V

I'm with this guy:

While I certainly would have voted for Al Franken, I would want to at least have the option of voting for the Lizard People.


Don't quite understand the logic here, though:

Aren't there enough bad men on the ballot already? I mean christ, one of them is a libertarian!

Liberté, Égalité, etc.

Pictures from today's NYC Marriage Equality protest





The Sun Gods smile upon gay marriage:

Bonzo

Thanks to this list of "things you might not know about Barack Obama," I learned that the President-elect not only collects comic books, but also that he once had a pet ape. Her name was Tata, and was his childhood pet in Indonesia. I think that this sounds like the premise for an awesomely terrible '80's comedy about the President and his ape.

The movie starts during the first week of a new President's term (probably played by an old white guy who looks like Reagan, because this is the '80's). Everyone is still settling in at the White House, when a large, mysterious package arrives! The bomb squad and the Secret Service play Keystone Kops for a while before they figure it out--It's not a bomb! It's the president's childhood pet and companion, Tata the ape!

Of course, the ape becomes the White House pet, instead of the more traditional dog or cat. At one point, a comically square foreign official, probably from England, is staying over in the Lincoln Bedroom. Tata steals his pants and wears them down the hall, forcing the official to chase after her. He ends up in a meeting full of Important People wearing his silly patterned boxers. Later, Tata gives him a hug, so its all OK.

For about 30 seconds, an actual politician makes a cameo appearance, and shakes the ape's hand. In the real world, he fires his PR guys.

And you have the requisite villain--probably a mean, over-serious staffer, who thinks Tata should go. But of course the President and the children of the nation love Tata, so she stays.

Zany hijinks, tiresome banana jokes, and an ape giving the finger ensue. In the end, the ape saves the day in some bizarre, convoluted fashion that wouldn't even make sense if you went back and watched it again.

It's a straight to home video classic!

The end of social conservatism

One persistent dream of the right has been to leverage conservative social views among Latinos into support for Republican candidates and causes going forward. Looking over the exit polls from California, it seems like this is going to remain a dream.

California had two ballot initiatives on hot button social issues this year--a gay marriage ban (Prop 8) and the less well known Prop 4, which would have required that minors receive parental notifications for abortions. On both of these propositions, the headline Latino category held slim majorities voting 'yes.'

The headline number is deceiving, however. As I mentioned in the previous post, there was an enormous age gap on gay marriage. While age 30+ Californians opposed gay marriage, the under 30's voted strongly against the ban. This pattern held up across racial categories, with 18-29 year old Latinos voting strongly in favor of gay marriage. Almost 60% of young Latinos voted pro-marriage equality.

This pattern held up on the abortion initiative, as well. Over 30's held more conservative views (with the odd exception of 50-64 year olds), while young voters voted heavily against abortion restrictions. Again, more liberal social views were found among young voters across racial categories. Fully two thirds--66%--of 18-29 year old Latinos voted against stricter regulations on abortions. This was almost identical to the vote in the white 18-29 category, 68% of whom voted pro-choice.


So much for conservative Catholic Latinos providing a future base for social conservatism. If these views remain even remotely stable as our generation grows up, the James Dobsons of this world are finished. Good riddance.

The next generation will be, hear me...

The passage of Proposition 8 in California, banning gay marriage, was the one big negative on an otherwise very positive election night. Immediately, people started with the blame game. It was the Mormon Church--they bankrolled Prop 8! My target of choice was (and is) that gutless, lying coward--Governor Schwarzenegger. Dan Savage, in particular, shot off an incredibly ill-conceived rant. Who did he blame? Those damn "black male homophobes." This wasn't the first time this charge had been made--even before the election, Savage and Andrew Sullivan were fretting about homophobia in the black community as a hurdle to marriage equality.

As always, let's look at the evidence. Looking over the exit polls, we see one group conspicuously absent: black male homophobes. The exit polls were not able to survey enough black men to be able to give us any representative data about how they voted on Prop. 8. There is no way that such a small group could have made a serious difference in the outcome. In fact, comparing the total black vote to the subsample of black women, it seems likely that black men as a group were more amenable to gay marriage than were black women.

