Warning: Incoming Election Thoughts

I've made a point of not writing about politics in this blog, because it's a tricky subject, and requires a lot more delicacy and sensitivity than I tend to display. However, a presidential election comes but once every four years, and there's no question that it is a major media event, and so some commentary is justifiable. This particular cycle of campaigning and election follies is especially notable for being one of the roughest, meanest, dirtiest, and most disgustingly expensive ones in history. The role of the media has also been heavily discussed and dissected, particularly on the Republican side, in light of the election results. FOX News and other right-slanted news outlets predicted a Mitt Romney win. That obviously didn't happen, leaving them and their viewers to do some serious soul-searching.

I'll be the first to admit my view of the latest election is not especially well informed. I live in a solidly blue state and have shunned traditional forms of media for the past few months, so I've largely avoided any campaign ads. I was the target of a grand total of one "Get Out the Vote" phone call, about a local proposition. The only time I turned on the television was election night. I watched Brian Williams announce the returns for about an hour before they called the race in President Obama's favor, stayed up a little later to watch the speeches, and then went to bed. I followed the campaign through web and print news with some interest, though, and kept up with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," where the election was a favorite subject. From my vantage point, the only period of time where there seemed to be any possibility that Romney would take the White House was after his performance in the first debate, but that momentum faded quickly. I've studied the American political systems and I know the stakes involved were high, but this presidential election was fairly predictable and I doubt the outcome was ever in much question.

As with most elections, I find the media commentary is mostly distracting, rarely informative, and practically inescapable. I know elections have always been popularity contests, but I really hate the way that differences between the parties get magnified by the endless campaigning to the point where we all end up convinced that the other side is full of depraved vermin we don't want to share a country with. I don't remember there being this much vitriol on both sides in any previous election, and I'm pretty sure that the 24 hour news coverage and the internet have a lot to do with that. I admit, being an Obama supporter, there were times when I found myself swayed by the characterizations of Mitt Romney as an evil, heartless, crony-capitalist with designs on looting the US Treasury the way that Bain Capital had preyed on underperforming companies. And I found myself wanting to leap to Barack Obama's defense on policies I didn't know a damn thing about. By my own admission this is completely irrational behavior, and it always reminds me that even though I shun the pundits and the pollsters, they still have an awful lot of influence over my own views.

Governor Romney and President Obama aren't all that far apart in their political positions from what I can tell. However, the election turned them into the living embodiments of the best and worst of their respective parties. The fit wasn't so good for Mitt Romney, who many Republicans vocally disliked during the primary process for being fairly moderate, and having supported certain left-leaning positions in the past. I think what made Romney so unpalatable to so many voters was that while he didn't explicitly adopt some of the right-wing's more extreme positions, like the stances on women's health issues, he let himself appear more to the right than he actually was, and did a very poor job of distancing himself from the fringe. This meant that it was very easy to associate Romney with the "War on Women," the Tea Party extremists, and the 1%. Obama, on the other hand, came out for gay marriage, and stayed consistent on pretty much everything else. The Left has their own fringe, of course, but they weren't really part of the conversation this time out.

The election reflected the ongoing American culture war, and there was clearly a loser this time: FOX News. Their attempts to control the narrative were familiar, reliably coming up with a new scandal or scare-tactic every week. Some of them were sort of plausible, but others were so divorced from reality that FOX essentially had to make up data to sell them, and they went a little too far this time. FOX is great at appealing to the Republican base, but it comes at the expense of alienating everybody else in the country who doesn't subscribe to their worldview, and the election finally made it clear that they were outnumbered and unprepared to deal with it. I admit it was awfully cathartic to watch FOX's house of cards collapse along with Karl Rove's credibility when he tried to challenge the Ohio returns on election night with outdated information. On the other hand, I view the corresponding rise of MSNBC with wariness, because the last thing we need is a liberal version of FOX News sticking the progressives in their own bubble to repeat the cycle.

Mostly, though, I'm just glad for a brief respite before the madness all starts up again for 2016.
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