This will be the last political post for perhaps some time as I seek to re-transition myself and the blog to other, more pressing matters like design, the use of the color brown, the latest Palm handheld, and the dearth of good museums today.
Actually, I don’t mean to jest. Politics, for almost everyone I know, has taken center stage in their lives and the way they live, act, work, eat, and, probably, sleep. Some state it outright while others suffer quietly and with the conviction that others are enduring similar angst and dolor.
I think what I find most disquieting (pun intended) right now is the presence of tremendous — but unexpected — sadness among many I know and others I don’t. It’s as if no one expected Mr. Bush to win the election — or if he did, that his winning would be less triumphant somehow. This inexplicable (to me) feeling of collective sorrow is not like anything else I can remember during my lifetime.
I certainly don’t mean to act like some sensor of the collective masses — though I aspire to be a kind of psychic sponge that assesses the mood ring color of the totality of the populace. And, if anything, I’m projecting my something onto others’ nothing. Yet, I can’t help but think that the sorrow I’m seeing (on magazines, in friends, at gatherings) is the sense that an era has ended — an era of New Deal sentiment and policy that helped drive such sentiment into our communal core. It’s not about liberals or progressive or democrats or independents; it’s about gentleness, thoughtfulness, and justice and the expectation that those values were in the hearts and minds of other U.S. citizens.
It turns out that those expectations are dashed and our senses about the future of hope — are dashed.
All posts by Andrew Boardman
A Blue State
First, thanks to M.B, for the title of this post.
It’s not without some incredible feelings of awe that the Democrats lost the election in large part because of people who believe that their particular kind of morality is key to the future of the country. The recent post by Victor (see end of posting) is important because it outlines what liberals and social democrats generally have been accused of for ages: government is built to help people make decisions about their utterly complex lives. In the case of this election, it seems that a slim majority of voters would like the government to be involved in a different set of relationships: not social welfare, poverty, old age, health and wellbeing, or education but rather marriage, sexuality, and science.
I want to change the corner slightly and point out some very interesting data points that have been published by the New York Times a few days ago. They speak to the reality of a very confused electorate, an empassioned and bitter set of folks that seem to think government is somehow both the problem and the solution, and a population filled with minorities that are not getting, somehow, represented in government. Here:
- 54% of voters over 60 (24% of total voters) voted for Bush
- 58% of white voters (77% of total voters) voted for Bush
- 88% of black voters (11% of total voters) voted for Kerry
- 74% of Jewish voters (3% of total voters) voted for Kerry
- 22% of voters felt that moral values were the issues that “mattered most” to them – these were the folks that won Mr. Bush II the election as 80% of them voted for him
P.S. The actual article (up for a few more days) is here but the superbly well-designed chart is hosted here.
Ununited States
Yesterday was so powerful, pulling a lever for a politician who could save us from ourselves and from the possibility of an overtly powerful chain of events and companies from controlling our destinies in a semi-authoritarian sense of statehood. But today these Ununited States are divided and Rove and friends would like nothing more than for 49% of the country to fall upon itself in disgust and accusations and recriminations. My only hope is that the Spring of 2005 will bring about a more full acknowledgement of the utter failure of Bush policies and, like Nixons’ second term, Bush’s will garner an internal reaction unlike any other seen this side of the Atlantic. G-d Bless America.
Dow Kerry
I’m no Dow Jones industrialist but you can’t beat the historical record. CNN reports today that a study predicts Kerry will win based on the Dow’s October record.
The first paragraph of hte story reads: According to a recent study by the Hirsch Organization, publishers of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, if the Dow loses more than 0.5 percent of its value in the month of October before Election Day, then an incumbent president is going to lose his job. The Dow fell 0.52 percent in October. This predictor has been true every election since 1904.
Vote tomorrow!
Long and Lost
It appears that my old high school friend, D.S., is coming to town. I haven’t seen him in a while, perhaps two point five years in fact, when he threw himself a goodbye party at a little bar near Canal Street, a stone’s throw from where I used to work and smell the collapse of the Twin Towers daily. He moved to Berlin, which was not an untoward move.
Alas, his return (or not) comes at a time when I feel very much without many of my old friends and colleagues. There are so many people who I once “hung out” with, sat with, drank with, movied with, talked with, commiserated with and they are all alive, thankfully, living their actions in good order. But I have to say that time has put a bridge between me and them and I do miss them, each and every one. Not dramatically or desparately – just plain old miss them.
(I don’t think most people want to admit that they had friends that they don’t see or correspond with anymore because it’s painful to know that this string of (perhaps natural) failures is a precursor to nursing home culture.)
