In this just-completed election cycle, one thing should be
clear to everyone: the GOP got thumped. Their candidate failed to upend Obama. Their slate failed to retake the Senate, and
in fact lost seats. The Boehner team in the House retained control,
but saw the chamber’s approval ranking plummet to historically-low levels while
losing, as of this writing, at least six seats. Tea-party
backed candidates who promised to usher in a revolution in 2010 faced the
stiffest opposition in both House and Senate races, and it was the rejection of
many such candidates that prompted the unlikely spectacle of Democratsretaining seats in red states.
Meanwhile, in this state, the biggest number haunting the
California Republican Party is not the 1 percent that have benefited the most
under the Bush tax cuts, or the 47 percent figure that Gov. Romney described to
a group of millionaire donors. No, thenumber that should concern them, more than any other, is 29.4 percent: the historically-low percentage of registeredCalifornia voters who now identify as Republicans. As I write this, the state GOP is in danger
of being so much in the minority that Democrats in Sacramento will be able to
ignore them on most measures.
Why did the GOP fail so miserably, especially in the Golden
State? It certainly wasn’t because they
didn’t have their advantages. The
President sought reelection in an economic climate that historically dooms
incumbents. The Democrats had far more
seats to defend in the Senate than the GOP, many in red states. And, just two years ago, the highest court
in the land had struck down campaign finance law that had placed limits on the
amount of money that could be spent by corporations in political
campaigns. A bad economy, far less
seats to defend and unlimited cash had Republicans throughout this country
salivating at the prospect of capturing the White House and both houses of
Congress.
Despite all that, the GOP experienced colossal reversals,
especially in California, where the party’s positions are increasingly
unappealing to the majority of registered voters. The views articulated in the GOP state and
national platforms, in turn, reflect a party whose base is older, less diverse
and (surprisingly) less able to respond to changes in the political
environment. While the Romney campaign
and other Republicans attempted to frame this election as a referendum on the
economy, time and again GOP candidates at all levels (and especially Tea Party
types) were unable to stay “on message”.
When they went “off message”, GOP candidates invariably
either made statements that hurt them with independents, or which solidified
Democratic opposition, or both. On foreign
policy, on immigration, on abortion, on marriage equality, over and over again
Republicans were forced to own their previous words and deeds in ways that
turned off independents. And, in various
schemes at the state level intended to suppress the size of the electorate, GOPlawmakers cemented the resolve of minority voters to do whatever it would taketo turn out and vote against the party that would attempt to make it moredifficult for them to cast a ballot.
That is why, in an election night betting pool, I chose 332
electoral votes. I had seen for myself
the impressive determination of many African-American and Hispanic voters
waiting five, six, even eight hours to cast ballots during early voting that
had been rather cynically curtailed by Florida Governor Rick Scott. Unlike other places where either the Justice
Department (Texas) or local courts (Pennsylvania) got involved, the people of
Florida had largely been unable to stop the GOP-controlled Florida state houses
from reducing the number of days of early voting, and they certainly hadn’t
been able to convince the state to make extra machines and manpower available
in densely-populated, Democrat-leaning urban areas.
The fact of voter suppression attempts itself had been
well-reported by some media, but how registered voters were taking the whole
affair was not. It was my sense that the
media was understating the degree to which such tactics (or what is almost as
bad, the threat of such tactics) would affect the psyches of the
potentially-disenfranchised. Throughout
the country, but especially in Florida, where there was little relief from
these ploys, I felt that groups of people were talking in their churches, their
barber shops and their neighborhood watering holes about what people in other
parts of the state were attempting to do to them. It was my sense that, just beneath the
surface, there was a growing anger that would boil over on Nov. 6th,
like soldiers from an exposed nest of fire ants. My sense of this grew palpable on Sunday
night before the election, and by Monday morning I became convinced that this
anger would show up at the voting booth in ways that the polls couldn’t quite
anticipate.
So, with great confidence on Tuesday evening (around 5:30 in
California) I raised the eyebrows of many by boldly predicting 332 votes, based
on the assumption that the President would not only take those swing stakes
placed in his column by Nate Silver’s “538” model, but that he would take
Virginia and Florida. In a word, I
thought there were lots of votes from people who didn’t really love the President’s
performance, but who were determined to vote, to stand in line however long it
took, to defy the attempts of any “monitors” to intimidate them, to spite the forces who would attempt to take
away “Big Mama’s vote”.
And, if it wasn’t for chronically-strapped Miami-Dade Countyin Florida giving up and going home after midnight on Tuesday, I would’ve seen
my bold prediction come true then and there.
As it was, Florida was still officially “too close to call” at the time
both Colorado and Ohio broke, “too close to call” at the time Karl Rove had histiff with FOX News analysts, “too close to call” when Governor Romney conceded
and still (insert eye roll here) “too close to call” for days after the
election.
What a joke! I hope
the people of Florida look at the stinking turd of governance called Rick Scott*
and send him packing when he is up for reelection, because he accomplished a
double-whammy: he snubbed the basic
human dignity of many citizens by making it harder from them to vote, and he
(yet again) reminded the rest of the nation that the government in Florida still conducts elections like a third-world country.
Thankfully, this time the citizens of
Florida reminded this nation that the right to vote is a sacred obligation, a
defense of the bonds that unite all of us.
The Romney camp has already conceded this point, but regardless of when
the official pronouncement comes, make no mistake: the Obama team won in Florida. The President garnered 332 electoral votes,
as I predicted. The high number of electoral
votes captured is not a fluke, but in line with the margin of error in what the
best models predict. Romney and the
Republicans collided with reality, and (as it always will) reality prevailed.
(* You might wonder how Rick Scott, being so dreadful---his highest approval ratings so far are in the high 30's----how did he ever win election? Well: it's because he's a Rich $cott, to the tune of $75 million)
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