2009 IL Primary Elections - Blue Skies Falling Endorsements

It's very late in the day, and I've only recently gotten around to researching any of these candidates. That said, if you haven't voted yet, and you're interested in a pseudo-informed opinion, here's who I'm going for this round.

GOVERNOR - PAT QUINN (D)
U.S. SENATE - DAVID HOFFMAN (D)
CONGRESS - IL 9TH DISTRICT - JAN SCHAKOWSKY (D)
COOK COUNTY PRESIDENT - TONI PRECKWINKLE (D)
METROPOLITAN WATER RECLAMATION DISTRICT - MARIYN SPYROPOULOUS (D), TODD CONNOR (D), KARI STEELE (D)

My most enthusiastic endorsement goes to Todd Connor, for his strident argument in favor of closing the Sanitary and Ship Canal to prevent the spread of Asian Carp into Lake Michigan. It seems that almost every politician I'm aware of has vocally supported keeping the locks open, a horrible choice to favor short-term expediency over long-term stability and fairness. The contention also illustrates one state's ability (and nobody can doubt that Illinois is the most powerful state in the region) to blatantly disregard the interests of other states. In this, one of the most important of county offices, we need qualified candidates who are willing to act on principle, and Connor appears to have exemplified this in his response to the Asian Carp crisis.

It is interesting for me to note that all three of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District candidates listed here were endorsed by the right-leaning Chicago Tribune Editorial Board as well as the environmentally-conscious Sierra Club. This level of concord among such different crowds suggests that these are extraordinarily qualified candidates.

My least enthusiastic endorsement goes to Pat Quinn for Governor. Both candidates ran attack ads of the variety that call the integrity and mission of their campaigns into serious question. There is no sugar-coating the vigor and virulence of political debate in Illinois, but the ads of both candidates completely occluded any discussion of their policy differences, which were, in many cases, little easier to disentangle from their public statements... at least from my point-of-view. I disagree with Pat Quinn on a variety of issues; he supports ease of recall elections, which is ironic given pledges to reduce the deficit, and Hynes makes a very well-reasoned argument that recalls are a gateway for special interests. However, I got a better sense of Quinn's specific stance on many of the most important issues, and he seems to have a stronger focus on the hard-hit middle and lower-classes in the midst of recession. So: "I'll punch the card for Quinn, or whatever."

My primary protest vote of 2010 goes to David Hoffman for U.S. Senate. Our political machine has been infected with all sorts of nasty financial shenanigans, and Alexi Giannoulias seems to typify many of these. However, I would like to add that Hoffman represented himself well overall in Tribune interview.

Event:Pass Health-Care Reform Yesterday!

I've been getting progressively more worked up each day the last few weeks and it finally spilled over into this letter I just wrote to my congresswoman and senators.

On consideration, I think the analogies here (trite as they seem) are worth sharing precisely because they are so very obvious and applicable. At any rate, I'm interested in your thoughts.

---

Dear Sen. Durbin, Sen. Burris, Congresswoman Schakowsky,

First, I appreciate your hard work and the good things you do. Please be aware of this.

Second, enough is enough.

Many in my family worked for GM for may decades, and I've had plenty of opportunities to reflect upon the failings of that company and the odd sort of insight that you only get from not being in the thick of a situation. Isn't it strange that the executives who ostensibly knew more about their company than anyone else missed the most apparent signs of its downfall? There's some horrible disadvantage to being on the inside; one misses the obvious wisdom that consumers stop buying cars from an unresponsive automaker unconcerned with quality and changing needs. Ironically, the people building the cars understood these liabilities far better than those running the company.

Today, I have had a grand opportunity to observe the same phenomenon in the slow and incremental death of health care reform.

Now everybody and their brother who supports you (and has been supporting your career for how many years now) knows that the Democrats' odds of surviving in November improve if you pass this bill. We all know that your chances are better the sooner you pass it. You seem locked in this idea that the independents -- that precious margin that determines so many elections -- are going to freak out if you are seen as having too progressive an agenda, while you miss the reliable and fundamental fact that the independents are more drawn to things that work than they are to political ideologies of any stripe. And today's half-passed bill does not "work" by any stretch of the imagination.

