Why did Obama win? (some numbers)

66% of voters between 18-29 voted for the Democrat
96% of blacks (!) voted for Obama
67% of Latinos voted for Obama (up by around 10%). An explanation for this can be found here.
52% of people earning more than 200,000 dollars who opted for Obama (these are the people who will carry the burden of Obama's tax increases)
58% of people holding a postgraduate degree voted for Obama
52% of Independents voted chose the Democrat
26% of voters were contacted by the Obama campaign
84% of Clinton Democrats finally went for Obama
17% of Bush 2004 voters went for Obama, 9% of Kerry voters went for McCain
51% of Americans think that government should be doing more (76% of them voted for Obama)
57% believe that Obama is in touch with people like them (the same number for McCain was 39%)

Some more here.

Why did McCain lose?

A collection of analysts ruminate. Your pick:

The political environment could not have been worse: an unpopular incumbent; an unpopular, costly war; and an economic calamity.

The irony is that McCain spent the past four years morphing from what the voters wanted into a diluted Republican. And he also seemed disadvantaged by a disorganized campaign.

When America has felt lost and uncertain about its prospects, as it does today, it has often searched for transformational leaders to steer it into the future -- FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan. Was it within McCain's power to be that man? No. His campaign created a great narrative, a great story, but it was only about John McCain. He did not create a narrative, as Obama did, about where he would lead us and about where we, as Americans, were going. That, perhaps, was his failing. The bigger question is: Who built the Republican Party that doomed him?

McCain's biggest mistake was not going with his instincts and picking Joe Lieberman as his running mate. This would have allowed McCain to run a campaign based on bipartisanship and results-oriented policies -- what was best for the American people -- and not one geared toward the GOP's right wing.

Saying that "government is the problem" was okay for Reagan's inaugural, but it was politically untenable in today's economy. Exit polls Tuesday showed that, by an eight-percentage-point margin, voters said that government should be doing more rather than less -- an 11-point swing from four years ago.

Had McCain voted against the bailout of Wall Street firms and backed the Republican alternative, there is no question in my mind that he would have won. After calling attention to his "suspension" of his campaign, McCain compliantly and supinely embraced the Bush bailout backed by the Democrats. America was waiting for him to speak out against excessive government spending and against bailing out Wall Street firms for their greed.

Ain't no stoppin' us now

Dizzee Rascal for Prime Minister

Haha, Jeremy Paxman is such a cocky bastard.

Reality check

Obama's team are already trying to lower the expectations created by Tuesday's landslide.

With the Democrats falling short of a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate on Tuesday, his agenda will probably require some modicum of horse trading for Republican support. Further complicating the picture, Mr. Obama’s winning coalition includes new voters who will be watching him closely but may not have patience for the deliberative give and take that accomplishment in Washington often demands.

I often tell non-American friends that one point not very well understood about American politics is how weak the Presidency actually is compared to many European governments with large parliamentary majorities. This is a point related to the system of checks and balances at the heart of American politics. The task is made even more complicated by Bush's 8-year legacy on public debt and international law. I hope the effect of the lame duck transitional period will be minimal.

KNOW HOPE

I have been following this campaign for nearly a year now (and quite intensely in the past 2 months) and today I am feeling quite hung over physically, emotionally and intellectually. The all-nighter and the alcohol galore by way of celebrations did not help. I have been trying to find something worth posting for some time now, but somehow nothing captures the moment quite accurately. It is as if opinion pieces, quirky videos, interesting exit polls and vivid photographs were worthless compared to the simple fact that yesterday the American community as a whole overwhelmingly voted for decency, intelligence, tolerance and HOPE.

I am not American by birth. I lived, studied, worked and travelled there for four years and I have quite strong feelings of affection for the country, its ideals and the fundamental decency of its people. Yet I also feel quite European in the sense that I have developed a certain amount of cynicism towards "the American Dream" and its overstretch as the backbone of American life. I could never reconcile these conflicting attitudes, or at least not any more than one can reconcile one's idealism with the complexity of real life.

Last night, however, as the exit polls and vote tallies were coming in, I felt that my personal ambivalence about America evaporated as the reality of a man who personifies the American Dream started sinking in. In his own words: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

While America's economy is losing its global edge, America's politics are leading the way redefining campaigning, rhetoric and message. In the years to come I look forward to seeing whether bad economics will trump good politics or vice versa. Last night and today, however, I am celebrating America's comeback as the great nation.

