No Runny Eggs

Running on a promise of “Hope and Change” and promising that politics in his administration would be different, Barack Obama was voted into office.   Yesterday, following his first trip to the White House, Obama and his team, showed just how much was going to change and how different it would be.

Following what was their first fact to face conversation, between a very gracious current President and the holder of the “Office of the President Elect,” a conversation that purposely invited no staff of either man’s, the content of the conversation was leaked.   It wasn’t leaked by the White House or people affiliated with the gracious host.   The information was leaked by “anonymous aides” of the individual who is not yet President but has been the Presumptuous President for over a year.

Why is it that when I think of Obama and his staff moving into the White House I get a mental picture of college freshman  arriving at  the college campus and charging towards the frat house awaiting the first of their many anticipated parties.   Like the college freshman, I hope Obama and his staff figure out that there’s more to being in the White House than  leaks, special favors and other attempts  to make themselves look good.   Eventually, like college freshman, they’ll learn that there is a lot of  day in, day out work that needs to be done.   Work,  without which, they’ll fail.

Somebody better get this news flash to the various Republican organizations and their leaders!

So Karl Rove has finally figured out that you can’t play defense and take body blows for 10 rounds and expect to win!   For as smart as Rove was at orchestrating two elections, this was one topic that he sure flunked!

You can bet Obama won’t be making the same mistakes!

There’s an old saying that says “If you don’t learn history, you’re destined to repeat it.” That saying perfectly states my final thoughts on the 2008 Presidential election.

First, I want to clearly state that while I am an Evangelical Christian, I am not like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell where I believe you can discern God’s will or see God’s hand in every event that occurs.

Ok, going Old Testament.

After the Israelites escaped from Egypt, the were lead by Moses and then Joshua. After Joshua, a series of “Judges” ruled/lead the nation, or parts of Israel.

During the time of the Judges we find that Israel’s relationship with God had become distant. As generations passed, the new generations didn’t have the benefit of first hand knowledge of God’s works in their lives as the generation of the Exodus had had.   As a result, many of the Israelite tribes took to worshiping Baal during this period.

It’s clear throughout the book of Judges that God no longer paved the way for the Israelites as a result of their distance. “If it feels good, do it,” was the guiding principle for the Israelites during this time. In fact, the last line in Judges is:

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

As things continued to deteriorate for Israel and a civil war took place, the people of Israel desired change from what they were experiencing.   Rather than looking back to see what had worked previously, they looked around themselves to other nations and said “we should be more like them!”   The result was a request to God via Samuel, to request a king to lead them.

God understood that the reason the Israelites were having challenges had nothing to do with the type of leadership they had.   He knew that the issue was one of self importance, arrogance and disobeying of God’s word.  

In  1 Samuel 8, God attempted to warn the Israelites that there would be consequences of their  desire:      

¹⁷He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. ¹⁸And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves,^(M) but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”The LORD Grants Israel’s Request

Unfortunately, the Israelites didn’t heed God’s advice and demanded a king:

      ¹⁹But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, ^20(N) that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” ²¹And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. ²²And the LORD said to Samuel,^(O) “Obey their voice and make them a king.”

So, God gave them a king in 1 Samuel 9, Saul, and he turned out to be as bad as God had warned and worse.

It didn’t take long for the Israelites to realize they had made a mistake.   Only a couple of chapters in the Bible, 1 Samuel 19,  and according to some scholars, probably a couple of years in real life, the Israelites were asking for forgiveness for their demand of God for change:

¹⁹And all the people said to Samuel,^(AM) “Pray for your servants to the LORD your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.”

So why the history lesson?

Even without tying in issues of faith, the parallels between the Israelites and the US are stark.   Like the Israelites, the US has moved from a period of steady prosperity into a time of trouble and uncertainty.   Also like the Israelites, rather than looking back and taking responsibility for the actions that have gotten us here, we’ve assumed that the right answer for our troubles is “change” and “to look more like other nations.”   Finally, like the Israelites, we have concluded, even though every sign tells us otherwise, that wholesale change of our method of governance is the answer.

The Israelites went through some tough times after they got Saul as their king.   While Saul had an early successes, he quickly turned from God and lost His favor.   God then instructed Samuel to anoint David as king but it would be years before David finally took the throne.

While I expect us to go through some difficult times as a result of our recent political decisions, I remain hopeful.   Like the Israelites, I expect the citizens of the US to eventually see the errors of their selections.   Also, unlike Israel, we won’t have to wait an unknown time frame until the death of a king to make a change.   We’ll be able to make a change in two or four years.

