Well, whether you voted for him or not, history was made yesterday as Barack Obama was elected President of the United States by 52% of voters, a healthy electoral margin, and victories in Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and probably even North Carolina. How was your election night?
A brief note on the Indian reaction: though some Indian papers are a little nervous about Obama’s anti-outsourcing rhetoric, for the most part India appears to be as enthusiastic as the rest of the world about the prospect of a President Obama. Manmohan Singh, for instance, described the victory as “extraordinary”. Also see this list of pros and cons in the Economic Times, and this story, which has executives from Wipro and TCS expressing satisfaction with Obama’s grasp of the realities of the globalization era.
Meanwhile, Ashwin Madia lost in Minnesota’s 3rd District to Erik Paulson. The numbers were something like 48% to 40%, with a curiously large 8% plus voting for “other” candidates.
It’s somewhat disappointing, but it is worth noting that Madia is just 30 years old, and he was running in a district long held by Republicans:
With a lack of real political experience, Madia, a former lawyer and Iraq war veteran ran on a campaign of ideals. Over and over again he told voters that he didn’t need experience in St. Paul, that he had experience in Baghdad. He often started his speeches with the tale of his parents’ immigration from India. They came here nearly 40 years ago with just $19, and today their son is running for U.S. Congress. The American Dream, Madia would often say, is still very much alive in this county.
His message did not change Tuesday night as he conceded. “Even though we lost this election tonight, we didn’t lose the debate,” said Madia, 30, as he addressed disappointed supporters in Osso. “Our message was right on. I may not have been the right messenger, but our message was right, this idea that our country can do better than what we have been doing.†(link)
We may have more to say about this once there is more data about why voters did what they did.
Old chapati, Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa is the son of an immigrant. dhishoom.
Da french have their own firsts btw. Imagine the shite that would hit the punkah if Condi decided to become a mom and chose to leave a father out of the game. well, that’s what rachida is up to. whazzat? yea.. she’s an aye-rab by ethnicite and daughter of immigros
as a blogbuddy (bluddy?) would say – le sigh – because guyz. we should be so much beyond color by now. it’s only news because finally the giant’s been drug into the twentieth century.
“… it is worth noting that Madia is just 30 years old, and he was running in a district long held by Republicans:”
Age had little to do with it. Madia lied to get the Democratic endorsement. The Republicans played back tapes of those lies in an endless series of ads. That, along with all his other lies, is why he lost. The public doesn’t trust Madia, and we Minnesota Democrats don’t want him back. We want somebody who can win this district, and tell the truth in the process.
10 · najeeb said
Even when they finally did it was phrased as an addendum to Madia’s defeat! Bizarre to say the least.
I was wondering why SM took so long to put a post up on Obama’s win.
Uh, you do realize we have day jobs, don’t you? Also, in my case, there is a two-year old who needs to have a bath, breakfast, and to be dressed & ready for pre-school! We aren’t just sitting in front of a computer all day, hatching blog posts.
I know. You’ll notice that I said: “that a non-white son of an immigrant can become President is simply imcredible”.
When the son or daughter of an African, Carribean or Morrocan Frenchman becomes President it’ll be comparable.
Najeeb and Dilip, What is the point of us reporting the same exact thing you can find on a million other websites? We post original desi-related angles we don’t rubber stamp what you should already know if you have a brain and eyes and ears.
55 · Bobby said
I like to remind the French how close they were to electing the National Alliance racist goon squad. I’ll take criticism from them about US foreign policy, but never about “equality & fraternity”.
Exactly right. India cannot hope to become a great power by depending so heavily on outsourcing by western corporations, and remittances from indians working in foreign countries.
Please! Outsourcing is in the corporations’ interest, as anyone with an iota of reason understands. It’s a model that’s worked reasonably well for many corporations. The opportunity should be milked till the tap runs dry, doesn’t mean that’s the only thing India’s doing or going to do.
India’s media being what it is, these are the ‘stories’ they run. It’s a waste of time to try to analyze the shit.
54 · Amardeep said
Abhi said:
First of all, Abhi and Amardeep, thanks for your respective posts on the Obama win. I think the way Najeeb and Dilip put it was a bit offensive, but since SM is a (privately run) community blog – it’s not so much the news value in itself as the opportunity to comment and discuss – supplmenting, complementing, even influencing the angles of the MSM coverage – that is great about SM.
Having said that, where are the comments? Not even touching 60 yet on this thread at noon EST on Thursday!
