The punditocracy is swimming in an ocean of its own hysteria, awash with its own failed analysis and prediction, and flailing about now, attempting to make sense of a sea-change in the perception of where the American psyche has landed. Much like a game of “pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey” they are poking the wall, blind-folded. Or, perhaps they imagine themselves as Goldilocks: “Center-Left”? No. Too hot! “Center-Right”? No. Too cold! “Center”? Just right! (Except, it’s not!)

In truth, Americans are far more complex, mired in decades of religious and social branding that has outlived its usefulness, and left us with nameplates that utterly fail and are inconsistent with our current beliefs. Yes, America has changed. Americans have changed. If there’s one thing that America does, it is change. And yet, the Right is tripping over itself today, (and it will be even more tomorrow,) trying desperately to (1) smoke out those it considers to be its inner Benedict Arnolds; (2) stamp out any and all discussion about its failure, and grab this opportunity to immediately move the party as far right as possible; and (3) do what it does best: throw stones at Democrats.

Here we are, one week to the day that America decided not that it wanted a black president, but that it wanted a smart president. After eight years of leadership by the man voted “the guy I’d most like to have a beer with“, America decided this time it would try brains over beer. (We even decided to vote against the husband of a beer-queen!) Every indication, including Obama’s choice of Chief of Staff, his successful first news conference as president-elect, and yesterday’s meeting with outgoing president Bush, says that Obama is on the right track. His team has already put together a plan to undo some of the damage the soon-to-be-former president inflicted on this nation, and his approval ratings are the mirror image of Mr. Bush’s. CNN’s latest poll offers Americans leery of Obama this reassurance:

“So far, Obama seems to be meeting the public’s high expectations. Two-thirds of all Americans have a positive view of what he has done since he was elected president, and three-quarters think he will do a good job as president.”

So, indeed, what does all this say about where we are? Is the a post-partisan period? A post-racial period? Are Americans now officially “Center-Left”? Is, as Pat Buchanan said last week, the Conservative Era dead? Are we, as Bill Kristol seems to still believe, still “Center-Right“? No, to all the above.

The problem America faces is one that manifest destiny began in the 19th century. Back then, we became a big country with not a lot of folks in it. 17.1 million, to be exact. Today, we are a country of 305.6 million, almost eighteen times as many people as we were 170 years ago. And that’s just too many people who are daily flooded with information and mis-information, most of whom are tethered with beliefs about what constitutes “right” and “wrong”, as well as “right” and “left”. And those views and beliefs are, now more than ever, subject to change. 

The question is not “Is America a Center-Right or a Center-Left country?”. The question is, as a country, what parts of those platforms do we want to embrace, and what parts do we want to discard? And then, how do we get there? And finally, who do we choose to make certain we do?

Looking at exit poll data, a composite of the person who voted “yes” to ban same-sex marriage in California is someone who is married (60%), and has children (68%), attends church weekly (84%), does not work full-time (57%), is an Independent or Republican (66%), and voted for Bush in 2004 (80%). This person also is likely to live in the suburbs (59%), and is very worried about another terrorist attack (65%).

None of these results should be surprising. Nor should these, given what we know about voting groups overall. 75% of black women, 54% of latin men, and 51% of white men voted to ban same-sex marriage. Overall, 70% of blacks supported the ban.

Interestingly, by approximately the same 52% to 48% margin, Californians voted that doctors do not have to notify a minor’s parents before performing an abortion. 

Overwhelmingly in both measures, the less-educated were more likely to vote against gay marriage and vote for parental notification. So, it seems Californians trust minors to decide to get an abortion but don’t trust gay adults to marry. Specifically, one could ask, are Californians willing to allow (what they see as) murder more readily than they are willing to allow (what we see as) love and marriage? Where is the logic in that?

Were gay marriage for Californians solely a religious issue, one would have to assume the parental notification ballot would not have passed. Historically we know that notification leads to less abortions, and would therefore be supported by more conservatives and the religious right. 

Unless we’re just willing to say that there were more voters who voted for the marriage ban who have girls at home. Which is possible looking at the numbers. The majority had children, but not, evidently, homosexuals.

