Light at the end of the tunnel: The 2008 Election, its aftermath and the future

I can also think of at least 2 instances were well known, regular members here in this specific forum posted 1)about bringing forth bloodshed to republicans with a baseball bat, and 2)indicated that they would assassinate the current President. (The second one was stopped due to potential legal concerns.) On a slightly less hate-based scale, I can also think of 3 people here who said that they would flee the country if McCain was elected.

Dont take that crap from them.


And if you're talking about that time I was being coy about Bush when he came to Canada soon after his 2004 election -- that was a JOKE.

 

KW-Yeah, but that's your perception, and since it's so personal, it can't really be used as a metric for anyone but yourself. Since you don't agree with the GOP, you consider it to be the one that is over the line. I understand that. But your view isn't any more or less valid than the view someone else might hold. I'd say that what is more important is what someone does with it.

Over the years, how many discussions have we been involved in where someone would say something like "Cheney is going to declare martial law so he can take over...or the government is sending critics to Gitmo... or the draft is just around the corner...?" I still remember the person who justified away the Patriot Act by seriously claiming that Bush switched the actual copies the night before so Congress didn't know what they were voting on. None, and I mean none of those are rational, and all based on fear.

Of course, none of those actually happened either, but "the ton of discontent and negativity" that you described sure has been focused in one direction.

Now, I would certainly equate the sentiment that Obama is a terrorist with the claim that Bush wants to install himself as dictator for life. What I can't accept is your claim that only one crosses the line because it's the one you don't agree with. Because both are stupid, and both are based on irrational fear.

EDIT: Gonk, no puns and jokes are just that. At least they should be..

 

Of course, none of those actually happened either, but "the ton of discontent and negativity" that you described sure has been focused in one direction.


Those are all extreme examples that should be discarded. But no major Democratic entity has ever endorsed those irrational views you mentioned. By contrast, major GOP organizations have been shown to be pushing the Obama as Muslim/Arab/terrorist/socialist idea throughout the general election campaign.

Individuals on both sides hold irrational views. The big difference is that irrationality and the strategy of using fear and division is institutionalized throughout the GOP. It is not that way for Democrats.

It's how Karl Rove won elections, 44.

 

I'd like to amend my previous post...the opening to The Simpsons TOH was hilarious. Homer tries to vote with disastrous consequences.

 

Uh, say what now? I think you're still operating in absolutes.

EXAMPLE 1

EXAMPLE 2

or are we still pretending that Moveon.org is an "independent" organization?

How about:

EXAMPLE 3

How has this affected his chance to actually win the Senate seat?

EXAMPLE 4

I wonder what kind of impact this will ultimately have on Murtha?

Speaking of campaigns:

EXAMPLE 5

And she wasn't even referring to the opposite party.

EXAMPLE 6

And this famous quote from Obama himself... But wait, is that the Guardian?

Now, I can certainly go on, and before this degenerates into a tit for tat as DS indicated, there are plenty of GOP examples as well.

But the thing is, I don't recall anyone making the claim that "there are no examples at all" on the reverse side....

 

or are we still pretending that Moveon.org is an "independent" organization?


It certainly is an independent organization, and one that has drawn the ire of the Democratic party on numerous occasions, and also attacked a Democrat or two.

Whether you like it or not, 44, what you have described is institutionalized in the GOP. That's why the official GOP site of California was able to have an Obama-as-terrorist ad up. No Democratic site in the country of any magnitude would ever do anything like that. Period.

Edit: See, you are describing acts by individuals. I'm talking about officially sanctioned things from the parties themselves. That's where the paths diverge.

 

Right. Gotcha. So anything even loosely affiliated with the GOP is considered to be a "By contrast, major GOP organization" (your term) and gets the hit, while a group like Moveon.org gets a pass because it's independent, and so does someone like Franken, because he's an individual....

Now I don't know if you joking or being serious here.

 

Of course I'm being serious. MoveOn is not part of the Democratic party. The official website of the California Republican party is part of the Republican party. Third party stuff is far hazier on both sides than direct attacks sanctioned by official arms of the party.