A lot of this happening now.
49 · Rahul said
Rahul that is not socialism but The irresistible allure of a lady in red
33 · umber desi said
Fine. I agree that this is not the end of racial politics. I just don’t think the data you cited about the white vote necessarily supports that conclusion.
11 · najeeb said
I’m glad someone mentioned this here. VERY disappointing.
I agree. How dare Indians think of their own self-interest, even if their interests are nicely aligned with the very principles of fairness and justice western powers have asked them to accept. And what’s up with those Mexicans crossing the border? Don’t they know Medschool will mean a better future in the long run than these unskilled jobs?
yes, you can’t build your whole future on call-center type jobs. I don’t understand why nations in africa whine about agricultural subsidies when everyone knows there’s more money in biotechnology and currency trading. WTF?
The Prop 8 victory is less/more puzzling when you look at the internals. A majority of Blacks and Hispanics voted for Obama and Prop 8. While a majority of whites voted for Obama and against Prop 8. Although Obama, Biden, and Arnie voiced their opposition to Prop 8, the liberal/libertarian constituency that supports them failed to keep out Prop 8. This is v.v.v. disappointing. Pleasantly some parts of right-wing talk radio today came out in favour of civil unions/partner tax benefits/health benefits etc., to civil union couples, but would keep marriage out. I am wondering what we require if civil unions can provide all these benefits. The LGBT community is v.v. upset with the Dems as a whole because the Dems dropped the ball on this one. And this is something Obama needs to work on, advancing the party’s position and not only the Presidency. There is v.sharp gap between the Obama campaign and the Democratic machine. Several marginal candidates like Madia, Tinkenberg, Jim Martin and Mark Begich seem to hav ebeen left without the benefit of astute campaign management. For non-Christian non-Whites, Congressional or a Stat-wide office still remains a challenge. Subodh Chandra in Ohio lost the AG primary to Marc Dann (who was backed by the Dem machine) who then went on to turn the AG’s office into a cocktail lounge. On he 2nd round this time again Chandra was passed over. Similary Jay Goel an Ohio State Rep. is locked up forever in Mansfield, because he can win only 3 counties of his district. The all important Canton area which is what he needs to win if he needs a Congressional seat is well out of reach for a variety of reasons. None of these men or women (Swati Dandekar, Satveer Chaudhuri) and others are likely to make it for some time, unless there is a puch from their respective parties.
age is the real problem facing gay marriage advocates. fortunately, old people tend to die at higher rates than young people. and amazingly, stats show old people have a 100% chance of dying within their lifetime. so the writing’s on the wall, the party that supports gay marriage will have a popular social issue on their side in about a 1/2 a generation.
Dems need to stop trying to push gay marriage down the throats of Americans via the courts unless its done as a constitutional amendment. i agree, gay marriage should be a constitutional right, but its not. we live in a democracy and that should be respected. in the meantime, we can go with civil unions.
just as importantly, dems are going to pull another roe v wade, taking an issue that would benefit them legislatively off the table by throwing it at the judiciary. i wonder if the reagan rev would’ve even been possible without roe v wade. very shortsighted.
66 · Manju said
So, independent of the political logic for opposing gay marriage that you have in the rest of your post, this particular idea seems like you’re advocating a tyranny of the majority. A president with the moral courage and legislative skill of LBJ made civil rights a part of the legal framework of this country. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a comparable figure for gay rights.
(thankfully, all the abortion related statutes failed.)
67 · Rahul said
I said it should be a constitutional right, precisely because I oppose the tyranny of the majority. But if its not, so can’t just make it up, b/c that has repercussions too…undermining democracy and the social contract.
In the case of abortion, it led to creating a hugely powerful disenfranchised minority, social conservatives (whose major issue was abortion, followed by school prayer then maybe anti-gay stuff). they, along with anti-communists and free-marketers, formed the crux of the Reagan revolution. fortunately their respect for democracy prevented them from acting out violently by in large (the last shooting of an abortion provider was 10yrs ago) but roe v wade was not good for the social fabric and was a low point for constitutional law.
68 · Manju said
What about civil rights legislation? Strong leaders with political will and skill can make this happen if they put their mind to it. Your other stuff is about political expediency, which might be a strategic concern to act in a particular way, but it pushes against the moral imperative.
