bunch of assholes you are. Do the species a favor and kill yourselves.