Looking back on another tumultuous election season filled with countless political missteps, the Daily Cal’s opinion writers share their views on a few of the most significant blunders.

1. Rape Remarks

During this last election season, a lot of ideas about rape and abortion were thrown around by politicians, the most egregious of which were proclaimed by Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri and Treasurer Richard Mourdock of Indiana.

Akin, who ran for U.S. Senate, claimed that if a woman is a victim of “a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Mourdock, who also ran for Senate in his state, was not so much concerned with the science of it all. He felt that pregnancies from rape reflect “something that God intended to happen.”

I’m not sure that God really has all that much to do with the issue here; few would argue that rape is a product of divine influence. But what is clear is that Christian politicians — which both Mourdock and Akin are — struggle to reconcile their religious convictions about abortion with a moral political stance, whether that be through appealing to science or “God’s will.”

Truthfully, the assertions and motivations of these two men, both of whom lost their races, are not the essential problem. Although the contents of both of these comments horrify me at a personal level, I am more than anything frightened by the fact that the arguments came from male politicians. There is a fundamental disconnect in a male-dominated discourse and government determining laws that affect only women.

I am, quite frankly, sick of hearing men discuss such a life-changing trauma that they will never be able to fully understand. A man will never be able to comprehend the physical and mental toll carrying a child takes on a woman and the impossibly complicated repercussions when that child was the result of rape. Let the debate carry on, but let’s hear the female voices.

—Hannah Brady

2. Forty-seven percent

The irony of the 2012 presidential campaign’s biggest blunder is that it wasn’t a mistake at all. It was just Mitt being Mitt.

In the midst of an Etch-A-Sketch-style national campaign in which Mitt Romney gravitated to the center, the nation was reminded on Sept. 17 just who Romney really is. In a secret video of a private fundraiser published by the left-leaning magazine Mother Jones, Romney speculated that “there are 47 percent [of Americans] who are with [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them … These are people who pay no income tax.” He continued, saying his job “is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The idea that there is a filthy lower class — a class composed of selfish, lazy, shiftless takers with few goals above a meager living — permeates the Romney-esque elite of this country. And the candidate expressed that sentiment perfectly. Like others of his breed, Mitt Romney concluded that a large portion of Americans are slacking freeloaders, addicted to the Democratic Party for its “gifts” to the plebeian class and deserving of nothing less than a Republican free market crusade.

It’s sad that this year’s election, as much as it was hyped, was largely decided from the start. Against a man who arrived on the political scene in 2008 as a demigod of hope and idealism (as flawed as that rhetoric may be), the GOP put forth just another cynic with enough capital gains to swim in.

Romney wanted a civil war — a battle between the ambitious and the lethargic, the capitalist and the penniless. But there’s no war to fight. If the results of the 2012 election prove anything, they show the American people are united in their resolve as one people — economic status aside.

—Connor Grubaugh

3. Romney’s Women

Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” remark at the town-hall presidential debate quickly became an Internet sensation. But too much commentary focused on Romney’s odd word choice rather than the fact that the phrase revealed even more hypocrisy than awkwardness.

At the Oct. 16 debate, after the candidates were asked about inequality in the workplace, specifically with regard to women, Romney flaunted that, when he was Massachusetts governor, his office “took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.” By stating this, Romney promoted affirmative action, inadvertently endorsing a policy rejected by the core of the Republican Party.  His words actually went even further than most proponents of affirmative action, who often dictate that ethnic- and gender-based criteria be used only when two candidates are equally qualified. Making a “concerted effort” to go out and find people based on gender falls under the most extreme forms of affirmative action.

The remark joins an endless list of Romney gaffes, one that will no doubt lengthen until he is laid to rest. Even from beyond the grave, he will probably continue to offend at least 47 percent of the population. (Although more overtly offensive, his 47 percent comment revealed a cocky personality trait most already assumed existed).

Americans should refocus on the context of the “binders full of women” comment and reveal the affirmative action-lover the world has come to know in Mitt. The rejection of affirmative action remains a foundation of  his party, and yet most attention went to a few semicomedic words within a larger, more meaningful gaffe. If people had been more forgiving over Romney’s bizarre word choice, they could have realized the more substantive — albeit less fun — critique of his comment.

—Noah Ickowitz

4. Measure S

On election night, I tweeted my hopeful prediction that “Measure S will win by 10+ points. Students will split, permanent Berkeley residents will break strongly for S.” Of course, it turns out I was way off: The measure lost narrowly, weighed down by overwhelming student opposition.

Berkeley voters missed an opportunity to support struggling businesses, encourage the local homeless population to seek help and improve the city’s quality of life. We also cemented the city’s position as the destination of choice for a subculture of young drifters from around the country who say they opt to live on the streets as a form of rebellion. I worry about the effects this will have — on the vitality of our public spaces and on the welfare of these young people, whose destructive lifestyles we are continuing to enable.

Despite its failure, I think that the Measure S campaign was in some ways good for Berkeley. It drew attention to the severity of Berkeley’s homelessness problem. And, as Measure S supporter Roland Peterson has pointed out, the campaign challenged the wisdom of an “anything goes” posture toward behavior in public spaces.

On another note, the failure of Measure S is an interesting comment on city politics more broadly. I had long been convinced that Berkeley’s place in the popular imagination as a stronghold of radical leftism was a mythical holdover from the 1960s with little relevance in 2012. Today’s Berkeley, I thought, had political predilections like those of San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Palo Alto and other progressive cities that have restricted sitting on commercial sidewalks during business hours.

The city’s politics have, of course, moderated since the 1960s. In the mayoral election, the pragmatic Tom Bates vanquished his more progressive opponents in a landslide. But the failure of Measure S is a reminder that the public’s conception of Berkeley as a bastion of liberal dissent may have more truth to it than I thought.

—Jason Willick

5. Global Warming

This past presidential election, there was no green on the American flag. For the first time since the 1988 vice presidential debate,

climate change was passed over in the presidential debates.

While no debate question specifically addressed the issue, activists assert that there was opportunity for discussion. When asked by moderator Bob Schieffer in the third and final presidential debate about the “greatest future threat to the national security of this country,” Barack Obama and Mitt Romney responded with what some would say are more “immediate” concerns about terrorist networks, a nuclear Iran and the Middle East.

Climate change is a national security threat, and it is immediate. As officially recognized by the Pentagon in 2010, the threats of global warming — including at-risk coastline populations and new channels that require naval defense — require alleviation by means of a solution or maintenance at the very least.

Both Obama and Romney had their sights set on becoming leaders of the nation; both prioritized their political interests over the welfare of the planet. But in doing so, they ignored the trumpeting elephant in the room and passed over a pressing multi-faceted issue as if it could wait. But the threats of climate change are imminent and transcend national security, with important  implications for energy policy, the economy and foreign policy.

Climate change is a phenomenon that knows neither citizenship nor wealth, only that one is a denizen of Earth. But even in the wake of 331 consecutive months of temperatures higher than the 20th- century average, increasing violence of weather, melting ice caps and rising seas, politics came first, hailing colors of red, white and blue — not green.

—Casie Lee

Contact the Daily Cal Opinion staff at [email protected].

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