69 · Rahul said
I prefer a clean cut constitutional amendment along the lines of the equal protection clause. that should solve gay marriage.
federal civil rights protection is problematic in my ideal republic because it violates the (unenumerated) right to property, federalism (states rights), and is currently on a collision course with the first amendment. but with our history of slavery amd jim crow i won’t quibble. i guess since the framework is there we might as well throw gays in the mix.
not perfect, but certainly better than an elite group of jurist legislating on their own.
70 · Manju said
Given how something like the ERA has failed to get 3/4 of the states (I mean the Dems can’t get 3/4 of the states, even with the republicans screwing the pooch so badly – and even a state like California does not seem ready to accept it), I don’t see how the current polarization on social issues will allow any such thing to ever successfully go through that path.
Hey, we’ve had a president picked that way, who has done things which will take a couple of decades to undo, gay marriage isn’t nearly as bad, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t go the same way 🙂
(the california judgment was generally well respected by moderate and left legal experts, so it wasn’t bullying by the court in the same way roe v. wade arguably was.)
wait, is sexual orientation currently included in federal anti-discrimination laws?
(I mean the Dems can’t get 3/4 of the states, even with the republicans screwing the pooch so badly – and even a state like California does not seem ready to accept it)
That was a confused sentence. I was talking about Dems vs. repubs in the electoral college (and I realize that gay marriage doesn’t line up purely as dems vs. repubs, but I am using it as a coarse proxy), and California vis-a-vis gay marriage.
72 · Manju said
If you are talking title VII, I don’t think so. Some states have protections, but I don’t think there is protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation at the federal level.
When the report about Monica Goodling came out, there were claims that she had discriminated in hiring based on political allegiance, and had fired some woman because she thought she was a lesbian. I remember reading about the former being a violation of the law, but now that I think about it, don’t specifically recall similar comments about the latter.
ok, so you’ve taken a constitutional amendment off the table b/c it politically unfeasible. fine.
but relying on SCOTUS to find a constitutional right to gay marriage in the document without any amendment isn’t gong to happen anytime soon either. so cancel that too.
so, on a federal level, that leaves us with a civil rights act that would prevent states from preventing gay marriage. but that’s open to judicial review too, and likely not pass since it clearly usurps the power from the states (10th ammendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people) and there’s no equal protection clause for gays in the constitution. you’d have to make a commerce clause argument, but that seems like a stretch and unlikely in the current court too.
so, we’re left with dealing with this on a state level. either you can go thru the states courts or the legislatures. since its probably a political winner in the long run you might as well go thru the legislature.
74 · Rahul said
Hmmmm? The more I think about it, I guess if you just ad sexual orientation to current federal anti-discrimination laws that could force states to allow gay marriage.
or maybe not. its still open to judicial review. wiki says the civil rights act outlawed jim crow but that sounds funny. after all, the equal protection clause would make jim crow laws unconstitutional, but maybe it never got that far.
anyway, without an equivalent equal protection clause for gays in the constitution would adding them to the civil rights act have any impact on the states? it would certainly apply to employers (commerce clause) but the states could still be free to keep marriage between a man and a woman.
76 · Manju said
actually, why would you need any of that? i was thinking about it some more, and the analog i saw was virginia v loving, which scotus decided based on due process and equal protection of the fourteenth amendment (and which does not have any text about preventing discrimination only based on some criteria). why wouldn’t gay marriage be similar? of course, this goes back to the fact that this current right-wing scotus, which went so far as to abuse its power and elect bush in 2000, will certainly not decide in the same way.
well, scalia is 72 now, maybe all those wellsprings of uncontrolled rage inside him will send him to his maker within 8 years, when hopefully, obama will still be in power. and maybe can hope for a new warren court after all.
31 · AnyDesiWinners said
The Bay picked up Susie Nagpal and Anjali Lathi for a second term. I couldn’t find anything on Ash Kalra yet.
How did Proposition 8 become law? The Mormon Church.
The Mormons were the ones who started this and they don’t even live in California. Shame on them for their hateful narrow-mindedness, especially given they were prosecuted in America themselves. In time, the Mormon Church went on to become the most unambiguously vile organizations operating in America today.
They have abused their tax exemption rights. Click on the link to learn more, and to sign the petition to demand these rights be taken away from them.
http://www.mormonsstoleourrights.com/
Well, deference to the legislature, ie judicial restraint, has its virtues in a democracy and is the major reason (ascide from threats of court-packing) FDR got much of his new deal thru.