Conversely, the senate is too blithe in assuming that the liberal base that has funded and supported the last two election cycles is going to have anything other than fury and resentment with an agenda that seems to turn its back on most of the issues we care most about.

In this case, the analogies are simple and apt:

Roger Smith, CEO of GM thought his restructuring of GM without changing corporate culture or quality standards would save GM. He was wrong, and it was obvious to everyone on the street.

Jeff Zucker of NBC thought that preemptive shuffling around of late night personalities without consulting the hosts or the affiliates would help NBC. He was wrong and it was obvious, and it was obvious to everyone on the street.

Now Rahm Emmanuel is sidelining health care and it looks like Harry Reid is going along with that. Guess what: They're wrong, and it's obvious!

PASS HEALTH CARE REFORM!

Pass it yesterday.

The sooner you pass it, the sooner it will start saving lives, and the sooner you can start taking credit for the good work you've done in the face of stiff opposition.

If you do not pass it, I assure you, and not without great sadness and regret, this November will be a calamity.

Respectfully yours...

Event: It's Friday. Some videos.

Not silly stuff this week. But engaging and worthwhile.



Also: Watch this one on Facebook videos.

Event: My letter to the newspapers.

Dear editors,

Most Americans understand now that health care reform is necessary. Most of us, eighty percent according to some polls, support a public option. The economic analysis and historical precedents have been examined; nobody proposes we go where angels fear to tread. No death panels, and no debt inflation. The public option is, quite simply, the muscle. It's what will make the reform meaningful. What will make it work.

So why does this option seem to be slipping further and further toward the horizon?

Quite simply, the insurance and drug industries have more money than the scattered public. These industries are better organized and have deployed their resources effectively. They have fought this fight with the same single-minded discipline with which they deny millions of legitimate claims.

What seems to be missing from the debate is the righteous anger and indignation that is the only appropriate answer to the outrages of the health care crises. People are dying out here. Careers are ruined. Health is lost. Long lives are cut short because treatable problems are unfixed.

John McCain rightly said this week that "elections have consequences." If this is truly the case, then the public option should pass by wide margins. I urge all reasonable Americans, the Americans who have seriously considered the public option and know how reasonable and even necessary it is, to pick up your phones and write your emails. Give your representatives the pressure and the political cover to push this thing through, and to make it stick.

This issue is too important to leave at the voting booth. It needs to be heard and read. Share your anger. I've shared mine. Now it's your turn.

Event: My letter to Sen. Dick Durbin.

Dear Senator Durbin,

I am a Michigan transplant who has been living and voting in Chicago for the better part of the last ten years.

I am writing you today about an issue that will supersede in importance the life of the auto industry; this is a bold statement for me to make as many of my family and many friends are or were employed by GM.

It is not enough to desire a public option in the effort to reform health care. We must *demand* it. Now I recognize that the diversity and recent development of the Democratic party makes consensus and coalitions difficult. But quite simply, this is what you were all elected to do, and your constituency is vastly in favor of the public option. I am reasonable, and I recognize that insisting on a public option will cause some risk to the entire reform initiative, and will entail short-term political liabilities. But this risk will be repaid with a robust and meaningful reform, just as immediate dips in the polls will be more than balanced by what will be increasingly seen as a historic long-term victory.

Not to be confused with the skeletal acquiescent "reform" increasingly represented by the proposal of Sen. Baucus.

A public option is essential. Any reform stripped of this option will not accomplish what must be accomplished, and the problem will resurface down the line.

Voters like myself, loyal liberals and Democrats with a variety of views have held out through the discouraging years of the Bush administration, when the slimmest of Republican majorities set a policy that we found as repugnant as it was regressive. With the strong numbers of Democrats in both the legislative and executive branches, this is a victory we insist upon.

Sincerely,

Connor Coyne

Event: My New Letter to Congresswoman Schakowsky.

My renewal of support.

