Four Insane Post-Election Arguments

This is a no-particular-order list of facts-optional things I heard said on Twitter or on faux-news within the last few days after the re-election of Barack Obama

1. "This is still essentially a center-right nation.  Because of this, Republicans have an inherent advantage and just need to communicate their message better."

Famously, in 1972, film critic Pauline Kael was (largely mis-) quoted as saying "I don't know how Richard Nixon won.  I don't know anybody who voted for him."  This quote, even though wrong, is a perfect summation of liberal ignorance of the nation as a whole--they live in a bubble of like-minded people (this fact is actually in the vein of her actual quote) and don't seem to realize just how many people disagree with them.

Pauline Kael, meet Dick Morris.  Dick Morris, Pauline Kael.

If you aren't familiar with Dick Morris's pre-election pro-Romney bravado, Google it.  What happened, though, is that Morris predicted a Romney landslide, completely disregarding polls as liberally biased (which, if you think about it, makes no sense; if you're predicting Obama wins by a ton, wouldn't it dissuade people, most of whom listen to you are liberal, from bothering to vote?).  This shouldn't be a HUGE shocker--Dick Morris lives in his own little Fox News bubble in which everybody he knows is voting for Romney and hates Obama.  This doesn't reflect the nation as a whole; it reflects the fairly small sampling of people Dick Morris knows.  Post-election, I suppose he has to acknowledge that Obama got more votes, but there's no specific need for him to acknowledge that, if given perfect information not skewed by "the liberal media" (a phrase said on a nationally broadcast news network on a daily basis), people would vote Romney.

There's also the fact that Obama's platform would be considered center-right in most of the western world (strong military presence, continued presence of Gitmo, etc.), but that would require Dick Morris to look to other continents while he won't even look outside of his personal bubble.

2. If the GOP wants to expand its base, it needs to be more liberal on abortion.

With most issues, young voters tend to favor the Democrats over the Republicans.  Abortion isn't one of them.  It's not that young people are overwhelmingly more pro-life than older people; it's just that there are so many clearer issues on which the GOP could actually gain young voters.

People tend to lump abortion and gay marriage as issues which are one in the same but this is hilariously untrue.  Abortion is the issue on which young people tend to be more conservative than their elders.  Gay marriage is the issue in which young people tend to be FAR more liberal than their elders.  One is an issue of conservative Christians inflicting their will because of their own private morality; one is an issue of conservative Christians inflicting their will BECAUSE THE LIVES OF BABIES ARE AT STAKE.  Whether you're pro-choice or pro-life, it shouldn't be THAT hard to see that the issues are pretty damn different.  Unless "be more liberal on abortion" means "don't have guys like Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock on the ballot", abortion is not the problem.

Abortion is an interesting issue to me in that there are a large, large amount of people who vote exclusively based on it.  Pro-lifers for Republicans, pro-choicers for Democrats.  Say, hypothetically, that somebody's biggest issue is abortion because they're pro-choice.  If the Republicans all of a sudden say they don't want to overturn Roe v. Wade, is this person going to change their mind, or are they going to view them as political opportunists?  Republicans lost on abortion this year not because people are especially pro-choice; it's because they lost their collective minds.  Even something like a late-90s "no abortions except for rape or incest, appoint judges who will protect life, etc." Republican platform is perfectly viable as long as you combined it with other shit.

Side note: While the dumbest argument in politics is people saying that gay marriage bans are "to protect traditional marriage", as though gay marriage somehow bans heterosexual marriage, the second dumbest might be "protecting a woman's right to choose".  And I say this as somebody whose stance on abortion is closer to the Democrats than the Republicans--if the choice, in the eyes of people who oppose you, is generally that of murdering somebody, who the fuck wants available choices?

3. With Obama no longer seeking re-election, he will now impose his anti-business, anti-gun, anti-religion views on the United States.

Similar arguments to this were made in 1996.  In 2004, people argued that George W. Bush would now just appoint a bunch of pro-life judges and start new wars and whatnot.  Clinton didn't impose stricter gun restrictions and Bush didn't start new wars.  It's a bold assumption to assume they ever wanted to do this in the first place, just as it's bold to assume Obama wants to "take yer guns away" given the complete lack of evidence to back this up, but let's say, hypothetically, that Clinton and Bush both wanted, in a perfect world, to impose their political agendas.  So why didn't they?  They didn't have to worry about their re-election to the presidency.