So much for Dan Savage's "black male homophobes."

So why did such a horrible, discriminatory initiative pass in super-liberal California? The same California which supported Obama and rejected parental notifications for abortion?
We could find any number of constituencies amongst whom a minor improvement would have preserved marriage equality. I would switch the question around: Why was it so close?
Every age category above thirty supported a ban on gay marriage. Approximately 55% of Californians between the ages of 30 to 64 supported a ban on gay marriage. Among senior citizens, the vote was 60% for Prop 8. How could any initiative fail when it holds the overwhelming support of the state's 30-somethings, middle aged and old folks? (And no, it wasn't just old black grandmas, either.)

The fact that the initiative was still too close to call on election night was a fucking miracle, and the miracle was this: Among younger voters, gay marriage was supported overwhelmingly. Over 60% of 18-29 year old voters opposed Proposition 8. And they turned out in large enough numbers to keep the election close.

So what of the age gap among people of color? We don't have large enough samples to look at the age gap amongst black, Asian, or "other race" Californians. (And, at any rate, Asian-Americans supported gay marriage outright) We can look at Latinos, amongst whom 59% of the 18-29 year olds voted against Prop. 8--roughly identical to the 18-29 year old vote at large.
Amongst whites, we see a similar age gap. The only age group among whites to vote for marriage equality were 18-29 year olds. Whites ages 30-65 were split evenly, with older whites supporting Prop. 8 by 20 percent. The only reason the headline white vote shows opposition to 8 is because an incredible 67% of young whites voted against the ban. I would expect to see a similar pattern with Asian Americans, who polled a similar slight total opposition to the ban.

So the young folks, across racial categories, supported gay marriage. Older folks, across races, were split on or hostile to gay marriage. Again, how anyone could expect that a proposition supported by every group over 30 would fail is beyond me. Of course it passed. But it's a testimony to just how huge the generation gap is that we still held it close.

Omaha, Nebraska

I guess this means I was off by one electoral vote.


Predicted:
Electoral Votes: Obama: 364, McCain 174
Popular vote: Obama: 52.5, McCain 46.5


Current (final?) results:
Electoral Votes: Obama: 365, McCain 173*
Popular vote: Obama: 52.6, McCain 46.1


And half a percentage point in the popular vote. Still--not too bad!

Fake America: The Next Generation

Via Ambinder, Patrick Ruffini writes:

the real story about the youth vote is not how many "new" voters Obama got to show up. It's how he produced a gargantuan 25% swing among existing young voters[…]

18 percent times a 25 percent increase in the Democratic margin equals 4.5 points, or a majority of Obama's popular vote margin. Had the Democratic 18-29 vote stayed the same as 2004's already impressive percentage, Obama would have won by about 2 points, and would not have won 73 electoral votes from Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, or Indiana.

I think that this and my earlier point about the racial composition of the Democratic coalition are part of the same phenomenon. Younger age cohorts are dramatically less white than our elders. "Young voters" and "people of color" are two groups with a great deal of overlap. This just underscores the problems that Republicans have going forward. They face an electorate whose demographics are trending towards traditional Democratic constituencies.

But it gets worse for them. Typically, partisan leanings are set fairly early, and tend to lean towards whatever party is currently dominant (i.e., young voters have not traditionally diverged significantly from the rest of the electorate). During the Bush years, this link was broken (even more than with Dick Nixon), and young voters began to oppose the sitting president by wide margins, even as President Bush remained popular with older voters.

I do not expect that this pattern of opposition to the sitting president will continue. In fact, I expect that we will support President Obama more than older voters for the foreseeable future. Younger voters do not seem to have been animated by blind opposition to authority, but by broad support for more liberal policies (especially on social issues). Furthermore, Obama has made a conscious effort to appeal to younger voters, and has been rewarded with not just broad support, but extremely strong support. When he was elected, we were literally dancing in the streets, throwing impromptu parties, and engaging in unprecedented displays of emotional patriotism.

In elections to come, the Republicans will face enormous hurdles. They will be facing an entire generation holding liberal political views, who grew up seeing the Republican Party as the party of disasters and intolerance, who have a strong emotional connection with a Democratic President, a majority of whom are not white, and more than ever are not Christians.

But clearly, we are a "center-right" nation.

Fake America

Several times since the election, I've seen right-wing pundits, those who spent months slinging horrible smears at now-President Obama, patting themselves on the back over the fact that "we" just elected a black man to be our President.

No. You didn't. Cut it out with the first person plural here. You spent the past year throwing every old quasi-racial slur at him that you could get away with on tv. I mean, black people as possible socialists, disloyal to America? Large black men threatening white women? Those were some oldies. This happened in spite of you--you were dragged to this "great moment" kicking and screaming

Some of this, I'm sure, is genuine cognitive dissonance. Mostly, though, this is an attempt to create a story about a post-racial America, where the generous white people finally all got over our collective racism, so now all those brown people need to stop complaining.


It's a nice story, I guess. But let's look at the actual evidence. (We'll leave aside, for the moment, the odd contention that voting behavior is a good proxy for the impact of structural racism on the lives of people of color)

Did Barack Obama win the white vote? Of course not. It would be extraordinary for a Democrat to do so. Obama won 43% of the national white (non-"hispanic") vote, which is a statistically insignificant 2% increase over John Kerry's performance four years ago. There is some evidence that there was a geographic shift here, with Appalachia and the western areas of the South voting more Republican than they did four years ago (presumably made up for by an increase elsewhere).

So white voting preferences, in aggregate, stayed stable, and became more geographically polarized. White people who were inclined to vote for Democrats (mostly young people, non-Christians, single women and union households) did so. So where did Obama get the support he needed to win the election? And not just win, but win big. A majority of the electorate--the first Democrat to do so in decades?

In short, people of color. They turned out in greater numbers than ever before, and voted more solidly Democratic. As Matthew Yglesias writes:

The big difference is that Obama increased the share of the black vote [in the total electorate] from 11 percent to 13 percent, increased the share of the “other [race]” vote from 2 percent to 3 percent, grew his share of the black vote by seven percentage points, grew his share of the Hispanic vote by 13 (!) percentage points, grew his share of the Asian vote by five percentage points, and grew his share of the “other [race]” vote by 11 percentage points.

Despite all the Clinton campaign's claims during the primaries about those horrible racist Asians and Latinos who would never vote for a black man, Obama's share of the vote among these groups--and their share of the electorate--went up, and dramatically so. He won the votes of 66% of Latinos, 61% of Asians, and 65% of people reporting "other race." As Chris Bowers points out, "[r]oughly 60% of all Democratic voters are now non-white and/or non-Christian."

We white folks need to stop patting ourselves on the backs. This wasn't about us.

White people didn't get enlightened. People of color got organized.

Gloating

In the Dailykos election prediction contest I guessed:

Electoral Votes: Obama: 364, McCain 174
Popular vote: Obama: 52.5 McCain 46.5


Current results:

Electoral Votes: Obama: 364, McCain 174
Popular vote: Obama: 52.5 McCain 46.2


Off by a grand total of .3 percentage points. Not too bad.

Deep thoughts

If everyone expects President Obama to not live up to expectations, what exactly are we expecting?

The hour that the ship comes in

Yesterday, I was canvassing in NE Philadelphia, where people were really 'fired up,' as the Obama campaign says. It was a heavily Democratic area, with Obama signs in every store window and nearly every house. A couple of old ladies asked me for Obama pins. I had been given an extra one at the staging area, so the first time this happened I went ahead and pinned it on the woman's coat for her. The second old lady was very insistent on wanting one that I had bought for myself.
"What are you going to do with that pin after the election, that's what I want to know," she asked.
"What am I going to do with it? I plan on wearing it in four years, that's what." She burst out laughing, and thought that was a pretty good explanation.

Having canvassed and handed out fliers for hours (as well as eating an embarrassing quantity of Philly Cheesesteaks), we headed home. While on the bus, Pennsylvania was called for Obama. Everyone cheered, though most of us were still too wary to celebrate quite yet. A bit later, the back of the bus cheered again. "What happened? What state got called," we asked. "No, no--we're back in Brooklyn." We had just crossed the Verezzanno Narrows Bridge. Thank god we are not in Staten Island!


After we got back to Brooklyn, some of us went over to Obama HQ down in the Financial District for some last-minute phonebanking. We were calling Colorado and Nevada, where the polls had not yet closed. I had never seen an excited phonebank before, let alone anything like this. The energy there was incredible. Our calls kept getting interrupted when the campaign's internals would call new Electoral College or Senate victories, and everyone would cheer (even for obvious wins like New York and Maryland).

I was in the middle of dialing when a voice called out, "we won Ohio!" The noise was deafening, as we all knew what that meant. We had won. People were crying, and the staff had to start whipping us back into shape--it's not over! The polls haven't closed yet in Nevada! Immediately after Nevada did close, the campaign called the state in our column (by double digits!), and kicked us out. Good job--go to the victory party at the Sheraton.


Once in Midtown, we were greeted by crowds celebrating in the streets, and an army of cabs and cars on 6th Ave honking their horns. We didn't make it into the party itself--the thousands gathered there spilled out into Rockefeller Center and the surrounding streets. NBC had built a very dramatic election night set, with the electoral map on the ice rink, huge screens showing the tv coverage, and banners up a skyscraper tallying the electoral votes.

The crowd was crazy--cheering and clapping at new calls for the Democrats, chanting "Obama, Obama," "Yes we can, yes we can," "No more Bush," and, finally, "Yes we did." We cheered for the (obviously exhausted) David Plouffe and David Axelrod, architects of the Obama campaign, and for David Patterson, our governor, announcing that we had finally taken the NY State Senate.
I hear that up at Sarah Lawrence College, the students chanted "USA, USA, USA" completely without irony. I can say with absolute confidence that this has never happened before.

In Midtown, people were crying and dancing in the streets. Others drove by in their cars honking and screaming out the windows. Complete strangers were hugging, three or four at a time. Somewhere there were fireworks going off. We all jeered and booed at Senator McCain's speech, and laughed at every mention of Governor Palin. But the crowd ultimately cheered his conciliatory gestures ("the American people have spoken, and spoken clearly." Damn right.) One of the people from the bus to Philly was calling her relatives in the South--"He just won Virginia--the capital of the Confederacy!" When Rachel finally got over her disbelief, she sent me a simple message: "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!"
Oh, indeed.

The real celebration in New York seemed to be up in Harlem, but there was plenty to go around. The Midtown crowd cheered for a man shown on the screens dancing in the middle of 125th street while holding up a glass of champagne. In Chicago, Jesse Jackson didn't say a word--he just stood in the enormous crowd, weeping silently with his hand over his mouth. Congressman Lewis was barely holding his composure. In Washington DC, the White House was surrounded by thousands of people cheering and celebrating for hours, chanting "nana nana, nana nana, hey hey, goodbye!" (Ever classy, Republican pundits referred to black people celebrating in our nation's capitol as a "mob") In Philadelphia, the liquor stores sold out of champagne. These scenes were repeated in cities across the country.

When Barack Obama gave his first speech as President Obama, the whole crowd became completely silent, but for the raucous applause lines (and a bit of awkwardness at his invocation of our slave-owning founding fathers to the mostly non-white audience). After the speech, more crazy applause and chanting for First Lady Michelle Obama, and Joe The Vice President. After that, the crowd began to disperse, but there were still cars driving along the edges, honking and screaming, while chanting and cheers echoed between skyscrapers. More group hugs. On the subway, people spontaneously burst into applause and cheers.

Crazy things are happening. The big question for everyone? How to get down to Washington on January 20th.

Some photographs I took in Rockefeller Center:




And some videos posted by others of the celebrations in the Village:
First Avenue:

St. Marks: