I've been worried Obama will end up being a "reset button" president.

It'll be like Carter or Clinton, where they improve things enough that GOP will be able to run a kind of Ronald Reagan campaign about how you deserve more luxuries.

Gore has recommended a tax swap, where the govt. decreases payroll taxes and increases a carbon fuels tax. So I'm wondering if a tax swap could be the real spark that ignites a switch to electric cars.

I've been opposed to a gas tax in the past - partly because most Americans really don't have an alternative to the car.

But there might be a chance to build a kind of 'strange bedfellows' coalition because...

1. The 'libertarian' auto hobby people have opposed CAFE and - at least in op/eds, and supported a gas tax as an alternative method. We're talking about hobby mags like Car and Driver and HOT ROD.

2. The switch from a progressive to a 'flat rate' tax might attract the Steve Forbes type capital conservatives.

3. Even the auto industry has at times said a gas tax might be better than the CAFE system - but then they don't support anything that takes people out of cars. Perhaps if they were set up with electric cars to sell, they would get on board.

It would behoove 'liberals' like us to somehow split the auto industry lobby away from the oil industry lobby - the two are pretty closely aligned now.

4. Neo Liberal 'market' types like Tom Friedman would love it.

5. Ecology groups would lobby hard for it.

I think it's at least worth mentioning that, while cars compose a great chunk of the economy and for some people like me can be a consuming 'hobby' - lets also remember that long commutes and gridlock rank near the top in people's complaints about urban living. We will still have the gridlock and long commutes might get even longer if everyone has a 70mpg car.

I agree there. I think they'd be better off with some kind of 'structural' change - i.e. national insurance. Much of the oft mentioned "legacy costs" and health insurance fund will be shouldered by the UAW in 2010 - that was a major concession the unions gave in 2007, but it doesn't kick in for another year.

The quality gap - according the JD Powers initial quality surveys at least - has been mostly closed.

I'm just concerned that real 'liberal thinkers' like Tom Friedman are still operating on this notion that "innovation" will lead to super thrifty cars...and...people will buy them.

He's still operating on the neo liberal foundation that says miracle "Jesus" CEOs like Steve Jobs could turn things around at GM in three months with something like an "I-Car." But a Jobs' hip I-phone would only take up a small space on the instrument panel of an automobile.

The auto is the world's most complicated consumer durable. There's just lots of complexity there and "Celebrity" CEOs are already beeing tried at Ford (where one time Boeing's miracle worker resides - except now he doesn't have Pentagon contracts, so helpful in converting water to wine) and Nardelli, the Home Depot reject is at Chrysler.

I saw gas is down to $2.40 - I'm really wondering if you retain the "consumer" model of car buying that people wont care much about gas mileage once they get beyond say 30mpg.

I think that history has shown that people really don't "choose" what pious liberals believe they should choose - a utility maximizing, sober, slow, safe, thrifty conveyance of some sort.

This soft 'n fuzzy vision of Oak Park/Evanston America just doesn't hold water (and come to think of it, lots of Mercedes even in Oak Park). Liberals need to be hard headed realists, not dreamy idealists.

As Josh has mentioned, maybe we could make a kind of "top down" or "command and control" wholesale switch-over to electric cars or something, but liberals need to let go of the sunny supposition that people will be concerend about saving that last $500 worth of gas consumption when they're buying a $40K car.

Put simply, "the market" is probably working against a radical makeover of our auto situation.

Now CAFE has been increased to 35mpg (the increase in 2007 was the first time CAFE has EVER - that's right - EVER been increased since its inception in 1975) we are at least working on the problem.

Ford is already doing what you ask. Their most popular sedan, the Focus, is based on Mazda architecture.

Let me ask all 'liberal' car czars - and instant experts like Tom Friedman:

Why does Detroit go in for heavy criticism about building expensive guzzlers, when BMW and Mercedes just fly under the radar?

When Tom Friedman starts laying into Mercedes for building expensive luxury cars instead of 'plug in hybrids' (which cost $40K to build - and who wants a $40k economy car? anyone?) then I'll start listening.

The fact is, Mercedes builds the "Smart" - that car you see in Europe and recently imported to the US (it looks like a phone booth with wheels).

Mercedes has NEVER made a penny on that car.

So you can't build small cheap cars, and then expect to make a bundle on them.

"Liberals" are caught in time warp. The whole "GM has feet of clay and doesn't make cheap, efficient cars 'people' (who?) want"

God that story was moribund 20 years ago.

So tell me why Toyota makes MOSTLY SUVS. Look at their website - they're makin' money on the big SUVs too.

The nostalgia world they think they want never existed. Was it before Nixon era integration bussing? Was it before 1965 and the voting rights act? Was it before Rosa Parks? Was it before Truman integrated the Army?

Because of their reactionary 'purist' streak, they are unlikely to reach out to hispanic catholics - even on their all important abortion issue. I was frankly shocked that they rejected Romney's Mormonism. I'm Catholic, but I find Mormonism actually more legit than the blatant charlatan-ism of Karismatic krischuns - yet they rejected Romney's apostasy - jeez, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

There's another, broader problem - a vicious pathology really - which is their voracious hunger for 'scary' canards. Ergo "Obama is a communist islam guy!" Children play pretend and make up scary campfire stories. The infantile Palin right has only ramped up this tendency of enthusiastic self-delusion.

Just because you are ignorant of way photos can both conceal and reveal doesn't mean everyone else has to be.

Jeez, go over to Green footballs or something.

Still, I think he did at least tell one of his town hall brownshirts that Obama was actually, not a 'muslim' and a "decent man."

Charlie still needs to get cast as Mr. Potter in the local school production of "It's a wonderful life."