Dear Ms. Schakowsky,

In the last election I voted against you because I didn't think you had taken as strenuous a stand against funding the war in Iraq as I thought was possible, given the level of support (and strong, progressive support) you've enjoyed here in Chicago. I was also disappointed by your support of TARP, given the lack of oversight involved (and how it has contributed to a deficit that is a sticking point in the present health care debate). That said, I am very proud to be represented by you these days; for my whole life affordable health care was always one of the most important political issues for me. On a day when most lawmakers (including strong Democrats) appear to be wavering and equivocating on the centrally important and essential "public option" I am very, very, very happy that you have been such a staunch and emphatic supporter. I realize that my vote in the last election wasn't strategic (if it was I would have supported you in spite of my misgivings), but I anticipate being able to offer more unequivocal support in the upcoming election. Please let me know how I can help promote the public option in the upcoming health care reform.

Sincerely, Connor Coyne
Uptown, Chicago

Event: Health Care Reform Post #2 - Interesting Articles

New York Times: Health Plan Opponents Make Voices Heard.

This is one thing that the new (meaning post-1994) generation of conservatives have excelled at; compensating for numbers with virulence. I'm nont saying that progressives should strive for such shrillness, but we should at least be emphatic. I'll be looking for evidence that Americans in favor of health care reform are taking just as demonstrable a stand. Or to put it a little differently, we know that politicians instinctually turn toward political cover. Let's provide some of that cover and support, so they won't be afraid to finish this much-needed bill.

Andy Heller drops in for a few cynical but well-intentioned comments:

The Flint Journal: Let's wait for heath care until we're all sick and dead, OK?

The Flint Journal: We'll spend to kill but not to heal and protect.

National Health Post.

I'm really annoyed at myself for not having covered this more in the past several weeks.

Here's an astute argument from Uwe Reinhardt:

A 'Common Sense' American Health Reform Plan.

And here's an unabashedly emotional appeal from Jeff Danziger:

Event: The Closing of Flint Central (Part 4 of 4)

Almost to the end.

I'm allowing myself a closing argument.

Flint has been in decline since before I was born, and very soon almost the entirety of its residents will only remember the city's downfall. In the last fifty years, the population has halved, and Flint has gone from an expansionist vision of a future that saw it eclipsing competing cities to the possibility of demolishing whole neighborhoods that have emptied out.

During this time there have been a lot of attempts to resurrect the city in its old glory, and many of them were, frankly, unrealistic. At times the main drag, which is the oldest road in the region and a conduit through four major cities (including Detroit) has been cordoned off for an ill-conceived pedestrian mall. Parking meters and haphazard one-way streets were installed downtown at the same time as free parking was added to the strip malls and plazas of the suburbs. AutoWorld, a hare-brained theme park expected to draw a million visitors annually was probably Flint's greatest embarrassment. However, an era of inept political leadership (two mayors have been deservedly forced out of office in the last ten years alone) has probably been more damaging.

These issues are all surrounded and dominated by the withdrawal of General Motors. In 1978, almost 80,000 people worked for GM locally. That number has shrunk by 90%, and the process continues today. Flint at its peak had 200,000 residents, and the county under 500,000. Even under expert leadership, well-coordinated institutional support, and an aggressively inventive private sector, Flint would have been doomed to a steep decline. In reality, the severity and speed of its actual decline is part of the reason this city is so analyzed, even on an international level.

The last several years have realized, finally, a more pragmatic and well-considered response. A decade of selective investment in the downtown area has prepared the way for a time when several expanding commuter colleges would go residential. In the last decade Kettering University on the West Side built dormitories, and has been followed this year by housing downtown at the University of Michigan campus. The area between the two schools has been approved for redevelopment and park space (several proposals involve brownfield left by GM along the Flint river, which could reflect the Olmstead-style Kearsley Park across town). The idea is that a sizeable mixed-income population will encourage investment and rising property values.

