Michelle Obama's Affirmative Action Style

Today's Los Angeles Times showcases Michelle Obama's fashion sense, which is described as reflecting "the American-led democratization of fashion..."

But what stood out in the photo gallery is this photo of a (ostensible) Secret Service officer escorting Mrs. Obama through the crowds:

I have no clue as to the bureaucratic decision-rules on the assignment of Secret Service personnel to the candidates and their wives. But given that Michelle Obama will be the most race-conscious first lady in American history, one can't dismiss the notion that she lobbied - even demanded - for black officers to dominate her security contingent.

As Linda Chavez pointed out last summer:

Michelle Obama’s life is a case study in affirmative action....

At every step of her career, race has been central to her own identification and upward mobility. Judging from the quality of thinking and writing exhibited in her Princeton thesis, Michelle would not likely have been admitted to Princeton (and later Harvard Law) had she been white. And of course affirmative action opened up jobs, first in a prestigious law firm and later as the vice president of community affairs at the University of Chicago medical center-earning $300,000 a year. She made it her first task at the hospital to steer more contracts to minority contractors. “She revised the contracting system, sending so much business to firms owned by women and other minorities that the hospital won awards,” the Times says.

Perhaps Mrs. Obama used her muscle (and her husband's electoral inevitability) to steer minority officers to her security detail, to add some street authenticity and send a message that race preferences will get an open house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

(Note: This could be a local police officer, so I have no idea as to the official position of the agent escorting Mrs. Obama. The post here simply assesses the logical implications of the situation in the photograph, considering Mrs. Obama's race-conscious ideology, and extrapolates to the future demographic composition of the First Lady-Elect's Secret Service detail).

Out of the Wilderness: Conservative Comeback Awaits

In the weeks leading up to the conclusion of the 2008 campaign, a number of bloggers predicted an Obama victory, and many started planning ahead for the long road to a conservative comeback.

I discounted such talk, for example, in my post, "McCain's Path to the White House."

In that entry, I cited Robert Stacy McCain, "The Other McCain," and his essay, "How John McCain Lost." Robert pegged September 24 - the day John McCain suspended his campaign to return to Washington to work on the Wall Street rescue - as the beginning of the end for the Arizona Senator.

In response, after providing an analysis of the Electoral College projections, I suggested:

The election's still close.

McCain needs to focus his core message now more that ever, hammering his ace cards of experience, accurate instincts on the economy, and unshakable patriotic convictions. That's the Maverick's path to the White House.

I wish my prediction was accurate, although at the time I knew I was really hoping against hope. Nothing seemed to go McCain's way in the last month. Even the presidential debates - in which McCain performed extremely well - we're interpreted as Obama wins, simply for what I thought was Obama showing up, looking moderate and contemplative, and not making any gaffes. Amazingly, we now have news that even the Obama campaign itself understated international threats as a way to tamp down public reservations on his foreign policy inexperience.

That's all under the bridge now: Conservatives of all stripes of will need years to regroup and find their way back for the GOP's return to power.

In an e-mail to me, Robert suggested the McCain camp veered far from bedrock conservative principles, and ignored warnings from the right-wing base while running the GOP ticket into the ground:

That is to say, the idiots running the McCain campaign, who repeatedly rejected sound advice from conservatives, spent the last three weeks of the campaign LYING about their prospects for victory, urging conservatives to believe in a cause they knew to be hopeless. And now those same lying idiots are trying to blame Sarah Palin for their own blunders.

The Reaganauts had a saying, "Personnel is policy." For too long, conservatives have accepted incompetence as a policy because incompetent personnel have escaped accountability for their errors. These self-dealing GOP incompetents need to be called to account. And those of us who saw through their barrage of [baloney] ought to get some credit for being right.

In reading bloggers and pundits the last few days, the dominant meme is that the GOP must return to Reaganite conservatism, i.e., consistent ideological principles focusing on low taxes, low spending, traditional social values, and peace-through-strength intenationalism (or thereabouts).

Yet, some have argued that the Reagan legacy is a chimera, and that it's time for a new generation of leaders on the right, and a new generation of ideas. For example, the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru wrote:

Republicans have a history of moving right after defeats, embracing Ronald Reagan after Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford had failed, and Newt Gingrich after George H. W. Bush had. Each time the party thrived as conservative independents and Democrats joined it. Many conservatives think that the party will succeed again just as soon as it ditches the big-spending, soft-on-immigration George W. Bush. But Republicans succeeded on those previous occasions because they addressed the concerns of the day for the vast middle class; moving right alone was insufficient.

As it will be in today’s very different political landscape. Based on the exit polls from 2004 and Tuesday, Republicans have lost more ground among self-described moderates than among conservatives. Even if Senator McCain had won the same percentage of conservatives that President Bush did in 2004, he would not have won. Moving right will work only if moderates are given a reason to move right too.

Michael Medved took up the issue as well, in his essay, "Was the 'Maverick' Too Moderate to Win?":

Some of the nation’s most influential conservatives (on talk radio and elsewhere) have begun promoting the odd idea that John McCain lost the election because he ran as a “moderate” and a “maverick” rather than a “true conservative.” According to this argument, the GOP nominee could have won the White House had he only “taken the gloves off” and run to the right, without apology. This logic suggests that candidates fare better when they display ideological rigor and consistency, and that Republicans can never succeed by going after moderate and independent votes.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to test this theory. McCain appeared on the 2008 ballot with some of the nation’s most outspoken, hard line conservatives, who won nomination for governor or US Senator. If the argument is true that you can win more votes by appealing to right-wingers, rather than aiming for the center, then conservative Senate and gubernatorial candidates should have out-performed McCain, particularly in solidly Republican Southern or Midwestern states....

In fact, McCain ran well ahead of Republican nominees for Senate and governorships almost everywhere – except in those cases when statewide GOP candidates had cultivated their own reputations for independence, centrism, and ideological flexibility.

The key point for both Ponnuru and Medved, from what I gather, is that there's more of an emotional appeal in the call for a return to conservative values than a rational one.

I'm not out to settle the matter here, and Robert will vigorously disagree (samples galore, here).

I'm neoconservative. I want national greatness in foreign policy, traditional values in social policy domestically (especially on abortion, marriage, and race relations), but I'm more flexible on the scope of state power in addressing economic concerns and providing public goods (within reason).

Going forward, the party must pay heed to the demographics of election 2008. Barack Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote, and also 62 percent of the Asian American vote. First time voters turned out 62 percent for the Democratic ticket, and Obama won 69 percent of the college-age cohort (see also, "Youth Vote for Obama Bodes Ill for Future of GOP").

Moreover, Barack Obama indeed appeared moderate to many voters (taking 60 percent of the centrist electorate), despite GOP attacks to the contrary (the attacks, of course, may ultimately prove prophetic, giving Republicans an opening to campaign against an ideological, overreaching Democratic Party).

Personally, I love Sarah Palin, who for all of her red-meat bona fides with the conservative base, is also pure neocon on American exceptionalism and moral clarity.

On that point, then, perhaps the various factions of the conservatve movement can unite, forging a way back from the wilderness.

Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right

The debate on homosexual marriage continues to rage after the passage of California's Proposition 8 on Tuesday.

As we saw yesterday, gay rights activists have turned against black voters in the state, who voted in overwhelming numbers to preserve the traditional definition of marriage as that between one man and one woman. Well, it turns out that today's Los Angeles Times offers a look at black views on same-sex marriage, "For Many African Americans, It's Not a Civil Rights Issue":

For Trebor Healey, a 46-year-old gay man from Glendora, Tuesday's election was bittersweet.

He was thrilled that the nation elected its first African American president. But he was disappointed that black voters, traditionally among the most reliably liberal in the state, voted overwhelmingly to ban same-sex marriage.

He understands that there are differences between the civil rights battles of blacks and gays: For one thing, he notes, gay people have a much easier time blending in. Still, he says, he thinks it's sad that "people do not equate one civil rights struggle with another."

Many black voters didn't see it that way.

"I was born black. I can't change that," said Culver City resident Bilson Davis, 57, who voted for Proposition 8. "They weren't born gay; they chose it," he added ....

Los Angeles resident Christopher Hill, 50, said he was motivated by religion in supporting Proposition 8. Civil rights, he said, "are about getting a job, employment."

Gay marriage, he said, is not: "It's an abomination against God."

One of the common attacks on supporters of Prop 8 is that they're bigots, and folks on the left are incredulous that the same voters who supported Barack Obama could in turn reject homosexual marriage rights.

The truth is that if we recall the original foundation of marriage as a union of man and women for the central purpose of procreation, it makes sense that Yes on 8 supporters resist expanding a definition of rights to those who make a lifestyle choice.

Indeed, the effort to change the language of traditional civil rights to include gay marriage has been one of the most clever yet sinister elements of the same-sex marriage movement this last few years. Yet, as Eugene Rivers and Kenneth Johnson indicate, the equation of gay rights with the black feedom struggle - and the traditional civil rights agenda - is a fraud that cheapens the historic legacy for equal treatment under the law in the United States:

There is no evidence in the history and literature of the civil rights movement, or in its genesis in the struggle against slavery, to support the claim that the "gay rights" movement is in the tradition of the African-American struggle for civil rights ....

The extraordinary history of the United States as a slaveholding republic included the kidnapping and brutal transport of blacks from African shores, and the stripping of their language, identity, and culture in order to subjugate and exploit them. It also included the constitutional enshrining of these evils in the form of a Supreme Court decision--Dred Scott v. Sandford--denying to blacks any rights that whites must respect, and the establishment of Jim Crow and de jure racial discrimination after Dred Scott was overturned by a civil war and three historic constitutional amendments.

It is these basic facts that embarrass efforts to exploit the rhetoric of civil rights to advance the goals of generally privileged groups, however much they wish to depict themselves as victims. Whatever wrongs individuals have suffered because some Americans fail in the basic moral obligation to love the sinner, even while hating the sin, there has never been an effort to create a subordinate class subject to exploitation based on "sexual orientation."

It is precisely the indiscriminate promotion of various social groups' desires and preferences as "rights" that has drained the moral authority from the civil rights industry. Let us consider the question of rights. What makes a gay activist's aspiration to overturn thousands of years of universally recognized morality and practice a "right"? Why should an institution designed for the reproduction of civil society and the rearing of children in a moral environment in which their interests are given pride of place be refashioned to accommodate relationships integrated around intrinsically non-marital sexual conduct?

One must, in the current discussion, address directly the assertion of discrimination. The claim that the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman constitutes discrimination is based on a false analogy with statutory prohibitions on interracial marriages in many states through much of the 20th century. This alleged analogy collapses when one considers that skin pigmentation is utterly irrelevant to the procreative and unitive functions of marriage. Racial differences do not interfere with the ability of sexually complementary spouses to become "one-flesh," as the Book of Genesis puts it, by sexual intercourse that fulfills the behavioral conditions of procreation. As the law of marital consummation makes clear, and always has made clear, it is this bodily union that serves as the foundation of the profound sharing of life at every level--biological, emotional, dispositional, rational, and spiritual--that marriage is. This explains not only why marriage can only be between a man and a woman, but also why marriages cannot be between more than two people--despite the desire of "polyamorists" to have their sexual preferences and practices legally recognized and blessed.

Moreover, the analogy of same-sex marriage to interracial marriage disregards the whole point of those prohibitions, which was to maintain and advance a system of racial subordination and exploitation. It was to maintain a caste system in which one race was relegated to conditions of social and economic inferiority. The definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman does not establish a sexual caste system or relegate one sex to conditions of social and economic inferiority. It does, to be sure, deny the recognition as lawful "marriages" to some forms of sexual combining--including polygyny, polyandry, polyamory, and same-sex relationships. But there is nothing invidious or discriminatory about laws that decline to treat all sexual wants or proclivities as equal.

People are equal in worth and dignity, but sexual choices and lifestyles are not. That is why the law's refusal to license polygamous, polyamorous, and homosexual unions is entirely right and proper. In recognizing, favoring, and promoting traditional, monogamous marriage, the law does not violate the "rights" of people whose "lifestyle preferences" are denied the stamp of legal approval. Rather, it furthers and fosters the common good of civil society, and makes proper provision for the physical and moral protection and nurturing of children.

I have no illusions that such rigorous argumentation and logic will convince homosexual rights advocates that gays face no discimination on the question of marriage rights.

But as we can see, the homosexual movement is attempting to create a right to marriage that has no basis in historical practice, and such attempts trivialize the bloody march to equality Americans have endured and overcome.

This is a lesson gay activists should consider, for when 70 percent of blacks in California - the nation's most liberal, trend-setting state - oppose the demands of an extremely vocal radical minority, it's a pretty good indicator that the movement for same-sex marriage rights falls outside the bounds of both traditional law and universal morality.

Obama Goggles

I love the title of Jeff Goldstein's post on the mass media's pro-Obama bias (especially the media's refusal to run stories damaging to "The One"), which helped boost the Democrats to power, "Obama Goggles":

We’re going to see many attempts to ironize away all the talk of media bias as the ravings of rightwing kooks whose ravings, while statistically showing some slight merit, are nevertheless overdetermined, given the final numbers.

– All of which will purposely obscure the point that it wasn’t necessarily the amount of coverage but the kind — and, in Obama’s case, the real complaint isn’t so much the statistical differential as it is the lack of a certain kind of vetting that speaks to the actual bias conservatives complain about.

In short, it’s what the media didn’t tell us about Obama — despite writing more about him — that bolsters the charge. And this is particularly evident when we stop to recall the coverage given to Sarah Palin — the vast majority of which was a deliberate attempt to over vet, to the point where the public knows far more about Ms Palin’s clothes and tanning bed than they do about Obama’s desire to create a civilian security force and to cajole a form of state servitude from the very youth vote whom he counted on to help swing the election his way.

And when these low information voters wake up, the hangover will hit them like that $5000 credit card charge they brought home from a strip club that one time, even though they could only remember having 2 drinks themselves, and buying a single round for the ladies...

Obama goggles, indeed.

Bachmann and Burner: Epic Electoral Fail for Netroots

I want to highlight the dramatic electoral significance of Representative Michele Bachmann's reelection to Congress from Minnesota's 6th district, and the defeat of Darcy Burner, the Democratic congressional candidate for Washington's 8th district, who has now conceded the election to incumbent Dave Reichert after a close race.

Together, the reelection of Bachmann and defeat of Burner mark a startling defeat for the 2008 netroots campaigns of Daily Kos, Firedoglake, Open Left, and their "Blue America" coalition of Internet activists (see also Memeorandum).

After Bachmann appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" in October, where she questioned Barack Obama's patriotism, the big blogs on the left raised close to a $2 million for Bachmann's challenger, El Tinkleberg. Leftists charged Bachmann with "McCarthyism" after she recommended the media look into the degree of anti-Americanism in Congress. While the left was outraged, Bachmann's comments were met sympathetically from her constituents, who said she had no need for apologies. The following comment, in response to some of the angry commenters at the Wall Street Journal, is also telling:

Come on ... let’s be sensible here. Michelle was baited over and over into those questions by Chris Matthews anyone who isn’t a blind partisan could see that and I have watched that interview 4 times to be sure she wasn’t being outright hateful.

She is a good woman and will get the job done ...

Now, Darcy Burner's case is in some ways an even more striking repudiation of the hardcore netroots left than is Bachmann victory.

One of Burner's biggest assets to the left was her leadership in proposing a widely distributed plan for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Called "A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," the proposal was anything but. The plan called for a complete U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq at precisely the same time that the Bush administration offered a new strategy for victory under the counterinsurgency doctrine of General David Petraeus. Like Barack Obama, Burner wanted to throw in the towel - capitulating to and enabling our terrorist enemies - after the U.S. government had in fact shifted to a new military doctrine that was based on some of the very criticisms the left leveled at the administration earlier in the war (not enough troops going in, poor doctrinal foundations for victory, etc).

But more than this, Burner's what the netroots call "the quintessential Blue America candidate," which is to say, her issue positions are representative of the brooding Bush derangement which is the hallmark of the radical left contigents.

Now, there's a lot of triumphalism on the left following Tuesday's results, for example, in Dave Neiwart's claim of a sweeping repudiation of conservatism in the United States:

No, this election was about one thing primarily: a sweeping repudiation of movement conservatism.

The breadth and depth of Democrats' victory was a loud shout from the American public: We have had enough of this crap.

Actually, as I noted last night, Barack Obama's margin of victory - in both the Electoral College and the popular vote - was less-than-middling by historical standards.

A slight majority of Americans nationwide voted for the change represented in Barack Obama's historic candidacy. But to argue for a sweeping repudiation of conservativism is innacurate. If any candidate should have been "sweepingly repudiated" as a "movement conservative," it's Michele Bachmann (who's frequently slurred on the left as a rightwing extremist of the "lunatic fringe"), who won reelection even after the RNCC caved to pressure from the PC attack dogs on the left.

So, Bachmann's win, and Burner's loss, combined with other indicators, like the decisive defeat of same-sex marriage at the polls across the country, reveals both the limits of left's ideological electoral program, as well as the strong basis for a conservative revival as early as 2010.

Scope and Change in Obama's Victory

The significance of Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president is more dramatic in its historical change than in terms of the size of his victory.

Frankly, Obama's triumph falls far short of what folks thinkwhen they hear of an "electoral landslide"; and while I haven't seen journalists speak of the Democrats in those terms, left-wing partisans can't find enough chances to announce a "realignment," or a "repudiation" of GOP rule that's left conservatives "irrelevant."

As Michael Cooper reported today, Tuesday's results were less a blowout than a call for change:

One of the many ways the election of Barack Obama differed from recent presidential elections was that in the end, it did not all come down to one state.

The addition on Thursday of the electoral votes from North Carolina — a state that had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976 — brought Mr. Obama’s total to 364, well above the 270 needed to win the presidency and the 162 won by Senator John McCain.

The final 2008 Electoral College tally is still not known because Missouri, which has 11 electoral votes, and Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, which has one, are still considered too close to call. (Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that do not allocate their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis.)

So how does Mr. Obama’s 364, which could go as high as 376, measure up?

“It’s a normal win,” said John C. Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who edited “After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College.” Mr. Fortier called it a respectable, solid mandate.

“It was not a blowout and not a really close election,” he said. “We got a little bit used to these close elections. Until 2005, we were legitimately talking about a 50-50 nation, where everything was close.”

Mr. Obama’s commanding victory does break the habit of decidedly close contests of the last two election cycles. This time around, there was none of the hand-wringing, nail-biting or teeth-gnashing that followed the 2004 election, which the Democrats could have won if they had carried Ohio. And certainly none of the conceding, unconceding, recounts, halted recounts and Supreme Court intervention of 2000 election, which the Democrats could have won if they had carried Florida or any of a number of other states.

For a real blowout, think of the 523 electoral votes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt won in 1936, when he ran against Alf Landon, who won eight. Or more recently the 525 electoral votes President Ronald Reagan won in 1984, when Walter F. Mondale won only 13. Or the 520 President Richard M. Nixon won in 1972 against George McGovern, who won 17. Those were the widest electoral vote margins.

For leftists, it's the disarray of the conservative movement that's important, but it would be a mistake to speak of "irrelevance." In fact, Barack Obama will have his hands full with a determined GOP Senate minority perfectly happy to block the extravagant policy demands of the party's far left-wing contingents, notes Kimberley Strassel:

Democrats won big on Tuesday but not big enough. The voters' rebuke of the GOP was brutal, though not so cruel as to hand Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the 60 votes they needed to grease a sweeping agenda. The GOP still owns a filibuster, and that is as big a factor in this new "era" as is our president-elect.

Even the "repudiation" meme is more chest-thumping than substance.

The Democrats offered the electorate literally a once-in-a-lifetime candidate. Barack Obama will be formidable in 2012 when he seeks reelection, but should he retain the office, the Democrats will find him a hard act to follow. There's little evidence that 2008 constitutes a poltical realignment, although the leftists believe that if they can drill their spin into the minds of the media and the voters, the party's natural propensity to overreach will be overlooked.

Proposition 8 and the New Racism

The backlash on the left over the passage of California's Proposition 8 reveals just how nasty Democratic Party identity politics can get sometimes.

It turns out that gay rights activists, in looking for scapegoats for their denial of same-sex marriage at the polls, are attacking blacks for helping to put the intitative over the top.

Pam Spaulding's got the background, but this quote really captures things:

The backlash is upon us, and it's going to get uglier unless our organizations step forward and say something. The desire to scapegoat blacks for Prop 8's defeat has exposed the now not-so-latent racism in our movement.

Spaulding then goes on with a discussion about how she's "three-times" marginalized (apparently as a black woman who's lesbian).

But what she doesn't do is address the inherent pathologies of lefist identity politics itself. She sees herself pulled into the maelsrom of race, rights, and identity, but it's all a misunderstanding, and not an inherent perversion of the left's obsession with race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and on and on, until each side's not getting enough of the spoils, and no coalition can last amid the division.

The fact is, with 70 percent of California's blacks voting in favor of Prop 8, the black community was shedding identity politics to enter into a traditional bloc of voters interested in preserving a valued institution.

For all the cries of GOP racism at the Palin rallies, and so forth, the genuinely wicked attack politics we've seen this year has been on the Democratic-left. As Jammie Wearing Fool notes, "Raw, unexpurgated liberal hate on display. Just imagine if these weren't two protected classes. We'd never hear the end of it."

Tears of Transformation

Judith Warner comments on the significance of Barack Obama's election:

This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.

The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.

For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.

Warner's speaking of the woman and her daughter above, in one of those priceless moments in time that captures a flick on the radar of epochal change.

But Warner preceded these remarks with some considerably less eloquent words (Republicans, for example, are marked by a "miserly indifference to the poor and middle class").

As the son of a black man who was born in Missouri, a former slave state, in 1913 during the depths of Jim Crow, and as one who's faced my own questions of racial acceptance in a society of "white hegemony," to borrow Warner's phrasing, I can testify to the significance of Obama's victory: It's revolutionary, not in the regime-change sense, but in the scope of social significance.

This I welcome. Had my father - a New Deal Democrat himself - been here to witness history this week I'm sure he would have been overcome, and I would have placed my hand on his cheek in comfort (for he endured tremendous pain).

I don't think, however, Warner and folks like her are doing American society any good by speaking of the Reagan Revolution in terms of "intellectual and moral paucity." Obama himself, during the primaries, recognized President Reagan's power of opitimism and singular character that changed a nation.

The Democratic-left certainly earned this moment, and I know how it feels to thrill in victory. I can't help but think, however, that all the calls for post-partisan transformation will be long-forgotten well before the Obamas get settled into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A New American Republic of Justice and Order

Pam Geller received this comment at her blog:

You people are pathetic!

Your racist fear mongering will not go unchallenged! Soon we will shut down your hate spewing web sites. We will confiscate your firearms. In prison, you will get an education on the error of your ways. We will take your children and raise them as our own and instill in them the values of social justice. We will have a new American Republic of justice and order for all!

You time is almost up! Prepare for the dung heap of history!

Pam didn't leave a link to the post, so readers can judge if this is genuine. But when I received the hate e-mail from a supposedly former "student," he signed off, "YES WE CAN!"

I'll have more tales from the Obama cult as they come in.

Obey Obama!

Via Tina Daunt, it turns out that Shepard Fairey, the Los Angeles Street artist who invented the "Hope" icon of Barack Obama - which captured the spirit of hope and change invested by millions of Americans in the Obama campaign - is busy creating a new set of "victory" seals to begin consolidating Barack Obama's cult of personality:

Fairey's website is entitled "Obey Giant," and includes subheadings labeled "Manufacturing Quality Dissent Since 1989," and "Propaganda Engineering."

Kim Jong Il would be proud.

Same-Sex Marriage Movement Hits Cultural Brick Wall

The passage of Proposition 8 in California marks the conservative movement's silver lining for election 2008. Indeed, as the New York Times reported yesterday, Prop 8 was one of three bans on gay marriage that swept the nation in ballot contests Tuesday:

A giant rainbow-colored flag in the gay-friendly Castro neighborhood of San Francisco was flying at half-staff on Wednesday as social and religious conservatives celebrated the passage of measures that ban same-sex marriage in California, Florida and Arizona.

In California, where same-sex marriage had been performed since June, the ban had more than 52 percent of the vote, according to figures by the secretary of state, and was projected to win by several Californian news media outlets. Opponents of same-sex marriage won by even bigger margins in Arizona and Florida. Just two years ago, Arizona rejected a similar ban.

The across-the-board sweep, coupled with passage of a measure in Arkansas intended to bar gay men and lesbians from adopting children, was a stunning victory for religious conservatives, who had little else to celebrate on an Election Day that saw Senator John McCain lose and other ballot measures, like efforts to restrict abortion in South Dakota, California and Colorado, rejected.

“It was a great victory,” said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego County and a leader of the campaign to pass the California measure, Proposition 8. “We saw the people just rise up.”

The losses devastated supporters of same-sex marriage and ignited a debate about whether the movement to expand the rights of same-sex couples had hit a cultural brick wall, even at a time of another civil rights success, the election of a black president.

Thirty states have now passed bans on same-sex marriage....

The victory of the social and religious conservatives came on a core issue that has defined their engagement in politics over the past decade.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor in Florida, said many religious conservatives felt more urgency about stopping same-sex marriage than about abortion, another hotly contested issue long locked in a stalemate.

“There is enough of the population that is alarmed at the general breakdown of the family, that has been so inundated with images of homosexual relationships in all of the media,” said Mr. Hunter, who gave the benediction at the Democratic National Convention this year, yet supported the same-sex marriage ban in his state. “It’s almost like it’s obligatory these days to have a homosexual couple in every TV show or every movie.”

Supporters of the bans in California, Arizona and Florida benefited from the donations and volunteers mobilized by a broad array of churches and religious groups from across the ethnic spectrum.

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, a pastor in Sacramento and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the campaign to pass Proposition 8 had begun with white evangelical churches but had spread to more than 1,130 Hispanic churches whose pastors convinced their members that same-sex marriage threatened the traditional family.

The repudiation of same-sex marriage initiatives dealt a crushing blow to hard-left activists of the Democratic Party. A number of top leftosphere bloggers were in fits of apoplexy over the "bigotry" of the turnout against gay-marriage. Electing the first black president wasn't revolutionary enough; total victory over the "reactionary" right demanded the privileging of a small but vocal gay-rights interest-group movement over the traditional values of the majority.

Digby, for example, decried claims of a victory for the "center-right":

The political implications are what the spinners will make of it. But these hateful propositions winning makes the victory bittersweet. How people can vote for the first African American president in American history, with all that implies, while simultaneously voting to discriminate against gays is testament to the incoherence of American politics and the lack of clear cut philosophy guiding people's choices. Everyone says there's too much ideology in our politics but I'd say there isn't enough. There isn't enough common sense either. Discrimination against others just because you don't like how they live their lives is against the very essence of the two pillars of America - liberty and equality. To fail to see that even as you vote for an historic, important first African American is incoherent.

Actually, it's not incoherent at all. Barack Obama's victory failed to constitute a landslide realignment in the American political culture. The precise nature and scale of Obama's win will be analyzed and debated for some time, but conservatives can rightly be heartened that one of their bedrock issues received phenomenal support at the polls Tuesday.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times, "Prop. 8 Protesters Target Mormon Temple in Westwood."

Hope and Change in the Classroom

Check out Diantha Harris in video below, a Barack Obama supporter and teacher in Asheville, North Carolina (at the time of this taping), bullying a young girl whose military parents supported John McCain for the presidency:

Here's Matthew Tabor's commentary:

Teaching is a tremendous responsibility. That’s no secret....

Ms. Harris has embarrassed herself, her school system and her profession - and in that order of importance. But what she taught 15 young kids about political discourse is the real problem. Harris showed these children that it’s acceptable [and a desirable means to an end] to abuse someone into submission over ideology; that it isn’t important to respect one’s views, or engage in discourse that furthers understanding; that intellectual diversity and dissent is to be crushed for political expedience; that a sneering, mean-spirited contempt drives politics.

We’ve heard a great deal about hope, change and goodwill over the last two years. Ms. Harris’ disgusting display undermined the efforts of folks on both sides of the aisle.

What I noticed is Ms. Harris' hostility toward Kathy, the young McCain supporter. I see here, frankly, reverse discrimination.

All of this is interesting, especially since yesterday someone who claims to have been a former student in my classrooom sent me an e-mail alleging, "after the first day of you pushing your beliefs on the class by telling us we need to support our president, I decided not to waste my time."

Check the comments here and here, where some of my actual students call baloney on that.

American Power Fan Mail

I must be doing a great job lately, as measured by the stepped-up reaction to my writing on the political left (remember the vortex?).

Here's a case in point, in this e-mail sent yesterday from "Isaac," a self-proclaimed former "student":

Dearest Mr. Douglas,

You post non-stop garbage about Obama and all the terrible secrets behind him, with paper thin proof, and the most ridiculous bias I have ever heard. You spew hatred and prejudice, and instead of pointing out McCain's positives, you point out Obama's negatives. You run your blog the same way McCain ran his campaign, and frankly, it comes off desperate and petty (and thats why the better candidate won). I petitioned to be in your class in 2003, and after the first day of you pushing your beliefs on the class by telling us we need to support our president, I decided not to waste my time. Remind me, how did that Bush thing turn out again? And I can only assume that you will support our president for the next 4 years, right?

It's obvious you are an educated man, but from the looks of it, the majority of your readers are gullible, racist, religious fanatics, that buy all the propaganda you, Fox News, and the McCain campaign is selling. To believe Obama advocates the murdering of innocent babies because he's Pro-Choice or that they would be betraying their country and God to vote for Obama. You seriously read those comments and think, "Well that is a valid point". In the meanwhile i put out a thought out, satyrical rebuttle to your laughable post, and I get banned? If you believe in your cause so much, I would think that you would refute my points, instead of deleting the posts and banning me so I don't expose your readers to the cell of a life they live in.

YES WE CAN!

I rarely delete comments or ban readers (mainly for abuse or pure stupidity), so Isaac's comments were likely as over the top as his e-mail above.

Obamania can do that to folks, so it's understandable.

See also my previous "American Power Fan Mail," here.

Code Pink, Obama Finance Bundler, Wants Iraq Reparations

Via, Gateway Pundit: Code Pink, the radical antiwar group which pledged to raise more than $50,000 for the Barack Obama campaign, has issued a statement of demands for U.S. policy on Iraq and beyond:

An Obama victory is a victory for the peace movement. It sends a message to the political establishment that being against war is the winning position. War is SO Over. American voters have recognized the costs-lives lost, international cooperation thwarted, and tax dollars squandered-and chosen the candidate who promised to end the Iraq war and to use diplomacy first....

What do we want from an Obama Administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress? We want an end to the occupation of Iraq and reparations for its people. We don't want the troops from Iraq shipped straight to another losing war in Afghanistan. We want a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. We want a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Iran. We want the restoration of our civil liberties and the protection of our environment. We want money to bail out homeowners who are in foreclosure because of predatory lenders. We want a NEW New Deal for America: jobs, housing, universal health care, education, roads, public transportation….We want a government that puts the needs of people ahead of the profits of banks and corporations.

Reparations for Iraqis?

I've been writing about this all year, and radical lefties have called me crazy. We'll see who's crazy in due time. Meanwhile, see my earlier essay, "Activist Groups Prepare for Left-Wing Democratic Takeover."

Obama's Middle East Roadmap

Ben Shapiro offers a troubling look at what we might expect in a Barack Obama administration. I especially like Shapiro's look-ahead to Middle East diplomacy:

Seeking to ease international tensions, Obama met directly with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Ahmadinejad insisted that the Israeli government grant a contiguous state to the Hamas-run Palestinian government, including full control of both its borders and East Jerusalem. Assad insisted that Israel concede the Golan Heights. Obama agreed with the general thrust of the demands, and suggested that the Iranian and Syrian proposals be included in a new "roadmap," to be administered by the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain. Israel has, so far, protested the plan, pointing to the continuing mass terrorism sponsored by Iran and Syria, including the use of crude chemical weaponry.

Don't forget one of Tehran's key preconditions for U.S.-Iranian diplomacy: A complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East.

Change we can believe?

Sucked Into the Douglas Vortex

My proposed blogging break is turning out to be shorter than I expected, but considering my post last night, maybe I shouldn't have expected it.

Anyway, I think I'm getting a "vortex," like Ann Althouse:

Boy, left-wing bloggers really hate Ann Althouse....

Evidently, there's a pack of bloggers hoping to catch Althouse on any slip-up, particularly when the Times has given her space [here]

Well, boy, left-wing bloggers really hate Donald Douglas as well.

It turns out there's a pack of bloggers (a small, but nevertheless vicious pack, like a wolf pack), who is out to catch me slip up.

The guys (gays?) at LGM have had me in the crosshairs for some time, and TBogg at Firedoglake posts some funny-bone slams on American Power from time to time.

But Dan Nexon's a new member of the pack, seen in his entry this morning, "Donald Douglas Goes Completely Insane:"

In private exchanges with Donald over the years, he's repeatedly discussed his use of "red meat" rhetoric to drive up his readership and implied that one should not take that rhetoric too seriously. He's even, to his credit, blogged about this--which also means I'm not inappropriately revealing the content of private correspondence....

At some level, this is all rather amusing. Donald's been on a self-styled crusade to reveal the pathological hate spewed by the left blogsphere, one in which he repeated proclaims that nothing on the right compares....

But I find it both sad and frightening....

Donald is a trained political scientist and a college teacher (by all accounts, an excellent one). He knows, or at least should know, that a 4% variation in the marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket is not the difference between communism and capitalism (John McCain does, as he said on video before the last days of the 2008 campaign), that both McCain's and Obama's policies "redistribute wealth," and... well, I could go on and on. If he does know, he has an obligation to pass this knowledge along to his credulous readers. If he does not, then there's little left to say.

Let me admit, first, that Nexon's so far the only blogger who's nearly one-upped me in debate, and he's also a respectable scholar to boot. I respect him.

But what's the fuss, really? Over this passage from my post?

Now, let me disabuse my relentless left-wing critics: Barack Obama is not a communist in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist mold, as seen in the widget above-right.

He is, however - whether folks want to acknowledge it or not - deeply in solidarity with many of the forces arrayed against the U.S. This I believe of Barack Obama: Not imminent physical destruction of our nation (though not completely discounted), but destruction nonetheless. Destruction of the moral light that never lets the malignant growth of evil roll across the land. No, America's enemies will get a respite, where they can regroup and reconsider what they want from America. There will be a reckoning, at some point, of course. Because even those who have been hoodwinked by the hope-i-ness of change will not long tolerate the yoke of Third World despotism and terror over this proud nation. A despotism seeking to behead the American individual, and the culture that bore him - all of this, dearest Americans, faster than you can say Madrid 2004.

It's true, of course: I do indeed throw out the juicy conservative red-meat from time to time, to chum the waters a bit. In fact, that's exactly why a posted the ObamaNation "Yes, We Can" Marxist-Leninist widget to the top-right of the page last night. I'm taking it down now, naturally, because I don't believe Barack Obama's the heir to Joseph Stalin.

I do think Obama's a master at disguising just how radically left he is, and how badly he wants to turn the United States in a European-style social democracy - a "brave new Omerica"- and I take nothing back from my post, especially the conclusion: "Stand with me, my friends! Fight with me! Fight for what's right for our country!"

And that's what I'll continue to do, with the effect, apparently, of building a vortex...

What's Puzzling You is the Nature of My Game...

Barack Obama has been elected 44th President of the United States. I laid out some of my earlier disappointments here, after Senator Obama won the Democratic nomination in June. Tonight, with the Democratic victory, Americans can rightly celebrate this historic milestone. Obama has achieved a phenomenal success, and it's not without the indomitable measure of his ambition and perseverance in pursuit of a dream.

Yet, the President-Elect is in many ways the least known candidate in the history of American presidential elections. The American public - simply exhuasted after eight years of President George W. Bush and his policies - has put caution to the wind and invested amorphous hopes of change and a better future in a man who has spent less than four years in the U.S. Senate, with a good two of those years spent campaigning for the very office to which he can now claim a popular mandate.

We do not know all that we can about Barack Obama. It's not for a lack of trying. Millions of bytes of digital space, and tens of thousands of dead trees, have been utilized to tell this man's story - over these last couple of years - of reaching the pinnacle of success and power in the American mainstream.

Yet, for all of this, mystery shadows our historic moment. A darkness of ignorance envelopes this candidate, his campaign, and his victory. I'm not fully in accord with Stanley Kurtz, the scholar who has done more than anyone to unearth the revelations of Obama's radicalism, when he says that Obama's been revealed for who he is:

Obama is clever and pragmatic, it’s true. But his pragmatism is deployed on behalf of radical goals. Obama’s heart is, and will remain, with the Far Left. Yet he will surely be cautious about grasping for more, at any given moment, than the political traffic will bear. That should not be mistaken for genuine moderation. It will merely be the beginning stages of a habitually incremental radicalism. In his heart and soul, Barack Obama was and remains a radical-stealthy, organizationally sophisticated, and — when necessary — tactically ruthless. The real Obama — the man beyond the feel-good symbol — is no mystery. He’s there for anyone willing to look. Sad to say, few are.

No, I differ: As we saw this last week - with the release of the audiotape of Obama's comments to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he indicated he'd "bankrupt" coal companies that refused to line up in lock-step with liberal-Democratic cap-and-trade environmental policies - much more will come out on Obama's oppositional, dramatically unconventional past. No, there's still much to be learned about this man, the man from Chicago, by way of Harvard and Honolulu, who more than any other political aspirant in our great national experiment, has slid under the radar of critical examination and everyday skepticism.

As readers know, I find a lot of comfort in music, in my considerable personal love of rock-and-roll. I'm sure I could find some classic tunes that might do justice to the moment, something, perhaps, like Bill Clinton's inauguration, when Fleetwood Mac performed "Don't Stop (Thinking 'bout Tomorrow)."

But what I've returned to is, in fact, Barack Obama's favorite band, the Rolling Stones, but not, perhaps, his favorite song, "Sympathy for the Devil," in the video above, with lyrics here (and John Lennon at 4:45 minutes, "Imagine!"):

If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste; use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste.

Yes, that's right ... if you meet him, look out, give him some sympathy. Bow down low, "The One" is here, and you must pay due penitence for the sins of your fathers, your white fathers. If not, he'll lay your soul to waste with the phenomenal power of the American state - a state structure now to be captured - more heavily than ever before - like nothing James Madison envisioned - by the largest radical left-wing interest group contingent in U.S. history.

Oh sure, Obama will govern from the center: He'll have to, lest he risk a violent conservative reaction. But the tide has turned for this moment, and traditionalists just better hold on tight. This next four years will be unlike anything we've ever seen. Lyndon Johnson did not have the nihilist netroots blogosphere to harass his administration into conformity; and Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats weren't delivered to the progressive hordes who seek to break bread with our mortal enemies. No, things are different today. Meet the new boss.

Now, let me disabuse my relentless left-wing critics: Barack Obama is not a communist in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist mold, as seen in the widget above-right.

He is, however - whether folks want to acknowledge it or not - deeply in solidarity with many of the forces arrayed against the U.S. This I believe of Barack Obama: Not imminent physical destruction of our nation (though not completely discounted), but destruction nonetheless. Destruction of the moral light that never lets the malignant growth of evil roll across the land. No, America's enemies will get a respite, where they can regroup and reconsider what they want from America. There will be a reckoning, at some point, of course. Because even those who have been hoodwinked by the hope-i-ness of change will not long tolerate the yoke of Third World despotism and terror over this proud nation. A despotism seeking to behead the American individual, and the culture that bore him - all of this, dearest Americans, faster than you can say Madrid 2004.
My masthead is now black in mourning for the missed opportunity of victory in John McCain's moral right and history. This change is permanent, at least as far as my current state of mind dictates. The Obama Soviet "Yes, We Can" widget, above right, is temporary, and will likely come down upon the resumption of regular posts. I don't know when that will be, however. I may take just a day off from blogging, or a month or two. But rest assured, dear readers, American Power will be back, stronger than ever, to pick up the flame of moral clarity and to enjoin the ideological battle that stands before us.

As always, I'll visit and comment at the blogs of all those who visit here.

The continuity of American democracy was confirmed today. Whether the results portend a long-term realignment of party coaltions and moral priorities remains to be seen. In any case, as John McCain would say: Stand with me, my friends! Fight with me! Fight for what's right for our country!

Despair not, for the present concatentation of forces is temporary ... I guarantee it.

An Election Day Prayer

Please reflect on a most profoundly spiritual election-day essay from one of my readers, Brenda Giguere: "Election Day Prayer":

Dear God,

For weeks now I have tried to be optimistic, but in my heart I have been preparing for the worst. I pray our country makes the right choice. If we prevail it will be by the slimmest of margins. We have much work to do regardless of who takes office, but if we lose our great nation to a dangerous radical leftist, we will need to call upon all of our collective strength to save the greatest nation the world has ever known from self-inflicted mortal injury. This bad situation didn't happen overnight. I should have been paying more attention; I thought I was, but clearly it wasn't enough.

I've always loved my country, though, and never took it for granted. We are doing so much good in the world; we've achieved so much here at home. Good people are living their lives and pursuing their dreams. I've always felt fortunate to be here.

We have millions of decent people, people who want to work hard and be part of what America should be. These people do not hang anyone in effigy, even on Halloween. They do not cheat when voting or making campaign contributions. They do not cheer in approval as a candidate flips a bird during a speech, or joke about gang-raping a mother. They don't storm into campaign offices and use mace. They don't have friends who stomp on the flag or damn our country from the pulpit, or set off bombs that kill police officers on our own soil.

We have true friends who are counting on us, and can't worry about false friends that want to drag us down.

We don't laugh at common people because we are the common people, the good people.

Regardless of the outcome, I am making a vow within this prayer: I pledge a committment to my country- not an apologetic country that would capitulate to our enemies, but a country founded on the Constitution, a country strong and clearminded enough to defend it.

It's true that I'm unhappy about the huge ideological chasm that has cracked open within my own family. But I am grateful to have met so many people online, my new friends from all across the globe who feel like I do. You people are my new family, and I am making a pledge to you as well, that I will do all I can, regardless of what happens this week, to stand alongside you and be part of America's solutions as best as I can. Thank you and bless all of you.

Whoever and whatever you are, dear God, you know that my religious beliefs are essentially Christian, although you know I'm still more of a seeker than one who serves. But I will defend the Judeo-Christian core of our great government and pray for our deliverance. The good people of the world of all beliefs who try to follow your commandments need to stand together.

Thank you for hearing my prayer. People always pray when they're in the foxhole, I know, but I will never ever forget the sick and anxious feelings I felt on this day, no matter how things turn out. It's the worst feeling I've ever had in my life, not merely another election.

We have much to do.

And now, I want to make one final statement in writing. I pledge alliegance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Amen.

Your Humble Servant...

Please read more of Brenda's posts at her blog, Hollywood Does Conservative.

One Man, One Woman: Can We All Agree?

Josh Marshall's right up there in gold medal territory for sleaze this election (a close contest with Andrew Sullivan), so I'm getting a kick out of the reader backlash he's getting for Yes on 8 advertisements running on his blog, including this one right now:

One of the key arguments against Proposition 8 is that it allegedly promotes hate and intolerance.

But look what Marshall reports:

I know many of you consider this ad both inappropriate and tasteless ...

Now, some of the emails we've gotten have been very heated and even angry. I understand and respect those sentiments. I especially understand the feelings of our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered readers, many of whom feel that a site they've read, supported, turned friends on to, etc., has in some way betrayed them. It really pains me to hear this. And I really wish I weren't faced with this choice. But I am. And for the reasons stated above this is the one I have to make [to continue to carry the advertisement as a matter of fairness and principle].

The "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered" readers (ayatollahs) mentioned are, frankly, just as intolerant to Yes on 8 supporters as is Iran's regime is to homosexuals.

Totalitarianism knows no national boundaries, and it's clear that the readers at Talking Points Memo don't care about the democratic process - and mark my words, this kind of reaction to a simple, automatically-generated campaign ad is just a glimpse of what's ahead for free speech under a far left-wing Obama administration, which will be completely captured by the progressive-radical interest group alliance of the Democratic Party.

You'll Always Find Us Out to Lunch...

Well, we're down to the wire of an agonizingly long election.

I think I'm pretty much tapped out on pithy one-liners and enlightened prose discursions. So, I'll just let the Sex Pistols express how I'm feeling right now, considering the (apparent) over-dermination of a Barack Obama electoral victory tomorrow. Please enjoy, "Pretty Vacant":

There's no point in asking
You'll get no reply
Oh just remember I don't decide
I got no reason it's too all much
You'll always find us out to lunch
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty we're vacant
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
A vacant...

Now before any (lefty) readers blow this off as sour grapes, remember ... I'm a political scientist, and there's oftentimes more emotion than reason in voter decision-making, as Larry Bartels explains at today's Los Angeles Times:

In 1960, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan described "the general impoverishment of political thought in a large proportion of the electorate." Shifts in election outcomes, they concluded, were largely attributable to defections from long-standing partisan loyalties by relatively unsophisticated voters with little grasp of issues or ideology. A recent replication of their work found that things haven't changed much....

Voters' strong tendency to reward incumbents for peace and prosperity and punish them for bad times looks at first glance like a promising mechanism of political accountability, because it does not require detailed knowledge of issues and policy platforms. As political scientist Morris Fiorina has noted, even uninformed citizens "typically have one comparatively hard bit of data: They know what life has been like during the incumbent's administration."

Unfortunately, "rational" rewarding and punishing of incumbents turns out to be much harder than it seems, as my Princeton colleague, Christopher Achen, and I have found. Voters often misperceive what life has been like during the incumbent's administration. They are inordinately focused on the here and now, mostly ignoring how things have gone earlier in the incumbent's term. And they have great difficulty judging which aspects of their own and the country's well-being are the responsibility of elected leaders and which are not.

This election year, an economic downturn turned into an economic crisis with the dramatic meltdown of major financial institutions. John McCain will be punished at the polls as a result. Whether the current economic distress is really President Bush's fault, much less McCain's, is largely beside the point.

Or, as Johnny Rotten might say:

Don't ask us to attend
'cos we're not all there.
Oh don't pretend 'cos I don't care
I don't believe illusions 'cos too much is real
So stop your cheap comment
'cos we know what we feel...

Anyway, thanks, dear readers, for tuning-in here at American Power throughout the year.

As always, I'll have more later... until then, vote life.