Limbo

Good for Stephen King!

2013-05-20T12:25:00.001-07:00

During an era when readers are being seduced away from bookstores (if they even have any such shops nearby anymore), this news comes as a wonderful and welcome surprise:

In a move to bump up physical book sales, Stephen King will not release an e-book version of his new novel, Joyland, The Wall Street Journal reports.

It’s something of a radical move for the man who stood onstage with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2009 to introduce the Kindle 2.

This time King has decided to throw his support behind brick-and-mortar booksellers. “I have no plans for a digital version,” King told the Journal “In the meantime, let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.”

However, the print book is still available for pre-order from online retailer Amazon.

The announcement has been warmly received by bookstores, which have been hurt by the lower price of e-books, sales of which are up across the board.

You can learn more about King’s decision here.

READ MORE: “Small Bookstores Fight Back,” by Linda L. Richards (January Magazine).

And Much Later, Limbo Was Born

2013-04-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

It’s not going too far to call this development world-changing:

It was twenty years ago today, on 30 April 1993, that CERN made the technology of the World Wide Web available free of charge to the public. The World Wide Web would not only revolutionise the Internet, but in the process would also revolutionise the world itself. From science to education to business to entertainment, there has probably not been one field that has not been changed by the World Wide Web.

A Shroud of Thoughts has more on this subject here.

At Sea with the Captain

2013-03-14T08:23:00.003-07:00

At the height of their renown, The Captain & Tennille perform “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

I almost never remember my dreams, but last night I dreamt that I had to drop something off at a small downtown business which turned out to be operated by the once-famous, 1970s musical duo The Captain & Tennille.

I was surprised and amused to discover who ran this office, but the friends I was with had no idea who The Captain & Tennille were, and I didn’t seem able to explain the pair’s cultural significance or what they had accomplished. It seemed that I was the only one left in the world who remembered The Captain & Tennille. At one point in our conversation, I tried to persuade “Captain” Daryl Dragon to put on his skipper’s hat, hoping that this would clear things up for everyone, but he didn’t have the headwear with him. Besides, he and wife Toni Tennille were less interested in impressing my friends than they were in buying my copy of the fall 1976 edition of TV Guide, in which their short-lived ABC variety show was previewed. (See below.) What made this dream all the more absurd was that Dragon turned out to be a fount of jokes about bears.

I woke myself up laughing.

And the Rest Was Musical History

2013-03-02T13:48:00.001-08:00

Here’s a bit of trivia to know and share: the first compact discs became available in the United States on this date, two decades ago.

Apparently, on March 2, 1983, CBS Records released 16 titles on CD in the U.S. The first CD to be manufactured was The Visitors by ABBA in Germany in 1982. The first album to be released on CD was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, which reached the market alongside Sony's CD player CDP-101 on October 1, 1982, in Japan. I guess that means the ABBA recording was produced before 52nd Street but released after.

And, to confuse things further, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA was the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial release, when CBS opened its CD manufacturing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, in September 1984. Discs previously had been imported from Japan.

You can find out more here. And here.

“The A-Team” Goes Vaudeville

2013-02-28T12:24:00.001-08:00

I was never a fan of the NBC-TV action-adventure series The A-Team (1983-1987), even though it starred George Peppard (who I’d very much enjoyed watching in Banacek) and was co-created by Stephen J. Cannell (who’d also been behind The Rockford Files and City of Angels). Still, I have found plenty of laughs in mash-ups between The A-Team’s opening title sequence and other programs, including this one with Star Trek.

But none of them has been as outright funny as the video I discovered today in The Daily Dot, recasting The A-Team with The Three Stooges. The results are embedded above. Just try not to crack a smile at this one.