Saul’s pride and jealousy created a schism within Israel at the end of his reign.   Rather than a peaceful transition to David, the king who God anointed, there was fighting between the families and followers of David and Saul.   Eventually, David won but not until there was great bloodshed within Israel.

Like Saul, it’s apparent that Barack Obama has enormous pride.   I’m not going to suggest that should  Obama or the Dems lose an election, that we would not have a peaceful transition.   I am going to suggest that the pride and ego I see in Obama, Reid and Pelosi leaves me concerned that they will attempt to impact how future elections occur.   Oh, I don’t mean not having elections.   Re instituting the “Fairness Act” and implementing the union card check program are two ways to tilt future elections in the Dem’s favor.

I certainly don’t have a crystal ball to see the future.   I do however, believe we are seeing a similar human behavior pattern (and just maybe a pattern of God) that is similar to the Israelites of old.   I guess the way to handle this for the near term is the same way that Samuel dealt with the situation with Saul.   When the Israelites recognized that Saul was a mistake, they confessed their sin to Samuel and asked him to pray for them.   In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel replied:

²³Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing^(AT) to pray for you.

I’ll pray for this country’s citizens and its leadership.

I’d have to check the archives but the only position, and I’m not even sure that it was that, that I disagree with him on was his commercials for global warming.

Newt has a solid finger on the pulse of the American public and the conservative core. While there may be others, Newt is the only person I know for certain who can take conservative principles and explain their benefit and purpose to the general public.

Ed Morrissey and I had a rather heated discussion over the difference between “the President” and “my President” yesterday on his Ustream radio show (his comments were on-air, mine were in the chat room). While it may be nuance to Ed, it certainly is not to me. “The” affords the office-holder the respect that the office demands, regardless of the views of said office-holder. “My”, outside of use in sarcasm, denotes a certain level of acceptance of the office-holder’s views. As Barack Obama and I share almost no common views, and I don’t wish to be sarcastic all the time, I cannot in good conscience call him anything other than “the President”.

I do need to expand on a few items. I do wish Obama success in defending this country against whatever forces seek the overthrow of a part of government. I do also wish for the economy to not tank. I do not, however, wish Obama political success; indeed, so far as his policies are opposite my views, I wish him nothing but political failure. As John Hawkins said, “I’m not interested in bipartisanship. I want to defeat liberalism, not cooperate with it. I want to throw sand in the gears at every opportunity and if Obama wants to work with us, he’s going to move to the right.”

Another explanation, better than what I can offer, can be found at Blue Collar Muse. Says the Muse, “I say, Obama will be the President; but he will never be my President. Obama wants what he is unwilling to give. To get the job, Obama divided us. Now on the job, he yearns for unity’s strength. But leopards don’t change their spots. As he ran, so will he govern. I will not be a party to that.” (emphasis in the original)

All I have to do to justify my stance is look at what the Democrats did when President Bush offered his hand in “bipartisanship” during and following the 2000 election. Outside of a couple of weeks in September, 2001, and Bush calling the Rats’ 3 1/2-year-old bluff on Iraq, they have been nothing but obstructionists. Still, Bush and the Republicans insisted on “bipartisanship”. What did that get them? Tell me; what did that get them? It got them a one-way ticket to Minorityville, and the way out isn’t “cooperation”, but “victory”.

It seems the Democrats got to 57 seats (with Bernard Sanders and Joe Lieberman caucusing with them, at least), and things are too close to call in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia.

At last count, Republican Saxby Chambliss was under the 50%+1 requirement to avoid a December 2nd runoff against his Democratic challenger, Jim Martin. There are, however, 42 precincts yet to report, and if each precinct reports like the remainder of the remainder of the county it’s a part of reported, Chambliss should reach the majority he needs to avoid that runoff. Still, I can’t guarantee that will happen, and we may have to work to save Chambliss.

There will be an automatic recount in Minnesota between Republican Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. Unofficially, with all precincts reporting, Coleman was ahead by 221 votes. There were 2,340 unspecified write-ins, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State, so that may well flip the other way upon a recount.

Finally, there’s Alaska. The first item is that Republican Ted Stevens is leading his Democratic challenger, Mark Begich, by 3,257 votes. However, there are 62,953 early and absentee ballots yet to be counted, and another 18,271 ballots that are in question.

