Tuesday, November 04, 2008 - Posts
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And I have tears in my eyes, too, watching Barack Obama and Michelle and their two beautiful little girls walk out there in Grant Park. And I'm glad my own little girls spent this morning knocking on doors here in Virginia, helping to get out the vote.
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John McCain went beyond where he had to go with the speech he just gave, pretty much all but begging his supporters to please forget everything his campaign has been suggesting about Barack Obama and instead hear this: "I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but in offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together. ... Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans, and please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.'' I do believe him. And not only am I proud of President-Elect Obama, but it's good to have John McCain back as well. At the end, when he complained that his campaign "at times seemed to be the most challenged campaign in modern times,'' he seemed more comfortable than he had in months.
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CNN is reporting that Obama received 60 percent to McCain's 38 percent of the female vote with just less than 50 percent of national precincts reporting. This 22-point margin is much higher than polls predicted.
Adding Sarah Palin to the ballot didn't attract the women vote as McCain and the Republicans might have hoped. After picking Palin as a running mate, many speculated that Clinton supporters would flock to the McCain-Palin ticket. These early results don't show that to be the case.
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On the positive side for Elizabeth Dole, she never again has to endure being called "Liddy," a nickname she's been trying to shed at least as far back as the first story I ever read about her, in which I distinctly remember her being referred to as "still turning heads at 43.'' Unfortunately, her new name is "the former senator'' of North Carolina. And though I've always liked her, she earned it the old-fashioned way, by working hard to disregard her better instincts with ads that accused her Democratic opponent, former Sunday-school teacher Kay Hagan, of palling around with "Godless Americans.'' Sitting here with my own team of analysts—including my door-knocking 12-year-old daughter, who just yawned, "There's a surprise," when Georgia was called for McCain—it occurs to me that I am not so much after a repudiation of conservatism as I am an end to meanness. And the ad that ended Dole's career? That was just ungodly.
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If you've already voted and already memorized the Slate tipsheet for tonight's returns, you may be feeling like I am: anxious, restless, hovering uncertainly in the intense stillness before this evening's big noise. Futile attempts at normalcy shut down at least an hour ago. If you're unable to rip yourself from your laptop, scroll through this terrific visual summary of all we have weathered to get here. (Sinbad and the Snipers of Tuzla!) It should help get you closer to Indiana o'clock--I mean 6 p.m. Eastern.
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I‘m afraid I hear “Sarah Palin’s not going anywhere” as more of a threat than a promise. But I’m with both Rachael and E.J. when it comes to the glory of voting. In fact, after casting a ballot at my local public school (which had a Sesame Street-level vibe of picturesque diversity and neighborly goodwill), I walked to a nearby hospital and gave blood, just to keep that vaguely civic buzz going.
And as long as we’re pitching cornballs, Melinda, I might as well hurl this one out: Now that I’m a parent—and this is my first presidential election since becoming one—I have a whole new investment in this process (like I’m voting for two now, and whoever wins had better goddamned well not wreck the future for my kid). I also, to my surprise, find myself identifying less with the candidates on this excruciating last day than with their mothers. (This happened during the Olympic Games, too; I’d see Nastia Liukin’s mother watching from the stands and nearly faint from anxiety.) Can you imagine the pride, the love, the fear (for their physical safety), and the sickening suspense you’d feel if it was your kid occupying this role on the public stage (even if that “kid” was 72 years old)? It occurred to me when Obama’s grandmother died that, of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Obama is the only one without a living mother, someone to cast her vote for him, hold his hand if he loses, and kvell like nobody’s business if he wins. The fact that his grandmother, who played that role in his life for so many years, missed this election by a matter of hours will surely be a sorrow he’ll carry forever. If my daughter ever runs for president, I’d drive a bargain with the devil to be there to see her win or lose.
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Hanna,
Thanks for your post on Sarah Palin. It's funny: I was at the polls today, doing my mundane but important civic duty, coloring in all the circles completely like a student taking a standardized test and reading the language of all the amendments and issues carefully to make sure a "yes" was a yes and a "no" was a no. But as I was going over my ballot (before feeding it into a box that looked mysteriously like a paper shredder), I paused on Sarah Palin's name right there under John McCain's, and just a bit of emotion welled up in me. There was a spring in my step as I walked back to my car. After all my doubts and confusion, I was excited and a little proud to be voting for her.