Supporting Abortion Choice

2013-01-22T10:50:00.001-08:00

On this anniversary of the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the NBC-TV news blog First Thoughts notes this interesting development:

NBC/WSJ poll: Majority, for first time, want abortion legal: Also today is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. And pegged to that decision, a new NBC/WSJ poll finds that a majority of American--for the first time--believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases ... What’s more, seven in 10 respondents oppose Roe v. Wade being overturned, which is the highest percentage on this question since 1989. “These are profound changes,” says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart and his colleagues. McInturff adds that the abortion-related events and rhetoric over the past year--which included controversial remarks on abortion and rape by two Republican Senate candidates, as well as a highly charged debate over contraception--helped shape these changing poll numbers. “The dialogue we have had in the last year has contributed ... to inform and shift attitudes.”

You’ll find the original piece here.

READ MORE: “GOP Isolated on Abortion, Too,” by Jamelle Bouie (The Washington Post); “Roe v. Wade Is More Popular than Ever--a Fact the Supreme Court Is Unlikely to Ignore,” by Linda Hirshman (The New Republic).

The First, a Second Time

2013-01-21T14:53:00.001-08:00

It’s a very satisfying, reassuring day in the United States.

READ MORE: “Inauguration Front Pages Combine Obama’s Second Term, Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy,” by Julie Moos (Poynter); “Obama Becomes First President to Mention Gay Rights in Inaugural Address,” by Sahil Kapur (Talking Points Memo); “Obama Pushes Back on ‘The 47 Percent’: Entitlements ‘Do Not Make Us a Nation of Takers,’” by Annie-Rose Strasser (Think Progress); “An Expansive Case for Progressive Governance, Grounded in Language of Founding Fathers,” by Greg Sargent (The Washington Post); “The Inauguration of Struggle,” by Irin Carmon (Salon); “Looking Out ‘One Last Time,’” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog); “The Liberation of Barack Obama,” by E.J. Dionne (The National Memo); “Obama II: Older, Wiser, Stronger,” by Joan Walsh (Salon); “What to Expect in Obama’s Second Term,” by Evan Soltas (The Washington Post); “How Obama Made Good on the Promises of His First Inaugural,” by Jamelle Bouie (The Washington Post).

Your To-Be-Read List Is Now Much Longer

2013-01-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

Well, it took more effort than usual, but January Magazine’s Best Books of 2012 feature has finally been posted in its entirety. Lists of works in the categories of general fiction, non-fiction, science fiction and fantasy, crime fiction (my favorite genre, of course), and others can be linked to from this page. Enjoy!

No More Future for Anderson

2012-12-26T17:19:00.000-08:00

Opening and closing titles for UFO

Oh, damn! British producer and writer Gerry Anderson--who gave TV watchers such science-fiction classics as Stingray, Thunderbirds, Space: 1999, and (my personal favorite) UFO--has passed away at age 83.

UPDATE: A German TV version of the UFO opening is here.

READ MORE: “Gerry Anderson, British Creator of Thunderbirds, Dies at 83” (Associated Press); “Fireball XL5/R.I.P., Gerry Anderson,” by Steve Thompson (The Booksteve Channel).

“Newsweek” No More

2012-12-26T16:05:00.002-08:00

Although it’s been wildly uneven in the quality of its coverage over the last several years, I am still sorry to see Newsweek release its final print edition this week. Launched under the banner News-Week on February 17, 1933, the magazine was owned for most of its 79 years by The Washington Post Company, which finally sold it in 2010 after significant monetary losses. Reports are that Newsweek will be reborn in 2013 as the all-digital Newsweek Global, but for all intents and purposes, the newsweekly as we have known and loved it is dead.

Magoo and the Seasonal Spirits

2012-12-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

There have been many interpretations over the years of Charles Dickens’ 1843 holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, but few as memorable as the musical adaptation Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Wikipedia says this “was the first animated holiday program ever produced specifically for television, originally airing in December 1962, and the only one until the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was first shown in December 1964.” I must have watched this hour-long program--which has Jim Backus voicing Ebenezer Scrooge and Jack Cassidy as the lowly Bob Cratchit--dozens of times. Yet it still brings a smile to my face and a modicum of joy to my heart.

With Christmas less than two weeks away, it seems right to revisit the near-sighted Quincy Magoo and his ghostly guest stars. Enjoy!

