Some Irony

First, the Democrats lost a seriously weird election yesterday in New Orleans.  Corrupt douchebag William Jefferson, who hid bribes in his freezer, lost to Joseph Cao, who will be the first Vietnamese American in Congress.  Pretty surprising, because the district has a PVI of D+36–making it more Democratic than any district in the whole country is Republican, and Obama won it by better than 70-30.  This is the best kind of purge, because the Democratic majority is big enough that they don’t need odious people like him.

Secondly, the two most senior Republicans in the House, who have been serving since 1971 and 1973, respectively, both have the surname Young.

Don Young, born 1933, corrupt Alaskan icon.

Bill Young, born 1930, cranky old Floridian with only a High School diploma.

(Incidentally, the third-most senior Republican is named Jerry Lewis.  He’s not the comedian Jerry Lewis, but he looks like Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.)

The party of the future!

The Penny Saver Inn

This was the last night on our three week road trip before reaching San Francisco.  It’s Crescent City, CA, which I thought would be bigger, although the houses have a sort of Bermuda feel to them.  They’re small, neat, close together and pastel.  (I only took pictures during golden hour, when pastels don’t always shine through.)

Crescent City, not too cute that it’s got bed and breakfasts littering everything, has a spectacular coastline but the only thing to eat at 8pm was a $5 Subway foot-long, the existence of which prevented us from eating burgers every night for 3 weeks.

Interestingly, Crescent City is the seat of Del Norte County along the Oregon border, the “Northern Gate to the Golden State,” which was the only coastal California county besides Orange County to prefer McCain to Obama.  (The three SW-most counties on the Pacific in Oregon were also red; from there north, it’s a line of blue straight up to Canada).  Of course, it only has a population of 27,000, making it the least populous coastal county in the state.

Seems to me that the relevant political dichotomy of California (with the exception of Orange County) should be Coastal vs. Inland, rather than North vs. South.  But what do I know–I just moved here.

In any case, it’s way pretty and shit.

The Most Pernicious Argument Waged by Liberals Against Obama

In late April, when Hillary Clinton was still technically viable as a potential nominee, bad Democrats like Evan Bayh suggested that the best measure of her success was the electoral vote totals of her primary victories.  “Obama can’t win the big states,” they said.  (And indeed, he had lost California, New York and Pennsylvania, tied in Texas, and Florida was sort of messed up, etc.)

However, check out the list of the largest US states by population, colored for their ’08 results:

California
Texas
New York
Florida
Illinois
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Michigan
Georgia
North Carolina
New Jersey
Virginia
Washington
Massachusetts
Indiana
Arizona
Tennessee
Missouri
Maryland
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Colorado
Alabama
South Carolina
Kentucky

Obama won 17 of 25–and really, 17 out of 22, including 13 of the top 15.  Does anybody seriously think Arizona won’t become more like Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico once an Arizonan isn’t running at the top of the GOP ticket?  Was Obama not competitive in Georgia till the last second?  Is Missouri even resolved yet?  Texas may stay infrared until eternity but it’s going to be a mansard roof on a house of cards.

The idea that losing or winning a primary dictates that that candidate and only that candidate will reproduce those results in the general election is ridiculous, but it was Democrats who wielded it.  I can’t think of any better evidence that demographic changes can cement an enduring Democratic majority.  Obama can win 15 of the 16 most populous states in 2012.

Obamaha, Obaha, Omaba, ‘Tevs

Suck it Nebraska, Obama just won one of your electoral votes.  This is the first time that one of the two states that splits its votes (Maine is the other) actually split its vote.  Since McCain will probably walk away with Missouri (suck it, bellwether), it appears the final electoral tally will be 365-173.  A poetic total for Obama, in a way.

I like anything that chips away at the stupidity of the electoral college, and to see it come from an otherwise crazy-right-wing locale is kind of nice.

On the subject, tangentially, of Maine, I just watched The Mist and it had two scenes that were pretty damn suspenseful.  Of course, I thought War of the Worlds was one of Spielberg’s better movies (not a fan, in general) and I insist that Halloween is totally not scary.  My boyfriend thinks Frank Daramont is a lesser demon of some sort, but I thought it was a pretty good adaptation: quite faithful, except for the end, which dispenses with the original story’s optimistic non-resolution for something more fucked up.  I guess the length of a novella makes it ideally suited to become a screenplay and satisfy the Fanboys.  Anyway: Obama won something and scary movies are good.

The gay is inexplicable

From CNN, the exit polls show that Obama did better among virtually every category of voter than John Kerry did…except the LGBT population.  By 11 points!  I guess not actively pursuing a constitutional amendment banning fag-fag marriage counts for something, but that’s just weird.  I mean, isn’t the gay usually at least a little smart?  And don’t you people learn anything?

This is 2008:

This is 2004:

We can deduce that in 2000, Bush did worse than McCain in 2008.  Bizarre, that.  At least Obama won straight vote by basically the same margin as he won the general population, which proves that the straight has achieved median intelligence in at least one arena.  If President Obama mandates two hours of daily Bravo consumption, we will see great gains for heterosexual-Americans.

Now I know why, whenever I leave a coast and go to a gay bar*, they’re always awful.  Or amazing, but ironically.

*For the purposes of this post, Miami is way the fuck inland.

Obama wins Top Design!

I have to remind myself that the global euphoria we’re all participating in really is what it feels like: an extremely important episode in American history. It comes at a time when the country is starting to feel like the end of its dominance might be in sight, but Christ, it’s seriously goddamn fantastic.

I seriously would not want to be Barack Obama, inheriting this clusterfuck of shitstorms that’s clearly going to get worse before it gets better, and his grandmother died, and he has to take the kids to the animal shelter and steer them away from the 8-year old Great Dane with the sad eyes and whose job got outsourced.  Jesus.

Fuck Prop 8 and the Positive Bradley Effect that exists for convicted Alaska senators for a minute.  The following things happened:

The Democrats picked up at least 5 Senate seats.  I think they’ll get Oregon, and maybe one more.  That’s a 56-seat majority, minimum.  It might be 58.  If Joe Lieberman wants to be a total douche and officially try to be the shrunken, rump GOP’s most liberal senator, fine.  The Democrats will own the Senate 57-43.  That’s a bigger majority than the GOP has had since before 1932.

They won at least 19 net House seats. Could be more.

Obama won Florida. He won Pennsylvania–and every other blue state.  He won Ohio.  He won motherfucking Indiana. It hasn’t gone blue since 1964 and unlike Virginia, isn’t exactly an electromagnet for cosmopolitan types.

Oklahoma retains its title as the nation’s worst state. Besides being ugly, tornadic and full of Christians, it was the state with the highest McCain win by percentage: 65.6% to Obama’s 34.4.  (Wyoming was a close second, but the two counties home to Laramie and Jackson Hole went blue–not a single Oklahoma county did, and Oklahoma has way more.)

In New York the Democrats won the State Senate to control all three branches of government for the first time since the precambrian rock underlying the Adirondacks was vomited from a molten earth.  New York City’s last Republican seat was swept away, along with two others upstate, and the last Republican Representative from New England is now gone, too.  New York and New England hold a combined 51 seats in the House.  48 of those are Democratic.

San Francisco went Democratic by 85%. More than Manhattan, but less than the Bronx.  Dallas County, Harris County (Houston) and Bexar County (San Antonio): all blue.  There is potential in Texas.

A map of Congressional distrcits still looks overwhelmingly red at first glance, due to the agglutinated lameness of people who don’t live near many other people, but check it:

Now compare that to just after 2006, which, keeping in mind, was an even bigger gain.

The Southwest is particularly dramatic.  Democrats dominate the NE, the coastal West (where everybody lives), the Upper Midwest, and even in the South, they fare much, much better than Republicans are doing in, say, New England.  Now, the fastest growing region in the country is also trending blue the fastest.  I think it’s going to be a long time before the Republicans get to run the country into the ground again.

Good luck, President(-elect) Obama.