Obama Wins...

And there goes the Dow...

RIP American Exceptionalism?

For months Roger Kimball was predicting a Romney landslide. Oops! In his piece today, he writes:

I fear that what an English friend just wrote me is true:

You just don’t care about being a Great Power any longer. That’s what this is about. The world should start sucking up the China instead now, as Americans have shown they’ve no appetite for world leadership any longer. You’ve had a century in the sun, and now you’ve decided to become Sweden instead of shouldering the burden. The 47% have won and you’re going to slip into social democracy and in 4 years time no-one — Christie, Rubio, Ryan — will be able to do anything about it.

          RIP American Exceptionalism

That might be overstating it just a bit but it's close. The thing about the Swedes, however, isn't completely true. They have no interest in leading the world. But at least they actually pay for their own social welfare state. They tax everybody to do it. Here, we put it on a credit card and ask the next generation to pay for it.

Republicans have been no better than Democrats to face up to the fiscal reality of unsustainable entitlement spending. And neither have the voters.

We are going to have to reform entitlements, which means future beneficiaries are going to get reduced. Or/and we are going to have have to raise taxes on people other than just the rich because what we soak them for won't begin to cover what has been promised. 

What's Race Got To Do With It? Not Much!

And that's something to be thankful for sez Walter Russell Meade:

Even those who voted for Romney can take heart in one aspect of the 2012 campaign: racism continues its historic retreat in the United States.

In the heat of the campaign, voices were heard saying that a defeat for Obama in 2012 would be a sign of racism in America. We could never buy that. Though we have no illusions that dark forces like racism, anti-Semitism and other kinds of bigotry still linger in the U.S. and in other places around the world, it seemed to us that electing an African American president in the first place was a pretty clear indication that white racism in America continues, thankfully, to wane. 

The President’s re-election should be further evidence of deep change in America. While the President did not do as well among whites as among other groups, partisan loyalty and the mixed economic record of his first term account for the fall off in his support. A white president in his shoes would have also faced a tough fight for re-election and would have lost some states that he carried the first time around.

No doubt. And this win is a tribute to Barack Obama as a campaigner. Now, it's time for him to govern.

Heh!

Nate Silver: Genius

The NYT's Nate Silver, who was referred to on blog yesterday as "brilliant," once again correctly predicted an Obama victory. He clobbered the pundits, especially the conservative ones, (including little ol' Spencerblog) by correctly reading dozens of state polls and the weighting them appropriately.

Hats off to the young statistician, who kept his head while some other very smart folks were guilty of wishful thinking.

Here We Go Again

Jenkins: The prez gets a do over.

On Wednesday, we woke up to the same old reality, a divided government and overextended fisc whose options are steadily narrowing. The country may start to wonder what the pundits are good for, when it figures out how little help they provided in the voting booth.

Mr. Obama now can be expected to claim a mandate, one whose content he will perhaps share in his memoirs. Judging by his campaign, he expected his victory margin to come from single women frightened that their abortions and contraception would be taken away.

This is a mandate to do what? That is, besides a mandate to keep frightening women about abortion and contraception every time Democrats need to scare up a few votes in close races?

Thank God for Sandy!

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is ecstatic:

"I am so proud of the country. To reelect this president and overcoming -- not because of the partisanship or even the policies. Here's an African-American guy with an unusual background -- part immigrant background, part African-American background -- with all this assault on him from day one. From Mitch McConnell, from the clowns out there that will never be elected, never will be to anything. 

And the way he took it, as someone said, with coolness and charm and dignity and took it and took it and kept moving forward and doing his job. And the American people, and I know we look at these percentage, 40% of white vote. Fine. That's about right among Democrats in the last couple cycles, three cycles or four. Good work for them. Good work for him. A good day for America.

 I'm so glad we had that storm last week because I think the storm was one of those things. No, politically I should say. Not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics."

Not so glad we had that storm last week...