Edit: Actually, it was the Sacramento GOP, but the point remains.

 

Alright then. I actually don't know how to respond.

So you'd be happy if everything was just be turned over to Moveon.org on one side and the Swiftboats for Truth on the other, because it doesn't matter what the specific message is, it comes down to who gets a pass for delivering or not?

That mindset right there is one of the major things wrong with the political process, right behind the culture of blame.

 

I'm sure you think so, 44. And we can just leave it at that for tonight.

 

But you lost me on what the details even are.

The local Sacramento GOP runs an ad, and to you it's proof of a larger and systemic culture of fear and division officiated by the entire GOP... but Al Franken runs on a platform of division, or Moveon.org runs a bunch of fear based ads, and they don't mean anything because they're either an individual or an independent group that doesn't represent the democratic party.

Maybe-just work with me here- but just maybe, the local Sacramento affiliate just speaks for themselves, according to the same standard that is being applied to any of the other examples?

Is it completely out of line to suggest that the same standard be applied to both?

EDIT:well, you edited away the question, so disregard this reply...

 

We're not going to find any common ground here, 44. Good night to you.

 

While it may not be an important difference to some, I think the fact that Barack Obama hasn't even been elected president yet, and he's already receiving this sort of hatred from the opposition, is worth noting. Democrats didn't take kindly to George W. Bush in 2000, but I don't think it was anywhere in the same ballpark as the hatred for Obama is this year. That's what I'm getting at - hating a president who has actually enacted policies and such is one thing, but having such hatred for someone who has yet to be elected president and pass a single bill is something that I wonder if we've ever seen. I wouldn't even blink if this was an Obama re-election campaign of 2012.

 

Democrats didn't take kindly to George W. Bush in 2000

Well, if one discounts statements to nuke Florida off the map, or go slap every single one of the Supreme Court Justices who "handed Bush the election," yeah I guess democrats simply didn't take kindly to Bush. I think the most colorful statement in this regard that I remember was that someone wanted Bush to be torn apart by zombies who had syphilis, but that was way over the top, I'd say.

My point is that I don't think hatred is a productive response to any of this. One can certainly disagree with someone without defaulting to hatred. But hatred is a human emotion, and as a result, all humans have it. Specifically in my response to you, I was highlighting that fact. It's not suddenly inconceivable that people hate Obama, correctly or incorrectly, given the level of vitriol that's been expressed.

Everything else is just a matter of scale. Because I think a good start would be to look around and reduce all such examples of hatred and not justify some away as "well, it was bad before, but I don't remember it being in this ballpark." That sort of thing...

 

I'd say, and this is based on where I live, I think, I've seen what I'd consider to be disgusting levels of vitrol aimed at Palin in particular, who's not even been elected yet and is already receiving this high level of hatred. McCain to a lesser extent, but particularly Palin.

 

The fact is, fostering hatred of opponents appears to be working, based on what Democrats have done since the 2000 election turned into a bloodless civil war (the main weapons were legal briefs and soundbites). Bush has been vilified for eight years running. Not only that, they themselves are vilified as somehow being racist or complicit in Bush's crimes.

At this point, there is probably a variety of things going through their head. Some are concluding that since the tactics used against Bush seem to be effective, that for the sake of political viability, they need to return fire. Others see that there is no chance to unite with the other side, and as such, they see nothing to lose by hating Obama already. Still others are doing this for nothing more than revenge (Your side went after our guy, we're going after your guy). Some feel that between ACORN and the recent discoveries regarding Obama's fund-raising (to include disabling basic anti-fraud features AND the campaign law violations), Obama has cheated, and as such is less than legitimate. Other have seen the REAL instances of violence (to include Molotov cocktails and shooting up houses), vandalism (to include Senator Norm Coleman's house), and death threats (see what happened to Strategic Vision when they came out with some polls that showed McCain ahead), and they become worried as to what may happen if Obama wins.