Well, they didn't.  But their party did.  The people they agree with did.  Bush had a Republican congress and a right-leaning Supreme Court for two years after he was re-elected and they didn't make any drastic changes to foreign policy.  It's almost as though, *gasp*, democracy is self-regulating and unless your party is planning on folding soon, there's an incentive to stay pretty much in line with the beliefs of Americans, maybe to support slight minorities but not to go too nuts with it.

4. Barack Obama only won because people voted for him because he was black.  White liberal guilt and racial favoritism fueled his base.

Sort of like the abortion thing, this is just so hilariously the opposite of reality.

First of all, I want you to think about this logically--has being a racial minority (not just in terms of numbers but in terms of amount of people in positions of power, in case you were thinking South Africa) EVER been more beneficial than being in the majority group?

Obama lost white voters and it wasn't THAT close.  It wasn't as big of a blowout as every other racial minority voting for Obama, but Romney still won the white vote without really having to sweat it.  Now, Democrats generally lose the white vote, but as with Obama/Romney, it's the smallest gap along racial lines.  Any sort of liberal guilt feeling would have to be totally internal, first of all; someone can say they're voting for whomever they like and then change it and nobody but them would know it.  

If you want definitive proof that Obama didn't win the black vote because of his race, look at 2004.  John Kerry, with no particular credentials in terms of helping the African-American community (and hailing from a predominantly white state with a bit of a racist history), was going against George W. Bush, who appointed black people into positions of power previously unthought of and, in sharp contrast to Kanye's insane ramblings, did not hate black people (that agreed with him politically, at least).  So obviously it would at least be a close race, right?

In what was probably the most lopsided in favor of the Republican in terms of race relations presidential battle since the civil rights movement, George W. Bush lost by 77 percentage points. 

*Drops mic*

The David Freese Photo Controversy?

Note the question mark.  It's part homage to the GNR album "The Spaghetti Incident?", which I always found bizarrely titled, but also just a question.  There's a controversy?  There's a debate surrounding this?

Now, first, here is the article that started the shit-storm regarding David Freese.  http://elmaquino.com/2012/11/04/freese-looked-less-than-sober-at-st-louis-bar-last-night/ It comes from @elmaquino, somebody whom I have followed for some time, and vice versa on Twitter, somebody who is one of my favorite people to follow because he (an assumption, I know nothing about EM beyond the blog and the Twitter account) is always willing to discuss whatever the day's events are.  Obviously his following is relatively small so it's different from some of the big guns in sports journalism, but I always appreciate somebody willing to defend what he says and willing to answer to criticism.

I will say, right off the bat, there is one thing about this article that I find objectionable: The headline.  The headline offers a presumption of guilt without so much as an "allegedly" or "reports say" with what I must say is fairly flimsy evidence (the whole story is based on hearsay and pictures in which he is not holding drinks and in which his inebriated nature is debatable).  But other than that, I fail to see the problem here.  Besides the headline, it's just a smorgasbord of facts.  Now, it's not a strong set of facts, but what it does is say "Here is the evidence of what happened".  It's a few guys on Twitter saying he was drunk.  The evidence, however strong the evidence is, is there.  You can draw your own conclusions.  The conclusion I've drawn, personally, is "David Freese went to a bar and according to a few people reporting anonymously on Twitter, possibly just seeking attention, he got drunk there."  It's sort of like when people argue whether or not you should teach evolution in schools--I'm an adamant believer in evolution, but I totally support also teaching creationism because I have enough of a belief in my side of the argument that mine will win out if considered equally.  But the point is, it's a story to be reported.

Just as Josh Hamilton's relapses were news-worthy last off-season, so are Freese's this year.  The situation is extremely similar--both are talented, nice guys who have serious demons and who have had problems in the past.  This isn't slander--both of them would be among the first to acknowledge this.  And if you don't think the Josh Hamilton story is significant--people are laughing off his desire for a 7 year, $175 million contract right now.  He's a few years removed from an 8.4 WAR season and has been the best hitter on the best team in the AL over the last three seasons.  If it weren't for his past, it wouldn't be outrageous that someone would offer Josh Hamilton this contract (I would consider it an excessive amount regardless, but that's neither here nor there).  David Freese is a similar player.

It's a valid criticism to ask why the media, of any size, would care about the relatively minor personal details of professional athletes.  But why does the criticism only come when the attention is bad?  Is it innocuous to obsess over if David Freese went to a bar?  Maybe.  In fact, probably.  But if the story had been "David Freese volunteers at an animal shelter and plays with sick puppies", there would have been no firestorm.  It's not a major news story--it's essentially a private citizen doing something people do every day.  But because it's David Freese, it gains attention, for the positive.  Just as Freese at a bar draws attention for the negative.

While I expect there would be some backlash over this had it been any Cardinals player, it's a different situation when it's David Freese.  David Freese is an almost cartoonish caricature of what constitutes a home town hero.  Like, I remember occasionally fantasizing in grade school about hitting the winning home run in a World Series game for, like, the Padres or something just because it was so damn implausible that a kid who grew up rooting for the Cardinals could have the storybook thing happen to him...and then it did.  And unlike Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols, by far the two biggest "stars" of my lifetime in St. Louis baseball, Freese wasn't a quiet or hesitant star--he was quiet, but he also had an inherent charisma.  He wasn't McGwire, the larger than life hero--he's a normal guy.  Everybody growing up in St. Louis knows somebody like David Freese, or so it seems.

The fact that the local sports media protects Freese should go without saying.  It's really nothing special.  They've protected players forever (poor Barry Bonds had the Chronicle reporting on BALCO while he was playing and Big Mac had the P-D scoffing that this Androstindiwhateveritis couldn't possibly be the reason for his home run production so it might as well be ignored).  They do it because people want to hear what they want to hear, for lack of a better term.  A basic rule of the internet, and media in general, is that if you want to be noticed, be negative, but if you want to be liked, be positive.  The Post-Dispatch is already noticed, so it tries to be liked, and it generally succeeds.  Bernie Miklasz has written columns in the last month about 1. Why Matt Holliday is a good player, and 2. Why John Mozeliak is a good GM.  It doesn't even matter that a vast, vast majority of fans agree with both of these points, and that nobody within the baseball industry is questioning either.  It's feel-good.  The fans want to hear about how wonderful the home team is.  The same thing happened in New York in the 1950s--Mickey Mantle was living a hard-partying lifestyle that eventually led him to an early death, but people didn't want to hear this.  They wanted to believe the legend.  And it appears, if St. Louis is any indication, they still do, and they're willing to shoot the messenger along the way.

Frankly, I hope it turns out El Maquino totally whiffed on this story, not because I wish him ill will, but because as a Cardinals fan, I quite frankly want the David Freese story to be as damn good as it often appears.  But I also hope that if this is the case, he doesn't do as Kent Brockman did on The Simpsons in the episode "Homer Defined".  In this episode, he questions Mr. Burns on the safety of his nuclear power plant as a meltdown seem imminent.  After (by fluke) the meltdown is averted, Kent Brockman says on air, "This reporter promises to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future."  That's not what the media is for--that's what PR is for.  The St. Louis Cardinals have their public relations under control and they effectively control the Post-Dispatch and Fox Sports Midwest.  They don't need another arm of it.  To make what is probably a way over-the-top analogy, there's a lot of G. Gordon Liddys taking shots at Woodward and Bernstein here.

It's one thing to question the details of the story.  I do, and hopefully EM is self-critical and does the same and works to make sure the story is told as comprehensively as it possibly can be.  It's one thing to question why it's a story--I mean, there is a presidential election in two days and there was a pretty major natural disaster a week ago; you could pretty easily argue what the value of sports journalism as a whole is.  But when you question somebody's right to publish something you don't like, or when you say any publicity to the Cardinals which is anything besides glowing, adoring, giddy fanboy praise is slander or libel, I do have a problem with that.  My journalistic bona fides are, to be generous, borderline--I was an editor for my high school paper's Opinions section and was, for a couple of unpleasant months, a staff writer for my college newspaper before I quit and gave up on journalism to such a degree that I became an accounting major.  A major part of the reason was that, for as big of a troll as I am, I defaulted to cowardice when it came to actual reporting.  I respect the hell out of those who will say something that'll scare people if it's something that needs to be said.  

We all should.