One of the curious things that happened as a result of this election is the obliteration of a central line of thought on the right. In wins and losses electorally, Republicans and conservatives often comfort themselves with the idea that fundamentally America agrees with them. Even in what passes for a big electoral win in the modern era, the 2008 election, the right told themselves that Obama had simply fooled America into believing he was a moderate.

The thesis of 2012 was that now exposed as a leftist, the right would simply need to show up and appeal to the America they know and love and they would win. Even better, they thought, was the idea that Obama didn’t run away from his ideology. Obama ran on raising taxes for the wealthy, on an activist federal government that would involve itself on a host of issues.

But America didn’t reject Obama. It rejected the conservative position and even though the election was closer than 2008, it was a more outright rejection than conservatives expected.

For the first time in a long time, even after electoral losses to Clinton and in the 2006 midterms, the right has to actually question a fundamental pillar of their movement – the idea that their positions are America’s true defaults.

Polls indicating a new generation of Americans who believe in an activist government, one that favors federal stimulus over tax cuts, further erodes this mindset.

Even when Clinton crushed Dole in 1996, the right didn’t feel as if America had flat-out rejected them as it does now.

The right has returned to this trope so often, and it is regularly used to blast liberals for being the ones who are truly out of touch. But a lot of it hasn’t actually worked. Polling shows that Republicans are thought of as the party of the rich far more often than Democrats are considered elites. Despite oodles of GOP rhetoric about latte-sipping liberals, Democrats are more often associated with the middle and working class than Republicans.

Despite the size of the right’s megaphone, the perception hasn’t caught on.

This isn’t to say Republicans can’t or won’t be elected, but the central idea – the forthright rightness of the conservative/Republican outlook on the world that was thought to be held by Americans who only supported Democrats when they could fake these positions – is bankrupt.

I expect they will continue to reassure themselves that the nation will come around, though I also expect that day won’t come. As in the past, it’s going to take a change in the party for them to get over this disconnect. That’s not impossible, both parties have morphed over time. The Democratic and Republican parties of 1960 are nothing like the parties today.

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I was surprised today to see Bloomberg correspondent Julianna Goldman’s interview with President Obama trumpeted as the first post-election interview the President has given. It still says on Bloomberg’s website that it’s “his first interview since winning re-election.”

Why was I surprised? Because something like 5 hours before Bloomberg aired and streamed the interview, Obama had already called in for a live interview on comedian Steve Harvey’s nationally syndicated radio show.

You can hear the audio of Obama on Harvey’s program here.

I should note that I’m not equating a hard news outlet like Bloomberg with an entertainment program like Harvey’s. And Harvey has been quite transparent that he is a supporter of the president’s. Certainly the questions on Bloomberg were harder edged and more journalistically sound.

Still. I feel like this has been part of an ongoing ignorance of minority media outlets. I have yet to see the press devote as much attention to the role of minority media – particularly urban (black) radio and latino outlets on TV and radio – in motivating Obama’s base to get out the vote. I don’t have the hard data but I’m betting it was pretty instrumental to the President’s re-election (one of the first things he did on Harvey’s show was to thank him and his listeners for going out and voting for him.)

And Harvey’s interview wasn’t all fluff. He discussed details of the fiscal cliff debate with the President, the same topic that comprised the bulk of Bloomberg’s interview.

I checked out the numbers, and a New York Times report said that Bloomberg’s audience averages around 200,000. By comparison, Steve Harvey’s syndicator boasts 7 million listeners to his show. Even if that number is inflated, his show (along with Tom Joyner’s similar radio show) has considerable reach with a demographic that shows that they vote at the ballot box and at the box office (most recently to the tune of $91 million).

The media needs to stop pretending that the club hasn’t gotten bigger and more diverse and they should start acknowledging this fact of life.

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The GOP has been very upset with President Obama over the last couple of days. They’re squealing like stuck pigs, mad that Obama apparently has learned a valuable lesson about governing alongside the GOP. His proposal on settling the fiscal cliff issue contained something previous Obama Administration offers to the GOP didn’t, during his first term so far: leverage.