And to be very honest, some of Obama's items worry the hell out of me. This "civilian national security force" he is talking about sounds a hell of a lot like Saddam's Republican Guard or Waffen SS. Why would he want to create such an entity in the United States? I can't think of any really comforting answers.

Not to mention Iraq - I cannot see Obama seeing eye-to-eye with Petraeus and Odierno on that subject. For him to pull off that withdrawal, he will have to replace both generals - who have widely received credit for turning the situation around. A lot of veterans will believe - and with significant justification - that President Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Furthermore, I know people who fully expect that in the event of McCain pulling off the biggest upset since 1948 (and to be honest, looking at some of the poll internals as compared to historical turnout, I think a McCain victory is very possible - the widest margin of turnout between Democrats and Republicans is 4 points, NOT the 6.5-point margin that Rasmussen, for instance, is using, and I would argue that given the way Palin has energized a lot of the Republican base, the gap may be closer to 2 points; do the math in that case) over an allegedly "stolen" election, particularly given what happened in the wake of 2004 (the Democratic challenge of Ohio's electoral votes in Congress).

Orson Scott Card once wrote that America was "waiting for Fort Sumter" (in the afterward of Empire). I think he is wrong. I am halfway convinced that America's looking for its next Fort Sumter.

Can America unite

 

I actually read about somethign where they looked at how in the south, based on the primaries, that seems to have actually happened, as I guess in the primaries in most areas, Obama polled higher than he got in official votes, but in the south it was the other way around.

 

Reminds me of an Eddie Murphy sketch.

You know Jesse's got a chance to win. White dudes like to do stuff like that...
Vote for the wrong dude as a goof.

They get drunk and go like:
"Let's vote for Jesse Jackson!"

"I just voted for Jesse Jackson!"

And next day would be like this: "He f* won?"

One more day before you get to write history, my American friends!

 

Having said that, I'm also reminded chillingly of another part of that same Eddie Murphy sketch:

"I see Jesse up there and he be doin' all this running and liftin' weights and ****. So I ask him, 'Yo, Jesse, what's with all the training?' And Jesse replies, 'Because I'm gonna be the first black President of the United States. And right from my opening speech I'm gonna be like, my fellow Americans, I come to you today--'

*Eddie Murphy jinks back and forth, stepping left and right, head bobbing up and down*

"--Cause if I do that they'll all be like--"

*Murphy mimes a sniper shifting his sight back and forth, left and right*

--"He won't stand still!!!"--

 

Has Obama actually said anything about what he intends this "civilian national security force" to be? Because people keep talking about it like something pernicious, whereas from what little I've heard he's basically thinking of expanded the AmeriCorps program, which is in no way a bad thing.

 

I admit, my curiosity was piqued by the article, so I hit PubMed on the topic, and there's certainly evidence to be found justifying KW's claim (incidentally, the Science article should be given some weight - Science is a high-impact journal).

Church attendance influenced by both genetic and environmenal factors:

Behav Genet. 1992 Jan;22(1):43-62.

Religion and education as mediators of attitudes: a multivariate analysis.
Truett KR, Eaves LJ, Meyer JM, Heath AC, Martin NG.
Department of Human Genetics, Medical College of Virginia, Richmond 23298-0033.

The transmission of social attitudes has been investigated as a possible model of cultural inheritance in a sample of 3810 twin pairs from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Twin Registry. Six social attitude factors were identified and univariate genetic models fitted to scores on each factor. A joint multivariate genetic analysis of the six attitude factors, church attendance, and education indicated that the attitudes were correlated--the same genes and shared environments influenced more than one attitude factor. A current controversy regarding social attitudes is whether the significant loadings on this shared environmental component represent true cultural influences or are actually the genetic consequences of phenotypic assortative mating for church attendance and educational attainment (Martin et al., 1986). In our data, church attendance is almost entirely due to the impact of the shared environment. The large shared environmental component on church attendance also accounts for a substantial part of the family resemblance in social attitudes, suggesting that not all of the apparent cultural effects found in earlier studies can be ascribed to the genetic effects of assortative mating. However, church attendance and education do not completely account for the cultural component. Therefore, effects in addition to church attendance, education, and assortative mating for church attendance and education must be involved in the cultural component of the inheritance of attitudes.

