So, for a while there during the campaign it seemed very iffy. But in the end, discipline and being on the right side of the issues prevailed. Yes, Elizabeth Warren won! Oh, and that guy, Barack Obama, too.
Now comes the cleanup; when thousands, perhaps millions, of right-wing heads explode, it makes quite a mess. Also, notice that the polls were right. I wonder if I can get invited when Nate Silver is sworn in as president?
O.K., somewhat more seriously: one big thing that happened in the election was that the real America trumped the “real America.” And it’s also the election that lets us ask, finally, “Who cares what’s the matter with Kansas?”
For a long time, right-wingers — and some pundits — have peddled the notion that the “real America” (all that really counted), was the land of nonurban white people, and the demographic to which both parties must abase themselves. Meanwhile, the actual electorate was getting racially and ethnically diverse, and increasingly tolerant, too. The 2008 Obama coalition wasn’t a fluke; it was the country we are becoming.
And sure enough that more diverse and, if you ask me, better nation just won big.
Notice too that to the extent that social issues played in this election, they played in favor of Democrats. Gods, guns and gays didn’t swing voters into supporting corporate interests; instead, human dignity for women swung votes the other way.
A huge night for truth, justice and the real American way.
Wall Street’s Bad Investment Decision
There are many lists now circulating of the biggest winners and losers from the election; oddly, however, none of the lists I’ve seen mentions just how bad this result is for Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe.
The story, as you may recall, is that the financial industry — having brought both itself and the rest of the world to the edge of disaster — was bailed out by taxpayers.
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Yet far from being grateful, top financial types were furious at President Obama for occasionally hinting that some of them might have misbehaved a bit. And investment bankers — who normally lean Democratic — went overwhelmingly to the other side, pouring cash into Mitt Romney’s coffers in the no doubt correct expectation that a Romney administration would dismantle financial reform and treat their wealth with the adulation they believe to be their birthright.
But Mr. Romney lost and Mr. Obama won. The limits of their power have been cruelly exposed, and the re-elected president now owes them nothing.
Did I mention that Elizabeth Warren, who helped to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is going to the Senate — a Senate that will be substantially more progressive and less Wall Street friendly than before?
Bad move, guys.
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