For some reason – assuming the best of the right, I suppose – President Obama has negotiated with the GOP in a very silly manner. Previous Obama deals with the GOP on issues like the stimulus, health care reform, and the debt ceiling made the assumption that the GOP is an actual rational entity and not a giant ball of emotion powered by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

Under Obama’s faulty assumptions (and common sense, to be honest), the GOP would be capable of seeing some of their ideas included in liberal-leaning legislation because they lost the 2008 election and until 2010 didn’t have the House. In response, the GOP chose to effectively shut down the government and hope they could do enough damage to win the 2012 election.

That didn’t work, and now after admitting that Obama campaigned on a left-leaning platform of raising rich people’s taxes they can’t even go to the tired well of “but he campaigned as a moderate” that they went to with him before and with Clinton.

On Obama’s side, he seems to have realized that baking in the GOP’s previously endorsed positions just makes them turn against their own ideology in the hopes of holding up their prime directive: opposing Obama. So now, hopefully, he’s doing what you’re supposed to do while negotiating. You start with your strongest position then work towards a compromise. This ensures that the right will also give up things.

The whole reason we are facing the fiscal cliff is thanks to Tea Party intransigence surrounding the debt ceiling. If we go over it, it will have been because the GOP continues to value party and ideology over country, to the detriment of both quite frankly. As with the Gingrich shutdown of the 1990s, the GOP will be blamed for this, while Obama is likely to get the credit regardless of how middle class tax cuts end up being preserved.

They are stuck, and the President is not nearly as naive as he used to be. Squealing time.

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In case you wondered if the right had learned anything about how their epistemic closure from real news and data led to yet another lost presidential election, think again. Here’s Fox-created candidate Allen West, who just lost re-election now comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. Now sure, both he and President Lincoln are carbon-based lifeforms but that’s about all the nutjob congressman and one of the greatest people to ever live have in common.

Similarly, congressional Republicans are still pursuing some bizarre conspiracy about the talking points on the Benghazi attack and not the actual attack. Thanks Fox News.

And infamously incorrect Fox pundit Dick Morris is flogging a book about how the UN is taking over the Internet and some other nonsense. Is he being shunned? Nope. Thanks Fox News.

And of course all this intransigence on the fiscal cliff, refusing to budge even after a presidential election has vindicated the President’s position and all polling shows that the right will get most of the blame for the lack of a deal — thanks Fox News.

They haven’t learned anything. Fox is still telling them everything is going great for the right. And it will continue to do so until there isn’t anything left on the right.

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I wrote the following on Twitter yesterday. I may or may not have been under the influence of leftover ham, candied yams, and stuffing.

All around me lay the discarded turkey carcasses, the faint odor of stuffing, and the mental trauma of too much ham. it was time.

A message came in on my communicator. High priority. The big boss was power mad from his second term and out for blood.

The image of the fat man had “target” scrawled across his forehead. Kringle.

An Apache helicopter hovered over the shopping mall. I had a napsack, a loaded gun and lust for blood.

The compound was just as intel had described it. small. surrounded by candy canes, and thick with ELVES.

The two lead elves appeared on the outside to be surly teens earning minimum wage. But my gut knew better. Ho. Ho. Ho.

The little operatives were lined up in thick little snot-nosed packs. Babies were crying. Where was the fat man?

The sign said Santa would be back in five minutes. I stopped over at the Cinnabon depot. “Load me up, this is war.”

I purchased a set of night vision goggles at Sharper Image. Overpriced, but I didnt care. This was Soros’ dime.

I formed a shelter from a pile of Furbys. The eyes weirded me out, but the fur kept me warm. Mall temperature is a beast.

The smell of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels fills the air. I have to focus. The fat man is coming back. And I best be ready.

I turned up the music on my overpriced Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Carrie Underwood was always the best killin’ music.

There he is. The fat man. Kringle. Geronimo. But he was surrounded by kids. That sick SOB. I couldn’t just take the shot.

My trigger finger twitched. Damn that hot chocolate. I was all hopped up on sugar and cocoa and Kringle WASJUSTSITTINGTHERE.

I whispered to myself in my best Sean Hannity voice: “You ARE a great American.” And I squeezed the trigger. This would be the last War On Christmas.

