After the choice, a new chance to return the merchandise.

Understandably, America’s election, lost by the Republicans, owns the front pages. The volume of the coverage suggests that all has been said about the event. However, by looking beyond the “immediate trauma”, several observations emerge.

1. Obama capped his victory with a promise. He predicted, “The best is yet to come”. With that, he might have produced the phrase on which the Democratic contender will be hung in the campaign of 2016. 

That “yet to come” insinuates that much good was achieved in the first term. We think that if, as claimed, this record equals is “good”, then what comes will top whatever we had and be even worse. Thus, the idea behind the claim may be re-written. The best to come will mean by the next election something unintended. Accordingly, the best coming will be seen as the present tenant leaving the White House. 

 

2. The election resulted in a general defeat of the Republicans and for much not to the left of Joe Stalin. Collectivist causes prevailed. They ranged from higher taxes -imposed only on “others”- to life style issues laced with endorsed bad habits. One can explain this as the victory of indulgence platforms. The idea has sold that we can all be given something and that the interests of those that must be milked before the great distribution can commence, may be ignored. 

The implication is that fairness is widely equated with mindless concessions. Saying “no” because reality commands it, has been abandoned. That in favor of unearned luxury consumption because “yes we can” afford anything as long as it is on credit. 

In the course of the second term to be served as a punishment, the limited means and the unlimited demands made on them will emerge as an unbalanced equation. Here the task to educate the electorate emerges. Its gist is to present a rational case in an understandable language about why “Pinocchio” is to be resisted in favor of “Honest Joe”. 

 

3. Not only have delusions defeated realism, so did the interests of the many “takers” triumph over those of the “makers”. A decisive portion of the electorate was bribed to approve of its feeders. 

Prior to the vote, it was assumed that unemployment will be the hook on which Obama’s hide will be hung to dry in the wind. This logic suggested that the regions of high unemployment would vote against the candidate that promised jobs and goodies galore four years ago. Behind this thinking is the idea that all the unemployed resent their condition. Contrary to this expectation, the areas of high employment heaved Obama over the hump. The same applies to those segments of the population that are especially exposed to unemployment. 

The point of the foregoing is not that all those without jobs like to be supported. Nor is it that, while growing up, many have neglected to qualify for the jobs of the economy has to offer and to acquire the skills the future demands. Nevertheless, there are welfare careers to be made. To those that opt for that lifestyle, not jobs are decisive but the size of allotments. Guaranteed outcomes and certain encouraged lifestyles have economic consequences and result in client votes backing collectivists. 

 

4. In part, the GOP might have lost because of the “47%” comment. This makes that assessment into a diagnosis whose details suffer from improvised formulation. Indeed, groups were included that did not fit into the concept. Through that, the idea became a handicap. However, the wobbly details do not invalidate the basic idea behind the thought. Dependency makes clients, and feeding hands are seldom bit. It rather provokes the licking of paws and of other body parts.

This election indicates that the minorities have become the majority. More carefully put, the minorities have coalesced into a majority. To the extent that this is so, a statesmanlike need to educate the public transpires. It is to convince society’s subgroups that their interests are best served by participation and not by trading votes in exchange for support. Such a process would make these elements into differently striped components of an enlarged whole. 

 

5. Again, we have been shown that the voter is forgetful. He is normally apolitical and induced to follow starlet affairs and trivia. Awakened from hibernation, days prior to the election he attempts to make up his till then ignored political mind. This assures that he will act upon easily gathered and out of context impressions. It is as though a diagnosis of colon cancer would be based on tattoos on the biceps.

 

6. Impressions, right, wrong and irrelevant, are part of yet another point. The GOP and especially the Tea Party have a lesson to digest. They should refrain from taking positions that rate as eccentric and which are, at best, footnotes of their message. If someone believes that, for example, markets make a good job of regulating themselves then that deserves endorsement, as it is a public policy matter. If the same person is convinced that the earth is the shell of a tortoise that floats on heavenly juices, that is a private view and it should be left in that area.

 

7. The following is understandable in a country that resembles a continent. At a time when the world is closing in on America, foreign policy has again been an ignored. Misled by the seeming protection of remoteness, the voters continue to be without knowledge of world affairs and of the antecedents of today’s conditions. Therefore, many voters assume that if, by their vote, they ignore a threat, then the peril will go away. Exactly the opposite happens in the real world.

 

8. Soon, someone looking at the magnitude of the growing US debt will ask, “Where is the collateral”? That will make another observer wonder whether a repayment is possible. Thus prompted, a third will question the will and the ability to raise the blood, sweat and tears demanded by a correction. Then another will conclude that there has never been a will and there is hardly a prospect to cut back the growing weed of debt. Queues will form before the banks. Those in line will want gold for their colored paper.

With that in mind, one wonders, whether the discomfort of a cleansing “fiscal cliff” soon may not be a preferable to the postponed collapse.

 

9. The is also good news. It is that the election, with its manicured 49-51 in favor of the Left, shows that, at least relatively, the USA is in good shape. Surveys tell that 90 % of the Germans would have voted for Obama. In France, the score is 80%. That makes out of America a one-eyed visionary among the blind.