The East Side is instrumental to these plans. While it does not have a residential campus, it is the site of the Cultural Center, which has been an anchor and an asset to Flint for over fifty years. Mott College, which is itself expanding, and the stable neighborhood of the East Village bound this area on the south and east. If anything, this part of the city has helped shore up the downtown area far more than downtown has driven regional commerce. If Flint's current slow-growth development works as intended, in one decade we will see a viable urban corridor running from the western city limits to Dort Highway. Of course, this corridor will still be bounded by the poverty and devaluation of surrounding neighborhoods, and the disparity will be extreme. However, given the severity of disinvestment, it is hard to imagine any permanent progress being made in Flint without some consolidation and growth.

The Flint School District, too, is a critical piece of the puzzle, albeit in a less obvious way, and from a less promising position. The district has cycled through three superintendents in the last several years, and has fallen victim to hare-brained schemes of its own. Earlier this decade the graduation rate was pegged at around 40%. And yet, if you haven't noticed, most of the current redevelopment plans involve higher education in some form or another. Three colleges are in the targeted development areas, and a fourth just outside of city limits. If Flint's progress is contingent on collegiate educational growth, yet city residents are not equipped to participate in that growth, then there is every reason to think that whatever progress does occur will be segmented, or worse, superficial. Therefore: By any means necessary public schools in Flint have to fix their problems. At this point, it is as important a question as GM's continuing presence.

Flint Central and its campus are an asset that cannot be replaced. We needn't rely on sentimental reasons for saving the school. Any short-term gains achieved by demolishing the building (even if another structure is built on-site) would be offset by the inability of future development to fill such a unique and necessary niche in the city's social and geographic landscape (an architect friend of mine has observed that $27 million today could not construct a school in any style of Central's size). Central is emblematic of Frank Manley's community education experiments, which are more relevant to Flint today than ever before, and the campus has ideal access to the city's most successful institutions. True, the problem of retaining the physical structure could be ameliorated by selling the building to Powers Catholic, but the most long-term solution, the solution that enables Flint's population to be the necessary and participatory force in the city's recovery demands that the school remain with in the public school system. Get the money from our foundations and federal stimulus money, beg, borrow, and steal from alumni, find and coerce the genius behind the Kalamazoo Promise, go on Oprah and beg, do whatever it takes. Fix Central, upgrade Northern, and make these two high schools the effective poles of newer, meaner, sharper magnet programming and community education. $27 million isn't pocket change, but it isn't that much either when calculated against the capital of a reenergized city center.

Central High School could be one the most decisive elements in a retooled and realistic master plan for the City of Flint.

And in my mind, when those polished doors swing open again, its the Indians they will welcome home.



Part 1: Here.
Part 2: Here.
Part 3: Here.
Part 4: Here.

Event: David Letterman, the trenchant observer.

Monologue, as captured via the New York Times Laugh Lines blog:

How about those Somali pirates? So they bring one of the pirates to New York City so they can put him on trial. But he will also be doing some other stuff. Like, tomorrow, he’s going to ring the opening bell at the stock exchange. Friday he’ll be on “Rachel Ray” making Clams Mogadishu, and he will be the starting pitcher for the Yankees. Monday, he’ll be on the “Today” show singing “I Dream a Dream.”And Monday night, he’ll be sleeping with Madonna. That’s the full schedule.

But the Justice Department says they want to make an example of this Somali pirate guy. And I thought, really? In terms of making an example, I don’t think you can do much better than shooting the other three guys in the head.

And oh, speaking of things like that, classified documents that were recently released show that Dick Cheney, who a couple of years ago went nuts and shot a guy, ordered Khalid Shaikh Mohammed waterboarded 183 times. When do you suppose Mohammed caught on and said, "I know this is just horse play"?

But anyway, they waterboarded Mohammed 183 times, and thanks to the information they got from this guy, via waterboarding, we were able to capture bin Laden.

President Obama has kind of a happier outlook on torture. He says instead of waterboarding terrorists, he’s going to put them in dunk tanks.

But Dick Cheney is now criticizing President Obama, and he’s saying that his recent actions around the world are "disturbing" and "not helpful." Yeah, yeah, things were so much better when Cheney was president, weren’t they?

