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Originally Posted by roachboy
and here is the obvious question...
what are your provisional assessments of the election results as they unfold?
for myself, i am not yet clear about it...and obviously it will be diffcult to say much that is not obviously provisional while the mt and va senate races remain unclear.
1. general question:
why is it that television news gets to effectively determine the speed with which an election results are "determined"? i was in a resto last evening with friends--on the wall across from me were 3 television monitors---football, espn meta-football, and the cnn talking heads. so it was the election and other sports. and once again i watched election results being projected based on very small percentages of actual votes counted.
since it is evident that there are procedural problems with elections, and that these problems appear to be more complex than simply one or the other party like two puppeteers pulling the strings for their own advantage, why is it not reasonable to allow for more time before elections are effectively decided on television based on statistical models etc.?
i think people can handle a period of uncertainty in the interest of making sure that such democracy as there is in the states is actually functioning.
what is the deal with this?
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You would think so, and it would be easy if there was just one network to give us election results. But we have several and if one decides to project results, well, the sheep will watch and ignore the other networks...$$$.
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2. on the results themselves:
well, it seems fairly clear that we are in for a couple years of ideological battle over which party gets to represent the center. again.
it is obviously too early to tell how the right is going to respond, but i think this poses an interesting dilemma for them.
ideology
what i would expect from on the ideological level is to see the right shift into oppositional mode and try to use the new composition of congress to reinforce their version of identity politics.
in other words, i expect to see the right media apparatus shifting into a version of the mode it worked under clinton. this because despite the myriad debacles they have to deal with thanks to the bush administration, the right managed to get considerable turnout and many races were and remain much closer than i had imagined. so their political machinery held in general, even as it lost ground tactically. that is why i do not expect much in the way of change from the right on ideological grounds--i think this will be seen as a tactical loss.
the strategy will unfold in a straight line.
politically--in terms of actual governing--the position the republicans are in is interesting-ish: i expect you will see what is required, which would be a shift toward the center legislatively. but this remains a bit murky in terms of outcomes, so..
structurally, it looks like paralysis.
i do not see this as a good thing, particularly not on the question of iraq.
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Is it that the bush admin won't want to work with the dems, or that the dems don't want to work with bush? Bush worked with the dems early in his presidency. Something about a prescription drug plan, then got lampooned by the left. You know what bush says...fool me once, shame on me. fool me twice, you can't fool me twice.
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on iraq: what do you see following from yesterday?
i am not sure.
i dont see "this isn't working" as the reverse of any consensus within the democrats about what to do.
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i don't know. more of the same.
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what do you see the implications of the election for the process of creepng executive power? do you see any of the administration's attempts to alter the balance of power between branches being withdrawn or changed?
it is still early, but maybe a sense of how this will go...
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no.
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economic policy change?
i am not sure that i see any consensus amongst democrats on this.
i am not sure there is one.
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just don't raise my taxes.
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i do find myself feeling a bit of relief on the question of judicial appointments. in this, paralysis is surely preferable to stacking the courts from the right.
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are any supreme court appointments expected within the next two years?