Altruism, religious tendencies, and antisocial behaviors have both genetic and environmental influences:

J Pers. 2007 Apr;75(2):265-90.

Religiousness, antisocial behavior, and altruism: genetic and environmental mediation.
Koenig LB, McGue M, Krueger RF, Bouchard TJ Jr.
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455, USA. koen0099@umn.edu

Although religiousness is considered a protective factor against antisocial behaviors and a positive influence on prosocial behaviors, it remains unclear whether these associations are primarily genetically or environmentally mediated. In order to investigate this question, religiousness, antisocial behavior, and altruistic behavior were assessed by self-report in a sample of adult male twins (165 MZ and 100 DZ full pairs, mean age of 33 years). Religiousness, both retrospective and current, was shown to be modestly negatively correlated with antisocial behavior and modestly positively correlated with altruistic behavior. Joint biometric analyses of religiousness and antisocial behavior or altruistic behavior were completed. The relationship between religiousness and antisocial behavior was due to both genetic and shared environmental effects. Altruistic behavior also shared most all of its genetic influence, but only half of its shared environmental influence, with religiousness.

Genetic influences on conservatism/liberalism:

Twin Res Hum Genet. 2005 Feb;8(1):47-52.

Genetic determinants and personality correlates of sociopolitical attitudes in a Polish sample.
Oniszczenko W, Jakubowska U.
Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland. wlodek@engram.psych.uw.edu.pl

The aim of the s

 

The local Sacramento GOP runs an ad, and to you it's proof of a larger and systemic culture of fear and division officiated by the entire GOP... but Al Franken runs on a platform of division, or Moveon.org runs a bunch of fear based ads, and they don't mean anything because they're either an individual or an independent group that doesn't represent the democratic party.

MoveOn.Org is certainly different from the GOP's own ads, just as the Swift Boat Veteran ads were themselves different.

Franken's running as an actual Democratic candidate, if I'm not mistaken. So that may be another story -- and I say may be because I'm fuzzy on what exactly we're looking at here.

 

From Politico:

A high-spirited Rick Davis late Sunday night made perhaps his final case for John McCain, arguing that the unusual number of still-remaining undecided voters could tip the election to the GOP and that whether those holdouts ultimately vote could prove decisive.

"If we can win Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, all of the sudden we?ve got a whole new pathway to victory."

From FiveThirtyEight:

[T]here are now very, very few true undecideds left in this race... Even if John McCain were to win 70 percent of the remaining undecideds (which I don't think is likely), that would only be worth a net of about a point for him.

Two very different views about the undecideds. Nate Silver seems to have the better argument. There's very little chance in my view that the undecideds will break heavily in favor of McCain.

 

How so?

Let's be honest. The media has been practically a 24/7 pro-Obama PR. Add in some of the stuff we have seen (like the Molotov cocktails tossed at a McCain sign in Oregon, the way that the press went after Joe the Plumber, etc.), and yeah, I can see a lot of folks simply telling a pollster, "I haven't made up my mind yet," when they want to vote McCain.

Supposedly tolerant people have proven awfully quick to key cars with McCain stickers. McCain signs have been stolen at a very fast clip - if, that is, nobody decides to toss Molotov cocktails at them. Tack on the dust-up over Missouri officals, and the recent actions of Philly cops... and there's a chilling effect.

Of course, this chilling effect doesn't draw much opposition form the same people who claim that the Bush Administration's efforts to have NSA try to listen in on terrorists caused another form of chilling effect. I guess those on the left view Republicans as more dangerous than terrorists.

 

The GOP's whole strategy has been "fake it 'til you make it." Doesn't surprise me that they're still insisting they can win this thing.

Frankly this can only help Obama. As long as the McCain camp puts forth a convincing case that McCain could still win, the Obama supporters won't become complacent and will still get out the vote.

TalkingPointsMemo had a great little comment the other day: