NYCweboy

The Retail Worker's Dark Weekend

For various reasons, I try never to shop on "Black Friday Weekend", avoiding the post-Thanksgiving madness and the media-constructed frenzy of shop-til-you-drop consumerist Americans and their lemming-like trip to the malls. I've worked in retail too long to see the romance, I don't like crowds, and frankly, the "bargains" of this shopping holiday are overstated.

It's also the case, these days, that I will probably also be working for most of it.

Black Friday this year was notable for a couple of things - one was the encroachment of the shopping into the actual Thursday of Thanksgiving, and the second was a planned, notable, if debatably successful attempt at labor actions outside of many Wal-Marts around the country. Even by the organizers' generous assessments, the number of workers participating in these protests was in the hundreds, though media coverage did clearly amplify the noise and the effect of the protests.

The remarkable thing, really, is that it's taken much of my lifetime for Thanksgiving to be breached by retailers as sacrosanct; only Easter Sunday - and Christmas Day, I suppose - remain as the day of no shopping, and that anachronism may be the hardest to topple, but it's also the one that makes the least sense (at some point, Christian traditionalism will be damned). Literally 20 years ago, I was having conversations with family and friends that one day, obviously, retailers would launch the "Thanksgiving Day Sale" - I mean, heck, one day, Macy*s was sure to notice that there was a crowd of people outside the store after that darn parade, if nothing else - and one more domino would fall on the notion that for one day, at least, we could forestall the real American pastime (shopping, not football).

Let's be clear: we don't close stores for the sake of shoppers. Keeping shopping out of Thanksgiving wasn't some kind of "have respect for this important American holiday, consumerism can wait." No, the point of closing stores was simple human decency for the American worker. Let's take one day, just one day, and nobody, or almost nobody, should have to work. The problem with Thanksgiving, arguably, started with my company, Starbucks; we're the most major corporation I know of that sees no particular reason to close its outlets on any holiday at all. Almost all Starbucks are open on Thanksgiving, for at least some portion of the normal day. Many are open on Christmas. We are almost all open on Easter, normal hours. We close early on days like New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July. But we are open. Always open. And people get bewildered when we close, even for obvious practical reasons, like a hurricane.

But Starbucks isn't just a restaurant - food being the general exception to "closed on the holiday" - we are a retailer, and we are located in shopping centers and malls like the other retailers and we sell more than just drinks and food and we're helping, I think, to erode the idea tbat there's one day, any day, when a retailer should be closed. 

And the people who get punished, when we lose even one day of being closed... are workers.

I was struck, this year, by the fact that, however small, people (and the media) seemed to take nte of the workers. It wasn't a big story, and it was surely subsumed by the stories of stampedes and fights and all the attendant madness of crowds. But the Wal-Mart action and the Thursday opens did get people talking, and talking about what these things mean to workers. Which is, after all, almost all of us. We are a nation of service workers, now, and it means that many of us work to serve the rest of us. It's a different equation about work and what we think of people who serve and it's complicated... and I think we're only just beginning to sort out the cultural and social implications, never mind the political and economic ones.

The Wal-Mart action revived the favorite liberal topics of how bad the big W is, how badly its workers are treated... but Wal-Mart in many ways is really just a stand-in for most of retailing, where the wages are low, the hours are long, and the rights of workers mean but so much. Attempts to unionize most retail workers, in or out of Wal-Mart, are rarely successful, and are unlikely to succeed en masse or long term. To say this is to be labeled "anti-union", and I'm not; but the realities are stark. I've been in retail a long time, and I've known many, many of the women (mostly) and men who work there. Don't take my word for it... but most of them are not interested in a union. And won't be. They are students and mothers and transient and free thinkers. Not being organized provides a kind of flexibility and set of options many workers want, and even need. Unions have not found a way to convince retail workers, generally, of their value long term. And still, that's unlikely to change much.

Even more to the point, as I've said before, because we are no longer a nation of mostly manufacturing jobs, Unions do not really respresent the majority experience of most workers in this country now. Yet "Organized Labor" is allowed, mostly by Democrats, to serve as the "Working Person's Voice" even when the policies unions promote don't necessarily refelects the needs and opinions of most workers. What we need, really, is a change in how we talk and think about the issues of work and labor in this country, and try harder to develop a sensible labor policy that reflects who we actually are and what we actually do. That's why, I suspect, the Affordable Care Act has managed, quietly, to be  a key selling point of President Obama and the Democrats this past election - it's not perfect, but it makes sure many workers will get health insurance, a practical slution many people need. Similarly with the debates of contraception and abortion - in the place where airy philosophical debates mean less than the practical issues of real people actually face.

