Month: November 2012

by

What do Lincoln and Obama have in common?

We all know that both are from Illinois, but did you know that both were elected on November 6?

Abraham Lincoln was first elected on November 6, 1860.  Barack Obama was elected to his second term yesterday, November 6, 1012.

When my husband mentioned this yesterday, I thought this was another good omen and it, like the 7/Eleven, Nickelodeon, and Scholastic polls was correct.

From This Day in History

Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.

by

A huge win

Americans voted to give President Obama a second chance to change Washington.

The re-election of Barack Obama last night was a huge win in many ways.  I went to bed after the confetti dropped in Chicago and woke up too early with my head still spinning.  I figure I can sleep later.  So who won besides the President?  Here are a few of my thoughts.

Last night was a win for everyone who has been supporting a tax increase for the wealthiest Americans.  Politico summarizes the exit polling this way

Six in 10 voters nationwide say they think taxes should be increased, a welcome  statistic for President  Barack Obama and a sign that the president’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s  proposed tax cuts  for the wealthy may have been effective.

Almost half of voters said taxes should be boosted on Americans making more than  $250,000 per year, and one in seven voters said taxes should be increased on all  Americans.

I think the Democratic wins in the Senate as well as the President’s re-election reflect this.  It is a loss for Grover Nordquist perhaps Republicans in Congress can now forget that silly pledge and negotiate all the fiscal and budget issues hanging over us.

This was a big win for the ground game over big money.  The Adelsons, Roves and Kochs of the world can’t buy an election. The Senate wins by Tim Kaine and Sherrod Brown showed that if you turn out voters, all the negative spending on advertising can’t buy the election.  I watched and worked the ground game here in Massachusetts using the same database that was used by Democrats all over the country.  All the information added this election should only help Democrats in the future.  This email sent last night under the President’s name tells the story

I’m about to go speak to the crowd here in Chicago, but I wanted to thank you first.

I want you to know that this wasn’t fate, and it wasn’t an accident. You made this happen.

You organized yourselves block by block. You took ownership of this campaign five and ten dollars at a time. And when it wasn’t easy, you pressed forward.

I will spend the rest of my presidency honoring your support, and doing what I can to finish what we started.

But I want you to take real pride, as I do, in how we got the chance in the first place.

Today is the clearest proof yet that, against the odds, ordinary Americans can overcome powerful interests.

There’s a lot more work to do.

But for right now: Thank you.

The election was a huge win for people of color,  for marriage equality (Maine and Maryland, and probably Minnesota) and for an American that is changing.  From the Washington Post

The electorate was less white (from 74 percent in 2008 to 72 percent this year), more Latino (9 percent to 10 percent), just as African-American (13 percent to 13 percent), more female (53 percent to 54 percent), more low-income (38 percent making less than $50,000 in 2008 to 41 percent Tuesday) and — perhaps most remarkably, younger (18 percent to 19 percent).

It all suggests that Obama’s laser-like focus on turning out each of his key constituencies — minorities, women and young people — paid dividends.

And in many cases, these groups backed him as much or more as in 2008.

Women gave Obama 55 percent of the vote and low-income voters gave him 60 percent, about the same as four years ago.

Latinos gave Obama 67 percent of their vote four years ago, and 71 percent on Tuesday.

I think the racially tinged and anti-immigrant Republican campaign made people angry and they were angry enough to come out to vote.  Until the Republican party learns to deal with the changing demographics in this country, they will become more and more powerless.

And my final thought for right now – this was a huge win for Nate Silver.  For those of us who put our trust in him, this was vindication.  His final map looks suspiciously like the final map but if Florida continues today as it is trending, I think he underestimated the Electoral College vote.  Nate predicted 313 electoral votes but with Florida it will be 332.

[Photograph:  Doug Mills/The New York Times]

by

Report from my precinct

People are still in line to vote here in the City of Boston, but my Roxbury precinct voted in record numbers.  617 ballots out of about 900 or so registered voter.  Obama/Biden got 583 to Romney/Ryan’s 20.  Elizabeth Warren got 576 votes to Scott Brown’s 35.

No winners called yet in Massachusetts, but in my neighborhood we have winners.  It was worth the work.

More reports to come.

by

Early, early signs on election day

It is very early on election day and I leave to get some volunteers started at our polling place.  It is going to be a long day.  But there are some signs:

Dixville Notch has voted:  It is a tie:  5 to 5.  In 2008 they voted for Obama 15 to 6.  The population is down, but this is still New Hampshire and which is very close.   Read this any way you want to.

Nate Silver’s final numbers:

Electoral College –  Obama 314.6    Romney 223.4

Change of winning – Obama 91.6     Romney 8.4

Popular vote –  Obama 50.9     Romney 48.3

Mother Jones managed to catch up with 5 of the 11 people who asked questions at the town hall debate.  (Remember they are in the Hurricane Sandy zone.)

