I was surprised to see Roseanne Barr of the Peace and Freedom Party coming out ahead of Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party. Barr, incidentally, shared the ticket with Bush bete noire and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.
| Candidate (Party) | Electoral votes | States carried | Popular vote | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obama (Democratic) | 332 | 25+DC | 61,304,426 | 50.51% |
| Romney (Republican) | 206 | 25 | 58,230,919 | 47.98% |
| Johnson (Libertarian) | 0 | 0 | 1,178,442 | 0.97% |
| Stein (Green) | 0 | 0 | 414,545 | 0.34% |
| Goode (Constitution) | 0 | 0 | 113,947 | 0.09% |
| Barr (Peace and Freedom) | 0 | 0 | 49,380 | 0.04% |
| Anderson (Justice) | 0 | 0 | 35,490 | 0.03% |
| Others | 0 | 0 | 39,822 | 0.03% |
| Total | 538 | 51 | 121,366,971 | 100.00% |
Not that it really matters, but by my count Obama carried 26 states plus DC. Very disheartening to see so few votes for Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Karen, for researching this issue and making it available to your readers.
ReplyDeleteRoseanne Barr makes a mockery of Third Parties which are sincerely trying to bring important issues to the public conversation. I find it terribly insulting to someone like Rocky Anderson to come in behind Barr who is doing this for some kind of comedic attention. If she wants to make fun of the political system, she should do so in a stand up routine. And how disgusting and uninformed are those who voted for her instead of casting their vote for a sincere candidate.
I think it is indicative of the Obama fear machine that the right wing 3rd Party candidates got more votes than those standing up for the Middle Class.
This was a street fight. Jill Stein and the Green Party did well, considering. She had a multiple of ten compared to the others. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." That was then. Now we fight the Clintonistas, Obama and the rest.
ReplyDeleteWe’ve wondered before here about the American public’s grasp of the issues. Is it so complicated? Clearly, just about all of the voters still like the Duopoly’s Kool Aid. Only 100 million more minds to change. Where to begin?
ReplyDeleteHere’s another number. About ten million fewer Americans voted in 2012 than did in 2008 – 2 million fewer on the Republican side, and 8 million fewer for Obama.
Ten million might add up to about 8% of the vote, well over the 5% threshold to obtain public campaign funds and a foothold, sort of, to receive more media attention. Too bad the mincing Third Parties, so proud of their point o x percent, and the mass of disaffected can’t get together as a force under one banner. The Duopoly is fond of dogs – Yellow Dogs, Blue Dogs, Any Old Ever-Grateful Dog. Third parties are composed of cats, satisfied to lick their paws alone.
Eight million disaffected voters, many of them part of Obama’s old “base” in 2008, walked away from him this time. He could win a lot of them back, but then he’d have to stop taking a dive every time an opposing politician said ‘boo.’ And why bother, he calculated that loss carefully and it never hurt him. Obama's a dodger, not a fighter. More fundamentally, as we concluded long ago, he makes believe he’s for the 99% but how curious that his best work always ends up benefiting the 1%. Buckle up for four more years of the same.
I agree, the winner-take-all system deserves another look. Look at the closeness of the voting totals compared to the numbers coming out of the gate for the electoral college. Is this representative government? The same thing happens through a range of offices down to the mayors. The system supports a Duopoly. We can dust off the old arguments for proportional representation, but it would still amount to nothing more than an old school exercise in Political Science 101. Look at the sweat going into just one narrow constitutional effort to re-establish the notion that corporations are not human.
Poor Bernie Sanders. He can’t hang on forever as a chorus of one bemoaning (on the record) the unfolding American tragedy.
ReplyDeleteFollowing is access to an article by Glen Greenwald about the Patraeus scandal covering his military history.
Petraeus scandal is reported with compelled veneration of all things military | Glenn Greenwald http://gu.com/p/3bma2/tw via @guardian
I have to admit to enjoying the news everyday of continuing interesting details about the laison between Paula and David and now Jill's complaints, a close friend that brought the house down. I am sorry for the innocents caught up in this saga, but I am sure there are many people who are relishing this denoument.
Sometimes bad things don't always happen to good people. And we need some temporary relief to the rest of the news.
Sorry to be off base to your current columns Karen, but sometimes we need some comic revenge relief to raise our spirits. The N.Y.Times is doing a better job of reporting this scandal than the Inquirer magazine could have.