America votes

Come on America, you can do it.

My humble prediction:

Obama: 338 - McCain: 200 (I am inclined to add Missouri to Obama's electors, but I have decided to be a little cautious just because some friends are calling me partisan- imagine THAT)

Who is against the Euro now?

The Eurozone might expand soon as national governments come to see the perils of playing a little too much with the currency speculators. Denmark and Hungary are obvious candidates. I would add the UK to the list.

Fact check on the August war

The BBC, battered these days by English newspapers over a rather stupid radio scandal, reminds us why it is still the envy of many a public broadcasting agency.

Last poll-check

Is Obama "too European"?

Matthew Price strikes a half-note about Obama and some American voters:

It boiled down to a sense that he was just a little bit too different. He seemed to have a different outlook, something they weren't quite sure about. Something unfamiliar... For many the fact that Barack Obama is different is intoxicating. For many others it is something that leaves them unsettled... This is about the people who simply feel his policies, and his approach would not be good for this nation. This is why John McCain's focus on "Barack the Redistributor" has hit a chord with many segments of the population here.

One can understand the worries of these people. Obama may look and sound like a Martian to many older or less educated voters. But are these voters the "real America"? Is Obama really the Un-American candidate?

What I see in America is the epitome of modernity in all its aspects - the good (liberty, equality, rational pursuit of happiness) and the bad (corporatism, social dislocation, intense consumerism). Voting for Bush, however, looked like a reversal of this creed - people voted for him because he was folksy, religious and unencumbered by the complexities of modern times - he also descended from a very wealthy family, an aristocrat palling with the average Joe if you wish. In the last eight years Americans recoiled from modernity into a pristine past of us-vs.-them, cowboy-like straight talk. They voted for Bush because they thought they could have a beer with him in his ranch in Texas. Well, I think we know what the results of this retreat were.

Obama, instead, is the American candidate par excellence, because he is self-made, technology-savvy, intensely hardworking, practical and young. Due to these qualities he represents the return of the States to the values of dynamic modernity at the core of the American Dream, at least the way I understand it. But he goes beyond that. He is also intellectually sophisticated, receptive of other people's different opinions and moral codes and he is post-racial. These are qualities necessary to redefine the American Dream domestically because the States need to move beyond the divisive culture wars and the anti-intellectualism of the last decades. These qualities can also redefine the American position abroad because the US can no longer have a claim to unrivalled greatness.

Why you should go vote (?!)

This is tres cool and tres Starbucks. It is also a good example of preaching to the converted - I am referring to those latte-sipping liberals who are usually more educated, more politically savvy and more likely to vote anyways.

On second thought I have decided I really dislike this commercial: it implies that a profit-driven corporation becomes the standard bearer for a "healthy" community. Who cares what Starbucks thinks about voting? Why have we (progressive urbanites) allowed it to create so much cultural and political capital at the expense of non-market forces? Thank God this election is about real issues, competence and grassroots campaigning, rather than fake feel-good messages.

Update: The black guy wins the race

Unbelievable finish! Hopefully the other race will not be determined on the last lap.

The revenge of the SS (Social Sciences)

The Guardian runs an interesting interview with Gillian Tett, an anthropologist working for the Financial Times who had taken notice of the stench coming out of the City:

Firstly, you're trained to look at how societies or cultures operate holistically, so you look at how all the bits move together. And most people in the City don't do that. They are so specialised, so busy, that they just look at their own little silos. And one of the reasons we got into the mess we are in is because they were all so busy looking at their own little bit that they totally failed to understand how it interacted with the rest of society.

A truly great man passed away

RIP Studs Terkel.

One time, ... I was doing 'Studs Place,' my early TV show, and I'm supposed to be quitting cigars and I'm yearning for a smoke and I quote from the 'Odyssey.' I say, I am Ulysses passing the Isle of Circe. Meaning I got these temptations. Truck drivers called in and said they liked the classical reference.

The Economist endorses Obama

Here we are then, the acerbic and consistently right-of-centre "newspaper" endorses a man with a a consistently left-of-center voting record in the Senate.

The only counter-argument to their own endorsement they offer and one worth considering is the following:

Our main doubts about Mr Obama have to do with the damage a muddle-headed Democratic Congress might try to do to the economy. Despite the protectionist rhetoric that still sometimes seeps into his speeches, Mr Obama would not sponsor a China-bashing bill. But what happens if one appears out of Congress? Worryingly, he has a poor record of defying his party’s baronies, especially the unions. His advisers insist that Mr Obama is too clever to usher in a new age of over-regulation, that he will stop such nonsense getting out of Congress, that he is a political chameleon who would move to the centre in Washington. But the risk remains that on economic matters the centre that Mr Obama moves to would be that of his party, not that of the country as a whole.

