Election Eve
Make no bones about it, an American presidential campaign is the greatest show on Earth. Wednesday is going to have us all feeling like the circus has left town (and it had better, otherwise we’ll be facing the nightmare of a disputed election). It seems amazing that an African-American is now within a hairsbreath of the presidency; it seems all the more amazing that he’s managed to do so while decisively defeating the Clintons and battling the Right Wing Attack Machine to a standstill.
It might also seem incredible that the GOP is even remotely competitive in such a year as this, though (as I’ve noted before) a lot of that is due to the underlying electoral map. But credit also goes to John McCain. The pundits are falling over themselves to declare what a shitty race he’s run; personally, I think it’s little short of a political miracle that he’s managed to convince so many voters that it’s neither constructive nor even possible to hold the party that’s governed America for eight years accountable for what it’s done. Had those eight years not made themselves all too apparent in the form of the economy cratering, it’s entirely conceivable that McCain’s early September lead would never have evaporated. Even if tomorrow’s returns realign everything on a seismic scale, it’s worth considering (in the words of the Duke of Wellington) what a “damn near run thing” this whole thing has been.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
This is, in large part, due to the persecution/Alamo narrative that social conservatives created and studiously tended for decades. The idea that conservatives in general and Republicans in particular are constantly under siege by radicals who wish to tear things down was compelling in the 1960s, when domestic riots and bombings were part of the normal news cycle.
The key though has been to maintain the siege mentality, and to continuously use the language of the harried underdog even when one is in power. It’s resulted in a carefully cultivated sense of grievance as powerful as any “identity politics” liberal’s. My in-laws explained carefully that things were in such a mess now because Democrats were in power. More information isn’t going to change that: it’s a fundamental view of the universe that reality is filtered through, and a percentage of the population will always hold to it.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I agree, there’s a lot of fundamental axioms in American politics right now that are totally adrift from anything that might remotely resemble “facts.” Another example is this whole redistribution meme; the fact remains that it’s the red states not the blue states that have their snouts in the govt trough (while the blue states finance them), and yet the red states are convinced that their dough is being stolen for welfare mothers, etc., etc.
I also think a lot of it boils down to a religious mindset. Once you’ve convinced yourself the Earth was created four thousand years ago, you can convince yourself of pretty much anything.