Although what any ordinary person would do in their personal lives is no one's business, in this case it is. It has also brought forth the not so savory private lives of all too many of our leaders whose public lives often match their private behavior. Petraeus also doesn't come off as very intelligent to not know that any e-mails even if deleted on his computer,can be recovered. Foiled by technocracy. I have even less faith in his military decisions now.
@Pearl--
ReplyDeleteI guess I view the military from a rather different perspective than you and Glenn Greenwald.
Yes, the military, like any other American institution, must regularly be thoroughly reviewed and critiqued. And, yes, there are more than a few reasons that the U.S. military forces are ultimately subject to civilian control, chief among them, perhaps, being:
“Civilian control is often seen as a prerequisite feature of a stable, liberal democracy.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_control_of_the_military
As noted in the cited article, the degree of civilian control over the military [in America] is “not a fact, but a process,” varying in degree from year to year and administration to administration.
But I think that there are at least a couple of times in our history when the people of this nation should have been—and, I think, were—justifiably grateful for the presence of a professional military class in its midst, despite trepidations about standing armies, etc.
Some of you out there may dispute that U.S. involvement in World War II was a “just act of war,” but I suspect that you are few in number. And I also happen to think that the Korean War—excuse me, er, “United Nations'-sactioned police action”— was a just war, too.
Both times, the U.S. was pretty much caught with its trousers down around its ankles. Both times, a professional military class—aided by America's industrial might—was able to turn an army composed of draftees into an effective fighting force. And both times, American soldiers endured unspeakable hardships at the behest of their civilian commanders. And they prevailed.
Victory in Korea was perhaps less important to the future of the United States, but what might have happened had the U.S. lost WWII, or forced into some sort of conditional surrender? Who among us would necessarily be here today, or, if so, speaking English?
I am grateful to the likes George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Omar Bradley, George Smith Patton, and Anthony MacAuliffe, who could turn raw civilians—like Mrs. Zee's Daddy, wounded at the Battle of the Bulge—into fighting men who would ultimately not only hold the line, but win the war and return to civilian life.
Now, David Petraeus seems to have been more a “scholar general” than one who actually experienced combat and led men. But who is to say that had the “balloon gone up” in his junior-officer days, that Petraeus would not have “been handed a rifle and told to earn his pay” as a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel colleague of mine once so quaintly put it, and honorably performed his duty?
Soldiers follow the orders of their civilian masters—unfortunately, both when the cause is just and when it is not. Oft-times, it seems, we don't know whether the cause was just or not until long after the deed has been done. But the soldiers went and served and bled and died at the time at least thinking that they were doing it on their nation's—and peoples'—behalf. We owe them that respect.
I don't know that David Petraeus is America's greatest living general. Frankly, I kinda doubt it, for the very reasons that you and Greenwald cite, @Pearl. But I have no sense of schadenfreude because he—like many great men, and “great-man wannabees”—couldn't keep his trousers zipped and remain faithful to his wife. It seems that FDR, Martin Luther King, Jr. and perhaps, Eisenhower—amongst the truly great men—suffered from the same weakness, as did the “wannabees” cited by Greenwald and other.
Schadenfreude? No, only sadness.
Happy Veterans' Day.
Pearl said “we need some temporary relief to the rest of the news.”
ReplyDeleteThe Grand Diversion (bread and circuses) in the weeks ahead will be all about sex - David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell - while we are collectively taken to the cleaners, as our Quisling chief corporate deficit hawk - Barry - and the Democrats - "the party of regular folks" - unravel the safety net and sacrifice the poor, sick, and the unemployed in their Great Betrayal.
As Karen said in her response to Krugman today, “whole thing is beginning to smell like the Bain method of creative destruction.”
Barry’s Bargain has no legs, but the Petraeus-Broadwell scandal has wings. Sex and scandal are the best sweeteners of a bitter tea.
The late historian Richard Hofstadter once wrote, “Third parties are like bees. They sting and then they die.” What we witnessed in 2012 was colony collapse disorder in the face of this looming disaster.
We constantly satirize ourselves.
Obama was the country's second Buchanan during his first term. Let's hope, and it's a dim one, that he'll find a spine in the second. But for God's sake, no Clintons or their ilk. Elizabeth Warren is a possibility. I wouldn't even want Hillary on the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteIf we add up (1) the people who voted third party (2) those who voted for Romney (3) the many Democrats who voted for Obama with a clothespin on their nose as TLOTE, and (4) the 8 million who voted for him last time but stayed home this time, Bronco Bama doesn't have all that much support.
