Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Election Day Eve Ramblings...

I am preparing for a bad referendum on a pretty good president tomorrow. Rotten politics will be rewarded and a lousy selling job on the part of the administration will be manifest in some mid-term spankings in senate, congressional and gubernatorial races. Speaking of gubernatorial races, wait until you see the goober who might get reelected as Maine’s governor tomorrow. It’s could be a bad day for Maine Democrats.

But it’s going to be a bad two years of non-governance for America as well. The butt-hurt that is felt by the soon to be former majority in the senate is so acute and its lesson from McConnell and Boehner in blind obstructionism so recent that what’s good for the goose will surely be considered good for the gander, or turtle, as the case may or may not be. Expect congressional gridlock that will make the 101/405 rush hour intersection look like boarding school toilets on the night of a bean supper. Sixty is the new majority, and the GOP won’t have it.

Recent presidents, and indeed recent politicians rarely come from single parent households, rarely needed a student loan, and rarely haven’t made a long slew of really rotten deals. A thrice-elected senator, a kick-ass speech at the Democratic National Convention and boom, there’s your Manchurian candidate. He was too clean, and the machine did not like that a bit. A bit of grime is appreciated, a few skeletons in the closet, and it is best if they resemble little boys.

The more parts of your soul you’ve already sold, the more capitulation can be expected, so when this moderate political figure with a silver tongue, caramel skin, a clean slate and a decent jump shot came along, the DNC put a lot of its eggs in the Obama basket and Brand Obama pulled it off. The resentment throughout the blue blood arm of the Senate alongside that of the Adam’s Rib/Noah’s Ark crowd in the House made for strange bedfellows and pretty soon, the only way this brainy African-American was going to survive at all was by capitulating at every turn with the Republican Party, with giving the banks a pass in the housing collapse, at signing the NDAA without a sneeze, signing away habeus corpus for military detainees, and the list goes on.

But even these egregious betrayals, these phenomenal sellings-out on the part of our smart, level headed president failed to satisfy the beast. Obama was not sufficiently craven for the side the oligarchs have decided to back more heavily, and the Citizen’s United savaging of representative democracy and the McCutcheon final removal of it paved the way for the gerrymandering ad-blitz masterpiece currently being orchestrated by theKoch/Adelson/Bechtel/Halliburton economic dictatorship.

It is to our shame that the message of military and corporate beholdenness has been inculcated into the American pysche to the degree that it has. The real truth of the matter though is that we have in fact not as a nation fallen into line with this message, rather the fact is that the ones who have adopted it have done so passionately, and  the majority of people who haven’t fallen for it haven’t fallen out of bed on Election Day either, thereby ushering in rule by people who do not have their best interests at heart. Low voter turnout is the stated goal of the Republican Party, and with or without voting restrictions, to my amazement and unspeakable frustration, America's hoi -polloi, the rabble middle, my people, seem willing to oblige them.

The 5-4 lock on the Supreme Court that believes it to be appropriate that 42 individuals control one third of the totality of Political Action Committees' resources will ensure that one dollar one vote supersedes one man one vote for the immediate future. I don’t see a way out beside campaign finance reform, and that won’t happen without a Supreme Court change or a senate veto. A senate veto is out, so progressives are going to have to hold their noses and vote for Hillary in order to have a prayer of effecting some easement of the money, media and politicians triumvirate of internally competing criminality, and even that has to wait. I guess so. Unless the Bernie Sanders miracle happens and we have our next assassinated president and our next shot at the truth. In any case, we can't just give up or the super predators will keep swarming to this country's wealth like bugs to a summertime porch light. They're not going to quit, and we can't either. I won't if you won't.

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