I don't think we can "save Thanksgiving" from the retail encroachment; the wall has been breached, business needs have overtaken simple decency and humane respect for workers and their families. We will, as we do, work around these new relaities. We are workers, after all. But I think this year may mark another, more refreshing turning point, one where the discussions around our working lives, and the pratcical need for a life beyond work, begins to become more public, louder, and more insistent. It doesn't mean service workers will unionize, and new laws may not be the answer (certainbly, that's not the whole answer); the change we need is cultural, social... not just political, and not just economic. 

And I could go on... but I really have to get on with my day - I have to work this evening.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: You're Indispensable...Or Priceless. Or Something.

Many observers have criticized the approach of using litigation to achieve social change ever since a Hawaii court ruled in 1993 that the denial of marriage benefits to same-sex couples was unconstitutional—criticism that only accelerated after Massachusetts's landmark Goodridge decision in 2003 ruling that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Much of this criticism takes the form of what I call the "countermobilization myth"—that is, the idea that victories won through the courts produce a unique amount of political backlash that make them counterproductive. The remarkable wave of success for LGBT rights on Election Day, combined with a steady increase in support for same-sex marriage, makes the countermobilization myth even more untenable. Michael Klarman's invaluable new book, From the Closet to the Altar, remains ambivalent about the use of litigation to advance same-sex marriage. But ultimately, it provides a powerful case that in the right circumstances, litigation can be an effective tool for social reform.

- Scott Lemieux, "Don't Fear The Backlash", The American Prospect, Nov. 15 2012

I make a very poor Grammar Nazi, and I'm only a so-so Usage Slut... but "invaluable" just annoys me. It's that thing about "disingenuous" where people usually mean the thing without "dis" but want to sound classy. I had to look up "invaluable" because I was just so annoyed (and I do find, in this insta-phone age, that my usage querulousness is faster and more easily confirmed - and yes, you can look that up, too), and a quick look for definitions made me both right and wrong. It's fair to say "invaluable" to mean the book has a value that can't be calculated... but I think Lemieux was going for more of the other words associated with invaluable - like "indispensable" or "priceless". 

My point is that, in context, Lemieux basically suggests the book does, indeed, have value. It's a very important book, clearly, and useful and informative... but is the value of it indeed beyond all measure? "Valuable" seems just as worthwhile a word choice, or even "extremely valuable" - but "invaluable"?  Really?

The other reason "invaluable" annoys me, and why I didn't bother finishing the article, is that the pint Lemieux's making is one of those "not so deep" points that strikes me as obvious: yes, people were initially reluctant to support gay marriage lawsuits (and, as I recall, many of us felt that we were being steamrolled into backing an issue, like gays in the military, that brought up larger issues we didn't entirely like), but what I found then, and still find is that most gays were willing to at least let the lawsuits run their course because, like gays in the military, the underlying point was obviously correct. Thus, "fear of backlash" was never quite the issue one wants to make it out to be: some gays may worry about adverse reactions to us standing up for our rights, but historically, most of us gays will prefer to see the positive result. Gay Pride, gay equality... we weren't all heroes who stood up right when Stonewall happened... but "they may not like us and be mean to us for speaking out" is a lousy approach to life. And mostly... we already knew that. And such an insight hardly seems... invaluable. 

Ew, It's Gross. I'm Not Doing It (Plus Some Thoughts On Taylor Swift)

 

"We are never ever ever getting into leather" is much fun (via one of my regular must reads, the World of Wonder blog), but then so is the Taylor Swift original which kicked off her album Red.

 

 

Swift has gotten a lot of grief because the song, apparently, is a thinly veiled diss of Jake Gyllenhaal. This is in line with previous songs, her subtextual critics suggest, with a string of songs aimed at exes and occasionally their new girlfriends. For her part, Swift doesn't entirely deny that her songs come out of her experiences, or that some of them are indeed, about a specific person or event.

That is usally how one writes a song.

I'm sort of struck by the obvious sexism at play in this, and by the blindness of otherwise sensitive types (like Jezebel) to the double standard at work. It's as if all that material written by high profile male rockstars to their (often equally high profile) girlfriends and exes never happened. Did nobody hear the backstory of "My Sharona"?  Or how Dylan aimed a string of (actually rather bitchy) singles at his girlfriends from the sixties (including, just as a for instance, Edie Sedgwick)? How about something more recent - did no one listen to the words to "Gives You Hell" by All American Rejects? (Yeah, I don't love it either... but still).

