Thoughts on Political Necessity

I was, and remain, absolutely opposed to negotiations on the debt ceiling.  No one likes a high deficit, no one.  But the unemployment rate still hovers at 9%, and in six months, it will be even higher.  The problem as I see it, started from Day 1 where Obama started capitulating and ruling from the "center".

Last weekend, Obama had one other choice.  He could have invoked the 14th Amendment and circumvented Congress entirely.  But look at these arseholes.  Really.  Obama has been concilitory to the point of putting his cape in the mud so that those dainty conservatives wouldn't get their feet wet--and they still called him a fascist.  Imagine him invoking executive authority!  He'd have been nailed to the wall.  So this was not the right time to make a stand.

However, the spinmeisters really failed Obama again.  The Republicans came off looking poorly, but not that poorly.  And it's still many months till the election.  I'm not talking presidential, I'm talking about Congress.  I'm not really worried about Obama winning.  I'm worried about him winning back Congress.  Looking at the facts, the people who hate the social safety net won the largest conservative victory since the Reagon era.  Which frankly was more liberal.

This bill will be a disaster for America--but half of our recovery is confidence.  If the Dems can make major victories next term, we can reverse this.  And if we can show the world a confident America, our credit will improve instantly.  To get that confidence we need a jobs program, and a strong welfare state.  Two things which only a strong Democratic majority can provide.

November 2nd Midterm Elections

On the eve of the November midterms I feel inclined to make a few comments and predictions. First of all, as a movement, I believe that the Tea Party will be merely a blip on the American radar. History will call it for what it was, a fringe movement supported by hypocrites and co-opted almost immediately by cynical Republican operatives. The same ones who cynically co-opted the Christian Coalition, the Moral Majority, Goldwaterism, and the John Birch society, funded by people whose views are rooted first and foremost in aristocratic elitism and monetary interest in only their own wealth.

Let’s get that straight. Not in the wealth of others, or in the strength of the economy as a whole—just. for. themselves. Why? Because they are only interested in perpetuating their own power, and who can blame them? Recessions are gold to the railroad tycoons. Their assets may lose value, but they’re not interested in money, so much as they’re interested in wealth. And wealth is as much or more, about power and privilege, than dolla dolla bills yo. And when everyone else’s assets crumple to zero, they’ll still be standing with absolutely no competition. They can refinance their corporations, shelter their revenues from taxes, and buy out the crumbling competition with little risk to themselves. They are the owners of the commodities, and hey, people gotta eat.

The only ones who can stand up to power like that is the government. Which has always been the reason to support a strong federal government. By using the lever of government spending, the federal government can upset the power of the oligarchs and reshuffle the economic spectrum. The rich will stay rich, and the poor will stay poor, but their will be new rich, younger rich, that are nearer to their middle class roots. New rich with new ideas.

This is what happened in America. It’s why America was dubbed a “post-racial” society after Obama’s election. The wealth of the industrial north was built on the backs of newer tycoons, people whose livelihoods weren’t dependent on slave labor, and the inherent racism necessary for slave labor to exist. And now, with gay marriage just on the horizon, the investment bankers, and “New Yawk” lawyers, might still call each other “gay,” and deride all those “trannies” who come out for Pride day, but they’re young, and not actually opposed to gay rights. They’re insecure and immature, but not inherently racist or homophobic. How could they be, they were born in an age where young pioneers were setting up gay rights clubs in their own high schools across the nation.

But to the Old Guard, this is anathema. Economic reshuffling brings change, and threatens to make them irrelevant—less powerful, not less wealthy. So new blood at the top is dangerous.

But before I go any further, this is not the year for Democrats and liberals everywhere to be complacent. Despite our unhappiness with the present climate, the capitulation by our own President on human rights issues like Guantanamo, or the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, the lack of precise financial reform, or the public option for healthcare—it is important to realize that the right, Tea Party or Republican, is so thoroughly and completely an intellectually bankrupt movement that to allow them even one step further into the body politic is to risk everything. And in less than two years, the Democrats have achieved more than eight years of true blue Republican rule. So, go to the polls tomorrow, and vote Left.