As regards the outcomes, it’s all positive except for the failure to make significant gains in the House of Reps. Obama wins easily, the Dems gain ground in the Senate despite defending 23 states against the Reps 10, and some big referendum wins on marriage equality and drug law reform. The good thing about the House is that it’s up for re-election in two years time, without the distraction of a Presidential race.
The popular vote is a more complicated story. At this stage it looks as though Obama will win narrowly. But he would win easily among registered voters, more easily among US citizens, more easily again among US adults and overwhelmingly in the world as a whole. The Dems need to make voting rights a core issue from now on.
The Repubs only lost narrowly, but time and demography are against them. Unless they shift ground on some major issues, they look like being a permanent minority. But the attack machine they’ve built up will savage anyone who suggests such changes. Logic says they’ll find a way, but maybe it will take another, bigger, defeat. Let’s hope so.
Particularly in the Senate, the quality of the Democratic caucus is greatly improved – Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and others are gone, while the additions include Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin. A House win in 2014 could see a genuine Democratic majority rather than one relying on Blue Dogs and Dixiecrats as in the past. That would provide a path to passage of genuine reforms.
It would be great if, now that he doesn’t need to go for re-election, Obama returned to the defence of civil liberties he advocated in his 2008 campaign and his inaugural address. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath on this one.
John Quiggin 
It would be miraculous indeed if the Dems won back the House at the next mid terms. But I wouldn’t bet on it, unless the US economy dramatically improves in the next two years. But I wouldn’t bet on that either.
The US is now effectively two countries, the north east and mid west (save for Indiana), which is Democrat; and the the South and non-coastal West, save for New Mexico and Colorado, which is Republican. In all but a handful of states the winner got over 60 per cent of the vote. It’s a country of two tribes with their own geography, their own media and their own web sites.
There’s only one way forward for the GOP. Angry white men will have to get much, much angrier.
You could just “hope” for “change”. But seriously I don’t know why civil liberties are so on the nose with politicians. It’s not like citizens in general hate civil liberties. With Colorado and Washington state legalising marijuana now would be a good time for the Feds to back off. But alas I see so few trends in favour of freedom and personal responsibility.
I think the main battle, that of repudiating the republicans, has been a resounding victory. Its curtains for right wing extremists.
Hopefully the next term should see some positive movement on policy.
Obama won by a nose nationally and in the key swing states. as for the GOP will be a permanent minority, same things was said in the heady days of 2008. 2010 proved that wrong
But the religious fanatics, the war mongers, the misogynists, the voodoo economists, the deniers of science and the racists who ran the Republican Party in 2008 still ran the Republican Party in 2012.
Of course the GOP will change. Political parties worldwide have demonstrated enormous powers of adaptation.
The wonderful thing is that the GOP will have to put their darlings to the sword.
Bring on the bloodletting.
The Democrats are the party of not eating babies and not murdering people. Why the heck did 49.5% of the American people vote for the murdering baby-eater Republican party?
I would love to see Democrats take the House in 2014. But Republicans did a good job of turning out their voters in 2010, and as a result took control of a lot of state legislatures, which allowed them to do good job of gerrymandering House seats. The US will probably have divided government at least until the beginning of 2017 (barring unforeseen developments, of course).
But yesterday’s win by the Democrats is still a very good thing.
Chris Murphy (CT) is another good addition to the Senate. Donnelly (IN) won’t be very liberal, each additional Democrat will give the leadership room to maneuver – IF they ditch the filibuster. We should know the outlook for that happening in a few weeks.
Obama is a vapid poppinjay, with shifting principles & little to no executive ability.
Romney must have been very bad to lose to one whose place in history will be as the worst president ever.
… and it would seem that the polls were correct!
I’m depressively confident that the “Lesser-Of-Two-Evils” crowd will sit down and shut up and ignore the ongoing extra-judicial executions, whistleblower prosecutions, torture, Gitmo, pumped up unconstitutional drone wars, XL pipeline, Wall Street welfare and so on… now that they have their small “e” evil President.
As one wit recently put it: “The only promise Obama kept was that he did buy his kids a dog!”
In Australia the Greens get reliably negative media coverage but are sitting at roughly 13% of the overall vote. Looking at the US figures, the Greens got about 1% (in the states they ran) and the Libertarians got about 3%. They both got absolutely zero corporate media coverage during the US election. The media is as big, if not bigger, threat to our democracy than either of the Two Evils.
megan, what extra-judicial executions? When the renegade Left opposes drones strikes, I am reminded of ‘Can There Be a Decent Left?’ by Michael Walzer (2002) in Dissent:
• For many on the Left, war, if it was fought at all, has to be fought without endangering civilians: “The last point was intended to make fighting impossible”.
