Since you don’t all follow me on Facebook, I want to share a story that happened just a few minutes ago.
This story seems to work on many levels.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Had similar conversation this morning with my Newfie. My wayward mouse was pitched off the deck into the bushes. Newfie sat and watched, perplexed. I went back to computer. 10 minutes later Newfie padded in with mouse and set at my feet. Tossed and found.
Newfs are rescue dogs after all. We need a battalion of them right now.
My symbolic victim was a stinkbug.
Well, I was always skeptical about the view that the Repubs had become a rump regional party. I know others claim there is “no path to 270” for them, but believe that at your own peril. Fuhrer Cruz is on the horizon, IMO.
So now there will be much argument that this is just another midterm electorate problem, not a fatal “disease” for the Dems. But one has to wonder if indeed this catastrophe has not truly broken the back of the party and whether the interests of the Dem coalition really can coalesce into an attractive “message”. The (white) voters certainly appear to believe that the Dem party is diseased. They basically now seem hostile to the idea of a multiracial, pluralistic party, they appear to hate every demographic component of the Dem party. How in the world does a party counter that attitude, especially when the (white) voter won’t even admit to it?
The GOTV approach failed last nght, and there is no way to compete with the plutocrats’ dark money and Citizens United corporate treasuries, so the traditional “ad” approach is kaput, thanks to the five conservative activists masquerading as justices. The teevee media (where the mass of uninteresteds get ALL their info) is corrupt and likely beyond reform. So what’s the path for whatever new message crafted?
And what will be the message for the completely alienated white voters? The endless Repub policy failures (i.e “conservatism”) have endured for decades now, yet failure doesn’t matter. So reason and facts are irrelevant and aren’t part of the equation when voters select their candidates.
Polls uniformly say that voters think global warming is a serious problem. The Repubs uniformly and as a matter of ideology deny the very science, and the Dems are the only party that would/have passed anything addressing the problem. As the warnings of the scientists get ever more desperate, the American voter somehow concludes that the only sane party should be annihilated politically. The same can be said for minimum wage legislation, abortion rights, corporate taxation, and apparently even birth control, for God’s sake.
If the mass of (white) voters is actually simply ignorant and just needs to be “instructed” in the many differences between Dem and Repub, then I have to say I’m at a loss as to how Dems can perform this task if they have so grossly failed so far. If the actual Dem message can’t filter through in the current tsunami of digital info, then it never will. I suppose that Dems could start to argue with the biased refs when they are on the corporate teevee shows, but they’ve had a decade to adopt a more pugnacious approach to the corporate media and have refused to go down that path. Now they are a broken corpse.
Or else the voters have gotten the Dem message and have reviled it. That would mean they say they support Dem policy positions and oppose Repub ones, yet they believe the Repubs should control Congress. They hate “gridlock”, yet they have now created the Cruz/Obama Cage Match for the next two years. That is a fundamental failure of logic, and can’t be addressed by reason or argument.
What do today’s voters want. They say they hate Repub policies and give historic low “ratings” to the Repub party. They then tear the Dem party limb from limb and throw it into the woods come election time. Um, OK.
I think we are starting to see a new period of “late democracy” take hold in America, which can only be seen as a descent into greater and greater political chaos, irrationality and dysfunction, which will ripple into a civil society awash in firearms and weaponry. Invest at your peril, world plutocrats. The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg was killed, remember….
Have to agree. Remember the “Emerging Democratic Majority” that was so highly touted 12 years ago? We keep hearing about this, and yet winning national elections – when we win them – by small margins. All those great successes of 2008 with the GOTV – the GOP has matched that and more.
I think we are starting to see a new period of “late democracy” take hold in America, which can only be seen as a descent into greater and greater political chaos, irrationality and dysfunction, which will ripple into a civil society awash in firearms and weaponry.
Pretty much. And then the carbon resources start to run out.
It will be interesting to see what the House voter breakdown will be. Since every House seat is up, that’s the only true national election in 2014.
If Democrats and Republicans run roughly equal (as I imagine they will), and you’re looking at 40% voter turnout, it’s tough to argue that the country is endorsing Republican policies.
Hopefully, however, the GOP will pursue Republican policies, because people will look at them, slap their foreheads and say, “Oh, right! THOSE assholes!”
Hopefully, however, the GOP will pursue Republican policies, because people will look at them, slap their foreheads and say, “Oh, right! THOSE assholes!”
And then, after slapping their foreheads, they return to the ballot box and still vote for them, in spite of that.
The whole “Americans have no sense of history” sure is beneficial to the Fascist Party of America, ain’t it?
Corporate news that stresses infotainment and BothSidesTM is somehow attributed to being libruul.
And of course elected libruuuls across the nation continually fail to SCREAM this out loud every fucking time they are on television.
Gee, I wonder why the American electorate is so confused and stupid.
Meh.
I never thought the Democrats were going to hold onto the Senate. I even asked a few times whether everyone who was talking about ground game, super new voting methods in Colorado, etc., wasn’t just an attempt to unskew the polls.
All things being equal, I’d take a look at Wang and Silver, and avoid adding percentage points onto the Dem side.
Oh well. It’s midterms, where Democrats do terrible. It’s year 6 of a Democratic blah President usurping a White House. Old Americans who are stalwarts when it comes to voting, went and voted. Young people who should be voting didn’t, as per usual.
Either the Democratic party tells the voters that they are going to get policy exactly opposite of the Republican party, or Allison Dipshit Grimes can play pretend at being a real Democrat by insinuating that she wouldn’t vote for…uh…her own fucking party’s Presidential candidate.
To me, Grimes’ failure to say that yes, she of course voted Democrat because she’s a Democrat and how fucking idiotic would it be for her to vote otherwise, is the Signature of Midterms 2014.
If the Democratic party is afraid of being the Democratic party, then fuck it. Of course people are going to vote Republican. Davis is right, if given the choice between a real Republican and a Democrat trying to run as a Republican, they’re going to choose the real deal every time.