Even if Stevens wins, there is the question of whether he will be seated, and if seated, whether he will be expelled because of his conviction on corruption charges. I do not know what the threshhold is for the Senate to deny seating a member, but I do know the only way to remove a member once seated is by 2/3rds voting to expel that member. If he is either not seated in or expelled from the 111th Congress, there will be a special election within 60 and 90 days of that date (“thank” you Frank and Lisa Murkowski), and I doubt the Republicans would be able to hold onto that seat.

Of course, if the Dems can’t get to 60 by ousting him and getting a Dem in his place (or they’re already at 60 without Lieberman), I fully anticipate them seating him and using procedural rules to keep him on the rolls until 2010 in order to use him as a weapon against the GOP. They’ll likely get away with it; after all, they parlayed the credit crisis they caused into the clean sweep.

There is a further complication; there are a number of Republican Senators who serve in states with a Democratic governor with the power to fill vacancies in the Senate until at least the 2010 elections, including several who serve in states that haven’t otherwise voted for a Republican lately. Notably, and gratefully, this does not include John McCain; Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is required by law to appoint another Republican to fill his seat should he leave. In Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson made a career out of giving state Senate Democrats plum jobs outside of the Senate in order to create a Republican majority out of thin air; I can’t put it past Barack Obama to do the same to create a filibuster-proof Democratic majority (or to do so without the troublesome presence of Lieberman in the caucus), and there are a couple of Senators who I don’t believe would feel particularly bound to prevent that filibuster-proof Dem majority.

So it’s done, or mostly so.   There are still a couple of Senate races yet to be officially determined (yes, one of them includes Al Franken and yes I live in MN…sigh) but in general, we’re done.   Now that I’ve had about 22 hours to decompress it’s probably a good time, before I completely lose the “sense of the moment” to look at what we learned in this election cycle.   Most of this is gleaned from the exit polling done by CNN:

1. Contrary to Obama’s protests, the election was  decided on  race – While he did swing about 2.5M votes of caucasians, Obama’s win came from non caucasian voters.   We knew about the African American vote.   Only 4% of African Americans voted for McCain.   Traditionally, 10% to 12% voted Republican.   However, Latinos also moved 14 points towards Obama versus what Kerry was able to garner in ’04
2. The PUMAs were a work of fiction – Oh I’m sure there were some and I’m sure they voted for McCain.   However, Bush got 11% of the Democrat vote in ’04 and McCain got just 10%.   Those numbers tell me that the PUMAs looked no different than your normal Dem voter.   I suppose it’s possible that McCain may have had an even smaller Dem vote without their support.   However, I’ve seen other result data that tends to corroborate the lack of a PUMA influence.
3. Working from your base to the middle works better than working from the middle towards your base – Obama received support from 89% of self ascribed “liberals”, compared to Kerry getting 85% of the same group.   McCain only received 78% of the “conservative” vote while Bush received 84% of the same group.   Of course those who are moderates broke for Obama 60% to 39%.   It’s clear from this that while Obama held his base, McCain never fully recovered from his early pokes in the conservative eyes.
4. No “event” cost McCain the election – Regardless of when they decided who they were going to vote for, with the exception of the last week, McCain was never closer than a 5% deficit.    This is interesting in that the talk of how the economic issues impacted McCain doesn’t seem to hold water.   What this also shows is that the election results were  about broad ideology and candidate  confidence issues.   It also suggests that while polling better than the broad Republican brand, McCain was never able to completely shake  the negative perceptions.    
5. 67% of those polled favor expanded offshore drilling – I’m a bit surprised that this number is still as high with $2.40 gas as it was with $4.00 gas.   It will be interesting to see how Pelosi/Reid/Obama respond to this.
6. Expect more Socializing of Industry – while only 39% of all voters supported the $700 billion bailout, unless they were strongly opposed to it (only 29%), they voted for Obama.
7. Age more important than Race – While I don’t entirely believe this given what I saw in item 1, the exit polls showed that 39% said the age of the candidate was a factor in their vote, while only 19% said race was a factor.   The people who said age was a factor overwhelmingly supported Obama.

Ok, so what does this mean?   I’m not honestly sure.   I’ll get back to you after the weekend.  

One  other quick observation:

Who was the person least happy with the Obama victory?   Hillary Clinton.

If Obama does well as President, Hillary can’t run until 2012 and we have this nasty habit of changing parties after 8 years by the same person.   If Obama doesn’t do well, that would likely move that group of no conviction moderates to swing their emotions to the nonDemocrat.

Well, at least at Thing 1 and Thing 2’s elementary.   I’m told he won 396 to 157!   I suspect the spread in the adult vote of this area won’t be too far off of that.   Maybe we should have started a drive to get “Power of attorney” for the rest of the state!