Three thousand six words that crescendoed with thirty four words that, much like the argument about last week’s $700+ billion bailout, was the “slam-dunk” argument convincing Americans that the risk of not going to war far outweighed the risk of going to war:

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

For many Americans, including myself, the image of a mushroom cloud, perhaps over my home in my beloved Manhattan, was far too compelling to ignore any longer. And Bush did succeed in taking us to war, through fear and intimidation, but with little facts, as it now appears he has succeeded in taking us to the cleaners, through fear and intimidation, but with little facts.

Though early in the race, we are already seeing signs of success similar to those we saw under his calamitous reign over the war: huge drops in the markets, worldwide, loss of confidence, worldwide, loss of personal net-worth, worldwide, loss of jobs, worldwide. Yesterday’s (albeit somewhat recovered but nevertheless historic) 800 point drop in the DOW, Russian markets having to close twice, even the fact that the second most-Googled term right now is “commercial paper”, leads anyone to believe that we are in for a long, cold winter, and unfortunately spring, summer, and fall.

No one is expecting any economy to recover in the near term. Bush’s fear mongering has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, although not in the form he predicted. He has been wrong on every count. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The markets essentially collapsed despite passage of the $700+ billion bailout bill. We learned Friday that another 159,000 jobs were lost in September, the ninth straight month of job losses, adding up to three quarters of a million lost jobs this year alone. Unemployment stands at a staggering 6.1%. On his Sunday talk show, John McLaughlin predicted next year unemployment will go over 11%. 

Have no doubt, Americans now have images of bread lines entering their heads. Right now, 60% of Americans “believe another economic depression is likely“. There is a huge rise in the use of the words “fear” and “panic” in the media. And for all this, we have Mr. Bush’s incompetence, ignorance, and lack of intelligence to blame. Right now, I pray for an “elite president”. 

By the way, President Bush had the audacity to quote John F. Kennedy in the very next sentence of his “Mushroom Cloud” speech.

As President Kennedy said in October of 1962: “Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small.

If only Bush had listened to the words he had repeated. Let me leave you, and President Bush, and Senator McCain with another quote from John F. Kennedy, from his inauguration in 1961:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.

America’s Economic Crisis Is Merely A Symptom Of A Greatest Crisis To Come.

The Road To Civil War. Part One.

The House’s failure Monday to pass the historic federal bailout bill is a failure of our government to do its most essential job: protect the people it was elected to represent. This was not democracy in action. This was a concerted, organized revolt against a perceived bi-partisan success by a small group of truculent Republicans and yes, some Democrats as well, who were more concerned with public perception, and fear that a “yes” vote would mean losing their jobs, than with doing the people’s business in an effective, efficient, responsible, manner. No doubt, the job losses will come, not only for them, but for millions of Americans who will suffer because every branch of our society failed in its duty to understand and present properly the true facts of the proposed financial bill, and its impact on the American and world markets.

Despite its ineptitude, or perhaps because of it, Congress knows that 34 days before an election it cannot go on vacation, without a solution in place to the gravest financial, indeed, gravest crisis, period, we have seen since the Great Depression. The problem is that few in Congress understand this economic crisis. Granted, few, if any, anywhere, truly do. But, as Tom Friedman wrote in today’s New York Times,

“We have House members, many of whom I suspect can’t balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don’t understand, swamped them with phone calls.”

This is the crux of a larger issue: Our society has become too complex and out-of-control for anyone to understand what is holding it together and driving it. Worse, overall, Americans are becoming less, not more, intelligent and educated, “reading and understanding what they read less as well”. We have a sitting president and a current vice presidential candidate who clearly do not read newspapers. When asked in an interview with Katie Couric, which aired Monday, what sources she uses to keep herself up to date, Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, could not name one newspaper or magazine or television news show she follows to “stay informed and to understand the world”.

Some Conservative Republicans are so in love with their faith that the bible, or their interpretation of the bible, has replaced the news for them. Republicans are so intent on allowing our children to wallow in religion that they want to dismantle the US Department of Education, teach Creationism in schools, and elect a president who had to get his father, an Admiral, to help him get into military college, where he subsequently graduated fifth from the bottom of his class. John McCain acknowledges this, and yet chose a vice-presidential candidate who took six years and five colleges to get her degree. Obviously, intelligence and education are not pre-requisites to the Republicans. Their response? The liberal, elite left and the liberal, elite media don’t love America. But whose America?