Discovering a truly exciting Obama and five other items to note on election day

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/06/ideal-obama-election-day

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Today, as you may have heard, is Election Day in the US. Here are a few notes about that:

(1) Ponder how great it would be if one could vote for the imaginary/fantasy Obama which, alas, sadly exists only in the paranoid imagination of those who populate the fever-swamps of the right-wing: the Kenyan anti-colonialist on the angry warpath against American militarism and oligarchy, engineering Apology Tours for America's past sins and vengeance-based retribution for thieving Wall Street tycoons. Here, for instance, is the person who National Review's Michael Walsh genuinely seems to think is president:

"In retrospect, of course, William Jefferson Blythe III was Pericles of Athens compared to Barack Obama, who far more than Clinton has revealed the true face of contemporary American left-liberalism in all its coercive ugliness: a blizzard of executive orders; the deployment of the regulatory agencies that have (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) 'sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance'; and the naked Marxist appeals to race and class envy. The most anti-American of American presidents has run the most un-American of campaigns.

"And that, by rights, should be it. That it's not explains the alarm of conservatives whose view of patriotism is that they love their country as it is, not as they wish it might someday be. From Day One of the Obama administration, real conservatives understood the explicit threat of 'fundamental change', whose meaning can now be clearly discerned in Obama's "revenge' remark; for the Left, 'revenge' is precisely what this election is all about. For them and their voting-bloc constituents, it's payback time: payback for slavery and segregation; payback for poverty; payback for foreign wars; payback for restrictive immigration laws.

"They've long used the goals of the civil-rights movement — which after all was directed precisely agains't Democrats – and the Vietnam-era 'anti-war' movement — which arose in opposition to the foreign policy of the Democrats — as wedges with which to crack the larger social structure and now, so close to realizing the ultimate expression of 'critical theory' — that everything about America stinks — they and their media allies are doing their best to swing one last election for Obama."

Why didn't someone tell me that Obama was seeking "fundamental change", applies "critical theory" to conclude that American does much evil in the world, and is all about getting "payback for poverty [and] payback for foreign wars"? If you see that person on the ballot, please let me know. I'd like to go canvass for him. Or, as Brad Reed put it: "Kenyan anti-colonial socialism looks a lot like American imperial neoliberalism these days . . . ."

(2) I rarely do election prognosticating, but the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf today remembered that, six months ago, I did, and he examines whether my predictions turned out to be accurate.

(3) The Guardian's live-blog for the election is here; I'll likely contribute a couple of items to it throughout the night. The Guardian today also has an amazingly well-done graphic novel summarizing the election.

(4) Beginning at 4:00 pm EST, I'll be on Al Jazeera English all night as part of their election coverage team. For those who don't get that network, you can watch it live here.

(5) Yesterday, Mother Jones' Adam Serwer documented that, as his headline put it: "What Would Romney Do to Civil Liberties? Eh, pretty much what Obama has done. Because when it comes to the war on terror, there's not much difference between the two candidates." Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare and Brookings makes a similar point today, noting that "the campaign has been remarkably free of serious disagreements over the basic authorities to prosecute the conflict with overseas terrorist enemies," due to the "remarkable degree of consensus [that] has emerged between the parties as to the basic rules that should govern the American side of the conflict".

Along those lines, Ramesh Ponnuru of the conservative National Review became one of the few mainstream commenters this election to write a critical analysis of the US of drones, pointing out the irony that Obama, a fan of the Showtime program "Homeland," "has heard more discussion of the downside of drone strikes in a television drama than he has in the presidential race."

(As for "Homeland", Columbia Professor Joseph Massad, in Al Jazeera, has a scathing and fascinating attack on the show's politics; it's well worth reading, though I actually disagree with parts of it (though not all) quite vigorously: that show is, in some ways, surprisingly nuanced, even somewhat subversive, as it features a US Marine as a main character who becomes an anti-US "terrorist" when the US government orders a drone strike that it knows will kill close to 100 children, kills a young Palestinian boy to whom he had grown close, and then systematically covers up the childrens' death, depicting it all as "terrorist propaganda". The show also at times equates top US officials and Muslim terrorists for their propensity to kill civilians in a way that is rarely seen in political discourse, let alone mainstream entertainment).

(6) Relating to yesterday's column about Saddiq Long, the US Muslim placed on a no-fly list with no due process or transparency, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum explains the very clear and simple point raised by that episode, one which remarkably seemed to elude several commenters yesterday eager to defend the US government's actions.