Some solace

Les finds a few glimmers of silver lining in the election results. To paraphrase:

1. We’ve survived bad presidents before, and the win (and gains in Congress) may give enough rope for Bush and the Far Right to hang themselves with. I hope so. I’m a bit worried over some GOP moves to exclude certain laws from federal court oversight — a horrid, horrid precedent, even if constitutional.
2. High voter turnouts were good news. Amen. Better by far for people to be engaged than apathetic. You can fool a large body of voters for a while. But you can get things by a disinterested populace a lot longer.

3. The election was still close. Agreed. Add in the noise vs. signal issue (what really drove voters, and how persistent are those issues going into 2006 and 2008), and it’s clearly not the end of the world. A McGovern or Dukakis debacle — that would have been a lot more profound. Indeed, that Kerry managed to get as close as he did only three years after 9-11 is remarkable on the face of it.

4. The banning of gay marriage in so many state constitutions is still better than a federal amendment for the same. That’s a reach, perhaps. Nor do I think Les’ contention that states that okay gay marriage (or, more likely, civil unions) are going to economically benefit in such a way as to get other states to change their ways (I doubt the economic effect will be that profound, and it’s a very different sort of issue to put at cross-purposes). This remains, to me, the most depressing outcome of the election.

Anyway, a good post, worth reading.

UPDATE: And another silver lining, from the comments — the defeat of Keyes (already mentioned here) in conjunction with the election of Obama.