Congratulations to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. My best wishes for the next four years.

My thanks go to those who made it happen. Here are some examples of people who know how to get it done.

Allegro.

[…]

By the time we’d made the loop around the park and were about ready to say goodnight, I laughed and said “Gee, you said you were sick of politics and what do I do but get on my soapbox!” She said that when I talk about it, it’s fun and interesting and she wants to hear more. It’s just the bits she hears on news broadcasts that she’s annoyed with because they don’t tell her anything - it’s just fragmented sound-bites that she doesn’t trust or understand because she doesn’t follow the back-stories. Now that I’m filling in some of the pieces (in my own inimitable way - I’m nothing if not colorful when I get worked up about something) she’s getting interested in finding out more.

I even have her now looking forward to watching the upcoming debates with me. This is huge. Turning Texas blue, one low-info voter at a time. :D

Read the whole thing!

Decatur Deb.

Wife and I are awaiting our Florida registration training packet—we should be registering students at one of the universities this week as they sign up for classes.

OhNoZombies!

I am proud to announce that I have been asked to bring a stack of voter registration papers to my husband’s mother’s church.
It’s awesome because some of these people haven’t voted in 25 years!
{{happy dance in progress}}

Stanley Sea.

I just registered with VoteRides.COM

Via a tweet I got. Providing rides on election day. I’ll take off & drive all day. Hopefully it gets out there.

Obdicut.

I’m doing get out the vote stuff. I suggest anyone with any spare time do the same.

EmmaAnne.

Yep. Just delivered voter guides today, to coincide with people receiving their mail-in ballots. This reminds our people to vote, and encourages them to vote the whole ballot.

And PhillyPretzel.

I have to be at the polls at 7am until 8pm. A very long day.

Those are just a few examples I’ve found here over the last couple of months. Thanks to all of you who did anything, even if it was just to vote. But extra thanks to those who did more. It worked!

Glenn Beck is despondent over the reelection of Barack Obama, and he’s talking apocalypse. I know, he always talks apocalypse, but this time he’s headin’ out to the farm with a good supply of ammo.

Today, Glenn Beck sought to make sense of the results of last night’s election, beginning with a lengthy, tear-filled monologue about George Washington before getting down to business by rolling out hints about his plans to create an entire Blaze “ecosystem” that will be able to operate independently of the government and existing media structure because everything is about to go downhill … so people need to start buying up farmland, pull their kids out of the public schools, and load up on guns.

My other favorite wingnut reaction today is from creepy right wing neo-Confederate Robert Stacy McCain, who is thinking dark thoughts, utterly convinced that America is doomed beyond all hope of redemption.

Perhaps others will still see some cause for hope, and in another few weeks my friends may persuade me to see it, too. But today I will hear no such talk, and I doubt I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow. At the moment, I am convinced America is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, and any talk of the future fills me with dread and horror.

For further context on the possible reasons why the reelection of America’s first black President is having such a mind-shattering effect on Mr. McCain, see: The Other ‘Other McCain’.

In the universe of Star Trek, the Kobayashi Maru is a test taken by cadets at Starfleet command. It is presented as a “no win” scenario in which there are only two possible courses of action:

1. Rescue the crew of a damaged ship, but violate a treaty to do so and provoke a battle (in which you are outgunned and cannot win) with an alien race.

2. Leave the ship alone, thus avoiding the battle but guaranteeing the certain deaths of everyone on board.

This campaign season, the GOP ended up in their own Kobayashi Maru scenario, stemming purely from the nature of the beast as it were.

They never found a good answer. There may not have been a good answer. In order to win the Republican primaries and thus become the Presidential nominee, a candidate was going to have to get the Tea Party contingent of the party on their side. This was not optional. The Tea Party became a large part of the GOP base following the 2008 elections and therefore a large segment of Republican primary voters for the 2012 election came from that group (“Tea Party” here refers to not only groups specifically identified by that name, but also other groups with similar beliefs).

In order to get that Tea Party vote and the GOP nomination, a candidate would have to promote and support viewpoints and policies favored by these groups. We saw what happened when Jon Hunstman tried to go against the grain. He failed miserably.

The eventual GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, took note of this and shifted to the right on all of his positions so he would gain some acceptance among Tea Party voters and not ruin his chances of winning the nomination.

It worked and after winning the primaries he now had to focus on the general election, which meant he’d have to find a way to appeal to wider base of voters if he wanted to win the White House.

Here we find the “Kobayashi Maru” problem.

In order to appeal to a wider range of voters, he’d have to by design support policy positions that were more moderate than what the Tea Party groups were in favor of, but if he did so he’d lose Tea Party support which would damage his chances of beating Obama.

It truly was a no-win scenario.

If he expressed a strong, direct preference for prayer in public schools, he’d hit big with the Tea Party types, but he’d also alienate moderates. If he endorsed religious freedom in schools, he’d gain moderate support but lose backers on the Tea Party side.

For the Romney campaign it became a question of “how do we successfully toe this line so as to not alienate voters on either side?”

They never found a good answer. There may not have been a good answer.

You can talk at length about the myriad of reasons Mitt Romney didn’t win in 2012, but his inability to solve the problem outlined above has to be near the top of that list.

Of course, the public comments by a variety of GOP state and federal candidates didn’t help him much either, nor did the weak response of his campaign to them.

The Romney campaign should have developed a comprehensive public relations plan and done their best to get all GOP candidates on board with it. If someone did make damaging comments, they should have acted quickly and decisively to deal with it.

But this is not just a Mitt Romney problem. It is not just a 2012 problem. It’s a Republican problem and it’s one that needs a solution sooner rather than later. With Obama re-elected the Tea Party will maintain its strength so it seems clear that whoever runs for the 2016 GOP nomination will face the same minefields as Mitt Romney did this time around.

Though there will be a new Democratic nominee next time around, the only chance the GOP has to take back the White House hinges on the answer to this one question:

“How do you win a no-win scenario?”

It’s actually not impossible.

One of the most famous parts of Star Trek canon is that James T. Kirk was one of the few cadets to actually win the Kobayashi Maru scenario and successfully save the damaged ship. He did so by reprogramming the scenario, which, while unethical to a degree, was not against the rules. In fact, he received a commendation as a result because of his “creative thinking”.

What the Republicans really need is a James T. Kirk. Someone who can open them up to a new way of looking at things that could ultimately bring some unity and cohesion to the party.

Romney Concession Speech - CNN

Obama Victory Speech - CNN

Wow — the previous post-election thread now has more than 1,100 comments, so before I do anything else, here’s a brand spanking new thread in which to stretch out.