Apparently, it's wrong for a woman to complain about bad boyfriends... or something. Or perhaps it's just that Swift's kiss-offs are aimed at young, handsome, popular celebrity men whose puppy dog reps (even a dog like John Mayer) preclude thinking badly of them in the public sphere. Perhaps it's simply the charmed nature of Swift's career and her own super-sweet public persona. I know I resisted at first, but Swift's chops as a musician and songwriter have become simply impossible to dismiss or ignore. And that, really, is why a song like "We are never ever getting back together" has sting. 

Whatever the case for resistance and ugly backlash, I can't help the feeling that if Swift were a man and the disses in question were aimed at ex-girlfriends we wouldn't be having this backlash and the star would be a hero, not a bitch. And that's just like... ew.

We Will Marry The Crap Out Of Them

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

 There's some issues of sexism attached (it's only boys, and a certain type of gay boy at that)... but I just find the underlying politics of it - gay boys taking back their power - somehow liberating. I do wish they someone would add lesbians to this... because that would make the mind-spinning complete. 

Skyfall: JB, Hooker

I've been so absent from my first love - film criticism - that I'm really rather embarrassed. I'm still a movie lover, first and foremost, and not getting to write about it hurts my soul. 

And so, perhap, it makes sense to make a fresh start with an old favorite: James Bond, and Skyfall, the latest entry in the saga.

Skyfall marks Daniel Craig's third foray into the Bond mythology, a journey that's been fascinating, and slow, often for reasons beyond creative control (since Quantum of Solace, MGM went bankrupt). The film arrive in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bond films (Dr. No, 1962), and carries the usual weight of these exercise, all the expectations intact, a built-in audience waiting to be delighted... and disappointed.

The big surprise of Skyfall is how solidly the machinery works, how cleanly it wraps up a set of loose ends and puts the story back on familiar ground and known territory. Strikingly well plotted, making the most of its strengths, Skyfall makes the strongest case yet that Craig's Bond is one of the best, a grand reimagination of the genre that's respectful of the past but not bound to it. At the same time, Skyfall is, at worst, a pretentious mess: a low budget act of desperation, hampered by some egregious hammy acting and sloppy scene chewing from talents who really should know better. The balancing act between the best and worst of its impulses, to me, is what makes Skyfall better than most, but a bit a big budget disappointment.

First, the good: Craig's Bond is what makes the film work, and work well, for much of the story. Accidentally "killed off" in the lively opening (a fine,if somewhat derivative chase through Istanbul, ending in a familiar feeling battle atop a moving train), Bond returns home to England when MI6 is attacked, and a list of undecover spies is exposed. Traipsing off to Shanghai, Bond discovers the madman (natch) behind these diabolical schemes, bringing him to justice... only to have the mad genius use just such an outcome in his favor to wreak more havoc. The action culminates in a fierce battle at Bond's childhood home (the titular Skyfall), where a few final twists play out.

Craig's strengths remain readily apparent: his impressive physicality, his solid acting chops, his ability to give a conventional, well defined role a sense of freshness and innovation. Where Connery (and Brosnan) inhabited the part as movie stars - more an act of being than pretending - or Moore played everything as simply dashing and debonair, Craig finds a role to inhabit, an actual part to play. It's marvelous to see what an actor could do with the part, and Craig never makes it simple, or easy.

Well, except for the part where he makes Bond seem... well, easy: as usual, Craig doffs his top at the drop of a hat (or a sheet), making Bond his own Bond girl (who needs Ursula Andress when Craig's there to bound out of the surf topless?). It's a remarkable, respectful Bond world where Craig is, time and again, more naked onscreen than his female costars, at the same time making the obvious point that he's the show, the reason people paid to get in (and really, isn't that being an honest hooker, at least?).