• The truth is that most leftists were committed to opposing the war, and they were prepared to oppose it without regard to its causes or character, and without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks.
• The Left denies one of the most basic and best understood moral distinctions: between premeditated murder and unintended killing. The denial is not accidental, as if people just forgot or didn’t know the everyday moral world.
• One cause of these views is powerlessness and alienation: leftists have no power in the USA and most don’t expect to exercise power, ever. They talk and write as if they could not imagine themselves responsible for the lives of their fellow-citizens.
• The alienation of the Left is radical. How else is there the unwillingness of people who, after all, live here and whose children and grandchildren live here, to join in a serious debate about how to protect the country against future terrorist attacks?
p.s. Obama promised to close Gitmo safe in the knowledge that not a single member of congress would vote to fund the closure. I even think that to close all avenues, current and former Gitmo detainees were declared prohibited immigrants by Congress
@Jim Rose
These extra-judicial executions: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Each one of your dot points is entirely specious. All of the those pertaining to war are of course irrelevant since the reason these executions are unconstitutional is that they take place in countries with which the US is not at war (Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen…). Your third point is especially egregious as this issue specifically pertains to the targets (the intended victims) of these executions. Either you are ignorant about this issue (in which case I recommend reading more widely) or you are deliberately misrepresenting other’s views in order to accuse them of a moral failing you know they do not commit.
Pr Q said:
I am guessing that Obama’s explicit support made the crucial difference to the Maryland and Maine gay marriage referendums. In general he US populus is mildly in favour of the idea of gay marriage but tends to oppose actual legislative action on this front unless prodded by the C-in-C. Until today gay marriage has lost 32 state-wide referendums in the US. The WaPo recounts:
FWIW I have some luke warm support for gay marriage on public health grounds. The bonds of marriage will tend to deter risky and dangerous sexual practices (promiscuous unprotected sodomy) amongst the gay community which will reduce the spread of STDs, especially AIDS.
Obama seems to be less favourably disposed towards drug liberalisation or “drug reform” as it is tendentiously termed by knee-jerk liberals. Yet this measure still seems to have some political momentum. This implies that drug “reformers” have some grass roots support [sorry] and does not need to be baby sat by tall poppies [sorry].
Drug liberalisation is inherently immoral as addictive drugs have a demoralising effect on their users, impairing consciousness, impeding free will and narrowing the sphere of empathy. Its sad, although predictable, to see Left-liberals once again tramping a well-worn path towards the degradation of morality.
Sadly, the trolls will have to go to bed without any supper.
@Jack Strocchi The main argument for drug legalisation is the alternatives are worse. Drug legalisation is the best of highly imperfect alternatives.
Drug legalisation is one of the few occasions where the Progressive Left embraces the fatal conceit: that there is a limit to the extent we can reshape the world in accordance with our desires.
the Left joins the arguments that drug legalisation is best even through such a world is very imperfect but attempts to reform and remake people into better people will inevitably fail as they have in the past and the body politic, police and rest of the system will be corrupted.
Opposition to drug legalisation is expressive voting at its best. People boo addiction and dissolute lifestyles. They are not interested in whether outlawing drugs does any net good.
@Jim Rose The main argument for drug legalisation is economic, the direct and indirect costs of prohibition are staggering.
Pr Q said:
It would not “be great” if you are a Malawa who wants to stand up for womens rights without being shot in the back of the head by terrorist assassins. Drone strikes kill the people who tried to kill her and her ilk.
And, just as importantly, drones protect our troops in the field, an important factor totally ignored by self-styled freedom lovers.
So I say good for you Obama, keep up the drone strikes and ignore the bleeding heart liberals who care more about moral posturing than protecting actual and existing rights.
Drone strikes throughout Southern Eurasia tend to help rather than harm civil liberties of the local population. The NYT (04 MAY 2009) reports that the Taliban/Al Quaeda, whose main aim is to keep half the population in a state of utter subservience, hate the drones more than any other weapon in the anti-terrorist arsenal:
The collateral damage from drones is well below the levels of civilian casualties in previous conflicts. A 2012 New America Foundation report states that drone strikes have an overall civilian casualty ratio well below ~15%, which has plunged to trivial levels in 2012:
Compare the Coalitions generally scrupulous use of force to the Taliban’s flagrant disregard for civilian casualties and the laws of war Wikipedia attempts a terrorist body count:
Thats right: the Taliban planted 16 IEDs planted in girls schools.
