Friday, October 24, 2014

Sure I kid about this infernal election, but of course there's a lot at stake

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MAYBE A NICER TYPEFACE WOULD MAKE THIS
SEEM MORE LIKE A WINNING PROPOSITION?



The Democratic alternative: And yet people say the Dems don't stand for anything. Can you imagine?

by Ken

I feel bad, and I felt bad at the time, seemingly writing off the 2014 election last week ("Throwing in the towel on the 2014 campaign, and while we're at it the 2016 campaign as well"), as if I was saying it doesn't matter. Of course it matters, and by even suggesting that it doesn't I have fallen into a trap beloved of right-wing manipulators: We throw up our hands in despair and they send their coalition of crooks and crackpots to the polls, and they get to rub our noses in their doody.

If you're reading DWT, you know only too well how easy it is to be deeply uninspired by the Democratic alternatives, who by and large seem to feel no need to differentiate themselves from the Republican wackos and scumbags except to suggest that they're a tad less wacky and scumbaggy. So it's hard not to wonder whether this election might look different if Democrats in any quantity listened to, say, the counsel of George Lakoff and actually tried to pretend they stand for something -- and I mean something different from what the Republicans do.

But I'm not so sure it would make that much of a difference. The Right has been manipulating the U.S. electorate into moronitude for so long now, and has become so adept at pressing the buttons that will bypass rational response and convert a goodly chunk of the electorate into frothing, torch-bearing mutant jihadists, capitalizing on the insanely bogus image of Barack Obama they've created out of their diseased imaginations, that we were bound in any case to see the fruit of the six-year right-wing Crusade Against America.

Despite which, I still don't understand how anyone who isn't either (a) directly wired into the plutocratic elite or (b) committed to (metaphorically at least) sucking the cocks of the (a) group or (c) in the grip of far-right-wing ideological perversion could even consider voting for a Republican, any Republican. We're still in the situation that goes back at least to the 2008 election, marking the end of the end of the eight years of unmitigated terror and lawlessness that was the Bush regime, where nationwide the clear operating principle of Republicans campaigning at every level all the way up to the top, with the toxic-sludgified Young Johnny McCranky trying to slither his way into the White House, that every word spoken in public by every Republican is a lie.

The principle has been rigidly adhered to in another presidential election and now two midterms, and instead of the country rising up screaming bloody murder, those people are prepared to reward the very sons of bitches who have been shitting all over them. Well, the morons deserve what they've gotten and, worse, are going to get, but what about the rest of us?

JUST TO TOUCH BASE BRIEFLY WITH REALITY: 
WHAT TO EXPECT WITH GOP SENATE CONTROL

ThinkProgress is talking up a list, put together by the Center for American Progress's Tony Carrk, of "10 Things to Expect Next Year If Republicans Win the Senate." These are all pretty straightforward and unsurprising, so while you should probably still take a look at Tony's discussions of these points onsite, I think everyone will get the idea(s):
1. Additional attempts to use the budget process to advance a conservative ideological agenda
2. More tax cuts for the wealthy and further spending cuts for middle- and working-class families
3. Obstruction of well-qualified judicial nominees, leaving vacancies on federal courts
4. A vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act
5. Attempts to roll back women’s health gains
6. Use of the Congressional Review Act to weaken environmental rules, jeopardizing public health
7. Action to dramatically expand people’s ability to carry concealed, loaded guns
8. Legislation that adversely affects the LGBT community
9. Legislation to deport DREAMers
10. New cuts to programs and rules that increase college access, affordability, and readiness
The thing we have to remember, which naturally the Republicans have managed to forget in their endless propagandizing, is that they have spent every hour, every minute, every second of the Obama presidency doing everything in their power to prevent this president from accomplishing anything. Often, if not always, this has meant taking an explicit attitude of "Fuck America -- we want ours, and we're going to get it over Obama's broken body."

You hear it stated as an article of fact that Obama would actually be happy to have the Republicans take control of the Senate, I guess because that would mean he can't be blamed for nothing getting done, and you have to wonder if the people who say these things have been out in the sun too long. (Many of these same people also speculate about how happy -- or is it how sad? -- Hillary Clinton will be. Spare me.)

I suppose you have to give the Rs credit for pulling off an electoral con of this magnitude.
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7 Comments:

At 9:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The idea that Hillary would want a GOP senate for Obama's final two years is really just the return of Clinton hysteria.

 
At 10:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I still don't understand how anyone ...could even consider voting for a Republican, any Republican.

Two words: corporatist media.

FOX is blatantly the worst, but look at all of the others who parrot much of what FOX pumps out. Certain memes are acceptable while all of the others are completely ignored.

The people are generally too lazy to check into news sources which aren't on the TV remote, so the corporatists get away with their lying propaganda.

Corporatists aren't yet a unified force, which is why certain media outlets aren't as extremist as FOX. This is done to protect certain profit streams of the owners, which would be affected if the FOX-backed political prostitutes became the entire government (as the GOP now threatens to do). But rest assured that if their harems gained that kind of power, they would be as vile as now is FOX, who would then become one of the parrots.

As long as most people have food, shelter, and entertainment, they could care less about the important things now being ignored by the political scam we call the 2-party system. Assuming that the two faces of the one corporatist party don't begin to wage actual war, they never will care, preferring instead to watch Dancing With The Stars or some other bilge designed to turn off what little of their brains which remains functional.

Then the party with the real power will count the votes as they see fit and no one will be the wiser.

 
At 12:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe H R Clinton thinks after two years of GOP congressional control people will be SO tired of the radical reich that they will elect her president with a 10 million vote majority and give her 59 seats in the senate and a 76 vote majority in the House.

Then something REALLY will get done!!!

John Puma

 
At 7:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

@John Puma

HRC only believes that the Third Way DINOs can win by being more Republican than the Republicans. They forget what Harry Truman observed when this was tried during his tenure. That strategy remains a bad one today.

 
At 10:54 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Anon@ 7:52AM:

Of course, my comment was more about Obumma than HRC.

So you think she'll win the nomination then lose to the GOP nominee?

Any predictions on our next president?

I completely agree that voters overwhelmingly chose registered Republicans over Dems imitating Republicans.

John Puma

 
At 3:06 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

@John Puma

It's highly unlikely that HRC will lose to any Republican lined up to run. We, the People will lose if -as it currently appears- that she will be more the corporatist than the liberal she is accused of being. In this role, she will be far more effective that that loser sell-out currently residing in the Oval Office. The backlash would come in the 2018 midterm.

 
At 11:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Anon@10:54AM

So the "only" thing HRC believes is to be applied to other DINOs, not herself?

Yes, when she wins in 2016 then proceeds to make Obumma look like a commie piker, in terms of political fellatio on Republicans, that 2018 midterm should be "historic."

The GOP might get 400 house seats and 85 in the senate.

John Puma

 

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