Do you remember Eliot Spitzer, who was governor of New York? He had to stop being the governor of New York because he enjoyed prostitutes. Well, now, he’s talking about running again for governor in 2010. He also said he’s looking forward to spending less time with his family.

Event: Shrinking Flint.

NOTE: I am a member of the Flint Diaspora. I care about my hometown and continue to follow news there. These are the opinions and observations of a former resident.

This is the closest thing to positive press I've ever seen Flint get from the New York Times. Which is ironic, because the situation prompting such a drastic response is almost relentlessly bleak.

The picture today, however, is somewhat different.

Shrinking any city is a complicated process, with few examples of implementation and accommodated by few tested processes. Everyone, homeowners, businesses, municipal government, and civic institutions, is taking a risk. And yet, as Karina Pallagst so eloquently argues in the article, "some cities just don’t have a choice." The idea of shrinking Flint confronts a drastic problem with a solution that is both ambitious and rigorous in scope.

Shrinking a city is also a test of leadership. It will be politically unpopular among residents dislocated, and also within more stable areas forced to quickly recalibrate their balance of services and residents. It will require delicate negotiation and collaboration between unions, city workers, residents, and government. Not least of all, the initial expenditure will be massive. Even after clearing away as much red-tape as possible, the process of razing and deregulating square miles of a dense city will take a lot of money. Taxpayers will have to be patient with officials as savings slowly accrue over time.

I've often argued that a lack of municipal coordination was one of Flint's biggest disadvantages. Unlike the withdrawal of GM, it is undoubtedly the largest factor that residents have a power to directly change. The city's decline in the last fifty years was inevitable, but with government and local institutions providing a united front, a lot of the tragedy of that time could have been averted. Instead, we've seen infighting, corruption, and a rhetoric that has racially divided the city at precisely the time when citizens needed to come together.

In 2002, after the recall of Mayor Woodrow Stanley, I noticed that Darnell Earley (formerly the City Administrator) seemed to do a better than competent job of reconciling the many difficulties of his office. He certainly excelled the Stanley, Rutherford, and Williamson administrations of recent history. Now there would appear to be a similar pragmatism coming from acting mayor Michael Brown. What is it about Flint that the best leaders are those who don't actively want the job? Is it a lack of political ambitions, or an immunity against reprisals?

At any rate, given the power vested in the Land Bank, the recent cohesion of the business community, and meaningful investments by higher education in the city, Flint's leadership may have finally come of age.

If so, it isn't a moment too soon... in fact, it's a few decades too late.

But the New York Times article conveys both the gravity of the problem and the potential for innovation, even progress, to spring from definite misfortunes.

Event: A hundred Wagoner loads of thoughts will not pay a single ounce of debt.

"Here’s the part I find odd. Now, the government didn’t ask any of those Wall Street C.E.O.s to quit. Isn’t that kind of a double standard? I mean, if you build Cadillacs, you’re screwed. But if your chauffeur drives a Cadillac, you’re O.K. Whew!"
- Jay Leno



Two or three days ago, I forget what it was, the news was packed dense with details on the travails of Chrysler and GM, and most of this focused on the ouster of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner. The Danziger cartoon above encapsulates some of the ironies of the current situation; a career-long affiliation and decade plus executive tenor coupled with an inability to move product. In fact, this is a constant theme in the books I've been reading on the American auto industry: the inability of the executive financial class to reconcile public demand with a speculative market. For a half-century their strategy has favored the latter, and so their decline in actual market share was foreseen and, once started, ongoing.

What I've noticed in the Free Press and among many Michigan politicians (and, surprisingly, late night talk show hosts who usually like to castigate Detroit and the Big Three) is the increasing tendency to contrast the disparity between the treatment of Detroit and that of the New York financial firms. After all, who has been ousted there? There's no question that, at least where the corporate class is concerned, bankers have retained more autonomy and have received less scrutiny than manufacturers, despite the fact that the mistakes made in the financial sector have been by far the worse.

