Sunday, November 07, 2010

What the election told us

There will be spin.  Ignore it. In the coming days, weeks, and months plenty of blame will be thrown but none of it will land where it needs to land. FOX talking heads will try to usher in a new era of doublespeak.  Let's hope they do, and the Republicans fall for the koolaide of their own myths.  For if that happens, the next election will be another massive swing.  This is not about Liberal verses Conservative for neither label really describes what's been done to us by both movements.  They are sellouts and neither current movement boasts integrity or solutions.

Here in the Heartland, you know---flyover country, voters are angry as hell---but not at liberalism per se.  Up here in Pend Oreille County, we have just one remaining lumber mill open.  One.  This is the heart of big timber country and the economy is in a shambles.  Spokane is the largest city still served by one friggin' freeway and the overpasses taking commercial traffic north are so low on the surface streets, we can't get today's semi's up to this part of the nation to load freight.  Canadian bound traffic must detour through Idaho, yes, Idaho!  This is the home state of Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Kenworth, Peterbilt and on this side of the state it might as well be the land of covered wagons. What remaining US industries, that haven't already relocated overseas, would want to locate here? Even though they can easily get away with paying $8 an hour---as a "living" wage?  And folks in Seattle wonder why a progressive agenda is DOA east of the Cascade Curtain.

My home has lost 70% of its value in less than two years.  I didn't take out a second mortgage, nor did I sign on for a sub prime loan. I owned the land free and clear, paid for the improvements out of pocket and when I finished construction on the place in 2007, I easily had substantial equity representing my life savings. Now its so underwater, it will take decades to be in the black again.  Nice huh? Do you think for a single moment Obama has my vote, ever again?  If the eastern Washington candidate had survived the Republican primary, and I'd had a choice, other than voting for slime-ball Rossi, I'd have voted for the Elephant in the room in a heartbeat.

This crap I hear muttered by the banks about buyers purchasing more home than they can afford is the height of lunacy.  Who determined the values of these homes?  The banks.  Who financed them? The banks.  Who is now leading the charge to guilt trip homeowners for a house of cards the banks created? The banks.  Who is now caught in the biggest foreclosure scandal in our nation's history and is the same gang the tax payers bailed out?  Yep. The banks.  Who is now foreclosing on all these homes, at the bottom of their value, holding on to them until the market recovers, and will make out nicely in the end.  The banks.  And who is Obama calling a deadbeat?  The homeowners?  How well has that mortgage bailout thing worked?  Yet the bank bail out sure seems pretty dang smooth.

In the worst economy in the last 60 years, how is it that the banks are showing a profit and handing out bonuses like Christmas Candy?  Somebody had to get screwed for that to happen and the voters know exactly who that person was.

I, as a progressive voter have no patience left for Obama.  The bail out on Wall Street---all the self serving corporate types he brought into the White house, leaving the average working guy to fend for himself.  I have watched Obama cave on DADT, Defense of Marriage, real financial reform, and then he bent over, without lube, and presented himself to the health insurance industry for the so called Obamacare reform.  If you can piss off your base so efficiently, then what do you have left to stand on?  Ego? 

The arrogance of the dude is mind boggling.  I watched the post election press conference in awe that anyone could remain so out of touch.  Really.  His words, "We got a shellacking..." were beyond dishonest. "We" progressives didn't get a shellacking.  You, as head of the Democrats, best friend of the corporations best friend of the Wall Street traitors who've ruined the heartland, off shored our jobs, left our infrastructure in shambles, you sir got your ass handed to you. You, Mr Obama, got the shellacking.

Yet lets take this a step further. When I listen to Michelangelo Signorile on the Michelangelo Signorile Show last week berate his listeners for not sticking with the Democrats, I hear a radio commentator so insulated from the concerns of average listeners that it makes everything else he spins meaningless. 

What the hell good are gay rights when you are homeless, your future is owned by the banks and insurance companies, and the people you put into office two years ago did everything but what you elected them to do?  Signorile, in his purity pledged NYC la la land hasn't a clue.  Of course people are voting their pocket book and no, contrary to your insulated world view Mr Signorile, its not all affluent gay circuit party white guys.  Thirty one percent of the gay vote went to Republicans. That included Lesbians and Transgendered and Gays who said no thanks to the man. Ignore that at your peril. 

It's obvious by watching Obama that he is clueless.  He will be a one term President. Its too damn late to make an immediate hard left. He has no mandate.  What remains of his party, is over him. All he has left is his own sorry shadow and the memory of what his presidency could have been.  Where is Hillary?  At this point I'd love to have the Clinton's back in the White house.  Even the conservatives now acknowledge that Billy, the kid from Hope, was the best prez during the last century, if ever.

I remember when Obama was elected.  A bunch of us local types gathered downriver at my friend Lane's home.  As we stood around the TV watching the returns, we reflected ultimate diversity.  Let's see that would be three gay guys, all of us easily working class.  A bunch of straight folk who included loggers, ranchers, locomotive mechanics and public officials.  The room was evenly split between Elephants and Jack Asses.  Still we united in the fact that it was a great moment and we were genuinely proud that our nation had elected an African American president.

Now I hope that in 2012, I pray we can hold another celebration.  This time celebrating the fact that we've just elected our first woman to the oval office.  Hillary.

Here's Greenwald, affirming a more national view of this disaster:

People are suffering economically and Democrats have done little about that. Beyond that, they failed to inspire their own voters to go to the polls. Therefore, they lost. By basing their power in Congress on Blue Dog dependence -- rather than advocating for the views of their own supporters and implementing those policies -- they failed, and failed resoundingly. Building their party around a large number of muddled, GOP-replicating corporatists not only creates a tepid and failed political image, but far worse, it prevents actual policies from being implemented that benefit large number of ordinary Americans. Democrats repeatedly refrained from advocating for such policies in deference to their Blue Dogs, failed to do much to alleviate the economic suffering of ordinary Americans, and thus got crushed. Anyone who thinks that Democrats lost because they were "too liberal" -- rather than because Americans are suffering so much economically -- is wildly out of touch, i.e., is a multi-millionaire cable TV personality who has spent decades wallowing in trite D.C. chatter.

...the Democratic Party now reaps what it has sown. Its message and identity are profoundly muddled, incoherent, unclear, uninspiring, and self-negating. Worse, its policies are mishmashes of inept half-measures that, with a handful of exceptions, produce little good for anyone (other than Wall Street, the Pentagon and other corporate interests). They are perceived as -- and are -- beholden to Wall Street, special interests, and the corporations they vowed to confront. They are without any ability to confront the massive unemployment crisis and financial decline the country faces. And as a result of all of that, they lay in shambles. Anyone who can survey all of that and cheer for the strategy which Democrats have been pursuing -- let's build our majorities by relying on GOP-replicating corporatist Blue Dogs -- or who thinks that this election loss happened because "Democrats are too liberal," resides in a world that has very little to do with reality. And that's true no matter how many times they repeat the simplistic snippets of exit polls to which they've obsessively attached themselves."  Glenn Greenwald

Read the entire article here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/06/o_donnell







1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This here splains every thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q