The Auto Industry is Next in Line to Board the Gravy Train

The financial services industry was certainly first in line. And now it seems that Hank Paulson, who was overly eager to help out Wall Street by buying up the bad mortgage assets, found out that things were more complicated than originally thought. So now we are following Britain's Gordon Brown model and injecting capital directly into the financial institutions after all. Doesn't inspire much confidence in a man who was first hailed as a savior of the economy!

As is always the case (and I know this as someone who works for a company that has a large presence in federal contracting), when the government creates a new spending plan, companies will line up to see if they can get a piece of the pie. So it comes as no suprise that the automakers are blaming their imminent demise on the recent economic downturn. What a joke! These companies have been badly run and held hostage by their union obligations for years, and now that the Federal Reserve's bank vault has been thrown open, they want theirs.

But this is a winning issue for Democrats over Republicans on so many levels:

1. On the presidential level, Republicans feel forsaken by the voters in Michigan once again. Obama won not only Michigan but also Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the so-called rust belt. Understandably, Republicans in Congress are little interested in helping Michigan's Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, nor Democratic Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow. Michigan has more Repbublican Congressional Representatives than Democratic and all have fiercely defended Detroit's interests...to Detroit's great detriment! Average fleet mileage standards? SUVs categorized as trucks instead of cars so that they're not part of CAFE standards? So if the Republicans are going to use the lame duck session to make their stand against one of the largest U.S. manufacturers and cede car production to the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese in the name of allowing the market to determine winners and losers, Democrats win and Republicans will be blamed for killing America's largest manufacturing sector.
   
2. Since President Bush and the Republicans got whupped, they have talked incessantly about going back to their "core principles," whatever that means! I suspect they wish to return to a vision of themselves as fiscally responsible, which might mean blocking any proposed bailout for Detroit on the grounds that the federal government has no business picking winners and losers. The market has rendered its verdict, and now the Republicans seem poised to defend their principles at the expense of the millions of jobs that will be lost. Seems politically disastrous, but the Repubs are suffering a severe identity crisis! But they're probably also hoping to break the backs of the United Auto Workers Union, a Democratic constituency.
   
3. Since Obama wants to help with a bailout, as do the Democrats in the House and the Senate, they will get to look like heroes to their base (unions), even as the Republicans alienate those same folks. Obama may also be able to seize this opportunity to put his health care program in place at one of the largest companies in the United States. One of Detroit's hugest expenses in health care coverage for the workers and retirees. I'm sure that GM would willingly give that obligation over to Obama's health care plan. And there's the foothold we need!

So as far as I'm concerned, Obama and the Dems should seize the opportunity to help Detroit and extract Draconian terms as part of the bargain. Might be the best way for Obama to get going on health care!

The Political Post Mortem

This is my favorite part of the political season, when the winners are lauded as geniuses and the losers exposed as backbiting and disorganized. Ann Kornblut of the Washington Post is a political insider who had the definitive story of how Hillary Clinton's campaign was in disarray following losses to Obama on Super Tuesday, and she did the same for the McCain campaign on Wednesday, as did Elisabeth Bumiller for the New York Times.

Frankly I'm not sure what to believe regarding the riffs between McCain and Palin or Palin and her handlers, but the knives are certainly out, aren't they? Campbell Brown had the best response to it all, blasting the McCain campaign operatives for dissing the the vice-presidential candidate that they themselves had picked and for telling us for weeks that she was ready to be one heartbeat away.



Are we to believe them now or what they were saying then? I'd rather believe them now, partly given that we saw how woefully unprepared Ms. Palin was to answer question during the Katie Couric interviews and partly because her stump rhetoric was just so mean spirited! It's ironic that Republicans channel Ronald Reagan in every election but they don't know anything about being positive in the way that he was. All their talk is fear-based. But I digress. I think these aides are devoted to McCain and trying to protect his legacy. Ironically, the more they bash his VP choice, the more people will conclude that John McCain was not in control of one of the most important decisions of his campaign, and how does that make him look deliberative or presidential? Maverick ain't lookin' so good these days!