Drones certainly violate the civil rights of collateral casualties and there is a good case for more accountability and oversight in target selection. But most civil libertarians have not bothered to make this case, preferring blanket opposition to drones. The suspicion lurks that civil libertarians oppose drones because of, rather than despite, their effectiveness in the war on terror.
Since when? Okay they clearly don’t eat babies but their guy seems pretty big on the whole killing concept.
I see the trolls have prepared their own supper.
Random thoughts, John?
You are really abusing the word: random.
Tapen
The above debate illustrates that both the “left” and the right have lost their moral compasses. The “left” ignores Obama’s drones, the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act and the right applaud and justify them… and want a Repub president to go even further.
Of course this “left” is not any sort of true left. They are just the petite bourgeoisie.
Jim Rose @11: ” leftists have no power in the USA and most don’t expect to exercise power, ever.”
Jim, you really need to visit Catallaxy, Quadrant online, and the blogs of Bolt and Akerman, and apprise those that sail in those vessels of this fact, of which this morning they are very evidently unaware.
Obama’s use of drones is worse than immoral. It is a mistake.
Drones serve to cement the relationship between Pakistani nationalism and islamism. This is an incredibly dangerous compound. It is almost impossible to overstate the gravity of the threats arising from this confederacy.
And by the by, drone technology is growing more capable and cheaper. Just as the AK47 multiplied the power of guerrilla forces in the 20th century, drones will do the same in the 21st century.
Drones will be the AK47 of the 21st century.
@Nathan are deaths of combatants in a war an extra-judical execution?
@Bring back Birdy at Catallaxy Michael Walzer is a life-long socialist and the author of Just and Unjust Wars. His definition of the Left is about the same as that in Australia and the UK. He was not talking of the centre-left.
Jim, I wasn’t disagreeing and don’t disagree with your statement that I quoted.
@Jim Rose
Unusually, I’m going to agree with the substance of your claims here. Drug policy needs towards managing illicit drug usage much as alcohol and tobacco are managed. A strategy that takes measurable harm into account and seeks to minimise them.
@Fran Barlow one of the big costs of drug prohibition is the narco-wars in mexico and elsewhere and the narco-states run by drug lords.
the bridge too far for drug legalisation is what to do about the currently illegal drugs and under 18 buyers. legalising for adults leaves a plentiful illegal drug market among teenagers.
maybe an imperfect world with an illegal market for under 18s is the best of all possible worlds.
@Jim Rose
In a word, yes. These killings lack adequate warrant and are systematic.
That there seems to be a consensus within the US that they are ethically acceptable attests to the reactionary chracter of mainstream US politics.
I would add to that the continuing legalised abuse of Private Bradley Manning also condemns this administration. Regrettably, again there seems to be a consensus within the US that this is unobjectionable.
Finally, the continuing diplomatic, military and financial support of Israel by this administration is a roadblock to a resolution of the problems in Palestine. Again, there’s a consensus on this and Romney even tried doubling down on this.
It’s a modestly not so bad thing that a murderous rightwing Israel-backing, off shore and shale oil supporting shill who was sympathetic to gay rights and a degree of fiscal expansion and trimming of income transfers to the egregiously wealthy defeated a putatively murderous rightwing Israel-backing, off shore and shale oil supporting shill who was unsympathetic to gay rights or degree of fiscal expansion and the trimming of income transfers to the egregiously wealthy and was into the bargain a brazen and compulsive liar and someone who thought climate change was an occasion for a cheap populist shot.
It’s not the triumph of reason and progress though.
@Jim Rose
I see no reason for drawing a bright red-line between 18 and over buyers and those under the age. That hasn’t worked all that well for alcohol or cigarettes.
As a matter of general principle we ought to use every non-coercive means to discourage self-medication with alcohol, tobacco or other mood-altering susbtances for all persons, regardless of age.
As a matter of practice we are forced to accept that people, including some who count as children will do this. We can try being pro-active — giving them diversionary programs, that militate against them being affected by non-prescribed drugs of one kind or another. We can intensify health education programs. We can price to constrain usage and produce the product in a form that would be hard to counterfeit. We can do early intervention with families that seem to be at-risk and give them suopport so inadequate parenting does not map to substance abuse.
But swingeing attempts to constrain through coercion are doomed to fail.
@Fran Barlow do you have the righ to use reasonable force in self-defence against an attack?
There has been some commentary on how the election did not change the “gridlock” between the two parties in congress.
