Various Political Comments: New Administration

Barack won. Our country's in way too much of a bind to spend time gloating. If you are doing so, stop it immediately and do something constructive.

Just a few things. Rahm Emanuel has been a great Congressman for his district in Illinois. He is several inches shorter than I am (which may prevent some of you from thinking that he could scare people.) Make no mistake, though: this is a man who will destroy you if you cross him. I have seen him raise his middle finger in anger and shake it at someone -- the middle finger which, by the way, was partially cut off in a teenage accident. It's not a pretty sight. He effectively ran the Democratic Congressional and Senate races in 2006, a period which might go down as a more historic changing of the guard than the current election. He recruited the right choices and helped the Dems back into power.

So Barack gets a Chief of Staff who you don't want to screw over -- and that includes Nancy Pelosi, if she tries to steer the ship too far to the left of the country. The fact is, election results aside, we are still a center-right country with an electorate who remains socially liberal but economically moderate-to-conservative. Emanuel is a pragmatist. When he worked in the Clinton Administration, he was a proponent of the welfare reform plan that helped to get Clinton re-elected. He is not a Marxist, and let's not pretend otherwise.

Conservatives have spent the day bitching about how Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan should not be on Obama's economic transition team. As if it's somehow entirely her fault that the American auto industry, which has been in decline for twenty years, is failing us. No, it isn't, and the high unemployment in Michigan can be directly attributed to the fact that America makes shitty cars. Sorry. No one wants to buy a Chrysler Sebring, or a Dodge Stratus. Have you ever heard anyone proudly announce their purchase of a Chevy Tahoe? No, you haven't. The re-sale value of all of these cars is simply horrendous, because they are shoddily made and fall apart more easily than their foreign counterparts. I would love to "buy American" but I also want my car to drive me to work every day.

Another problem? GM, Chrysler, and Ford each have about 4,000 auto dealerships in this country, while a foreign dealer like Toyota has only 2,000 dealerships. Frankly, all of the American auto companies are over-stocked, make too many cars, and sell far too few of them. If that leads to an economic crisis in Michigan, how is Michigan's governor supposed to stop it? How is lowering taxes in Michigan going to solve an auto industry problem she has no control over? She's perfectly capable of helping Obama's transition team for the economy, and frankly, anyone (Republican or Democrat) who is governor of Michigan at the moment would receive a great deal of blame for problems that they simply cannot fix. One woman cannot fix the entire American auto industry.

I don't care if Sarah Palin knows whether Africa is a continent, or how she could possibly not know that NAFTA is comprised of three countries (the USA and its only two neighbors, Canada and Mexico, I found that out in 1993 when I was 10, Jesus). However, isn't it interesting that all of the Palin hate is coming from Republican sources leaking the info. to Fox News? If she was so incredibly awful, how were these McCain strategists able to look themselves in the mirror each day, knowing that they had helped to put this woman in a potentially enormous position of power? Yet another reason that Republicans need to clean house and get rid of the Karl Rove-era strategists (like Steve Schmidt) who divide us all into red and blue, black and white caricatures, instead of voters who are capable of comprehending issues.

As to the new Administration, things I like that I'm hearing: Larry Summers for Treasury Secretary (he has some bad opposition research coming his way, but he's brilliant). Chuck Hagel, possibly for a post in the Admin. somewhere, since he's centrist and would do a good job in the right spot. Maybe Colin Powell as Education Secretary, although he wasn't that great a Secretary of State and I'm not sure why Powell is being floated for Education Secretary when that's not his background. I'm glad David Axelrod is Obama's chief strategist, since he implemented Obama's incredible campaign and will be instrumental in making sure that the ideas go from the drawing board into actual legislation.

Point being: this is not the Socialist/Marxist revolution that extreme right-wing conservatives are hoping will happen.

Oh, and to give credit where credit is due: John McCain's concession speech was dignified, eloquent, and exactly the right tone for where we need to go next. Shockingly, I also feel that President Bush gave a GREAT speech about helping the transition into Obama's presidency. Whether he follows through on that promise remains to be seen, but it was nice to have a break from the bitter, nasty, partisan infighting for a brief few moments.

As to whether I'd comment on Amendment 2 and Proposition 8 in California passing? I may be disappointed by it, but I fully expected it in both places. It is the only thing that could possibly make this election bittersweet for me.