Do not mistake me, there are two choices this election and they're between the Vandals and Status Quo and that vandalism could have consequences that are irreparable. The GOP stool stands on three legs: Plutocracy, Theocracy, and Bigotry. Be under no illusion that the Democratic Party does not have Plutocratic Enabling as one of its legs.
The elected Democrats have a sufficient number/percentage of Plutocratic Enablers in their membership that no program concerning economics that depends on a solid Democratic vote is going anywhere without that percentage's vote and it will include for their vote the interests of the Plutocracy. It will be conveniently forgotten by that coterie that wealth doesn't need any damn help being wealthy or powerful.
The GOP depends on the Plutocrats for most of their money and those folks know perfectly good and well that their interests will be exclusively served, the rest of the economy be damned. They will manage their political fortunes by serving up theocratic bullshit and whistling up the bigots, though that alone won't be enough. In order to get somewhere beyond those narrow interests they will have to use a stenographic media to serve up scary lies (something well beyond exaggeration or framing) and dupe an ignorant and disinterested electorate. The 2010 election serves as proof that given utter cowardice by quite a few Democrats and enabled lying, the GOP can win.
Here's the deal with the Democrats, they need to win in order to do anything and in order to win they have to serve an electorate that qualifies as stupid by outcome. No, the actuality of the electorate's intellectual ability doesn't equal stupidity, it is their lack of access to good information, their disinterest in good information, and their distraction from political issues by the pressing details of living (OK, and Dancing With The Stars or whatever). You cannot and will not get good results by putting junk information into a computer and you'll get just as bad results by putting it into the electorate - in fact worse because a computer will actually process the junk.
If you are expecting the Democratic Party to bring any kind of meaningful economic change then you need more and better Democrats. You can, in a lot of places, manage that with a lot of work and money in Primary Elections - your problem then is the General Election and that means a hell of a lot more work and money and some losses. When you lose, what you can hope for is that there is sufficient contrast to bring you forward next time in the face of the GOP's failures and mismanagement. You can't get there by looking sort of like the other side. If you want to lay a lot of blame on the President, you haven't bothered to look at Congress - at all.
If you think this election will change things for the better if Democrats are elected, you've got some real wishful thinking going on. What you can hope for is that we won't get pushed over the cliff the other side is wistful for. If that isn't enough, then maybe you need to take some time to find out the history of revolutions other than our original one. It is not pretty.
1 comment:
I sometimes wonder if one of the problems with the Democratic party is that we are too big of a tent. As much as I dislike the big tent analogy as a political scientist, it does visualize some aspects of the party.
The idea that wall street interests can line up with the populist/progressive factions is always humorous. I really have no connection myself to the parts of my party that keep large foreign investments and have financial fortunes to keep tabs on.
I was arm-twisted into having to like the 'bailout'. The only part I liked of it was the government owning parts of these companies, and at the same time I had to put up with a stimulus package that was way too small.
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