Stick With It

that went well.

Well, shit. Everyone came through.

America: It took you six years too long to figure it out, but I owe you a bit of an apology. You did understand eventually.

Democratic Politicians: You've still been a bunch of roll-over cowards over the past six years. You seem to have plans ready to go to bring back a sense of civic progressivism; it'd be nice if you could give us back our civil rights while you're at it. You've got a chance: please don't fuck it up.

Media: Holy crap, you suck. Oh, sure, after the election you cover the Democrats' ideas. Before the election, all you had time for was repeating the Republican negative campaign slogans. You helped promote the war in Iraq until it became untenable; you've stood by silently while Bush has run our core liberties into the ground; you seem only slightly more bothered than Bush about torturing people. You despicable bunch of feeble, timorous jackanapes. The public doesn't believe you any more, the Democrats won despite you, and if anything good happens in the coming years, it certainly won't be your doing.

(I'm harsh, I know. The media are owned by giant corporations. But they didn't even try.)

California's Proposition 83 passed, but has already been blocked from enforcement by a federal court. This remarkable piece of legislation tried to do a few things:

Using a very broad definition of "sex offender", it would extend the limits around things like schools and parks where sex offenders could live. We have so many of those things here that a city like San Mateo becomes essentially off-limits, thus pushing offenders out to rural communities where they can be neither monitored nor helped.
Forced lifetime satellite monitoring, and a variety of other punitive measures.
Provided no new crimes or penalties for not complying with any of the requirements in the provision. (That one's my favorite.)

Now, it's true that certain classes of sex offenders have unbelievably huge rates of recidivism. But the best argument against this proposition that I heard bypassed all the arguments about "civil rights" and "paying one's debt to society". The guy being interviewed simply asked, "If they're still such a danger to society that we need to monitor them for the rest of their lives, why are we letting them out of prison?".

We're all very happy today, and I think Americans of all parties are relieved that we're back to a two-party system. The Democratic message is progressive, of all the crazy things, and now that everyone's agreed the Republicans have completely screwed up everything they've touched, and they're clearly incompetent at managing money, we're finally acting as though the ideas of progressivism and fiscal responsibility aren't mutually exclusive. Yay! For a fascinating vision of what America might be, I recommend this interview with Barack Obama. I'd never heard him talk, and I think he's really astonishing.

Chris