7 Exciting, Inspiring – and Overlooked – Lessons From the “99 Percent” Election

[n.b. ultimately 332 electoral votes]

By Richard Eskow, Campaign for America’s Future, November 7, 2012

So, let’s get this straight: A Republican President is re-elected in 2004 with 284 electoral votes, and the pundits tell us he has the “political capital” to push an extreme right-wing mandate. A Democratic President gets re-elected in 2012 with 303 electoral votes, and they’re telling us he needs to “unite a divided country.”

Nonsense.

This election was a clear and unequivocal victory for the populist positions the President took on the campaign trail. Don’t believe the hype: This was a great night for progressives, populists, and agents of change. Our political system may be dominated by Big Money, but this was a victory for the 99 Percent.

We’ve been through our Dark Night of the Soul. Now it’s time for inspiration — and for determination to build on these victories in the weeks, months, and years to come. Here are seven lessons from this election that have been under-reported, or overlooked completely, in all the media frenzy, including Occupy Wall Street’s victory, the “Harold and Kumar” factor, Harry Reid’s big mandate, and the fact that “Socialism” sells.

1. Occupy Wall Street won big.

The Occupy movement may have disappeared from the national media eye, but this election was a big win for Occupy’s vision and language. After that movement caught the national imagination, the President adopted its populist rhetoric. That may have hurt the tender feelings of America’s CEOs, especially those on Wall Street, but it help cement his decisive victory.

The nature of that victory was underscored by the victories won by staunch progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, even as far-right candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock went down in defeat.

The President’s populist theme didn’t end with his victory. He spoke last night of a “generous America,” a “compassionate America,” a “tolerant America.” …

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Fantasyland

By Frank Rich, New York, at Reader Supported News, Nov 9, 2012

Denial has poisoned the GOP and threatens the rest of the country too.

Mitt Romney is already slithering into the mists of history, or at least La Jolla, gone and soon to be forgotten. A weightless figure unloved and distrusted by even his own supporters, he was always destined, win or lose, to be a transitory front man for a radical-right GOP intent on barreling full-speed down the Randian path laid out by its true 2012 standard-bearer, Paul Ryan. But as was said of another unsuccessful salesman who worked the New England territory, attention must be paid to Mitt as the door slams behind him in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s brilliant victory. Though Romney has no political heirs in his own party or elsewhere, he does leave behind a cultural legacy of sorts. He raised Truthiness to a level of chutzpah beyond Stephen Colbert’s fertile imagination, and on the grandest scale. That a presidential hopeful so cavalierly mendacious could get so close to the White House, winning some 48 percent of the popular vote, is no small accomplishment. The American weakness that Romney both apotheosized and exploited in achieving this feat—our post-fact syndrome where anyone on the public stage can make up anything and usually get away with it—won’t disappear with him. A slicker liar could have won, and still might.

Aall politicians lie, and some of them, as Bob Kerrey famously said of Bill Clinton in 1996, are “unusually good” at it. Every campaign (certainly including Obama’s) puts up ads that stretch or obliterate the truth. But Romney’s record was exceptional by any standard. …

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Postelection Blues

New York Times, November 7, 2012

Stocks sold off on Wednesday, following the re-election of President Obama on Tuesday. The stock market has more often fallen on the day after Democrats were elected, but over the full course of the term, it has tended to perform better under Democrats than Republicans.