It jammed. My screams of “Festivus” put the ELVES on high alert. My cover’s blown. The fat man is in the wind.

Before I could blink, I’m knee deep in jolly. Elves to the left, on the right they’re prepping reindeer. I look for exits.

My eyes meet Kringle’s. I mouth “next time.” He grins. I run. Crowd in the Apple Store. I can lose them there.

In seconds the genius is out like a light. In two clicks I’ve got my turtleneck on, rebooting iPads and iPods. I’m in deep cover.

An elf walks in, looking for me. I gamble. Dazzle him with the new iPad. RETINA DISPLAY MFer! He reaches for his wallet. I’m gone.

I send a message to 44. The fat man lives. Kringle’s won this round. He assures me I’ll get another shot. I vow it.

Fin.

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Jonah Goldberg (of Hillary Clinton = Hitler infamy) writes that he thinks he was wrong to dismiss George W. Bush and his “compassionate conservative” branding. Goldberg is essentially admitting here what some of us have pointed out for some time: Actual conservatism cannot sell in America.

Barry Goldwater was the first to realize this, as he was trounced from coast to coast for the sin of supporting absurdity. Ensuing Republicans either knew that they had to keep the crazies locked in the basement or had to just pretend like they didn’t exist. And no, don’t even bring up crazy tax-raising Ronald Reagan in this argument. He had to run for office as the real Reagan, not the gauzy, historically revisionist version of Ronald Reagan that conservatives hold up as an icon today.

By 2000, George W. Bush realized the only serious way for conservatives to be elected to the presidency was to pretend not to be conservatives. He put the crazies in the basement, then tried to out-compassion Al Gore. Even that was only good enough for an electoral college squeaker.

This year, we saw Romney shift to the hard right in an attempt to win the nomination, then in the first debate he tried to do a song and dance and disappear his severe conservatism. But he made the fatal flaw of actually standing in front of the cameras for those Republican debates. And America saw a true conservative, one who would do as much as possible to ban abortion, kill the safety net, and ask “how high” to the filthy rich and the corporations they operate.

It was rejected.

The only way for conservatism to win a national election in America is for conservatives to pretend to be centrist or even liberal on several key issues. Being against the actual safety net, as conservatives are, is electoral suicide. Being a totalitarian against a woman’s right to choose, is key to yet another double-digit loss among women voters. On issue after issue, the conservative position is in the fringe.

A Republican presidential candidate will only succeed in the future if he does as Bush did: hide his conservatism or disguise it in progressivism. It speaks volumes about just how hollow your ideology truly is if it can’t stand up in the light, but must instead hide in the darkness like a cockroach.

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All you guys who were talking smack before the election — where’d you guys go? Did something happen last Tuesday? You mad?

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Like John McCain before him, Mitt Romney has lost an election in a coast-to-coast drubbing by Barack Obama. Like McCain, Romney also doesn’t get why America rejected him.

Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss toPresident Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a “superb” campaign with “no drama,” and attributed his rival’s victory to “the gifts” the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama’s  first term.

Obama, Romney argued, had been “very generous” to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. He cited as motivating factors to young voters the administration’s plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest and the extension of health coverage for students on their parents’ insurance plans well into their 20s. Free contraception coverage under Obama’s healthcare plan, he added, gave an extra incentive to college-age women to back the president.

Romney argued that Obama’s healthcare plan’s promise of coverage “in perpetuity” was “highly motivational” to those voters making $25,000 to $35,000 who might not have been covered, as well as to African American and Hispanic voters. Pivoting to immigration, Romney said the Obama campaign’s efforts to paint him as “anti-immigrant” had been effective and that the administration’s promise to offer what he called “amnesty” to the children of illegal immigrants had helped turn out Hispanic voters in record numbers.

These guys. No, Mitt, you didn’t lose because of Obama giving away things. You lost because you’re an out of touch wealthy elitist who couldn’t connect with the American people. You lost because you called corporations people and described soldiers and people on disability as those who feel “entitled” to food. You lost because you embraced in a bear hug the most fringe anti-immigrant position out there. You lost due to the inability to connect on a basic level with people who don’t earn six figures a year.

But what’s great is that Republicans haven’t learned anything. Nevermind that they are the party and movement of corporate and 1% gifts and giveaways, they think that the only reason Democrats like Obama win are giveaways to minority groups, not because the Republican party has whittled itself down to white male wealthy extremists.

There’s a different America out there. A more diverse, tolerant America than the one in which guys like Mitt Romney used to run to the exclusion of all the rest of us. This election, more than any other, has bitten the old ruling class in the rear end, but they’re too busy making even more excuses for why they suck to even realize this.

Oh well.

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Conservatives are addicted to Ronald Reagan more than they are in love with tax cuts. More than any other issue – and there are several – holding the modern conservative movement back, I think their never-ending obsession with President Reagan is at the top of the list.

First, a caveat. It isn’t as if the left doesn’t have its presidential heroes. Without a doubt figures like FDR, Kennedy, and LBJ (on domestic policy at least) will always hold a special place in the left’s heart. The same can be said for President Clinton, as well as non-Democrats like Teddy Roosevelt (a favorite of mine). But, and this is key, as much as the New Deal shaped our modern world, there is little of the cult of personality around FDR that there is with Reagan.

The right has allowed the right-wing hagiographic version of Reagan (the one who didn’t raise taxes, like the real Reagan) to dictate so much of what they are as a party. On domestic policy and foreign policy, the right is regularly pausing to ask “what would Reagan do” rather than come up with a modern, conservative, solution.

I’m a liberal, I don’t want conservatism to succeed, but despite that I do want a coherent conservative alternative to be offered if only to keep our liberals on their toes. Plus, history shows us that overall that’s better for the party.

But the right adheres to a brand of Reaganism that The Great Communicator himself could never live up to. Reagan’s actual policies and occasional compromises would put him quite a distance from the Tea Party that supposedly reveres him.

And let’s be blunt: Ronald Reagan hasn’t been the head of the Republican Party for 23 years now. Children born on the last day of his presidency are finished with college.

There isn’t anything wrong with parties and movements having national heroes and examples of leadership, but it becomes too much when you allow them (or fantasy versions of them) to rule your thinking so much it becomes a hindrance, rather than a celebration.

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So that was pretty sweet. My guy – our guy – won, in decisive fashion. A Democrat has been elected to two terms in the White House. Barack Obama joins Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton in the hall of electoral success. And I think history will record his achievements at the upper end of the spectrum as far as consequence – just based on what he’s done so far.

I have to indulge my already large ego here in pointing out I really got some things right. As far back as November of 2011 I predicted that President Obama would win by 2-3%. That appears to be the margin of victory right now. For once, again based on current results, I actually called Florida right.

As many liberals lost their minds after Obama’s poor performance in the first debate, I had a strange sort of serenity in simply trusting Obama to triumph. In his entire national career and my time as a supporter, the only time I’ve seriously doubted him was after he lost the New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton. Since then I realized that he and his braintrust really know what they’re doing. We saw that in 2008 and in almost epic form during this year’s election.

The single biggest thing I’ve learned about politics in America, encompassing the 2004 contest and up until last night’s triumph is this: Being “against” is simply not enough. It. Will. Not. Work. Progressive hatred of George W. Bush was not able to drag John Kerry across the finish line. Conservative hatred of Barack Obama equally failed to pull Mitt Romney into the oval office. Both parties need to learn, via the primary process, that simply picking a candidate based on your perception of what America wants is ultimate folly.

“Electability” is really a myth. A candidate does not gain electability until he has a legion of passionate supporters behind him or her. Electorally successful two-term presidents like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and now Barack Obama prove this maxim. You have to be FOR someone for America to get the right signal to vote for them. Period.

On the left, we have accomplished something truly great. Our standard-bearer has been reaffirmed from coast to coast while the right has suffered enough of a defeat to – at least on the surface for now – start seriously questioning their place in the American political conversation. Obama’s winning coalition – a coalition that really looks like America in 2012 – strikes at the very heart and soul of foundational American conservatism.

America is moving forward, and past them.

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