What We Have Learned

by Errington C. Thompson, MD

President Barack Obama resoundingly won reelection on Tuesday night, November 6. He won 332 electoral votes, because 62 million Americans gave him their votes, and their vote of confidence.

We learned on Tuesday night that a majority of Americans had decided to stick with the president who has worked heroically to dig us out of the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression. They decided that Barack Obama was not soft on security, that he does know what he’s doing, and that he would do a better job fighting for the American people than his opponent Mitt Romney. We learned that a majority of the American people respect and trust Barack Obama to put the country on a course for a safe, prosperous future.

A minority of Americans did not learn those lessons; they preferred to believe the big lie propounded by opponents of the president. It is one thing to tell a lie. It is a completely different thing to convince yourself that that lie is the reality.

We learned on Tuesday night that many conservatives believed the lie. Many conservatives, especially those on Fox News, told their audience that this wasn’t a close election, that Mitt Romney was in the lead, and that he was going to win. They said all the national polls were wrong – including their own Fox News polls.

Dick Morris, formerly a Clinton strategist and now an overpaid Fox News analyst, said that Mitt Romney would have a “dominant” win. Karl Rove, once called “Bush’s brain,” and the man behind major Republican Super-PACs, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Mitt Romney would garner at least 279 electoral college votes. Fred Barnes, editor of the Weekly Standard, came up with a new theory that undecided voters line up with the challenger (Mitt Romney). Newt Gingrich, Republican strategist and former congressman, read the tea leaves and decided that Mitt Romney would rake in more than 300 electoral votes and over 53% of the popular vote. Larry Kudlow, CNBC personality, predicted, laughably, that Mitt Romney would rake in 330 electoral votes, leaving 208 for Obama – almost the exact opposite of what really happened.

Now, there’s no problem with being optimistic. The problem is there was absolutely no data to support any of these predictions. The problem is many of the viewers of conservative television thought these guys had some expertise and some knowledge – when, in fact, they had none. As more and more conservatives began to make more and more assertive predictions, people started to believe them.

There’s no greater evidence that they started believing their own lies than Karl Rove’s meltdown on national television on election night. When Fox News called Ohio for Barack Obama, Karl Rove went apoplectic. It was the best example I’ve ever seen of delusion meeting reality. We learned that conservatives believe their own nonsense.

On Tuesday we learned that good, strong, assertive progressives can win major elections. Running as a “moderate conservative” and “independent Republican,” Sen. Scott Brown had won the late Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts in a special runoff election about two years ago. This year he lost his reelection bid to a real progressive, former Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren – who, as far as I know, will be the first economics professor in Congress.

Todd “legitimate rape” Akin lost his Senate bid to Claire McCaskill. This is doubly delicious as Todd Akin had to give up his House seat in order to run for the Senate. Former governor Tommy Thompson – “I’m the right man to get rid of Medicare” – lost his Senate race to the openly gay progressive Tammy Baldwin. And both Representative Connie Mack in Florida and his wife, Representative Mary Bono Mack of California, lost their respective races.

One of the best victories of the night, which I’m still savoring, was Patrick Murphy’s victory over Allen West. Allen West had earned a reputation for being one of the most abrasive and offensive conservatives on Capitol Hill. He called early voting an entitlement and opposed it. According to West, food stamps and Social Security “enslave” Americans. He said Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the Democratic Party – and, like Joesph McCarthy, announced that he had “a list” of 81 Democratic House members who were “enrolled members of the Communist Party.” As you would expect, in spite of losing, Allen West will not go away. He is demanding a recount.

New York Times columnistCharles Blow pointed out one of the most interesting statistics of this election cycle. In Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of blacks, 89% of the whites voted for Mitt Romney. In the state with the lowest percentage of blacks, Maine, 57% of whites voted for Barack Obama. Another interesting to statistic is that Massachusetts has the highest percentage of college graduates in their population at 39%. Massachusetts went overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. The state which has the lowest percentage of college graduates (18.5%) is West Virginia, which went overwhelmingly to Mitt Romney.

Finally, a few words about Hurricane Sandy. I blow a big fat raspberry at anyone who believes that disasters should simply be managed by the states. Disasters like Hurricane Sandy cause widespread destruction. They are extremely costly. No state is sitting around with an extra several billion in their coffers. The response to a major disaster requires complex coordination between local, state, and federal officials in order to get resources to those in need. In a disaster, the local infrastructure faces a meltdown: emergency generators failed, because they were in basements that got flooded; gas stations with gas couldn’t pump it because they lacked electricity; people in highrises had no water – because electric pumps needed to push water up 10 stories had no power.

To the best of my knowledge, even major hospitals had to evacuate because of loss of power. Think about moving hundreds of patients, dialysis patients, ICU patients, some of the patients just out of the operating room, others on ventilators, many in wheelchairs with no elevators working – it is a logistical nightmare. Hospital evacuations had to be done not once but twice – to the best of my knowledge, without one major complication. I tip my hat to all of the first responders.

One last thing I have learned as I write this on Veterans Day: I’m able to sit here and express my opinion to anyone who will listen in part because the sacrifices, hard work and training that our veterans have had to go through. I have learned that I salute, support, and love our veterans.