ReplyDeleteThe third parties did as well as they could given two factors: they weren't on the ballot in all the states (Rocky Anderson's Justice Party was not on half the states ballots), and more importantly, most voters still cling to their Democrat or Republican party membership. Sadly, they simply can't let go.
That tells us that people are clearly NOT fed up with the Duopoly. Look at people who did vote third party - there are probably more Duopolists among them than actual third party members, so how can we expect them to make a big showing with such tepid support? Duopolists can't even bring themselves to change to Independent/Uncommitted, let alone register as a Green or other. It could be the same dynamic at work as with those who cling to their guns and religion - a feeling of safety in numbers, a primitive survival instinct.
However, just think of the powerful message to party leaders if they saw their party rolls shrinking day by day while the population grew. I mean really, is there any message sent by voting once in 4 years by SECRET ballot while remaining a Duopolist? No. Unlike marriage, if you want to divorce a party it is simple, and can be undone anytime. It doesn't take a lot of courage.
It IS going to take a spirit of courage and independence, stronger than currently exists in our national character, to change this country and its corrupt Duopoly. That said, perhaps we should consider doing what ALL our ancestors chose to do despite tremendous personal hardship and suffering - move somewhere that is more compatible with our values.
Armistice Day is now Remembrance Day. What’s to be remembered on Remembrance Day? Do we dwell on the great generals who gave us “victory,” or do we dwell, instead, on the millions of grunts and everyday citizens on all sides who came away from the great wars in coffins or broken or forever missing and forgotten.
ReplyDeleteThose “good wars” of the twentieth century are finally being rethought by a few important historians. It seems that so much history about battles was propaganda. Tell me again about chivalry and brilliant strategists.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/oct/11/truth-about-world-war-ii/
On our November Elevens, whatever we call the day, think first, last and always about the millions of torn bodies face down in the mud of France and then on subsequent fields of destruction through the years up to this moment. The poppies are red. If the humanity within us forces us to remember long enough and well enough (for a change), we may eventually find a way of dispensing with any more “advanced” weaponry or great war leaders to multiply the carnage.
We’ll always have the Fourth of July to celebrate Mars.
“That said, perhaps we should consider doing what ALL our ancestors chose to do despite tremendous personal hardship and suffering - move somewhere that is more compatible with our values.”
ReplyDelete--- Outsida
I followed you with interest until that last sentence. Somewhere that is more compatible with our values? Like, where? And what if we can’t decamp as easily as we can divorce? And are things so desperate that we should give up and not stand in place and resist – despite tremendous personal hardship and suffering? Abandon our neighbors, even if they are misguided? Or are you subtly slipping in what right wingers love to hurl back at lefty critics, “love it or leave it”?
@Jay--
ReplyDeleteI see no glory in war, neither for the generals' victories nor for the dead and maimed who carried out the generals' orders, good or bad. When I expressed gratitude for America's professional military in my earlier remark, it was simply because they were available to train raw civilians into fighting men, and then lead them into battle in what I believe was a necessary response to Axis and Japanese aggression.
Like you, I “think first, last and always about the millions of torn bodies face down in the mud of France and [on prior and] subsequent fields of destruction through the [millenia] up to this moment” when contemplating the meaning of “war.”
Certainly, there are plenty of reasons to revisit the causes of WW II, and especially to wonder if racism and policies intended to deny natural resources to resource-poor Japan did not “provoke” Japan to attack first Manchuria and then the United States. By revisiting history and learning from our mistakes, we can, perhaps, hope to not repeat them.
Cases were made at the time that Great Britain should never have entered the war in Europe, and left Germany alone. Similar cases were made in the U.S. that we should never have joined in the European Theater.
And, of course, pacifists will always reject any and all violent responses to violence on any scale; to them, any involvement in WW II would have been wrong despite the provocation.
But then, I'm not a pacifist. Yes, I sorrow for the millions killed in World War II, and the permanently maimed, both outwardly and inwardly.
Still, I have seen the film footage and read the stories of the American and Soviet troops who liberated what was left of Jewish Europe—along with other “kinds” of people that the evil Third Reich deemed inferior—from the extermination camps.
The first liberators were the grunts—heroes in my eyes—and neither the generals nor FDR, the latter of whose own State Department resisted until 1944 the entry into the U.S. of Jews fleeing Europe.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/
article.php?ModuleId=10007094
And whenever I see that film footage and fight back the tears once again, I say that WW II was a just war.