UPDATE: When I originally composed this post, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was available in its entirety on YouTube, and I embedded it above. However, that video has since been taken down “due to a copyright claim.” As a substitute, I have installed at the top of this post a scene from the film, which finds Scrooge visiting the humble home of Bob Cratchit, in company with the Ghost of Christmas Present. You can purchase a DVD of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol from Amazon.

READ MORE: “Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts).

Never Too Much of a Good Thing?

2012-11-28T11:50:00.000-08:00

That’s a question well worth asking, as news spreads that Julian Fellowes--the British screenwriter behind the phenomenally successful period drama Downton Abbey, as well as this year’s comparatively disappointing Titanic miniseries--has signed on to produce another historical serial, this one for U.S. network NBC. As The New York Times reports:

In its release, NBC described the series, which will be called “The Gilded Age,” as an “epic tale of the princes of the American Renaissance, and the vast fortunes they made--and spent--in late 19th century New York.”

Mr. Fellowes said in a statement, “This was a vivid time with dizzying, brilliant ascents and calamitous falls, of record-breaking ostentation and savage rivalry; a time when money was king.”

America’s Gilded Age (roughly 1877 to 1893), with its economic and industrial development booms, and its widening divisions between the wealthiest citizens (who built extravagant mansions as proof of their prosperity) and its poorest ones, might serve well as a setting for Fellowes’ brand of storytelling.

But does it really fall to me to remind NBC honchos that trying to create a Yankee knock-off of a well-loved UK historical drama can be disastrous? Just look back at the example of Beacon Hill, the expensive CBS-TV series that debuted with considerable fanfare on August 25, 1975 ... and disappeared from the airwaves on November 4 of that same year, after just 13 episodes.

TV Guide’s September 6, 1975, spread on Beacon Hill, which includes a preview of Gabe Kaplan’s Welcome Back, Kotter, an ABC-TV sitcom that also premiered that fall. (Click for an enlargement.)

“Beacon Hill was the U.S. answer to Upstairs, Downstairs,” recalls Steve Phillips in his excellent tribute Web site to the latter series. “It featured the exploits of a well-to-do Catholic family living in Boston in the twenties (the first episode started a few hours after Prohibition in 1920).” In its 1975 Fall Preview edition, TV Guide offered this synopsis of Beacon Hill’s concept:

The series has two layers--rich family on top, servants beneath. This is a Boston family, the Lassiters--Ben, a powerful industrialist and political boss, and his wife, children and grandchildren. Below stairs, we find Mr. and Mrs. Hacker running the household staff of Irish immigrants--most prominently Brian Mallory, a brash laddie who is determined to rise in the world in a hurry, just as Ben Lassiter did a generation earlier.

Although the program undoubtedly benefited from the participation of cast members such as Stephen Elliott, Nancy Marchand, Edward Herrmann, Linda Purl, and Beatrice Straight, negative reviews of Beacon Hill were quick to come in.

This hour-long show was probably hobbled by the fact that it was slotted on Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. against ABC’s waning but still popular Marcus Welby, M.D. (as well as NBC’s new cop drama Joe Forrester). And it followed on the heels of CBS’ new con man-detective series, Switch, which probably didn’t spill much of its audience over to the very different Beacon Hill. But Phillips opines that the show suffered for additional reasons, as well. “Since the series has never been made available to the public in modern times,” he writes, “it’s difficult nowadays to analyze where the problem was. Rather than the acting or directing, the finger mainly seems to point at the quality of the writing--this made many of the characters seem like rather bad stereotypes and some of the dialogue was hackneyed. To sort out the writing problems, John Hawkesworth, the producer of Upstairs, Downstairs, was called over from Britain. Sadly, even his great talents couldn’t rescue things and CBS cancelled Beacon Hill mid-season, despite the fairly promising ratings.”

It is certainly a shame that Beacon Hill has not yet made it to DVD; I don’t remember watching the show originally, but I would be pleased to look at it now as a curiosity of TV history.

