Over a Candle

It looks like the 2008 Election is finally over. Today, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the election panel’s finding that Al Franken won, by the narrowest of margins – 312 votes, over incumbent Norm Coleman.

There was some concern Coleman might proceed to contest the election in the Federal Courts, but he said today he wouldn’t do that. And Minnesota Governor (lame-duck, probably running for President in 2012) Tim Pawlenty has said he will sign the election certificate.

I’m glad to see this election over. And I’m glad Coleman was defeated. He was too cozy with the Bush administration. And he needed to be tossed.

Will Franken make a good Senator? I don’t know. We now have six years to find out, I guess. I wish him well. And I feel confident that he can’t be any worse than his predecessor.

I must admit to being a bit nervous that the Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate (counting the two independents that usually vote with them and the two Senators who have been ill and absent). Assuming that count holds up, I’m not terribly comfortable with the Democrats having that much power. I have long been a fan of divided government (though lately I think there’s been a bit too much division). And this concentration of power gives me pause. However, I take some comfort in knowing that the Democrats have a penchant for being unable to stick together.

Now that that’s finally over, what shall we do next for our political entertainment?

Yes, that’s right; I’m tagging a post for the 2008 election. You know, the election that ended five and a half months ago.

Well, that election hasn’t ended up here in Minnesota. It’s still going on. And today another small step was taken to end it:

Al Franken wins round in Minnesota Senate race

Despite this victory from a three-judge panel, Norm Coleman has vowed to appeal the decision to the state supreme court. And several Republicans are encouraging him to take it all the way to the Federal Supreme Court.

I think I speak for many Minnesotans when I say, “We don’t care anymore. Just give us a second senator so that we can have two people fighting for us in Washington.”

But really, I don’t even care about that. If Franken and Coleman want to keep arguing about this in court, so be it. I just wish someone would stop the various groups sending me emails soliciting donations to continue the fight. I don’t want to hear about it anymore; I’ve donated all I’m going to to an election that should have been over months ago.

Maybe we’ll have a senator in time to know who to call incumbent on the ballot in 2014.

With the closeness of the Minnesota Senate race, there has been more talk of third-party spoilers. Dean Barkley, of the Independence Party (the party that got Jesse “the Body” Ventura elected governor of Minnesota), ran in the Senate race, and received around 15 percent of the vote.

While I suspect few people would deny that he has the legal right to run, many people seem to think that he was wrong to do so. Depending on who you supported, you may believe he made it harder for your candidate to attract the needed votes for a decisive victory. Thus the argument about Ralph Nader (from 2000) resurfaces.

But I’m less interested in talking about whether third party candidates should run than about the people who vote for them. (I think it’s obvious they should run, if they choose. I do think, however, that at this point, Nader is just running because of his ego. I don’t know that that was true in 2000.)

I heard, more than once this election cycle, the old argument that a vote for a third-party candidate is a wasted vote.

Hogwash.

Why should I vote for a candidate I don’t believe in if there is a candidate running who I can, in good conscience, support?

Take the Barkley case. I did a good bit of research on the three Senate candidates. Not surprising, I agreed with Coleman on none of the issues. I agreed with Franken on a number of issues, and disagreed with him on some others. Likewise with Barkley. Indeed, I agreed with Barkley about a few more things than I did with Franken.

I decided, based on the issues, I could support Franken, and I thought he had a better chance than Barkley. But that doesn’t mean that I think those who voted for Barkley wasted their vote.

Had I decided that I couldn’t vote for Franken (for whatever reason), what should I have done?

If a vote for Barkley was a wasted vote, then I should have either voted for Coleman or not at all? I suppose Franken supporters would have said that I should vote for their candidate. But on the assumption that I could not, in good conscience, support him, that wouldn’t be an option. I wouldn’t have voted for Coleman. So should I stay home? Isn’t a vote for Barkley better than remaining silent?

I suppose some would have it that I should pick the lesser of two evils between the two main party candidates. But that undermines the right of conscience of the voter. I have, at times, been unable to vote for either major party candidate. At those times, I have sometimes stayed home. (In my more anarchical moments, that seemed the best choice.) But if there is a candidate that I can support, even if it is not a major party candidate, why shouldn’t I vote for him or her?

Only those who believe that the Democrats and Republicans exhaust the reasonable spaces along the political spectrum could imagine that everyone should be able to vote for one of those candidates.

I understand that partisans want to get everyone out to vote for their candidate. But voters ought to vote for those who they believe will best support their ideals. Voters can make mistakes. But I will not reward a major party candidate for being the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Voting for what you believe in is never a waste.

All those getting ready to head to Florida for the winter might want to reconsider their reservations. It seems Minnesota is getting ready to be Florida this year.

Today, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting that Norm Coleman’s margin of victory is 239 votes over his challenger, Al Franken.

That’s 239 votes. Out of 2.9 million.

Another 100 votes were found for Franken just today because of a reporting error from one precinct. Who knows what the next week or two will uncover?

And yet, when the margin was a few hundred votes higher on Wednesday, Coleman came out and suggested that Franken should concede, thus preventing a mandatory recount: “I recognize that because of my margin of victory, Mr. Franken has a right to pursue an official review of the election results. It is up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct.”

Coleman accomplishes two things with this comment. The first is that he makes it sound as though Franken would need to request the recount, that Franken would have to mistrust the vote totals. Of course, this is false. Franken doesn’t have a right to pursue an official review, at least, he doesn’t merely have such a right. The people of Minnesota have a right to such a review and the Secretary of State’s office has an obligation to conduct such a review. It’s mandatory under state law. What Franken could do is concede, and thus preempt this obligation. But Franken needs to do absolutely nothing in order for such a recount to take place. A recount doesn’t rest on Franken’s shoulders. It is demanded by state law. Coleman’s suggestion that Franken circumvent the normal procedure in this case is disingenuous at best.

The second thing Coleman accomplishes is to suggest that Franken allowing the normal procedures to continue will cost the taxpayers money. It is true that the taxpayers will have to pay for a recount. But such a recount guarantees that our wishes are made known. Franken hasn’t cost us this money. Coleman hasn’t cost us this money. The closely divided electorate, the taxpayers themselves, who are so evenly split between these candidates have brought this about. And we want to know the answer.

If Coleman believes that he won a convincing reelection, he has failed to learn anything from this campaign. (Likewise, if Franken winds up the victor, he must recognize the closeness of the results and not take it as a mandate for his positions.) The people of Minnesota were not won over by either of these candidates. Thus the incredibly close results. The next six years should mean, for the victor, that they need to rebuild our trust in their leadership.

Coleman’s attempt to suppress the lawful process of deciding this election are simply one more ugly moment in what has already been a very ugly campaign in Minnesota. Let’s allow the recount procedure move forward. We’ll have our answer in the next month or so.

I had two fears about the immediate fallout from an Obama loss (if such a thing had actually come to pass).

The first was that Democrats would learn the wrong lesson from such a (now hypothetical) defeat. Obama ran the smoothest, most disciplined campaign I have ever seen. Had Obama lost, I didn’t want the Democrats to blame it on the way his campaign was managed. It seems to me that it’s a campaign Democrats should study for future campaigns. And had he lost, I was worried they wouldn’t do that.

I suspect I can put that fear to rest now.

The second fear, though, may not be as easily averted. My second fear, if Obama had lost, was that the Republicans wouldn’t engage in the necessary soul-searching that they so desperately need. George W. Bush and the neocons have moved the party so far away from its traditional conservative roots that it’s hardly recognizable. There has been no fiscal discipline. There has been none of the humility on the foreign stage that Bush advocated in his 2000 campaign. The government is more involved in our lives than ever (it seems). The Republicans need to find a more coherent (and I would hope a more traditionally conservative) message for their party.

Had McCain won, I feared that the Republicans might think that everything was fine with their party and not engage in that necessary self-evaluation. (I don’t mean that it’s just necessary for them. I think it’s necessary for the country to have a viable and reasonable alternative to the Democrats’ policies. Having a positive message to rival that of the Democrats is good for all of us.) With McCain’s defeat, I thought such a reevaluation an inevitability.

But now I worry that it may not happen. I’ve heard a few Republican pundits in the last 24 hours suggest that this country is still “center-right.” They somehow believe that this “center-right” country voted for “socialists” (as they would have us believe about Obama and Biden) because… why? I don’t know. They will cling to their incoherent party policies in the face of overwhelming evidence that the country rejects them.

I had hope that the Republicans who spoke up during the campaign to critique McCain’s run might get a fair hearing and help the Republicans come together with a positive, forward-looking plan. But instead, the Republicans seem content to blame McCain, or Palin, or the public, or the media.

I still hope that the Republicans, after they vent their ire, might still do some of that important soul-searching. Until they do, they deserve their time in the wilderness.

Perhaps, at least, they can serve as a reminder to the Democrats not to get too complacent. As we saw in 1994 and again in 2006, the public can get frustrated with hubris from either party.

I can’t help but wonder how things might have been different if the John McCain who conceded last night had shown up earlier. While there was one comment during his speech that gave me pause, for the most part McCain was gracious and laid the first stone to bridge the divide between his supporters and Barack Obama.

One of the elements of Obama’s campaign that I have been impressed with for months is that it struck a tone that suggests unity, rather than division.

For me, this is the most hopeful sign of this election. I do not expect Obama to single-handedly fix the country. There is much to work on, and I don’t expect the government to be the answer. What I do hope is that we might overcome some of the bitter polarization that was the legacy of the 2000 election.

This divisiveness was stoked by McCain’s campaign, by Sarah Palin’s “Real America,” and Michele Bachmann’s “Pro-America.” Things have gotten worse, not better, this campaign season. My one hope, the one thing I would like Obama to do, is set a tone of cooperation and openness in Washington.

Does it seem like I do not ask very much? I think, perhaps, I aim too high. The hate that seemed to regularly pour from McCain and Palin’s rallies gave me ever-increasing pause. If Obama can find away to temper that, to bring Democrats and Republicans together for common cause, it will be a major achievement.

Last night, I heard Obama strike that tone, a tone he has long included in his speeches. My hope is that he will bring that same tone to the White House.

I took some time tonight away from my self-imposed role of outside observer and gadfly to attend a party. A Party.

I sat with a roomful of DFLers and watched the results roll in. The room erupted when the election was called for Obama. And we all watched McCain concede, in what might be his most honorable moment of the general election. And the room, a little thinned out because of the lateness of the hour, the room still erupted as we watched Obama take the stage and accept his victory with poise and style.

Tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime next week, reality will sober us up, I’m sure. But right now, Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America. An African-American. A Democrat. And, perhaps most importantly, a man who seems to want to find ways to bring this country together. It is a night for flying sky high. It is a glorious night.

I have hope for our country for the first time in nearly eight years.

I watched history with many of my fellow Americans. And I feel moved. It is a good day to be American.

Those who have known me a while know that I am, by temperament, an anarchist. (That’s a small “a” anarchist. The kind that believes, as Utah Phillips said of Amon Hennacy, that people don’t need cops to tell them what to do.) Indeed, the first version of this blog, Windmills or Giants, came into being to fully explain and explore the concept of anarchy (and other, related, ideas).

I still harbor that basic mistrust of government.

Despite that, after struggling with this decision for a few days, I’ve decided that this time around, I’m going to use this space to encourage you all to vote.

There is simply a tension within me. I think it preferable for people to get together and make the world better. But I think the last eight years have shown us that the government can do significant harm to the world. Wars of choice, refusals to work with the international community, refusing to regulate business (leading to energy crises, economic crises, etc.), torture, the erosion of civil rights… The list goes on and on.

In short, I still don’t think the government is the answer to our problems. But the current administration has proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the government can certainly be a source of new problems.

I will never give up criticizing the government, and that will be true no matter who wins this election. But I cannot, in good conscience, suggest that it doesn’t matter who wins.

Thus, despite my reservations about the system, I’m going to go vote today. Voting doesn’t exhaust our civic responsibility. Indeed, it is, at best, the minimum. But until we are willing to stand together to fix our world, we should at least make sure that our government doesn’t do more to destroy it.

So go vote.

And I can’t believe I’m saying that.

On the off-chance anyone wants to know…

The results from Dixville-Notch, NH are in.

Obama won 15 votes.

McCain won 6 votes.

Dixville-Notch usually votes Republican.

Take these results for what they are: The first 21 reported votes out of more than 100,000,000 that Americans are expected to cast over the next twenty-four hours or so.

Barack Obama is ahead in the polls. He’s been ahead for a month or more now. He’s ahead in state polls (more important than the national tracking polls, since it’s the electoral college that will decide who’s president, not the popular vote). Maybe even more importantly, he’s way ahead over at Intrade.

And yet, every Democrat I know is anxious about this election.

It’s not hard to guess why. Al Gore seemed poised for victory in 2000, until the Supreme Court gave the Presidency to George W. Bush. The unpopularity of the Iraq War in 2004 seemed to guarantee a victory for John Kerry. That is, right up until the election actually occurred, and Bush won a squeaker in Ohio. (Don’t blame me. I don’t vote in Ohio anymore. Indeed, I haven’t since 1992. I think I voted for Tsongas that year, if I recall correctly.)

It seems within reason, then, to discount all the available evidence that suggests an Obama victory. Gore and Kerry both went down. Democrats seem to feel like they are under a curse. (Perhaps the Red Sox’s curse has shifted over to the political arena? Probably not.)

But this misses important features of the current situation. Obama is more than just a little ahead. He has more than one path to victory in the electoral college. McCain has to defend so many red states in these last few days that it seems almost ridiculous. Obama, unlike Kerry, actually has both charisma and a ground game that would make Karl Rove envious. He has maintained a coherent, consistent campaign strategy, where cool heads have obviously prevailed, while McCain flounders about for any message, and any attack, that might stick for even a minute. And the AP poll out today suggests a serious morale problem for McCain’s supporters.

All of these factors, and more, point to an Obama victory. Even Republican senate candidates are running on the assumption that Obama will be President. Their arguments amount to a “vote for me as a check on Obama” campaign. And yet, Democrats don’t trust it.

I can’t blame them. I am not foolish enough to predict the future. Anything can happen when voting occurs. Obama could lose. McCain could win. I don’t deny it. But I don’t think those results terribly likely.

Frankly, though, a little anxiety might still be a good thing for the Democrats. It keeps them from getting complacent. They still need to stay energized until Tuesday if they want to win.

So I won’t try to dissuade them from their anxiety just yet. Even if I suspect it’s a bit more than is truly called for.