Indeed the film's creepiest, yet slyly sexiest moments are the interplay between Bond and the mad genius Silva, overplayed by Javier Bardem. In their initial confrontation, Bardem gets especially physical, tracing Bond's chest and parting his thighs (no, seriously - it's amazing, in its way), and making suggestive comments about his "first time." It's heartening, I suppose, that Craig has a comeback ("who says it's my first time?"), but there's a subtext here that's old and especially homophobic, a notion that gay is sick and weird, the province of mad geniuses and creepy freaks. Bardem is a mystery to me - I frankly don't get his appeal and I've yet to be truly impressed by him onscreen as an actor - but the problematic role of Silva is ultimately not about him. The bigger problem is the "mad freak genius" aspect of Bond villains, especialy when they don't seem especially menacing, scary or dangerous. Still Bardem's "jamon con queso" performance - all ham and cheseiness - doesn't help. Understated muttering is still scene chewing if you do too much of it.

The rest of the (small cast of) supporting players is fine - obviously Judi Dench's M, but also Ben Whishaw's fine turn as Q, and Albert Finney and Ralph Fiennes, as well as underused Naomie Harris - but there's a sense of using a machine gun to kill a squirrel in the acting talent assembled. Actiually, the machine guns in this film also seem like overkill, too. There's acting aplenty in the supporting cast, often too much to too little effect. Whishaw's too tic-y, Finney is wasted, Fiennes is adequate, but not especially memorable. Only Dench, with and without Craig, seems to have mastered the right balance of hammy and serious needed to make a vast commercial enterprise like this work, proof, as if one needed it, of how seasoned and smart Dench is as a performer. It is, dare I even say it, practically worth another Oscar nomination.

Of the other details, there's not much to be said - Adele's theme song is both one of the best Bond themes ever, and surely one of her best performances as well. The gowns are sumptuous - especialy in the Macau casino squence. The Bond toys, are minimalist but classy (only Craig could make Bond's shaving routine into the sexiest thing imaginable), though Bond's shrunken suiitings are getting to look kind of excessively tight on Craig's yes, impressive, physique. The title sequence is, yet again, top notch.

Visually the film is a feast, and Sam Mendes deserves considerable credit for how good this thing looks, and how solidly he handles elements, like the action sequences, that one might think were beyond him. Mendes is good for not losing sight of his actors in the midst of the derring-do, at his best in moments where the action doesn't just snap and crackle, but actually shows us character development as well. Why, oh why, then can't Mendes seem to get more of a handle on Bardem's messy, psychotic, morass of a performance? Charitably, I'm willing to accept tht Mendes made a bad thing better than it ight have been otherwide; but if there's a next time, Mendes will need to do better on the villain front.

And of course, there will be a next time, a more familiar time with a more conventional MI6, with a reimagined Moneypenney and other details more in line with familiar expectations (how's that for avoiding a siginificant spoiler?). Craig owes us, and Bond, more time, and more films, to see what he makes of his Bond. And, three films in, it seems fair to admit that he's done a pretty decent job of it, so far.

The Money Games (Where The Odds May Never Be In Your Favor)

As we begin to sort out the "what worked and what didn't" of the election cycle, we're re-learning one of the more obvious ones: money, alone, cannot by electoral success. While lefties fretted about Citizens United and the huge sums of money put into the election by right wing millionaires and billionaires... the reality turns out to be the dud some of us predicted. With billions spent, a lot of the money was apparently mostly wasted, and changed very little.

This is especially true of Karl Rove's American Crossroads,which threw millions at a variety of races (including ads in Presidential "swing" states) and won almost none of them (including the swing states for Romney). Rove's money machine mostly solidified one thing: Rove's hold over the right wing as a power player. Sheldon Adelson's vast wealth? Wasted. Linda McMahon's nearly $100 million spent to lose two consecutive Senate races in Connecticut? Exceedingly wasted.The zillionaires put a brave face on the enormous waste, and considering the enterprises these people profit from (Adelson's shady gambling empire in Macau, McMahon's fortune from the heavily staged WWE) , there's more where that came from... but there's no getting around the waste of a King's ransom spent on losing this year's elections. 

Underlying this fear of the "big money donor" is, as I've siggested, a broader misconception and fear of mass market advertising. We are so bombarded, as Americans, with advertising messages that it's easy to assume that mass advertising really does make us mindless drones easily pushed into doing anything ads tell us to do. In reality, advertising gets us to do very little we wouldn't do anyway - eat, shop, wear clothes, and on and on. We accept advertising as a cultural given, we've explained it away as the price of captalism and free markets... but believing too much in the power of advertising is believing, ultimately, that we're really very dumb. And we're not - we're no geniuses collectively, but most of us are also not idiots (despite what I yell in my car). Advertising does not define us, or our choices, and we should question assumptions about mass media influence more than we already do.

So this was the year that political ads were supposed to be ugly, when the blanketing of ads in some markets (I can't imagine life as a TV viewer in Columbus or Cinncinnati) was so complete it was impossible to miss them... and the net/net was... about the same as last time. Ads didn't convince a lot of people that Obama was a terrible person who wanted to socialize medicine and ship auto jobs to China, nor did ads entirely convince people that Mitt Romney helped kill a woman with cancer. We watched, we saw, we went on with our everyday lives. And we voted for candidates who made sense to us for a variety of reasons, things that often had nothing to do with the messages in ads.

There's a lesson here should anyone choose to learn it - I've long thought that we won't solve the excesses of money in politics until the people who are foolish enough to waste their money start wising up and simply refuse to give it. Adelson's money doesn't make him a political genius - it makes him a gullible check writer who apparently falls for a good story and rosy promises of easy success. Linda McMahon's money doesn't make her a viable candidate; it makes her a vanity candidate convinced that looking the part is the same as being it.

Even the argiument that the Obama team are organizing and marketing geniuses for winning is suspect, and ought to be given only so much credence - as good as they did, as much as they executed well to the long view, the idea that deep database research made them extremely formidable is kind of wishful. It's simply demographic research at a micro level, and ultimately, what you know isn't necessarily all the much more than an observant person can figure out anyway. Single women weren't thrilled about the right's antiwoman, anti birth control tactics. Latin Americans want better immigration policies. People vote on the issues that affect them most, and most personally. People will accept political contacts when those contacts treat them more as individuals and less as a number on a sheet.  Retail politics isn't complicated... it's just that door knocking and building rapport at the local level is hard and takes energy and conviction. The Obama team's real secret, still, is the passion of its volunteers and supporters. And that can't really be bought.

I don't want campaign finance reform because it will make our elections magically more fair; I want campaign finance reform because the sleazy business of political contributions is embarrassing and wrong. Setting some campaign finance limits would also help save billionaires with a checkbook and no sense from themselves, and I'm all about Consumer Protection. :) But mostly, I think we'd be better able to do some campaign finance reform if we faced the obvious - all that money doesn't do very much to win elections, or even change minds. It's mostly wasted, and that's just silly. And then maybe we could look harder at the money that's the real problem: the fairly obvious bribery of the lobbying industry. That's the real problem, harder to solve, and far more dirty.

Come To Jesus

I was just a fresh, new voter in 1984, an idealistic (no, seriously) kid, convinced that Everyone Must Know That Liberals Were Right About Everything. After voting, for the first time, in my home state primary, I went off to college, convinced that the guy I wanted to be President would win. He just had to. How could anyone want four more years of that aging actor, Ronald Reagan?

And thus were my naive political dreams shattered. 

Walter Mondale won just one states: his home state of Minnesota. It was then that I learned that I had grown up in a liberal cocoon, cossetted and protected from a rougher, realer world where people didn't care about the issues I did, and didn't hold to principles that I held dear. And in 1988, I got my hopes up - again - that Michael Dukakis might win over a badly prepared, poorly presented George HW Bush... only to have Reagan and his people embrace Bush in a bear hug that dragged him over the finish line as the promise of Reagan Term III (and that, kids, is a big part of why Bush lost in 1992, because he failed to live up to that promise0.

I mention all of this because when older Democrats talk about the hard won return to electoral success - including the self doubting, sweet uncertainty so many of us carried in the last few months, despite what, we now know, was a virtual certainty of reelection for the President - we're not being theoretical. The Democratic Party I still believe in and support is not the Party of my childhood, or my teen years. We're tougher, more pragmatic, less doctrinaire (and, yes, sometimes frustratingly not as liberal as I or others might like). We keep our eye on what it takes to win elections, and we work to actually win them. We don't pin our hopes and dreams to unrealistic notions of what might be or what we wish would be... we have a clearer eye on what can happen, and what can't.

(And that, kids, is why we have Obamacare.)

The point here is that somewhere between 1988 and 1994, most liberals had a Come To Jesus moment. We got seriously tired of losing. We got tired of characterization of us and our beliefs by others who had no idea who we were or what we actually believed. And, too, we let go of old notions of how government works and what voters want that didn't really work. We ended the Oppression Olympics. We let go of ideas that only Government Knows How To Solve Problems. We softened notions that we hate Big Business, or The Rich. After all, many of us were rich, or about to become rich. And we embraced the adventurous idea that we could embrace notions of change, modernity, and innovation and use technological advancements to help us do better, help people, and succeed.

This was not done easily, and there are plenty of people who, still, resist the ideas of moderation, of giving in, of leaving traditional liberal ideas behind. We don't do enough or think hard enough about poverty. We've let a housing crisis deepen and worsen. Social Justice is still often more a concept than a plan. We have a lot of internal tensions that are likely to leave a big mess as we approach 2016. Yet, and still, we won this last election (from the Presidency to the Senate to the House, picking up seats in both houses) because we are not the Democrats of 1984.

And Republicans, in many ways, are still the party of 1992.

This election, it appears, was the "1984" for many Republicans, that the actual 1984 was for me. A moment when illusions met reality. When wishful thinking met the cold light of day. In 1980, I had excuses for why Reagan won, why it was his moment, how you can fool all of the people some of the time. That, really, was what 2008 was for Republicans. John McCain was a sad joke. Even they knew it. Sarah Palin failed. "Hope and Change" was a slogan that many found hard to resist. On and on. Iran hostages, Carter was weak... believe me, I was there. We had reasons. But 1984 was shattering. We should have won, It should have been closer. How could we have been so wrong?

I've been saying for six years that Republicans are actually in a wilderness created by the disastrous Bush presidency of 2000 and 2004. But that's just the manifestation of a far longer and deeper issues that conservatives are loath to face: that you can't be the party of the super wealthy elite and voice the concerns of the white working class. That you can't adopt rigid, absolutist positions and attract a wide swath of the public. That you cannot dismiss the concerns of traditionally marginalized groups wholesale.  You learn these lessons, adapt and change... or you die.

This, then is the conservative Come to Jesus moment. Will they actually, for once, admit and accept defeat? Can they see that the change that has to happen is change they have to make? Or will they, yet gain, call the voters stuoid, blame the "Magical Black Man", and offer excuse upon excuse about how they're right, and the rest of us, a growing and compelling majority of us, are bad and wrong? 

I am telling you, conservative folks... I've been there. We, we older liberals, have been there. We called the voters stupid, we resisted changing anything, we called all y'all bad and wrong. And then, we had a Come To Jesus moment. And we stopped doing those things. Or, at least, we realized that those excuses are not an answer, and no sense of a solution.

You'd think, really, that Coming To Jesus would come naturally to the folks who wear religiion, and an especially muscuar Christianity, on their sleeves. But then, the falseness and wafer thin commitment to actual Christian valiuues and politically driven religious piety is one of their problems, now, isn't it? Change or die, people.... change or die.

The Change We Cannot Make

Six or so years ago, I started a blog; partly out of a passion to write, and partly because, I realized soon after starting it, I was immensely frustrated by the politics of the early 2000s.

At the time I wasn't alone, and a whole world of blogging grew and thrived and started the wave of change that, I'm convinced, eventually swept Barack Obama into the White House. 

Six years later, life is different, politics is different, and my passion for writing... drifted. This year I largely sat out the election, and blogging - both thoroughly disenchanted with the politics of right now, and pursuing some personal ambitions.

In any case, I'm glad I waited. Now, I feel like I have something to say. Again.

For months - probably close to a year - I've been gamely predicting to anyone who'd listen that Barack Obama would, most likely, be reelected by a grim electorate who, while clearly not impressed with his first term, saw little alternative. When Mitt Romney steamrolled his way to the GOP nomination, I calmly told family and friends that America would not elect him President.

Yeah, I feel pretty vindicated, but that's not really my point.

Mitt Romney was a bad bet that Republicans made whose loss confirmed political ideas I've been trumpeting for months, if not years: that Republicans have deep internal issues that must be addressed to grow and thrive, that anger alone cannot win an election of make a movement, and that both Mormonism and a pronounced inability to seem genuine or sincere wrecked Romney well before the debates. I feel particularly heartened that the dark witch's brew of undiscussed racial bias and deep personal hatred for Obama of many conservatives led to nothing but failure. And I remain amazed about how months of obvious indications of Romney's unfitness - the "47 percent" remarks, the lack of any common touch, the ham-handed inability to note any comprehension of the problems ordinary people face - still left so many with some sense that Romney could win this. He couldn't. He never could.

More obviously, though, this election is yet further confirmation, as if we needed it, that the Presidency of George W. Bush and the worst tendencies of the conservative movement have combined to create a Republican Party on a slow path to complete failure. Virtually everything about this election underlines that reality: