Gotta love vintage cartoons. In this one, a pilgrim and a turkey play roadrunner vs. cayote. Just watch out for the exceedingly clever bear and the magical brick wall...

The next 4 years will be quite interesting in terms of how the Republican party will respond to its recent electoral failures. Unfortunately, much of their fate will be determined not from within but rather by the presidency of Barack Obama.

Senator Tom Coburn writing in Forbes and Ilya Somin writing for the Volokh Conspiracy make very different predictions regarding how Obama will preside.

Coburn, defending economic conservatism, argues (naively) that Democrats have done well because they've appealed to some sort of pent-up yearning Americans have for conservative ideals. You hear this argument echoed all the time by pundits who claim that America is a "center-right" nation.

Is this really true? In the case of Barack Obama, I'd say emphatically that it is not. While he promised tax cuts for a vast majority of Americans, his plan also included a massive tax increase for individuals and small businesses making more than $250,000. He spoke positively about "spreading the wealth around." He proposed hundreds of billions in new government initiatives.

If economic conservatism enjoyed any victory with Barack Obama's campaign, it was only in the most shallow sense: restricting how Obama spoke of his plans. His campaign certainly did de-emphasize the liberal nature of his policies. He never outwardly said he was going to increase taxes on anyone, constantly only referring to those that would be receiving tax breaks. He would give lip-service to fiscal discipline but would never name any specific area he would reduce or even freeze funding to. He proposed a massive government intrusion into our nation's health care system, but phrased his plan to make it sound like it was a defense of the current employer-based private health care provider model.

Somin, on the other hand, argues that Obama will lead not with an appeal to conservatism, but rather from a far left approach:

I highly doubt that Obama and the Democrats will actually take the relatively moderate, budget-cutting path. It would go against both their own instincts and historical precedent from previous periods of united government and economic crisis.

The positive take-away from this, according to Somin, is that a liberal Obama administration in union with a liberal Congress could unite libertarians and conservatives in the GOP.

I certainly hope this is true. After 8 years of rule by social conservatism plus economic populism, the GOP is in shambles, and the nation is much further in debt.

Or at least that's what some person worried can happen:

Conservatism is facing its most thorough and severe attack in the history of the United States. While LBJ's "Great Society" and FDR's "New Deal" tilted the balance of the market and government in this nation--allowing government to intervene on matters ranging from the environment, to workplace safety, to even declaring what wages are fare--the current government "bailout package" abandons any pretense of maintaining a balance.

Instead, the current government plan is fundamentally altering our economic order, doing great injury to the backbone concepts of capitalism: profit incentive, risk & reward, supply & demand, and survival of the economic fittest. George Will has a great column saying that while McCain and Palin were complaining that Obama would take us in the direction of socialism, they failed to realize that we are already socialist in many ways:

America can't have that, exclaimed the Republican ticket while Republicans -- whose prescription drug entitlement is the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society gave birth to Medicare in 1965; and a majority of whom in Congress supported a lavish farm bill at a time of record profits for the less than 2 percent of the American people-cum-corporations who farm...

Here, the Constitution is an afterthought; the supreme law of the land is the principle of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. Sugar import quotas cost the American people approximately $2 billion a year, but that sum is siphoned from 300 million consumers in small, hidden increments that are not noticed...

In America, socialism is un-American. Instead, Americans merely do rent-seeking -- bending government for the benefit of private factions. The difference is in degree, including the degree of candor. The rehabilitation of conservatism cannot begin until conservatives are candid about their complicity in what government has become.

If the Federal government keeps spending like a drunken sailor on shore-leave, it could even lose its AAA credit-rating. The cost of doing anything would then suddenly jump. The more we throw money at problems, the more we risk devaluing that money through inflation. Money isn't magic, and we all know the bubble will burst in some fashion and at some point, if the government keeps this up.

Most disturbing is that Republicans over the last 10 years have been active participants in the war on capitalism. Deroy Murdock, writing for the National Review Online, doesn't hold back:

The GOP has been laid low, thanks to politicians who swapped their principles for power and lost both. As the chief electoral vehicle for conservative and free-market ideas, the Republican party cannot regain America’s confidence —nor should it — until the guilty have been cast into the nearest volcano.

Comrade George W. Bush has spearheaded the most aggressive federal expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a delivery system for socialism, he has been the most effective Trojan Horse since that pine steed rolled into Troy.

When Bush arrived, Washington consumed 18.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Uncle Sam now devours 22.5 percent of the economy, reported Jon Ward in the October 19 Washington Times. "The country has gone from a $128 billion budget surplus when Mr. Bush took office to a deficit of at least $732 billion in fiscal 2009,” Ward writes. “No president since FDR — who offered a New Deal to pull the nation out of the Great Depression and then fought World War II — has presided over as rapid a growth in government when measured as a percentage of the total economy."

Senator Tom Coburn lends his voice to the meme, defending the principles of conservatism, while arguing that Republicans were hurt by abandoning those principles:

It was conservatives who indicted the corrupting practice of pork-barrel spending long before sitting members were formally indicted. It was conservatives who warned that budget surpluses would quickly disappear in an environment of out-of-control spending and decimate the Republican brand. It was conservatives who insisted that a culture of oversight was more important to our long-term success than a culture of parochialism.Therefore, what led the Republican Party to this day was not the application of conservative principles but the abandonment of those principles while hypocritically appealing to those tenets.

I carefully avoided referring to a "bailout" of the Big 3 automakers, because there is absolutely no assurance that $25 billion or even $100 billion would save GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

Here's one reason why we shouldn't throw money at them: to let American startups play on an even field and have a chance of success. Fisker, for example, is company doing some very cool things with plug-in hybrids.