I thought about compiling a list of the individuals who I miss and posting that list here. But then I thought about the categories of “missing” with which I might organize that list. The categories might be something like:
- Phoned in the past six months
- Has kids, no longer available
- Been over three years, no idea
- Former girlfriend, thankfully
- Hasn’t called or written me (their fault)
- Haven’t called or written them (my fault)
- Lives in another country (Europe)
- Lives in another country (Canada)
- Might as well live in another country (California)
- Went insane
- Had a falling out with, no love lost
- Nothing in common but college
- Emotionally tight but geographically far
- Common experience under duress, now not
- Godless heathen
- Hopeless aristocrat
- Artist and too busy to meet up
- Artist and too smart to meet up
- Artist and too cool to meet up
- Only does e-mail these days
- Only does IM these days
- Won’t remember me
- Willfully won’t remember me
- Hopes I never contact them
- Hopes I do contact them but won’t themselves take the initiative
- Still in college
The Art of Winning
Although I’ve been relatively pessimistic about the current election and under the assumption that Mr. Bush will win by a narrow margin, I now have a hunch that Kerry and the Democratic National Committee knows more about this than anyone will let on: they will win.
It’s not based on facts, reporting, or punditry, but my hunch that Kerry will win this election is based upon the verbal mudslinging, the tone of each candidate, and the language behind some of their past week’s stumping. Bush is beginning to look weary, and his words about Kerry seem old, tired, and are symptomatic of fearfulness because they engender fear itself. Kerry, on the other hand, looks increasingly resolved, resolute, defiant, and alert.
What’s behind this? My suspicion is that the Democrats actually know that they are ahead by a few percentage points that is not reflected in polls; these points come from the typically disenfranchised voters, the mobile phone set, and the recently registered and angry. And I suspect, as well, that the Republicans right now realize they’re about to lose and are pulling out the punches like never before.
Neither party can actually talk about this publicly for fear of alienating voters and reducing turnout in a seriously close election. But I’ll bet both parties know which way the wind is shifting.
I could be wrong. I hope I’m not.
CrackBerry 7100t
After much hemming and hawing and spitting and scratching, I broke down and bought the newest Blackberry telephone the 7100t from T-Mobile, which is part of the BlackBerry 7100 Series.
For over one year, I thought about purchasing the now famous Treo 600 and looked at all the Treo rumor sites for information about the upcoming Treo 650 that looks very sweet indeed. But I realized that I did not want to spent about $500.00 to continue on with the relatively crappy Sprint PCS network which offers both high cost plans and average customer service. And I didn’t want a telephone that can do everything except wash the dishes because I believe that PDAs are best kept on a tight leash lest they dominate the remaining brain space we all have outside of our cubicles.
The new Blackberry, at $199, is just right. It isn’t for the power-user, the ones who want to stay up all day and night glued to their handheld to see who emailed or imed every few minutes or moments. And the keyboard, which innovatively combines two letters on every key in the small QWERTY keyboard takes some getting used to. It’s easy to hit a wrong key on the thing but I do that anyway on my 18″ keyboard and the last thing I want to do is actually “type” on a phone.
With the brilliant advent of third-party Mac synchronization software for the BlackBerry (which took 14 months to produce, apparently without much thanks to Research in Motion, I can now see all my calendar events, contacts, to do lists, and emails on the same device. (No need for a phone, PDA, or a short-term human memory!) Email comes fast and furious thanks to RIM’s superb email handling service and the phone is small, the way phones should be.
Best yet, surfing on the Web on the device, while slow, is actually possible and the screen resolution combined with a usable scrollwheel on the side is very, well, handy.
For Me
For anybody who has ever created a website (or built a house) this little ditty may strike a chord: If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers…. This has been making the rounds for a while, but it’s so completely right on. Thanks, Jake.
Revelatory
Every so often, it’s good to get out of the blog ruts. I’ve found a few new titles, to me, that are fascinating, well designed, and fundamentally far-reaching. But this is the best one of the lot. Published by NYU’s Department of Journalism, The Revealer is a “daily review of religion and the press” and is, well, pure brilliance. Take a look at the slide shows, the crazy long columns of article after article, and the Movable Type-driven categories and you’ll see the future of Web journalism and writing. Only drawback: it ain’t anywhere near Web standards compliant and the code behind it looks like it was built with a shovel, a sledgehammer, and an axe — surely not the tools of the future Web.
Operation Bubbe
A newish (pun intended) organization called Operation Bubbe is attempting to bring folks from other parts of the country to Florida to help Jewish retirees get to the polls on November 2. (The overarching theme of course is that voters in Florida hold the key to our collective political future. Other organizations, like MoveOnPAC, have similarly good plans.)
O.B. asked me to design OperationBubbe.com Online Store | CafePress” href=”http://www.cafepress.com/opbubbe.13786616?zoom=yes#zoom”>a little t-shirt ensignia for them. I’m planning on buying a few of these.