Believe me, I'm someone who abhorred the "PC tokenist ‘90s," and god knows that I would never vote for a woman just because of her gender. I don't know what tonight will bring, and I'm not overly optimistic. But I think that you're exactly right that she's bigger than some of her low moments and bigger than the wardrobe. Maybe even bigger than the campaign. If she and McCain lose tonight, she might take some hits for a while. But there will be a lot of blame to go around, and she won't get all of it. And, like Tina Fey's Sarah Palin said on Saturday Night Live in that QVC skit, "I'm not going anywhere." Speaking of which, where can I get one of those "Palin in 2012" T-shirts?
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Ah, the irony of the sexy librarian inquiring whether it's legal to ban books.
What I was initially getting at was less how Sarah Palin defines herself and more how our culture has responded to those definitions. For example, in all the McCain blame-game conversations that are emerging in the press today--like this one by Slate's Christopher Beam--there's a total absence of hand-wringing of the were we ready for a female VP? variety. Of course, had Palin been more prepared for the job, that conversation may be a different one: Her inexperience and incuriousity have been a great leveler.
I'm happy that the McCain flame-out discussion doesn't imply we wait another 24 years for a female candidate, as we have since Ferraro. Hanna suggests, and I agree, that Palin will gain mastery in the political game--at least as it plays out in mass culture if not in policy discussion. But the specter of a post-Palin America, as Hanna put it, with our most famous Alaskan annointed as the lone figure to be reckoned with? That strikes me as just the sort of future celebrity candidacy Obama unfairly had to shake. Normalizing the concept of women in our highest offices? It's about time. Normalizing Palin as the best shot at female leadership? Thanks but no thanks.
Perhaps before I get all worked up about 2012, I should get through tonight. But it's certainly intriguing to consider what this two-year campaign has laid out for the road ahead. Looking at the ballot in my polling booth this morning, I flashed back to the beginning of this relentless, seemingly endless trip. Back then I wouldn't have believed the choices we have had the opportunity to make today.
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Oh my gosh, how I love to vote! I stood in line for two hours this morning in a dense urban area right outside Boston waiting to vote. The lines were literally around the block and then another block back—hundreds of people, maybe more than 400 in line at a time. It's a bright, chilly day up here; when we turned the corner onto a windy street, my fingers went numb and didn't fully stop tingling until an hour after I'd voted. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Mine is a mixed-class, mixed-age neighborhood, and it sure did look like everyone in town was in line: white working-class (especially Portuguese and Italian, who used to be called "ethnics" only a generation ago), college students, parents (some brave souls with babies or toddlers in tow), elderly folks, and Certified Liberal Elites (professors, journalists, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and the like). I did get some use out of the time in line: The preschool teacher behind me gave me some suggestions for managing a child's tantrums—very useful, since I am spending more and more time with a 5-year-old. Then the 80-year-old woman in front of me insisted that I vote ahead of her since she didn't have to go to work and I did, so that cut a minute off my time. The cheerful line was still curled around the block when I left at 11 a.m., all happy at being part of democracy.
I suspect I wasn't the only one who felt especially virtuous because of the wait. Social science suggests that yes, in presidential elections, people vote as much for that feeling of moral virtue as for a sense of affecting the outcome—and that people tend to value something more highly or believe in it more firmly if they had to work harder to get it. Here in the Boston area, the sense of cheerfulness and friendliness in line could be linked to the probability that most people were voting for a candidate they believed would win—and felt that they were accompanied by those who agreed with them. Like Emily, I am giddy with relief that this 100-year campaign is almost over. But for today, whatever the outcome, I just love that feeling of having my say in hiring our commander in chief. Voting makes me especially love my country!!
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I think we're talking about some quality of Palin's we haven't pinned down yet. I've talked to some women who thought her performance on the prank call, and then on SNL last night, made her seem small, and defeated. And that they felt sorry for her. I felt just the opposite. I thought she sounded almost regally bored on the phone call, and poised on the SNL clip in a way that suggested she has already figured out every part of the game - the irony, the self mockery, the great American path to fame. Under the normal rules, Palin's future is punching bag for the Republican Party, the McCain campaign has already started some of that finger-pointing. But you sense that she'll resist it and make her own rules. They wanted her to be a token and she stole the show. In that way, she is post-feminist, shoving hidebound politics past the PC, tokenist '90s and straight into 2008. Even if they do lose, she still feels larger than the prank call, larger than the wardrobe controversy, larger than the campaign. Yes, her wink-wink, ain't I pretty thing has been central, but I bet as an icon of the right, she'll transcend that without quite shedding it, in the way Nina describes.
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There have been times, yes, when I've felt like the corniest living American. But, oh, this is not one of those times. Suddenly, here come e-mails even from normally non-woo-woo quarters, sharing Obama-related stories of people coming together and feeling great about it, like they were not only thirsty but had forgotten what water was. My favorite: A gentlemanly McCain supporter in Ohio offers his XL Dale Earnhardt jacket to three XS elderly Jewish ladies so they can vote despite having shown up in forbidden Obama T-shirts—and they not only bond but win his vote without ever asking for it. Others tell of African-Americans taking photos of their deceased parents into the booth with them, and a former Freedom Rider who cannot believe this day has come. In Santa Monica, my friend who is wearing her lucky Indiana Motor Speedway shirt while dialing undecided Hoosiers reports enjoying even those "long, cordial conversations'' that do not end in conversion experiences. A certain husband who in 24 years has never sniffled at anything other than my Amex bill is beyond misty that Obama's grandma didn't live one more day. And my hands-down most levelheaded friend, Rose, who is a teacher (but no, she's not that "Rose the teacher") writes, "I see a new day dawning after today.'' McCainiacs, beware, or you just might get hugged into submission; we needed this, bless our hearts.
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I don't have anything to add to Lauren's post about Obama's grandmother, or John Dickerson's lovely piece. But this sentiment from Yale law professor Judith Resnik seemed worth sharing:
As I reflected on the poignancy of the timing of the death of Obama's grandmother, I thought, may this be the day that so many of us think
-- would that our parents or grandparents had lived to see this. And may it also be the day that our children and grandchildren will
come to take for granted, to assume its naturalness as if it
was always obvious that it would come to pass.
Maybe the symbolic part of this sentiment is one that people can share, however they voted.
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Welcome, Lauren, and thanks to you and Nina for starting to puzzle over these identity implications of the campaign, which will be with us long after the polls close today. (Oh, what a glorious phrase: The polls will actually close.) If post-gender means that you don't run away from the female part of candidate but you don't lead with your mother or sexy librarian side, either, then I'm with Nina: Palin isn't there. For that matter, Hillary wasn't quite either, because at key moments she appealed to women by reminding us of her own victimhood. On the other hand, she did get us past the commander in chief bar. My own fear has been that Palin ran right back into it. But that's not because she's a woman or even because she winks and flirts with her audience. It's because she has shown us that she knows little where a vice-presidential candidate should know a lot. So maybe we are at the point at which the next woman with serious qualifications will indeed mount a post-gender candidacy. And maybe Palin helps bring that about, too, in the sense that Michael Kinsley writes about today: Because of her and Obama (and I'd add, Hillary), he argues, it's "hard to imagine" that future pictures of the two presidential candidates with their VP picks will show us four white men. Actually, that seems a bit aspirational to me: I can imagine plenty such pictures. But are they less likely than they were before? Yes.
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Lauren, your post about Palin and Obama got me thinking. As I’ve always understood the concept of “post-race,” it isn’t really about being past race. Race isn’t something you can transcend. But it is something you can bend and complicate—especially if you’re as charismatic and talented as Obama is.
I remember first hearing the term “post-black” in 2001, when Thelma Golden curated Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem, featuring artists who were, in Golden’s words, “adamant about not being labeled ‘black’ artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness.” That was the same year that Rolling Stone published the article “To Be Gay at Yale,” in which many of my classmates spoke about how their queer identity had become “backgrounded”—i.e., it was still an important part of how they conceived of themselves, but it was no longer necessarily the most important part. They were, in a word, post-gay.
Ever since then I’ve found the phrase “post-race” to be a useful one, personally. I’m a biracial woman who’s very attached to the immigrant communities I grew up in—someone who thinks about race a lot—but my skin color is not always in the forefront of my mind when I interact with the world.
So to me, Obama is absolutely a post-race candidate. He’s the quintessential post-race candidate, even! Here’s a man with roots in Kenya and Indonesia, in Hawaii and South Side Chicago, and though by all accounts his sense of himself has evolved over time (“struggled with his identity”—ick, I hate that phrase), he now seems totally at ease with his complicated self. Being post-race, to me, means wearing yourself a little more lightly.
So is Sarah Palin post-gender? I’m not entirely sure, but my instinct says no. Too much of her public persona seems to rotate between performances rooted in gender roles—the flirt with the high heels or the über-mom, as you point out, or the Ann Coulter-style mean girl or the sexy Puritan, as other Slate writers have noted. Is it the calculatedness I’m responding to? Her eagerness to put on a show for us? I was going to say that it’s because she was chosen for the ticket simply because she’s a woman, but that’s not quite right since she’s obviously proven to be a charismatic, electrifying politician, as well. I confess I’m stumped.
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