When the dust settles I'm afraid it'll be Romney with a briefcase and a fountain pen, trying gosh-darned hard to get America to switch insurance companies.
I'm no prognosticator, which means, above all, that I don't have to phone in one of these cutesy faux-self-deprecations at year's end (designed, you'll note, to reinforce the Offical Pundit Script even as they supposedly highlight what pundits got wrong. Imagine a real column in which Dana Milbank confesses his errors. It would take the entire year to do it. The wisdom of confining oneself to "predictions" when doing such things is shown by the fact that Weigel doesn't have to admit anything nearly as embarrassing, or self-revealing, as his paean to Michele Bachmann's knowledgeable and polished initial debate performance).
I have no idea what Romney's path to the nomination looks like. I know he has unlimited funds, God bless America, and a collection of opponents who couldn't govern a home daycare operation without one or two swingset strangulations per annum. That may be all he needs, or he may be so personally devoid of personhood that support coagulates around one particular non-Romney in response. You heard it here first.
What I do know is this: the supposed Teabagger Agenda is just the corporate agenda, and Romney's the corporate candidate. And so's Obama. Some of us think the 5-10% difference between them is important, vital even; that difference, for the Republican rank-and-file is what the headline writers call The Culture Wars. And they are busy fighting a protracted partisan conflict over whether that shit needs to be saved to rile up the yokels, or spread across every front page in America.
In a sense, then, the Republican party has become the Democratic party, with an entrenched leadership machinegunning the human waves of the unwashed and their sharpened sticks. Meanwhile Democrats get to keep up their thirty-year rope-a-dope attempt to become the Thinking Man's Corporate Lackey party.
Can someone remind me what the intervening three decades of hubbub was all about, again?
Can someone remind me what the intervening three decades of hubbub was all about, again?
ReplyDeleteCertainly!
FWIW, I blame Bill Clinton for taking the Democrat party down the toilet of corporate servitude, and Obama for keeping that swirly going (and making it worse).
Sure, there were war-mongers and corporatists before Clinton, but he's the one who deliberately and successfully marginalized 'The Left', aka the wing of the party that cares about actual people.
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Sorry, can't hang with you on this one J.B.S. "d" R. There are differences and that ten percent, seen from where I am sitting, could have enormous impact on some issues.
ReplyDeleteI am by no means championing the faux DLC left here. They are as detestable as you put it but to imply there's no difference, well, it's just not true.
You can do better than this.
One crucial difference has to be the next Supreme Court Justice. I can't stomach another Bush v. Gore or Citizens United. So that alone makes a difference. Or so I think.
ReplyDeleteCan someone remind me what the intervening three decades of hubbub was all about, again?
ReplyDeleteOnce Reagan/Greenspan set the machine in motion, the major difference has been whether to accelerate (R) or decelerate (D) the transfer of American national assets to the wealthy.
I can see Romney unveiling another Alito, whereas I cannot see Obama doing that. Plus, when it comes down to looking at the motherfucker that gets elected, I need to limit the number of projectile vomitings (that is so a word) I enjoy daily.
ReplyDeleteIt was about shattered dreams and mislaid hopes as the jackboots slowly descended on our necks. To paraphrase desertscope, the rate of descent is hinged upon the party in power.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Ebon Krieg.
ReplyDeleteNow if someone could tell me how voting for Obama (again) would help change the direction, rather than the rate only, I might consider it.
It seems to me that the corporatists who control the Democratic party cynically count on just these calculations while they shit on everything we believe in.
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aint you taken calculus?
ReplyDeletechanging the rate IS changing the direction. if you squint.
thats what i choose to believe, anyhow.
Changing the rate of descent might mean that a lot of folks survive for the rest of their natural lives, or get a shot at a college education.
ReplyDelete