Let’s hope that Julian Fellowes and NBC can make a better showing with Gilded Age than CBS did with Beacon Hill. It’s interesting to note that Fellowes is hedging his bets on the success of his new venture; as the Times piece mentioned above notes, he will also be producing a fourth season of Downton Abbey.

Meanwhile, Downton’s third season is set to premiere in the States on Sunday, January 6, under PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Classic umbrella. I, for one, will be watching.

Ironic, Ain’t It

2012-11-21T06:10:00.003-08:00

From Greg Sargent’s Washington Post column:

When all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup. Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says new votes in from Maryland put Romney at 47.56 percent. He predicts with certainty that with all of New York and California counted, Romney will end up below 47.5 percent of the vote.

Rounded, of course, that would put the final tally at 51-47.

You’ll find the whole piece here. And if you need to be reminded of how significant the 47 percent figure is to Romney, click here.

READ MORE: “Mr. 47 Percent,” by Steven Benen (The Maddow Blog); “God Rubs Mitt Romney’s Nose in Karmic Dogshit,” by Richard Metzger (Dangerous Minds); “No, Romney Didn’t Win the Middle Class,” by Timothy Noah (The New Republic).

“A Clean Sweep”

2012-11-16T11:44:00.000-08:00

From The Economist magazine:

The Democrats won 50.6% of the votes for president, to 47.8% for the Republicans; 53.6% of the votes for the Senate, to 42.9% for the Republicans; and … 49% of the votes for the House, to 48.2% for the Republicans (some ballots are still being counted). That’s not a vote for divided government. It’s a clean sweep.

You can read the full article here.

Switching Roles

2012-11-11T10:53:00.002-08:00

Given how quickly the Republican Party was able to rally after its defeats in the U.S. national elections of 2008, and win again with backing from the hatemongering Tea Partyers in 2010, it’s premature to predict the RP’s failure after its trouncing this last week. However, James Fallows makes an interesting point when he writes, on The Atlantic’s Web site:

For the first time in my conscious life, the Democratic Party is now more organized and coherent, and less fractious and back-biting, than the Republicans. It is almost stupefying to imagine that.

But think about the facts: We’ve now had four of the past six presidential elections won by Democrats. In five of the past six, the Democrat has won the popular vote. The most effective advocate for the current Democratic incumbent was the previous Democratic president. The current president’s toughest rival in the primaries is now his Secretary of State, and another former rival is his vice president. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the nominee dared not even mention the existence of the previous Republican president. His rivals in the primary were tepid at best in shows of support. Democrats now disagree about a lot, from their relationship with Wall Street to the ethics of drone wars. But they are a more coherent whole than through most of their recent history--and much more coherent than the Republicans.

So much for American humorist Will Rogers’ old joke that “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”

You can read all of Fallows’ post-election analysis here.

READ MORE: “The Secret to Barack Obama’s Survival,” by Greg Sargent (The Washington Post); “Christian Right Failed to Sway Voters on Issues,” by Laurie Goodstein (The New York Times); “A Remarkable, Historic Period of Change,” by Ezra Klein (The Washington Post).

Once More, a Divided Nation

2012-11-10T12:56:00.002-08:00

With President Barack Obama having finally been declared the winner in Florida, Talking Points Memo has released this map of the nation’s presidential preferences. (Click for an enlargement.)

The breakdown between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney doesn’t look terribly different from the 2008 election map. Four years ago, though, Obama picked up 365 Electoral College votes to John McCain’s 173. And in 2008, Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular to vote to McCain’s 45.7 percent; this year the president scored 50.6 percent to Romney’s 47.9 percent (a result quite close to my own prediction on the morning of the election).

READ MORE: “Brief Rundown of Just How Big a Victory Tuesday Night Was for Democrats,” by Mugsy (Crooks and Liars); “Paul Begala: How the GOP Helped Obama Win” (The Daily Beast); “Which Polls Fared Best (and Worst) in the 2012 Presidential Race,” by Nate Silver (The New York Times); “Forget Nate Silver: Meet the Guy Who Called 2012 in 2002,” by Benjy Sarlin (Talking Points Memo); “Hayes: Conservatives Are Creating Their Own Electoral Enemies,” by Heather (Crooks and Liars); “Close, but Not Really,” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog).

A-OK

2012-11-08T16:21:00.000-08:00

This beautiful cover of The New Yorker actually comes from that magazine’s November 17, 2008, issue. But with President Obama’s re-election this week, it just seems appropriate to post. The illustration, by Bob Staake, is titled “Reflection.”

Another Promise of Change

2012-11-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

As we continues to celebrate President Barack Obama’s re-election, let’s not forget that this week also brings an important political anniversary. It was on November 8, 1932--80 years ago today--in the harrowing midst of the Great Depression, that Democratic New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected as the 32nd president of the United States, winning 42 states to Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover’s ... er, six.

The energetic and highly innovative Roosevelt would go on to be elected three more times, and serve in the White House until his death in 1945 (at which point Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency). He is commonly remembered now as the greatest U.S. president of the 20th century--even by Newt Gingrich--and certainly ranks among the top presidents ever.

You’ll find a collection of FDR’s greatest quotes here.

Rachel Maddow Explains the Real World

2012-11-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

The MSNBC host delivered a stinging but thoughtful rebuke last night to the Republican Party for its unwillingness to accept reality. The segment is well worth watching here.

On the Road Back to Obscurity

2012-11-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

This comes from GQ magazine contributor Marc Ambinder:

Of all the indignities involved in losing a presidential race, none is more stark than the sudden emptiness of your entourage. The Secret Service detail guarding Governor Romney since Feb 1. stood down quickly. He had ridden in a 15-car motorcade to the Intercontinental Hotel in Boston for his concession speech. He rode in a single-car motorcade back across the Charles River to Belmont. His son, Tagg, did the driving.

There is no formal guideline for the Secret Service agents in this situation; it’s up to the discretion of the detail leader, who usually consults with the local police to make sure that his protectee’s home won't be overrun by protestors and supporters all of a sudden.

But the Service leaves quickly. No more motorcades. No more rope lines. No more bubbles. Familiar faces disappear, never to be seen again.

Click here to read Ambinder’s full post.

READ MORE: “Romney Campaign Concedes Florida” (Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire); “Life After Defeat for Mitt Romney: Public Praise, Private Questions,” by Philip Rucker (The Washington Post); “Mitt Romney Is Losing 847 Facebook Friends Per Hour,” by Kevin Collier (Mashable).

Double Billing

2012-11-07T15:01:00.000-08:00

Has anybody else happened to mention this anomaly in American history? Barack Obama is now the third recent U.S. president in a row to be elected to two terms in the White House, following Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009).

The last and only other time three men were elected consecutively to two terms as president was back at the beginning of the 19th century: Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), James Madison (1809-1817), and James Monroe (1817-1825).

Let’s Do It Again

2012-11-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

If you missed seeing President Obama’s acceptance speech last night, or if you just want to watch it all over again, click here.

READ MORE: “Obama’s Victory Should Settle a Bitter Argument,” by E.J. Dionne (The Washington Post).

Obama Wins Big, McConnell Goes Small

2012-11-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

One of the things that struck me last night, after U.S. TV networks declared that Democrat Barack Obama had been re-elected as the 44th president of the United States, was the pettiness of the response to that history-making event by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky).

Rather than being gracious in defeat, and acknowledging that Republicans had received a thrashing at the polls--not only losing the presidency, but failing (as a result of several poor and alienating candidates) to win back control of the U.S. Senate--McConnell chose once more to snub this democratically elected leader he had previously committed his party’s machinery to driving out of the White House after a single term.

After briefly and bloodlessly congratulating Obama on his victory, McConnell opined in an official statement:

The American people did two things: They gave President Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved Republican control of the House of Representatives.

The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president’s first term, they have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control.

Now it’s time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office.

To the extent he wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we’ll be there to meet him half way.

What a small man is Mitch McConnell, what a boorish man. Recognizing that he will have to run for his seat again in 2014, and perhaps fearing that the hateful Tea Partiers--who have already taken down other once-influential Republicans (among them Delaware’s Mike Castle and Indiana’s Richard Lugar)--might remorselessly cut his head off, too, if he doesn’t further burnish his right-wing ideologue creds, McConnell took the low road last evening. No doubt, he and his Republican henchmen are currently scheming to keep America’s political system in gridlock--something they’ve been doing ever since the 2010 elections, despite the crying needs of the public for new jobs-creation programs and fiscal common sense.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the next thing McConnell says, is that President Obama didn’t win a mandate for change with this election. It’s the same sort of thing Republicans always claim when a Democrat wins the White House; in fact, there are already conservatives spreading this message to the media.

Now, a case could certainly be made that McConnell and others are correct in dismissing the notion of a mandate. As Ed Kilgore observes today in his Washington Monthly blog, “the ‘mandate’ talk is in general a myth, and sometimes a destructive myth. Voters pull the lever for candidates, not agendas, and this year, at least, they largely voted for parties, not candidates.”

But then, what was the significance of yesterday’s nationwide elections? It may have been less about handing Obama a mandate to make more sweeping changes, and more about voters doing two other things: (1) reaffirming their faith in his leadership, and (2) slapping down Republicans for their obstructionist behavior over the last two years as well as their destructive policy proposals in this election cycle. Here’s Kilgore again:

Forget about “mandates” for a moment and just think about the practical consequences of Obama’s re-election, particularly since there will still be a Democratic Senate. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 will be implemented (with some obstruction from Republican-controlled states, to be sure, but implemented nonetheless), with its most important provisions kicking in prior to the 2014 midterm elections. Obama will also instantly possess superior leverage on the “fiscal cliff” issues that reflect the two parties’ most fundamental differences on taxes, spending, and the very role of government, for the simple reason that no “solution” can be reached without his and his party’s consent, with inaction producing an outcome much closer to Democratic policy preferences.

That means Republicans are the ones, far more than Obama, who will have to decide what happens next. Do they want to commit themselves to a midterm referendum on Obamacare that means actually reversing existing health insurance coverage for 40 or 50 million Americans? Is their opposition to high-end tax increases (reiterated by John Boehner just last night) so fanatical that they will reject any fiscal compromises no matter what happens, knowing that high-end taxes will in fact go up if they don’t bend?

In a post this morning, The New Republic’s Jonathan Kohn picks up on that latter point about Republican responsibilities in the forthcoming Congress, and how the president has a stronger hand now in dealing with recalcitrant right-wingers:

But what about the next four years? Doesn’t Obama still need a governing plan? Sure. And if Obama has been relatively silent lately on some urgent issues--chief among them, climate change--he’s been quite clear when it comes to economic policy. He’s produced plans for strengthening the recovery. He’s laid out principles for reducing the deficit: Relatively modest reductions in spending coupled with higher taxes on the wealthy. And with the coming debate over the spending sequester and expiration of the Bush tax cuts, both set for January 2013, Obama will get a chance to apply those principles.

The stakes in this fight are large: Depending on the terms, they will define the scope of the federal government for at least a generation to come. And, unlike in recent fiscal debates, Obama should have leverage--more, perhaps, than at any time since the earliest days of his presidency. He can hold out in the debate over the sequester and Bush tax cuts, because the default action--doing nothing--is far worse for Republicans than it is for him. And with the newly elected Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren joining the re-elected Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse in the Senate, Obama should have a more unified and incrementally more liberal congressional party behind him. (Hopefully they will push Obama, even as they get his back.)

How this plays out depends a great deal on the Republicans, of course. At least since early 2010, after the bruising fight over health care, Obama has been predicting that the Republicans would not become a responsible governing party until they experienced the consequences of extremism. Now that has happened. Republicans effectively ceded winnable Senate seats by nominating far-right candidates. And they lost a potentially winnable presidential election by nominating a candidate who ran on the Paul Ryan budget and even named Ryan as his running mate.