However, it seems to me that trade and protectionism are not the biggest issues of the day. Financial re-regulation, balancing the budget after a fiscal stimulus and giving China a say in IMF and other international institutions will be much more prominent issues. As for trade, Obama has been rather clear lately that he wants to create new, competitive jobs for the middle class rather than protect old, inefficient ones.

For anyone looking for a clear analysis of Obama's economic policies here is a good one from the NYT.

“Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate, concludes that a fiscal stimulus is necessary now that consumers are super-conservative and the Fed cannot do much to help.

That means building American roads, bridges, dams a new energy industry and many more things that will make the great capitalist nation much more, well, socialist?

We found someone who will miss George W.

He is, of course, a cartoonist.

Disenfranchised by illiteracy

This article is deeply moving. In case someone had not grasped the historical significance for all the underprivileged anywhere of electing a black man as President of the United States.

Is this a battle for the 10%?

Michael Tomasky thinks so:

Republicans and conservatives must be asking themselves - we're throwing everything against the wall, all the old tried and true stuff that has worked many times before, and yet this time, it isn't sticking. We're calling him a socialist and soft on America's enemies, we're hitting the taxes thing as hard as ever, we're dropping subtle but not too obvious racial hints in certain parts of the country. None of it is really taking. Why?

Of course the economy is the main answer. But I think there's a lot more to it than that. Those attacks have often worked in the past because they persuaded swing voters. In other words, when thinking about questions like this, you always have to divide the country into threes, because there are three main and easily distinguishable groups of voters. Loyal Republicans, who are around 45%. Loyal Democrats, also around 45%. And the 10% in the middle who go either way.

I have to disagree on this one. In this election we might witness a broad coalition in the making. The reason is this:


Update: Harold Myerson of the Washington Post makes the same argument today.

I-Boooks

Google and the publishing industry have finally reached an agreement over Google Books. My first reaction is that this is great, revolutionary, will change the way people read forever etc. However, I do wonder how Google will determine the prices for each book they scan and if this will make financial sense for authors. A reader of the Information Weekly voices his concerns:

In the end, the Author's Guild capitulated. The result sets up a meager $35m dollar fund for compensating authors victim of continuing Google copyright infringement practices. And now copyright violations are winked at, putting the onus officially on the Authors/Publishers to have their works removed from Google Books.

This is not how copyright protection is supposed to work, and it's not how legislation is supposed to work. I don't like big business forcing change down people's throats by blatantly breaking laws, forcing a judicial ruling, instead of legislation by congress. If Google wanted to do this project, the proper way is to ask congress to legislate modification to the copyright laws. Then the congress could properly weigh the merits and legislate for the benefit of all parties.

Instead Google forces the judicial hand and we get legal precedent, and essentially copyright legislation, from the negotiated settlement between a David and Goliath.
So now Google gets a pass on systematic widespread illegal copyright infringement because the Author's Guild were forced to capitulate? It's still illegal!!! Why is the US Attorneys Office sitting on their hands? Private parties cannot be allowed to negotiate between themselves how they will obey law. Google should be roundly punished, Google Books should be suspended, and the matter should be turned over to congress to decide if and what modification to copyright law is needed.

What if Will Jones oversleeps?

Why should conservatives vote for Obama?

The Dish, as is often the case, offers the most compelling answer. E-mail the list to conservative friends accordingly!

An unlikely scenario

Why McCain will win the election.

What happened to Iceland?

BBC News runs a short but comprehensive analysis of why a small and wealthy country like Iceland has gone bankrupt. The argument about overexposure to foreign borrowers and speculators is familiar; what strikes me in this analysis is the realization that it is the big fish (call me big countries) which will survive the crisis and the small fish that will go bust:

In a crisis, such as the one we are experiencing now, the strength of a bank's balance sheet is of little consequence.
What matters is the explicit or implicit guarantee provided by the state to the banks to back up their assets and provide liquidity.
Therefore, the size of the state relative to the size of the banks becomes the crucial factor.

In case you didn't get it, the photo shows an agitated Icelandic volcano;) I confess I know nothing about the country to post a more appropriate photo-cum-metaphor.