If not that, maybe he could get the Edgar G Robinson spot in "10 Commandements"

"We wonna worship a golden caaaalf Moses!"

The Civil War is finally over.

We're supposed to be bigger than that.

Before last night he, at various junctures, called out his cracker audiences, saying that, no, Obama was a decent man.

Rocks.

The House.

Boy, did they keep THAT powder dry!

Now Obama will lose Chicago. DANG!

As someone once said...

This is EXCELLENT news...for MCCAIN!

have a great time in the park. I'm going to a party in a high rise around Oak and Michigan - hopefully just far enough away from the throngs.

The traffic will be hellish - but then I'm thinking the blue and red lines will be packed too.

I'll try to think of it as 'victory congestion'

I took my usual turn at St. Bart's Catholic school basement - replete with the donuts and coffee - pretty much the same middle aged poll workers.

Didn't feel any different at all really. There was literally no line at all.

Call me crazy, but I have this feeling Obama will eke out a victory in Chicago - even the NW side (bungalow belt) where I live. I really didn't need to get up early etc - my economics prof brother says statistically there is no reason to actually vote. But yes Jim, it's about 'being there.'

BMW and MErcedes don't make fuel efficient cars (Mercedes has SMART - the car that looks like a phone booth - but it has never turned a profit on them - BMW has the Mini, but they make the big money on their gas swilling, rear drive 'driving machines')

The point is that the 'liberal' agenda for US carmakers pushes to mutually exclusive goals.

Make lots of money - but make cheap small cars.

The two just don't go together.

I'll be VERY glad if the Feds don't sweeten the pot for Cerberus and GM.

See, it was this big private equity group that bought Chrysler back from Mercedes recently. Their plans to dismantle chrysler piece by piece were foiled - largely because no one wanted to buy individual nameplates or assembly plants of a doomed automaker (the strategy only works when a carmaker is doing well).

For example, they've recently been sort of walking out on the street and yelling "Viper? anyone want to buy the Viper? Anyone? Anyone? Viper? Viper for sale!" And they've had no takers.

Now they're trying to pawn the whole company off on GM - but get the rest of GMAC finance arm.

GM just wants to 'buy' Chrysler to eliminate competition. They largely have the same problems (legacy costs) and the same product mix of guzzling SUVs. There would be no 'synergy' in the merger - just a way to for GM to play feeding vulture on the Chrysler carcass - and they wanted a check from Uncle Sam to do it.

"Buy a Chrysler get a check!" (Remember Iaccoca)

By the way, the amount of the commie Carter bailout of Chrysler was 1.5 Billion.

I think Bernanke would be able to find 1.5 billion under the couch cushions.

At a 'town hall meeting'

(fyi: Nixon invented the contemporary klieg lit "town hall meeting" and the planted shill that asks just the right question)

Mccain, just by accident mind you, just happend to call on a woman who - wouldn't you know it - just happened to have a young son who was shocked - SHOCKED - to receive a nasty robocall from Bush defaming Mccain.

Gee - what are the chances?

But no one's even mentioned "Jose the construction worker" You might know him from a Mother Jones interview on Youtube. He wears full construction worker regalia - all the way down to the hardhat and blaze orange vest - and stands behind Mccain at rallies - and gosh - I've even seen clips of him on - perish the thought - cable news mimicing Wurzelbacher's turn as an instant 'expert' on politics (this time without the blaze orange vest though - Jose be movin' on up vato!)

Imagine that. I wonder if scuba divers for Mccain show up to rallies dressed in a full wetsuit and aqualung.

The fact that of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Joe and Jose just happened to walk into ours - Gee whilikers - what a bizarre co-winky-dink.

And not only doesn't the press question this 'chance' - they have Joe on for interviews - providing yet another chance for Joe the shill to sell Dr. John's snake oil.

Wow.

Worst.

Press.

Ever.

Precisely the same personality.

One reason to be 'Christian' and reject vengeance is that it will be a waste of energy.

I've read lately that Mccain is vengeful in that "Hatfield and Mccoy" (Mccoy and Mccain = Scots Irish 'honor') sense of the word.

Yet what standing will he have after this? Did Wendell Wilke go on a tear after his loss? Bob Dole?

"When Mavericks attack!"

I realized last Spring, after Obama had a really good month after the NH primary but before the PA loss - sure Obama's a true force to be reckoned with.

And yet...what truly gave me chills was the fact that - so many people RECOGNIZED Obama as such - and that - at least in Dem primaries, "hard working Americans, white Americans" were voting for a half black guy.

I was much more encouraged that at least Dem primary voters weren't going down the stupid 'electability' rabbit warren of 2004 that gave us President Kerry.

So as, BO says, it REALLY IS NOT about him - it's about people coming to their senses. That the electorate has some sense left, in the face of 30 years of right wing agit prop - that's the most astonishing thing - Americans just being rational - here's where the real inspiration lies.

If we don't get a major reform in campaign finance, the last eight years of struggle won't mean much.

Obama has made much of the need to reform the system from the malign influence of lobbyists. I would add to this, the great need to get away from the two year presidential campaign.

I read this as the change we need.

I can't maintain this level of...militancy? for another eight years.

We need to make some permanent changes to the system - another one is to revive the fairness doctrine - so that this kind of Herculean effort isn't required just to get something 'reasonable' out of an election.

Saying that, I'm definitely not in the 'crush' school. Obama's already doing his inimitable 'distancing' dance from the web - remember the rebuke to MoveOn's attempt at a 527 attack group?

"Centrism" isn't the change we need.

Amazing. I certainly don't know any Russian vernacular to match 'doggonit' - well played sirs.