Maybe some moderates will react to Tuesday’s GOP debacle by breaking with the Tea Party, and reaching out to Obama. Or maybe they will be too scared of reprisals from the right wing, as they have ever since Obama took office. I have no idea. But, whatever happens over the next four years, Obama’s re-election guarantees that the laws passed during his first term stay on the books. That instantly makes him one of the most accomplished presidents of modern times. Already Obama and his allies have shaped this country in ways that will last for generations--making life more secure, and creating new opportunities, for tens of millions of Americans.

My guess is that cranky old McConnell hopes the Republicans in Boehner’s dysfunctional and do-nothing House majority will balk at the Obama administration’s every effort to legislate and compromise, so he himself won’t have to do all the dirty road-blocking work and therefore endure not only the president’s arm twisting, but also that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada). However, with Obama no longer having to face re-election, and with Republican extremists having made McConnell’s job significantly more difficult, the minority leader isn’t in a strong position to make demands on this newly re-energized White House. Especially if, as anticipated, yesterday’s GOP disaster leads to a blood bath within the party.

Sometimes you don’t need a mandate for change. Sometimes all you need is the opposition to be petty and out of step.

McConnell fits that bill.

FOLLOW-UP: Jamelle Bouie of The Washington Post offers more on McConnell’s determination to obstruct: “Negotiations about the ‘fiscal cliff’ are set to begin soon, and Mitch McConnell is already signaling that he doesn’t intend to budge or cooperate. If anything, in the wake of Tuesday’s election, he is signaling that Republicans will adopt a strategy of categorical opposition even faster than he did after Obama’s victory four years ago.” Read more here.

READ MORE: “He, the People: Obama’s Transformation of America,” by Tom Junod (Esquire); “President Obama’s Mandate for Fairness,” by Neera Tanden (The New Republic); “Four More Years to Enact a New Great Society,” by Jamelle Bouie (The American Prospect); “Barack Obama’s Decisive Victory for Liberal Government,” by Ari Melber (The Nation); “Why Revenge Is Sweet,” by Joan Walsh (Salon); “Whites-only GOP Meets Its Demographic Destiny,” by Rich Benjamin (Salon); “The Unappreciated Virtues of Doing Nothing” and “Beware of Beguiling Explanations for Obama’s Victory,” by Kevin Drum (Mother Jones); “Obama’s New Cabinet: 7 Candidates, Plus 4 Supreme Court Options” (San Jose Mercury News).

Fingers Crossed. Fired Up. Ready to Go!

2012-11-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

As we get ready for what could turn out to be a very long and unsatisfying Election Day here in the United States, the politics-oriented blog The Reaction has posted predictions by a number of its contributors--including me--of how tonight’s most prominent races will conclude. Here is what I wrote:

Okay, get that limb ready, I’m going to take a walk out onto it with my crystal ball balanced in hand.

While I am convinced that President Barack Obama will win a second term in the White House, I remain somewhat less confident of it than, say, Nate Silver. Nonetheless, I’m going to predict that Obama captures 303 Electoral College votes, winning the majority of this year’s swing states, including Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia. Romney will probably win both North Carolina and Florida. The popular vote spread is likely to be quite a bit closer; I say Obama scores 50.4 percent to Romney’s 47 percent.

What will be interesting is to see how quickly Republicans turn on each other after the TV networks start projecting an Obama win. GOP pundits will be quick to blame Hurricane Sandy for Romney’s loss, because it’s easier than acknowledging that Americans simply don’t like the short-sighted, every-man-for-himself policies Republicans are trying to peddle. Tea partiers, on the other hand, will be out for blood; what venom they don’t expend on attacking the president, they’ll direct at the “Republican establishment,” which assured them that a “true believer” like Rick Santorum couldn’t beat Obama but a “weather vane” like Romney could.

In the end, the Republican brand will be further tarnished.

Click here to read all of The Reaction’s prognostications.

“A Presidency of Historic Consequence”

2012-11-05T23:13:00.002-08:00

From tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show: