After the Election, What Next?
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — In just a little over 24 hours, the polls will close and the country will have elected a new President. After being enveloped in political rhetoric for more than a year, surely November 5th is going to feel strangely quiet.
Regardless of who gets elected President tomorrow, liberals and conservatives don't get much respect these days. On Thursday, November 13, take some time out of your Art Walk to join author Tom Waldman for "What's Next for the Left and the Right?: A Post-Election Dialogue," a free event taking place at the historic Farmers & Merchants Bank.
Waldman is the author of "Not Much Left: The Fate of Liberalism in America," published this year by the University of California Press. The book asks why it is that no one wants to be called a liberal anymore, pointing to the failed 1972 Presidential campaign of George McGovern as the turning point for the term.
The discussion on November 13 will be a chance to take a look at where liberals and conservatives are in the post-election landscape, and to talk about where the two sides might be headed going forward. Waldman will do a short reading from his book, but the majority of the time is intended to be a dialogue with those in the audience.
November 13 is the Downtown Art Walk, so the discussion will start at 6pm and is scheduled to go until 7pm, allowing plenty of time for gallery viewing afterward. Don't expect a good discussion to get cut off, though. Waldman plans on sticking around to talk for as long as people are interested.
For those who can't make it, we'll be taping the event and putting the video online afterward.
"What's Next for the Left and the Right?: A Post-Election Dialogue" / Farmers & Merchants Bank, 401 S. Main / Doors open at 5:30pm, Discussion from 6pm to 7pm / Free.
Purple Haze on November 03, 2008, at 10:50PM – #1
What a year this is. It has all become a moral play, fated by the Ancients to illuminate the way in future times. Much has gone wrong, on every front. Environmental threats to the planet at large are ignored, with nary a blip on media’s radar. Tomorrow, Barak Obama will be elected as the country’s next president. His grandmother died this morning in the small Honolulu apartment where she largely raised him. His essential parent of his teenage years dies 24 hours before the polling day opens. This particular candidate at this very particular point and era in U.S. history. Preordained? The Ancients would be all agog at such a scenario. Someone is trying to make me not an agnostic, draw me away from the atheism I adopted in the the face of war so long ago. Like Chekhov, I estimate talent, artistry, the idea of the individual, and truth. But I have come to admire the next U.S. president in particular. After all that has happened over the past eight years, how truly fortunate we are!
John Crandell on November 07, 2008, at 03:50AM – #2
Villaraigosa is gone to Chicago to meet with Obama and economic advisors. Word has it that Democrats and the new administration will have infrastructure high on their list of spending to pump/prime the econ.
Prop R passed. It's not hard to imagine quick scheduling of RFPs for planning and engineering of the initial segment of the Wilshire Boulevard subway.
The westside of L.A. is the pre-eminent traffic nightmare in the nation. Villaraigosa said that the subway would be his number one priority. What Downtown L.A. needs more than anything else is that subway to be up and operating, all the way to the beach, as soon as possible. Nothing else can begin to compare. The Subway To The Sea poses the highest potential benefit to/for the central city.