But the ideas and contradictions embodied in the Leno quote are where things really start to get interesting. It prefers conflation by industry over separation by class, which runs somewhat counter to reality. It's actually a pretty funny joke, but not quite correct when we get down to things. Those who "build Cadillacs," that is, the autoworkers and management, are likely to be subject to forced contract renegotiations in the upcoming weeks and months -- in bankruptsy court if not out of it -- and this is where the force of contrast is a source of dark humor. But then Leno also assumed this slight applies to Wagoner personally: "Now, the government didn’t ask any of those Wall Street C.E.O.s to quit." The former GM CEO isn't hurting these days. He received something of a $20 million severance package, so in the words of our president he's "doing fine," he'll "still be affluent." To put it a little differently, in the Danziger cartoon, our sympathies ought to be with the bedraggled dealer who has worked hard to push his unwanted vehicles, not with a hapless and besuited Wagoner.

I don't share the sympathy of the press for GM's former CEO; he had a decade worth of chances, and while he tried harder than some of his predecessors, he didn't try hard enough. The disparity in the government's response is telling, and has more to do with politics than with our economic health. This week is important as the G20 summit will determine whether we will continue to push our economies through aggressive spending (per the US) or whether we will instead pursue aggressive international financial regulation (per the EU). The fact that this is only posed as an either/or proposition shows how unequal governing forces have been to the economic crisis so far. The fact is, we need both.

In the U.S. where we are enacting broad spending programs and will need to enact more, there is no injustice or impropriety in the government's demands on Chrysler and GM. However, we need to see more oversight of the financial sector, and when it comes, it should be in terms as strong as and stronger than the chastisement the auto industry has received this week.

Event: Some Compelling Political Pieces...

At Street Prophets today: Here.

EVENT: Flint Mayor Don Williamson Resigns.

And Flint, Michigan has just had another seismic day.

Andy Heller writes some insightful comments on the resignation.

Here's my take on his position:

Just a few observations from a 11-year ex-pat.

1.

"Michael Brown, appointed as city administrator last week by Williamson, becomes mayor in the short term. He's a steady, peacemaker type who will bring what order he can to City Hall."

Darnell Earley was far and away the best mayor I've ever seen preside over Flint. Chicago has a reputation for nasty politics, but Flint's scene seems comparable if not worse. The trick is in what you said above... Brown doesn't want the job. The same was true for Darnell Earley. A mayor who "doesn't want the job" is freed from his political ambitions to pursue an aggressive agenda for the city of Flint. A city as troubled as Flint doesn't have any room for personal ambitions and vanities. Which is why I'm optimistic about Brown, and hope he'll maybe reconsider.

2.

While I agree, it's a bad idea to endorse anyone before we've seen the full ticket, things have changed a lot since Dayne Walling lost. He was running on a platform of coalition progress and innovative troubleshooting which has (and many people observed this at the time) had a lot in common with Obama's strategy. Flint's choice of Don Williamson was a -- understandable perhaps -- fearful and skeptical choice. It was a choice that argued that entrenchment and hunkering down will slow a city's deterioration, and that this is preferable to the risk of trying a new direction. Given Flint's history with experimentation -- AutoWorld, the Don's own Windmill Place, even Job Corps -- this stance should not be a total surprise. Of course other "experiments" (the cultural center, community schooling, the magnet program) have been successes. So it's a mixed bag.

Whoever takes the reins of Flint now is going to have to 1) be willing to take risks, and 2) to recognize the right risks. In the past, the city has gotten one or the other, but not both.

Best of luck to all of you. I'll be watching.

EVENT: Fair Points Against Illinois and Chicago.

Chicago Reader: Outrageless: Is Chicago more complacent than other big cities?

I wonder how Detroit stacks in this equation. I understand the situation in Flint and New York.

BODY: Today is a new beginning.

I am turning over several new leaves.

Event: I Have Discovered My Secret Super Power.

Within a short time of my moving to any given state, that state's governor will fall into disgrace.





So where should I move next?

Event: More Reasons for the Bailout...

LeftHandedMan posted this brilliant comment on DailyKos:

The GOP never dreamed it would get to kill a massive part of organized labor and have an entire region of the country completely collapse on the Democratic parties watch to boot, but that is just the opportunity that has arisen for the Limbaugh/Coulter wing of the GOP.

A 25 billion dollar loan, with strings attached mandating the auto industry stay the fuck out of monkeying with healthcare reform and making them go green or else, could save hundreds of billions of dollars in social spending over the next 10 years alone.

10 to 12 million jobs lost, boom!, 200 to 1 trillion dollars in emergency social spending to deal with the collapse's impact on the region, the UAW dead and Wal-Mart the biggest employer in the region, Michigan in full economic collapse and millions of voters ripe for being in play in the next round of the Culture War.

The GOP, and the media pundits who are all clamoring for Obama and the Congress to let the auto industry die will be damning us and running against the Democratic Party as the party that 'Let Michigan Die' or 'Let Detroit Die' for a generation if the auto industry is allowed to die.

The auto industry is 4% of our GDP.

If it goes, thats several years added on to the economic crisis that we face.

And probably Bobby Jindal in 2012 running as Ronnie Reagan on a white horse to "save" America.

Event: The Next Pressing Political Discussion...

We here at Blue Skies Falling understand that to most of the world, the issue of Norris the Gray's influence over Kuto's Well is an open-and-shut case; at the best he's a squatter, and at the worst he's a thief, guilty of robbery and aggrivated battery. But circumstances also compel us to observe that Norris has undeniably been operating under some amount of pressure, and this might plausibly have influenced his leadership.

We don't know how his career originated, but with recent reappropriations committees setting up in the Slums from New Phlan, the population pressure in the Kuto's Well region is considerable. It would be disengenuous to a rational policy to assume that Norris is not in pursuit of some legitimate political power; he very likely considers himself to be an alderman of sorts over Kuto's Well. It is known that he has cultivated support among the Orcs living there, and perhaps he plans to use this to consolidate his base in both the Slums and Podol Plaza. It remains, however, that firing arrows at others from hiding and then running away is going to strain the most even-keeled of diplomats, nor do his proclamations of "surrender or die" endear him to many outside of his immediate following. But for us, the most telling of Norris' controversial statements is his refusal to assist Sokal Keep against the gentrifying hordes of New Phlan, unless he gets to lead. Do the undead repel him? Somehow I doubt it. Rather, it would seem that Norris has written Sokal Keep off since it is likely to remain outside of his direct political influence. He sees collaboration as a waste of his time, money, as well as that of his Ogre retainer. Norris the Gray has appealed to a fickle and fanatical base in the hopes of creating an unlikely groundswell of support; in so marginalizing himself, he has hastened his own political obsolesence.

Event: Election Post-Mortem.

I couldn't post yesterday; I was just too exhausted. I won't post tomorrow either; I need at least a brief break. On election night we hosted a breakfast-at-dinnertime party while the results came in, drank orange juice and ate sausage and potatoes. A loud sound went up at Pennsylvania, then Ohio, and then, when Obama passed 270, everyone freaked out. It was like crowds at the Super Bowl or Lollapalooza, only bigger and better. The champagne flowed and we all went out into the streets, and the news was all about people running into the streets.

* * * * *

Yesterday I was nursing a hangover all day long, but by evening I felt better. I met up with some friends at Metropolis, and we all took a walk. Just to take a walk. To enjoy the unexpected late fine weather and to muse on just how big and momentous this week has been.

So this, then, is my election post-mortem.

It is good that Obama won the election so decisively. Already, this one move has served to bolster our status in the world. The breadth of Obama's support has opened up states that have not been in play to Democrats in decades. The Great Lakes region was united behind a presidential candidate for the first time since 1972. The press has been quick to point out the significance of this election as a civil rights victory; they are right to do so. We should not forget that it is also a victory for Democrats, who have been resurgent since 2006, for the Left, which will (presumably) be better represented by Obama than by it would have been by Hillary Clinton, and most importantly, as an emphatic refutation of Bush-era policies of division and marginalization.
And yet... concessions are already being made and it would seem that there is little time to rest on our laurels.