It should be noted that in the senate, to block the filibuster, you need a super majority — i.e 60. The Democrats had 51 and now have 55 (plus apparently one Indie who may caucus with them). Only 1/3 of the senate was up for re-election and 23 of these were Democrats, meaning that to breakthe logjam in the Senate they needed to win 100% of the contests.
I add also this note on the House of Representatives (from Wiki):
Not only is Congress a lagging indicator of sentiment, but one that has become sclerotic through abuse of process. By contrast with Australia, where the AEC does it, the business of drawing electoral boundaries is a perk of incumbency. Toss in voter suppression and non-compulsory registration to vote and the mix predisposes just what one sees in the US.
@Jim Rose
Of course one may use reasonable force in self-defence. What is reasonable is of course proportionate. One must have well-founded fears for one’s safety, or the safety of those to whom one owes protection. One must use only so much force as will abate the well founded fear. One must have regard to the safety of third parties in framing the response, because, fairly obviously, if a third party sees your attempts to defend yourself as potentially harming them, they have the same self-defence rights as you exercise.
The mere fear that a particular class of person may in the right circumstances, do you harm is not an adequate reason to kill or maim them. You have to be certain that they mean to do so imminently and have the means and that no good alternative but some form of violence will serve. In addition, if your self-defence is likely to harm seriously those who are not a threat to you, then your defence of necessity comes under a more serious test. One has to ask — was this really all that one could do?
@Fran Barlow al-Qaeda attacked the USA on 9/11 so a mere fear that a particular class of persons may in the right circumstances, do you harm became moot. The issue is defending against further armed attacks by a hostile group and destroying the capacity of that group to recruit and resupply.
Your criticisms rest on profound misconceptions of the nature of the war on terrorism and the rules of warfare. Because the USA and others are at war with al-Qaeda, they can use force to conduct hostilities against the enemy and those who harbour them.
When a nation goes to war, it seeks to defeat the enemy to prevent attacks. The U.S. and allied military and intelligence services are legally and morally free to target al-Qaeda for attack whether they are on the front lines or behind them and with or without warning or any attempt to capture. al-Qaeda members can turn themselves in at any time.
A corollary of the right to kill enemy personnel is that the deaths of civilians that occur as a result of legitimate attacks against military targets are not illegal. It is pious to deny this.
The central principle of the laws of war is that innocent civilians should not be targeted, but the rules of war accept the death of civilians in or near legitimate military targets.
It is the terrorists who violate the rules of war by hiding themselves and their bases within civilian populations, thereby drawing unwilling and unsuspecting innocents into the fighting.
Al-Qaeda will never follow the rules of war because it gains its only tactical advantages by systematically flouting them and hiding among civilians knowing that the US and its allies seek to avoid civilian deaths.
Terrorists are pirates – hostis humani generic – the enemy of all mankind. Nations’ military have conducted wars on pirates for thousands of years. It is pious to deny this.
The joint study by Stanford and NY Universities (available at livingunderdrones.org ) puts the figure of innocents killed by drones in 345 strikes at about 90% and as high as 98%.
They were critical of the tactic we use called “double tap” where we kill a bunch of people and then kill the rescuers shortly later.
It is worth remembering that Obama also declared every male over the age of 14 as a “combatant” and therefore legitimate targets for premeditated killing in cold blood in circumstances where nobody other than the victim is in any imminent danger (I don’t believe the drone pilots ask to see ID before the killing starts).
I don’t care what any trolls think but everyone who wants to have an opinion on the topic should have the basic facts clear.
“A corollary of the right to kill enemy personnel is that the deaths of civilians that occur as a result of legitimate attacks against military targets are not illegal. It is pious to deny this.
The central principle of the laws of war is that innocent civilians should not be targeted, but the rules of war accept the death of civilians in or near legitimate military targets.”
Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out. If the civilians didn’t want to die, then maybe they shouldn’t have lived around suspected terrorists. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Who the hell appointed you as the final arbiter of life and death? Just apply your kind of thinking to your enemy and it may dawn on you that it is a perfectly good justification for THEM to commit atrocities too.
@Jim Rose
It being unclear that such a thing as “Al Qaeda” exists at all, or if it does in some sense, who comprise its command structure and functional components, this claim is unimpressive. Certainly, no specific evidence showing that any of the people who have been targeted had the means and the intent to harm US interests has as yet been adduced.
As Katz also points out, it seems likely that the “defence” serves as a recruiting tool for groups hostile to the US presence in Pakistan and perhaps more generally,so even on purely instrumental grounds, the warrant is unclear. Then there is the certainty of so-called “collateral damage” — currently about 80-90% of deaths.