Best Political Election Cartoons

The Boston Globe had some great links to political cartoons on its website. Many are moving, but this is one of my favorites that shows America "reclaiming" its place in the world. So many people in so many countries love Americans but disdain America's government. We have certainly earned our props this time!



But the ones with Lincoln, especially this one, moved me to tears yet again! Love that terrorist fist jab! Ha!

YES WE DID!

When the moment came I was unprepared. Having worked on the Obama campaign in Prince William County, Virginia since mid September, I was determined that I would do my part to help get this man elected. (I'll admit right here that Sarah Palin's selection scared me into action when McCain rose in the polls following the Republican convention.) Before this year, I'd donated neither time nor money to a campaign at any level, but somewhere along the line, say after the South Carolina primary, the race became personal to me. I'd written about this in an earlier post, but I identified with Obama on a gut level, especially with the early charges in the Black community that Obama was not Black enough, a sting that I too had felt during my college years at Brown University.

Early in the year, I became obsessed with political news and even began blogging in this space to record my thoughts. I played with online electoral maps, obsessed over statewide polling numbers on RealClearPolitics.com, treated Chuck Todd like a sage, and made good use of the picture in picture feature on my new TV so that I could watch both MSNBC and CNN at the same time (which drove my partner nuts!).

On election night I knew the only path to victory for McCain lay through Pennsylvania and that Obama's team worked to ensure that they would have more than one path to 270 electoral votes. That was why I volunteered in Virginia to help turn that red state blue after all! But watching the results at Station 9, a restaurant/bar near my home, I really got caught up in the moments. Each state win was greeted with cheers and high fives as if we just couldn't be sure it was going to go our way. But of course the networks all had their plans to call the election at 11:00 p.m. when the polls in California, Oregon, Washington State, and Hawaii closed (77 electoral votes in total). When Pennsylvania and Ohio were called before 10 p.m. Obama had 195 electoral votes, so it was just a matter of waiting for the polls to close on the west coast. When New Mexico (5 electoral votes) and Iowa (7) were called for Obama before 11:00, Obama had 207 so at 11:00, Wolf Blitzer could announce that "Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States!"


The condensed evening on CNN leading up to the big win

A DJ played music like "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang and "Can You Feel It" by the Jacksons, Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" etc. Tears and hugs were free flowing. Everyone danced and pulsed together for 15 minutes. I cried on Brian's shoulder, I looked at the screen, I cried some more (and I know it was an ugly cry!), I danced, I marveled at the sea of younger people surrounding us and just felt so powerfully moved to have been part of such a movement. I'll never forget that night and its historical impact.

We snuck out after McCain's gracious concession speech so that we could watch Obama's first words as president-elect at home. Already fireworks were going off and people were pouring through the streets just letting their joy flow in whatever way they felt appropriate. Horns honked, people beamed, and more hugs went around. During his speech (in which he seemed more somber in tone than I would have expected), again the tears flowed and have been flowing every time I see images like the new first family bedecked in black and red walking out on that stage together.

The next morning, I had to go to the Newseum and see all of the front pages of the country's and the world's newspapers. Others made pilgrimage to the Lincoln memorial. A fellow African-American of my age told me how he'd cried and that he sat his children down at breakfast that morning to say that in America anything is possible with hard work and determination. Again the tears flowed at the power of that notion. A black man is poised to become the most powerful person in the world! I myself, educated at elite institutions, never thought that I would see a black men elected president. I even thought that the first black president would be a Republican like Colin Powell, someone who would not come to the American people with racial grievance in his (or her) history, but I never anticipated Barack Obama. So much of the commentary has been to the effect that Obama's victory marginalizes Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton even more. Hallelujah! Let President Barack Obama carry that torch now. He will lead by example that he is president of everyone in the United States and certainly not by overt racial appeals. That's not how he ran and not what the country expects of him. I look forward to crying at his inauguration and taking part in this historic moment fully.