The more I think about it,its plausible. I’m sure activists have thought about where the current court would stack up on such a challenge, and SCOTUS doesn’t line up as cleanly as one may think. personally i can see gay marriage as an individual right, falls under the equal protection clause, and almost certianly fits within the general framework of classic liberlism under wihich the constitution was written. i might go with that. so, i reverse my earlier postion about dems not wanting to use the courts, though they may want to still consider whats best for their future electoral prospects.
Aside from gay marriage, in order to do what? Civil rights movements who don’t know when to quit often descend into tyranny. look whats happening to free speech in cananda. there are anti-porn feminists with very dangerous notions of free-speech, and it goes beyond porn. many college campus have less protection of radical speech than the public square. you have rumblings here about a fairness doctrine and problematic hate crime bills. at least 2 liberals on SCOTUS were willing to throw the boyscouts right to free speech, free association, and freedom of religion under the bus in the name of ant-discrimination laws. freedom of religion has been limited by an imaginary wall. the government has been allowed to take private land and give it to a private casino in the name of the public good. the conservative court has done a fairly good job protecting individual rights from the american left. don’t wish them away so quickly.
this could be interesting since obama’s constitutional scholar, and has kept his views close to the vest. students say he often debated from either side of the issue. my hope is that he’ll split the difference and surprise people by going beyond the typical lef-right dichotomy, ie appoint someone who’ll recognize gay rights but put a halt to leftist restrictions on religion, speech, etc.
could you explain the canadian angle?
p.s. today’s toronto star has an article by rosie dimanno saying that BO would be a red tory in canada cos we’re SO loonie lefti. made me smile. 🙂
Wha? Canada needs some pro-sex feminists? a castle coalition? I’m confused…
81 · khoofia said
hate crime laws being used by unelected councils, Canada’s human rights commissions, to prosecute people for criticizing islam, among other ideologies. see marc stein and ezra levant cases. often the tribunals are secret so it not only violates the principle of free-speech, but also due process.
i agree with you to some extent. despite my general support for HRC’s, the process needs an overhaul badly. currently the bar is too low for what needs to be taken to court. for example, a guy who used to smoke pot (for medical reasons) outside a bar used the HRC to take the barowner to court. the owner had asked him to move away from the entrance because other patrons had complained. the potsmoker lost but he created a huge nuisance for the owner who ended up shellign out 20k of his own money in the defence (whereas the HRC defended the smoker for free). that said – i am willing to pay for a broken system if it helps one guy get a fair hearing, rather than not have a system at all. we are a prodigiously wealthy country despite the popular lament of not having the latest ipod for all.
sorry for the sidetrack.
8 · Brigette Gabriel said
The issue is not whether jobs will go to India or anywhere else.Globalization is a reality and is here to stay.Progressives should rather embrace it.In this day and age when boundaries are being eliminated,no job is a birthright of any one.Jobs like anything else,belongs to peolpe who work hard to earn it.
If I were white, I wouldn’t want some 30 year old Indian kid elected to Congress of my state. The Indian kid, in the eye of the Whites, is some ambitious, opportunistic INDIAN. He doesn’t share the same Nordic background as the locals of Minnesota, unless, of course, his family is Brahmin or North Indian.
Also, according to Wikipedia: “Madia was living in the Minnesota’s 5th congressional district (Minneapolis, Minnesota), at the time the 3rd Congressional District seat became available. After he announced his run for the 3rd Congressional District seat, he moved back to Plymouth.” He totally is not a true Minnesotan at heart or choice. He was born in Boston, MA, afterall, where I’m from.
He is the brown Mitt Romney who happens to be left-leaning. Or like the leftist Jindal: Some young, brown guy who changes if it’s politically expedient.
80 · Manju said
Yes, to me, one of the best things about an Obama victory is that I hope to be able to sleep calmly for the next 4 (and hopefully 8) years that policy will be driven by the real worries and dangers of what is, not the poisonous manufactured fantasies, fearmongering, paranoia, and dogwhistles of what might be, be they welfare queens in gold plated cadillacs, specters of socialism raised by upping tax cuts on the wealthiest, untrammeled spending on interplanetary defense, ticking timebombs in times square allowing any and all perversions of due process, wars being fought on fall pretexts and lies, and so on and so forth.
80 · Manju said
from rush limbaugh’s mouth to manju’s ear.. to sepia’s comment box. is there any right wing tripe that is too far fetched for manju to put lipstick on?