It is also good that the Democrats picked up seats in congress; it would have been better if they had picked up a supermajority. I've commented to a few people in the last several days that whenever one party achieves dominance, things start to go south for them pretty quickly, and I suspect it's because interal rigor and discipline become a liability in a rush to fast action. I believe this argument, and yet it is meant to be a qualification of, not a dissent from, victory as a unilateral Democratic majority.
In the first place, the U.S. is too sheltered from the effects we have on our neighbors and the world at large. There is a pendulum in U.S. politics, but it's motion is strictly determined by a relative understanding of what is "liberal" and what is "conservative." It is fine to consider these differences meaningful, but we needn't consider them objective. While I don't believe the U.S. is definitionally a center-right nation, it functionally is at this time. Our policy needs to move to the left in general to accomodate crises that can only be addressed through action that is both democratically and collectively determined.
In the second place, the horrific damage rendered under the Bush administration, propogated by Republicans and sometime abetted by Democrats in congress over the last 14 years, and often upheld by an inconsistent judiciary, are huge in magnitude and can must be addressed by broad and sweeping executive and legislative action. Given the abysmal performance of our congressional Democratic leaders (we're all thinking of Reid and Pelosi), we need a sufficient "vote cusion" to make action possible. In our current crises, action is necessary, and therefore, Democrats and Independents should hope to see more Democrats in office.
In the third place: The Republican Party of the 2000s is much like the Democratic Party of the 1850s: it is broken. While it still stands upright, it only wreaks damage on itself and those it represents. Today's Republican Party represents not a free market but a fanged market; it represents not American patriotism but American nationalism. The riven Democratic party of the 1800s recovered, and I believe that the Republicans will as well. But first they have to be broken. They have to reconstitute themselves along their original premise of individual liberties upheld at the expense of collective prerogative, of a correspondent expectation of individual sacrifice, and of a government that tries to excise unnecessary intervention. That Republican party, a party recognizeable to Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Barry Goldwater, can contribute to our political landscape. But this Republican party, hateful, angry, alienating, divisive, invasive, unscrupulous, and increasingly regional: it is walking around broken. It is wounded and wounding, and as such, this broken party needs to be further broken. It needs to be crushed. Only then can it recover.
Now the Democrats didn't get a supermajority, but they picked up enough support to pursue an agressive progressive agenda with executive support. I do hope they use that strength with rigor and discipline. But make no mistakes: I hope that they sustain and increase it, and above all else, use it.

Finally, it is good that some good ballot amendments passed: I'm thinking most fondly on Michigan's Proposal 2, which allows research on embryonic stem cells, and California approved a bullet train, which is pretty cool, and which may in the long run offset the two other environmental proposals the state rejected. Sadly, the success of Proposition 8 in Califoria would seem to trump many progresses made around the country, as it revoked marriage rights in one of only two states where gays and lesbians can truly enjoy marriage equality. Beneath the hubbub over California, similar amendments passed in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida. And yet... amid all this... the challenges have begun, and they are built upon firm constitutional ground.

* * * * *

It is deceptive of the graveness of our times to pretend that this election was an unmitigated vitory; in fact there is more to worry about now than ever. It is equally deceptive to underestimate the genuine power, the profound importance of what was declared last Tuesday; as Tom Brokaw said on election night, "just over 150 years ago, Mr. Obama could have been owned, as a black man." The emphasis is mine, but the emphasis is what gives this often unspoken statement its force. I think that Clay Bennett said it even better.

To fall back on a common declaration these days, yes, we can. Yes, we did. Yes, we will.

Be delirious.

Be deliriously happy.

Take a day, a week, a month to feel this happiness, and as you do, use that energy to infect and infest your labor and your conversation.

We just lived through a big thing and it was good ...

and ...

... it has foreshadowed some of the hardest work our nation will ever have to do.

END OF POST.