This is mistaken because the Laws of War apply only after war has been declared. One cannot “declare war” on “terror” or on non-specific persons. While civilian deaths are not war crimes where a legitimate target was attacked, the civilians are at least put in a position where they might notionally put distance between themselves and targets. The nature of the attacks by drones would entail all civilians in Pakistan, Afghnaistan, yemen and Somalia leaving for places where they could be sure either no drone strikes would be effected or else no possible targets would exist. That’s not practicable and so these attacks on civilian areas, in states recognised by the US and against which a state of war has not been declared are thus not covered.
This is specious argument. Al Qaeda (if such an entity even exists outside of the US imagination) could offer an analogous defence of their activity to that proposed by the US — they seek to evict the US from occupation of Islamic lands. yes there is collateral damage etc … The US operators of drones “hide” in the US behind their civilian population dealing death from thousands of miles away.
Moreover, the US,quite clearly, does not seek to avoid civilian deaths. There has been no change in their rules of engagement since the drone campaign started and indeed,the frequency of attacks has increased.
For all practical purposes, there’s absolutely no ethical difference between a drone attack in a market place and a bomb placed outside a police station by a group doing asymmetrical warfare. It’s just that the west has high tech weapns and a recognised state to support its acts, giving systematic mass murder of civilians a veneer of respectability.
As things stand they could report suspects to the relevant states and their police agencies. If they don’t trust them they ought not to have diplomatic realtions with them and be giving them aid. If they were concerned with civilian deaths they’d send in assassins on the ground to infiltrate these groups, gather intelligence and implement more surgical killing.
test: Al Qaeda
test: terrorist
test: 9/11
Feel free to delete this and the last three posts PrQ. I wanted to know that string had sent my post to the spam bucket.
Back onto the main post topic, Tod Akin and Richard Mourdock: cautionary tales for the Tonester?
@Tim Macknay
Appraretly five Repugs who made offensive observations about r@pe were defeated. Linda MacMahon blew $100 million dollars in two senate campaigns.
JR:
Untrue.
The antiwar Left include folks who dispute on practical grounds the militarised response to terrorism. Militarist responses through history have served to exacerbate, not defeat, terrorism. Progressives have been pointing this out for more than a decade in relation to Bush’s disastrous wars against an abstract noun. The US and its enablers, including, to our embarrassment and cost, Australia, is fast running out of fingers to plug up the holes it has encouraged to be drilled in the wall of the dyke.
Islamism is an idea that thrives on the promise of a future reward. The only currency of militarism is fear. Fear is no deterrent to an idea that has taken root, as the history of the American Revolution attests.
The US and its enablers will bug out of Central Asia within two years, leaving a far more able Islamist force in the field, with admirers in every Muslim country on earth.
It didn’t have to be this way.
@Katz if militarist responses through history have served to defeat terrorism, rather than exacerbate it, would you be in favour of such responses?
Yes.
This requires a nuanced reply.
Piracy is a vulnerable military target. Pirates usually don’t excite widespread support.
Primitive rebels such as Ned Kelly had a small level of inchoate support. Such support can be cowed by military or quasi military suppression. This must be done carefully, or else primitive rebellion blossoms into full-fledged liberation movements. The history of Ireland in the 19th century is an exemplar.
Broad-based cultural movements like political Islamism are beyond military resolution.
@Fran Barlow Obama acquired legal authority for drone warfare from the Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted just after the Sept. 11 attacks and which was effectively a declaration of war against al-Qaida.
For many on the Left, war, if it was fought at all, has to be fought without endangering civilians: “The last point was intended to make fighting impossible”.
If the Allies followed your rules of war, would world war Ii have finished sooner?
Jim, with the benefit of hindsight it is quite plain that World War II could have been finished sooner and with less cost in allied lives if they had spent less effort on murdering civillians. A prime example is the night time bombing raids on German civillians which had quite a limited effect on reducing German capacity to wage war in comparison to strikes on industrial and millitary targets. After the Battle of Britain it can be argued that random allied terror attacks on civillian populations could have caused the Germans to spread their resources more thinly in attempting to defend the lives of women, children, and the elderly, but the number of attacks on civillians required for this is far less than the number of attacks on civillians that were carried out.
@Katz The USA’s first and third war was against the barbary pirates led by the pasha of Tripoli. The US army was deployed against mexican bandits up to 1914. many navies are currently deployed against pirates in Africa.
Every member of the enemy forces and leadership are a legitimate target in war regardless of whether they can be caught or pose an imminent threat. The U.S military should hunt and destroy pirates and their support networks “wherever” a commander “shall find them,” in Thomas Jefferson’s words.