I've never liked Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. I thought his reporting during Hurricane Katrina was both self-righteous and insincere--a combination I didn't even know was possible. But in this clip, I mostly agree with him:



I actually thought that ABC, CBS, and CNN were fairly unbiased during this election season. NBC and MSNBC were in the tank for Obama, IMHO, as Fox News was for McCain of course.

Just 8 years ago, a proposition to end gay marriage passed by 23% in California. Proposition 8, an amendment to ban gay marriage in Cali, passed by only 5%.

The tide in favor of gay marriage makes it inevitable. As more and more people (mostly younger) have friends and family who are open about their sexual orientation, then more will realize that gay people aren't demons who will kill the institution of marriage by joining in it.

- When Pennsylvania was called so early, I knew the election was over. As I explained in a prior post, McCain had to win there. Had to. In fact, the only mystery of the night for me was how Pennsylvania went so strong for Obama. In the latest polls there, Obama was up between 3 and 8 points. He won by twice that at least. I'll have to look to see if anyone has come up with an explanation.

- Indiana indeed told the story early. McCain's lead after the Eastern time-zone counties came in was pretty slim (like 5 points), and I was sure at the time that the northwest's returns would overcome that deficit for Obama.

- Vigo County, Indiana, which went for Obama, proved its mettle yet again, maintaining its status as the most accurate county at predicting the outcome in America.

Sarah Palin has been thrown under the bus. Or maybe, if you prefer, the GOP has simply chosen not to cover up her own dive.

I watched this report live on Fox last night and my jaw dropped. Apparently all was not honey and roses between Palin and the McCain campaign, and now sources in the campaign have leaked numerous embarrassing stories.

Watch the whole thing:

Yesterday, voters in California, Arizona, and Florida voted to amend their state constitutions to ban gay marriage. In Arkansas, voters banned gay (and other unmarried) couples from adopting children or providing them foster care.

When else in history has a constitution in our nation been used to directly DENY rights rather than grant them? The only examples I can think of are the provisions in the U.S. Constitution (prior to the 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments) that blatantly discriminated against blacks and women.

That voters would approve these gay marriage bans today provides a sad echo of our nation's past discrimination.

Perhaps even more disturbing is that in California, according to exit polls, whites opposed Proposition 8 (banning gay marriage), while blacks supported the measure, and latinos were divided. With polls prior to election day showing the measure narrowly opposed by Californians, some pundits, including Andrew Sullivan, have wondered whether Obama's draw of a higher black turnout in that state led to Proposition 8 passing.

That one minority group could be so blind to the challenges facing another minority group is deeply troubling to me. Are humans so narrowly-minded? Especially considering the plight faced by many black gays and lesbians, homophobia is an issue that community needs to confront.

Some will try to use this issue to drive a wedge--to foment a cultural war--between gays and lesbians. Now is the time we should attempt exactly the opposite: reconciliation. Could Obama be up to the task?

On his blog In the Agora, Josh Claybourn has a great post exploring the relationship between the wealthy and socialism. Perhaps in theory socialism should be opposed by the richest of the rich. But in reality, such as has been the case in Europe, socialism rewards the very large companies who have enough influence to skew the rules in their favor.

His post is definitely worth a read.

I have a couple substantive election posts in the works, but first a WTF. This is a video of a group of Obama supporters celebrating outside the White House. Notice anything peculiar about halfway through?

Indiana could be the canary in the coal mine on election night. The state's eastern time zone counties--most of the state--close their polls at 6 p.m. The central time zone counties close at 7 p.m. ET (6 p.m. local time).

Usually Indiana's early returns are so strong for the Republican that they are the first state called on the map. But this year could easily be different. Indiana's current polling shows it nearly dead even here. So if the early returns from the eastern time zone area, which includes Indianapolis and several cities that resemble the rust-belt cities of Ohio and Pennsylvania, are more heavily in favor of McCain that expected, then we could see a tight race.

But Indiana's northwestern cities, including Gary and Hammond, report at 7 p.m. and are heavily in favor of Obama. So the TV networks may very well have to wait until these counties report, before they are able to call Indiana.

If Indiana goes for Obama, it's the beginning of a landslide (see previous post).

Update: And then we have Vigo County in Indiana. It is the nation's most accurate at forecasting the outcome--that is, it has agreed with the national result more closely and more often than any other county in America.

Can John McCain win tomorrow? Very unlikely, but here's the path it would take:

- McCain wins Florida (27 ev's) and North Carolina (15 ev's), where Obama currently has a very narrow lead in the polls
- McCain somehow wins Virginia (13 ev's) and Ohio (20 ev's), where Obama has a medium-sized lead
- That puts McCain still only at 260 ev's, so he'll need even more. This is why the campaign is focusing on Pennsylvania where the polls have shown some tightening. If he can pull off a win there, he'll have a total of 281 ev's and the presidency.

If the so-called Hillary voters, the appalachian working class, turns out more for McCain than the polls currently indicate, then Ohio and even Pennsylvania could go McCain's way. But I don't see how he also gets Virginia and all these other states.

Obama's path to a landslide is a bit more probable in my mind. Lots of people have already voted (half of all registered voters in Colorado already!) and polls indicate that Obama enjoys a huge advantage already. Here's one possible path to a landslide:

- McCain enjoys only very narrow leads in the following states: Indiana (11), Missouri (11), Georgia (15), Arizona (10), Montana (3), and North Dakota (3). If Obama picks all of these off he'll have a total of 406 ev's.

I doubt he'd win all of those states, even if he does have the momentum on election day, but he could easily get a few of them.


**all polling data from Electoral-vote.com**