At the second presidential debate, a town hall forum held at Hofstra University, 11 undecided voters from Long Island asked President Obama and Mitt Romney questions on a range of issues, including unemployment, gun control, and equal pay for women. Mother Jones caught up with five of them, all of whom are still dealing with the aftermath of Sandy, and asked if they finally have decided. Results? Four of the five say they’re voting for Obama.

The one who isn’t for Obama is “Leaning Romney”.  The reasons are interesting.

What does this all mean?  We will know late tonight.  In the meanwhile I’ll leave the last word to Nate Silver

But Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the Electoral College have slipped, and are now only about 8 percent according to the forecast model — down from about 30 percent 10 days ago.

The most notable recent case of a candidate substantially beating his polls on Election Day came in 1980, when national surveys had Ronald Reagan only two or three points ahead of Jimmy Carter, and he won in a landslide instead. That year is not comparable to this one in many respects: the economy is much better now, there is not a major third-party candidate in the race, and Mr. Obama’s approval ratings are about 50 percent rather than 35 percent for Mr. Carter. And in 1980, Mr. Reagan had late momentum following the presidential debate that year, whereas this year the momentum seems to favor Mr. Obama.

All of this leaves Mr. Romney drawing to an inside straight. I hope you’ll excuse the cliche, but it’s appropriate here: in poker, making an inside straight requires you to catch one of 4 cards out of 48 remaining in the deck, the chances of which are about 8 percent. Those are now about Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the Electoral College, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast

As any poker player knows, those 8 percent chances do come up once in a while. If it happens this year, then a lot of polling firms will have to re-examine their assumptions — and we will have to re-examine ours about how trustworthy the polls are. But the odds are that Mr. Obama will win another term.

Voters wait in lines for absentee ballots in Doral, Fla. on Sunday. (AP)

by

Why voting for Obama is important in blue states

If you are like me and live in a state that has already an insurmountable lead for President Obama’s re-election you might be tempted to vote third party, but it is still important for you to vote for Obama.  Why?  The popular vote total.  The pundits and headlines will continue to say the race is tied.  Forget the electoral college which in most estimates have Obama now over the 279 mark with some headed to 300.  No it is the popular vote where there is potential trouble.

Willard Mitt is too close for comfort. This morning Nate Silver puts it at 50.6 to 48.3 or a 2.3% margin for the President.  The margin of error is 2.1.  Much of the Romney vote comes from Red States and that is what is making it look close.  Unless Obama wins both the popular vote and the electoral college, the Republicans can complain about the results.  You know they will.  They are already beginning to blame Hurricane Sandy for the loss.

Of course, we won’t know until the votes are counted how things will turn out.  Polls can be wrong and folks like Nate depend on aggregating polls, but as an Obama supporter, I do feel hopeful.

Also it looks as if Elizabeth Warren will beat Senator Scott Brown.  Let’s hope that’s the last time I have to call him that!  And better yet, it is beginning to look like my old friend, Tim Kaine, will win in Virginia.

This shows President Clinton, President Obama and Tim Kaine.  This is an important sign:  The Democratic Senate candidate is not running from the President.  In a purple state.

So if you live in a blue state, don’t be thinking your vote for Obama doesn’t matter because it does.

by

Hurricane Sandy and poverty

OK.  There is no more marathon.  I always thought that was a little crazy what with Staten Island and parts of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn still with no power.  I’m glad someone got some sense!  But I was struck by two headlines in the New York Times this morning:

In New York’s Public Housing, Fear Creeps in With the Dark

For Some After the Storm, No Work Means No Pay

It would be dark soon at the Coney Island Houses, the fourth night without power, elevators and water. Another night of trips up and down pitch-black staircases, lighted by shaky flashlights and candles. Another night of retreating from the dark.

…

Perhaps more so than in any other place in the city, the loss of power for people living in public housing projects forced a return to a primal existence. Opened fire hydrants became community wells. Sleep-and-wake cycles were timed to sunsets and sunrises. People huddled for warmth around lighted gas stoves as if they were roaring fires. Darkness became menacing, a thing to be feared.

A lack of friends or family in areas with power, or cars or cab fare to get to them, meant there were few ways to escape. Dwindling dollars heightened the pain of throwing out food rotting inside powerless refrigerators, and sharpened the question of where the next meal would come from. Some had not left their apartments since the storm swept in.

I heard a woman being interviewed who lived in public housing, not sure where, who was making her 8th trip of the day up the unlighted stairwell (there are no windows) with water.  She was talking about the generators set up in Central Park for the marathon and wondering why they couldn’t be moved to give her building power.  Remembering this is what made the New York Times headline catch my eye so quickly this morning.

Thousands of public housing residents in New York City defied evacuation orders because they underestimated the ferocity of Hurricane Sandy; now they make up a city within a city, marked by acute need. Any bathtubs filled with water on Monday are empty. Unflushed toilets stink. Elderly people with creaky joints are marooned on upper floors. Batteries are running out.

An estimated 400,000 New Yorkers live in public housing and many of their institutional brown brick buildings hug the waterfront.

On Thursday, 227 of the 2,600 buildings operated by the New York City Housing Authority remained without power, according to an agency spokeswoman, including many in low-lying neighborhoods like Coney Island in Brooklyn, Rockaway Beach in Queens, and Alphabet City in Manhattan, the areas most seriously affected by the storm.

I would imagine that many were afraid to leave for fear their apartments would be looted if they did so.  So there is fear, but there is also community.

On the Lower East Side, at the Baruch Houses, neighbors helped an older woman down flights of stairs because she was feeling ill. An ambulance emergency worker gave the woman oxygen and the neighbors helped her back up to her apartment.

“There’s a sense of community,” said Darryl MacCullum, 24, who lives at the Jacob Riis Houses in the East Village, where the tidal surge had, for a time, ringed the buildings like moats. “Neighbors I usually don’t talk to, I talk to now.”

The residents cooked for each other, eager to not waste food that was thawing fast. At the Red Hook Houses on Wednesday night, there was an impromptu outdoor barbecue for 25 people, with hamburgers, frankfurters and ribs sizzling on grills.

And there are muggings in the stairwells as well as fear that they are forgotten.

Darkness enveloped the Jacob Riis Houses.
Then there are the hourly workers who don’t get paid if they can’t get to work or if their place of business is closed.
While salaried employees worked if they could, often from home after Hurricane Sandy, many of the poorest New Yorkers faced the prospect of losing days, even a crucial week, of pay on top of the economic ground they have lost since the recession.Low-wage workers, more likely to be paid hourly and work at the whim of their employers, have fared worse in the recovery than those at the top of the income scale — in New York City the bottom 20 percent lost$463 in annual income from 2010 to 2011, in contrast to a gain of almost $2,000 for the top quintile. And there are an increasing number of part-time and hourly workers, the type that safety net programs like unemployment are not designed to serve. Since 2009, when the recovery began, 86 percent of the jobs added nationally have been hourly. Over all, about 60 percent of the nation’s jobs are hourly.Even as the sluggish economy has accentuated this divide, Hurricane Sandy has acted as a further wedge, threatening to take a far greater toll on the have-littles who live from paycheck to paycheck.On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that New York City and four suburban counties were eligible for disaster unemployment relief,which covers a broader spectrum of workers than regular unemployment benefits, including the self-employed like taxi drivers and street vendors as well as those who were unable to get to work.

New Jersey has also declared people in 10 counties eligible for disaster unemployment assistance. In Connecticut, residents of four counties and the Mashantucket Pequot Indian Reservation are eligible.

A New York Department of Labor spokesman emphasized that workers who lost wages should call to apply because the program is flexible and many eligibility issues would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Disaster unemployment will help some, but not everyone.

Federal labor laws include more protections for salaried workers than hourly workers when a disaster hits. Employers must continue to pay salaries if the worksite is closed for less than a week, even though they are allowed to require employees to use vacation or paid leave for the duration of the closure. Hourly workers, on the other hand, do not have to be paid if the worksite closes. If the workplace is open but salaried workers cannot get there, their pay may be reduced.

So Sandy is not just about not being able to charge your cell phone or laptop.  For many it will be a step backward on the climb out of poverty.

Photograph of Jacob Riis Houses Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times.  Reporting for the NYT by By and  and CARA BUCKLEY and MICHAEL WILSON
by

Starting the big push for Elizabeth Warren

I’ve been doing little bits and pieces  for Elizabeth Warren’s campaign since August, but the big push to election day starts today.  Interesting that Scott Brown didn’t want to participate in a rescheduled debate which would have taken place last night.  I think he is seeing the growing agreement between the polls and realizes that he is losing.  He certainly lost ground while debating.  This is from Monday.

Senator Scott Brown said today that there was no need for a final debate with Elizabeth Warren, his Democratic opponent, while she said she would be willing to participate in a rescheduled match-up on Thursday night.

Brown did not rule out rescheduling the debate, which had been slated for tonight, but made clear that he had little interest in doing so.

I’m not sure another debate would have changed much, but there you go.  Brown went from “I have a truck and can pick her up”  to “I’m too busy.” between Friday and Tuesday.  Do you think that it had to do with the Suffolk University poll that showed Warren up by 7?

Garry Trudeau has been running an occassional series on the campaign featuring Joanie Caucus as a Warren staffer.  If Joanie can keep pushing after hip surgery, so can the rest of us.

Doonesbury

by

Obama vs. Romney: A comparison for voters

Cartoonist Jen Sorensen has created this handy guide for those who still aren’t certain if they really want to vote for Obama (the reluctant left) and the still undecideds.

Sorensen adds

These are but a few examples. Turning Medicare into a voucher program, radicalizing the Supreme Court for a generation, and displaying an open hostility toward science probably won’t help things either. Obama isn’t perfect, but as far as I’m concerned, voting is a moral arithmetic problem with a clear answer.