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"...viewing last night's Blue Dog losses with happiness, I
[nevertheless see] many complex factors that account for last
night's crushing of Congressional Democrats: widespread economic
suffering, anxiety over America's obvious decline, the perception
that Obama has done little to undermine destructive status quo
forces and much to bolster them, etc. etc. ... the ... rational
conclusion -- given the eradication of 50% of the Blue Dog caucus --
is that the worst possible choice Democrats can make is to run as
GOP-replicating corporatists devoted above all else to serving
corporate interests in order to perpetuate their own power: what
Washington calls "centrists" and "conservative Democrats" ... The
number of Obama followers writing to me on Twitter and elsewhere
telling me that left-wing critics of the President are the primary
cause of last night's outcome - rather than massive economic
suffering and the actions of their Leader - is even more than I
expected. Bizarrely, they actually seem to have convinced
themselves of this; I suppose one who is desperate to cling to their
leader-love will find any theory that shields him from
responsibility. .." <br>
<br>
Pundit sloth: Blaming the left<br>
BY GLENN GREENWALD<br>
<br>
Ten minutes was the absolute maximum I could endure of any one
television news outlet last night without having to switch channels
in the futile search for something more bearable, but almost every
time I had MNSBC on, there was Lawrence O'Donnell trying to blame
"the Left" and "liberalism" for the Democrats' political woes. Alan
Grayson's loss was proof that outspoken liberalism fails. Blanche
Lincoln's loss was the fault of the Left for mounting a serious
primary challenge against her. Russ Feingold's defeat proved that
voters reject liberalism in favor of conservatism, etc. etc. It
sounded as though he was reading from some crusty script jointly
prepared in 1995 by<i> The New Republic</i>, Lanny Davis and the
DLC.<br>
<br>
There are so many obvious reasons why this "analysis" is false:
Grayson represents a highly conservative district that hadn't been
Democratic for decades before he won in 2008 and he made serious
mistakes during the campaign; Lincoln was behind the GOP challenger
by more than 20 points back in January, before Bill Halter even
announced his candidacy; Feingold was far from a conventional
liberal, having repeatedly opposed his own party on multiple issues,
and he ran in a state saddled with a Democratic governor who was
unpopular in the extreme. Beyond that, numerous liberals who were
alleged to be in serious electoral trouble kept their seats: Barney
Frank, John Dingell, Rush Holt, Raul Grijalva, and many others. But
there's one glaring, steadfastly ignored fact destroying O'Donnell's
attempt -- which is merely the standard pundit storyline that has
been baking for months and will now be served en masse -- to blame
The Left and declare liberalism dead. It's this little inconvenient
fact:<br>
<br>
"<b>Blue Dog Coalition Crushed By GOP Wave Election</b><br>
<br>
"Tuesday was a tough night for Democrats, as they watched
Republicans win enough seats to take back the House in the next
Congress and began to ponder life under a likely House Speaker John
Boehner (R-Ohio). But one group hit especially hard was the Blue Dog
Coalition, <b>with half of its members losing their seats.</b><br>
<br>
"According to an analysis by The Huffington Post, 23 of the 46 Blue
Dogs up for re-election went down on Tuesday. Notable losses
included Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.D.), the coalition's
co-chair for administration, and Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), the
co-chair for policy. Two members were running for higher office
(both lost), three were retiring and three races were still too
close to call.<br>
<br>
"The Blue Dogs, a coalition of moderate to conservative Democrats in
the House, have consistently frustrated their more progressive
colleagues and activists within the party..."<i><br>
<br>
Half of the Blue Dog incumbents were defeated, and by themselves
accounted for close to half of the Democratic losses.</i> Some of
us have been arguing for quite some time that the Rahm-engineered
dependence on Blue Dog power is one of the many factors that has
made the Democratic Party so weak, blurry, indistinguishable from
the GOP, and therefore so politically inept, and would thus be
stronger and better without them -- here's a 2008 Salon article I
wrote making that case. Despite viewing last night's Blue Dog
losses with happiness, I wouldn't point to this outcome as
vindication for my argument, as there are many complex factors that
account for last night's crushing of Congressional Democrats:
widespread economic suffering, anxiety over America's obvious
decline, the perception that Obama has done little to undermine
destructive status quo forces and much to bolster them, etc. etc.<br>
<br>
But for slothful pundits who want to derive sweeping meaning from
individual races in order to blame the Left and claim that last
night was a repudiation of liberalism, the far more rational
conclusion -- given the eradication of 50% of the Blue Dog caucus --
is that the worst possible choice Democrats can make is to run as
GOP-replicating corporatists devoted above all else to serving
corporate interests in order to perpetuate their own power: what
Washington calls "centrists" and "conservative Democrats." That is
who bore the bulk of the brunt of last night's Democratic bloodbath
-- not liberals.<br>
<br>
* * * * *<br>
<br>
One other point about the standard pundit line: for all the giddy
talk about the power of the "Tea Party" -- which is, more than
anything else, just a marketing tactic for re-branding the
Republican Party -- the reality is that the Tea Party almost
certainly cost the GOP control of the Senate. Had standard-issue GOP
candidates rather than Tea Party fanatics been nominated in
Delaware, Colorado, Alaska and Nevada, the Republicans would have
almost certainly won those seats (in Alaska, rejecting the GOP
incumbent in favor of a Tea Party candidates appears to have ensured
that Lisa Murkowski will return to DC as a GOP-hating reject rather
than a loyal Republican, the way Joe Lieberman returned after 2006).
That's not a criticism of the Tea Party -- I think it's admirable to
support candidates who represent one's views and be willing to take
a few extra losses to do so -- but the Tea Party storyline from last
night is one that is far from unadulterated success; in the case of
Senate control, it's quite the opposite.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
UPDATE: On a related note, in The New York Times today, one finds
the spectacle of Evan Bayh -- who gave up his Senate seat to a
Republican while he frolicks around in the millions of dollars his
wife receives from the health care industry -- demanding massive
entitlement cuts for the poor and freezes on the pay for government
workers, while also blaming the Democratic loss on the alleged fact
that<b> "we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters." </b>
Is he referring there to the escalation in the war in Afghanistan,
the massive increase in civilian-slaughtering drone attacks, the
virtually wholesale embrace of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties
architecture, the defense of Don't-Ask/Don't-Tell and DOMA, the
multi-billion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, the failure to stem the
tide of the foreclosure crisis, or the elimination of the public
option? Apparently, the lesson Evan Bayh -- and most pundits --
took from last night's results, and which they want the Party to
learn, is that if only Democrats had suppressed the enthusiasm of
their base just a little more, they would have won.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
UPDATE II: The number of Obama followers writing to me on Twitter
and elsewhere telling me that left-wing critics of the President are
the primary cause of last night's outcome -- rather than massive
economic suffering and the actions of their Leader -- is even more
than I expected. Bizarrely, they actually seem to have convinced
themselves of this; I suppose one who is desperate to cling to their
leader-love will find any theory that shields him from
responsibility. Behold the supreme power of the Professional Left!!<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/03/pundit/index.html">http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/03/pundit/index.html</a><br>
<br>
On 11/3/10 6:10 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:<br>
<br>
"...the American electorate never quite grasps the obvious, glaring,
brutal fact that neither of these factions is ever going to change
the system one iota if they can help it; they are the system, they
are its servants, its enablers, its enactors. Then again, we are
dealing with, to borrow Gore Vidal’s deathless phrase, the United
States of Amnesia, where history doesn’t exist (except in the form
of feverishly distorted self-righteous myths about America’s eternal
super-duper specialness), and every election is a tabula rasa ...
The people’s concerns are not only not addressed; they are not even
articulated by anyone in the lucrative, sinister game of King of the
Hill played by the two factions, both of which are pledged, body and
soul, to elite rule, corporate rapine and militarist empire. And
certainly, neither the corporate media nor the educational system
will do anything to help inculcate a deeper sense of history ...
Instead, these institutions keep replicating and refreshing those
same myths of specialness (in either “conservative” or “progressive”
form), adding layer after layer of thought-obliterating noise to the
Great American Echo Chamber that encloses, and imprisons, the entire
society ... both factions are – literally, legally, formally,
undeniably – packs of war criminals, pledged to the continuation of
a rapacious empire of military domination that is killing innocent
people, fomenting hatred and extremism, and destabilizing the world.
The myth of specialness prevents most people from seeing the truth
of what their bipartisan political establishment is doing to the
world – or even to themselves, how it has stripped them of their
liberties, corroded their society, destroyed their communities and
degraded their quality of life, while diminishing the lives and
futures of their own children and grandchildren. Most Americans
apparently cannot break out of the narrow cognitive structure that
has been imposed on their understanding of reality: i.e., that
America is inherently, ineradicably good..."<br>
<br>
Dissatisfied Mind: Flickers of Hope in a Deadly Political Cycle
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4CD1EBE3.2000106@illinois.edu" type="cite">
By CHRIS FLOYD
<br>
<br>
I found myself unexpectedly heartened by American election
returns, at least in one respect. For they have shown, once again,
that the American people feel an abiding, angry – if deeply
inchoate – dissatisfaction with the nation’s unjust, corrupt and
dysfunctional political system. They know that something is
profoundly wrong with the system, and so they keep voting one
faction out and putting the other faction in, hoping to see some
kind of change.
<br>
<br>
History gives this proof: in almost every national election for
the past two decades, we have seen a change in control of either
one or both houses of Congress or the White House. This has
happened in 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2008, and now
again in 2010. The pattern is very clear. And it is not because
Americans “prefer divided government,” as the dim chewers of
Beltway cud like to tell us; it’s because they can’t get anyone in
the system to address their concerns.
<br>
<br>
Yet with every turnover in factional control, we see a rush of
earnest, serious analysis telling us how the results represent a
vast sea change in America’s politics, culture, society, soul,
etc. But somehow, two years later, these momentously meaningful
tidal waves ripple into nothing on the empty shore. And again,
that’s because they don’t actually signify anything beyond the
by-now perennial unease and dissatisfaction.
<br>
<br>
What is less heartening, of course, is the fact that the American
electorate never quite grasps the obvious, glaring, brutal fact
that neither of these factions is ever going to change the system
one iota if they can help it; they are the system, they are its
servants, its enablers, its enactors. Then again, we are dealing
with, to borrow Gore Vidal’s deathless phrase, the United States
of Amnesia, where history doesn’t exist (except in the form of
feverishly distorted self-righteous myths about America’s eternal
super-duper specialness), and every election is a tabula rasa .
The only flickering historical awareness that seems to exist in
the American electorate is a vague sense that the gang they voted
in two years ago hasn’t changed anything; better try the other
gang again … forgetting this is the same gang they threw out the
time four years ago, for the same reason.
<br>
<br>
So the cycle goes on and on, and the rot and dysfunction grows
deeper, and ever more intractable. The people’s concerns are not
only not addressed; they are not even articulated by anyone in the
lucrative, sinister game of King of the Hill played by the two
factions, both of which are pledged, body and soul, to elite rule,
corporate rapine and militarist empire. And certainly, neither the
corporate media nor the educational system will do anything to
help inculcate a deeper sense of history (“History is bunk,” said
that quintessential American, Henry Ford; you can’t make no money
from it, so what’s the point?), or provide any wider, deeper
context for articulating – and confronting – the causes of the
electorate’s dissatisfaction. Instead, these institutions keep
replicating and refreshing those same myths of specialness (in
either “conservative” or “progressive” form), adding layer after
layer of thought-obliterating noise to the Great American Echo
Chamber that encloses, and imprisons, the entire society.
<br>
<br>
Mmm, maybe it’s not so heartening after all. Especially given the
fact that both factions are – literally, legally, formally,
undeniably – packs of war criminals, pledged to the continuation
of a rapacious empire of military domination that is killing
innocent people, fomenting hatred and extremism, and destabilizing
the world. The myth of specialness prevents most people from
seeing the truth of what their bipartisan political establishment
is doing to the world – or even to themselves, how it has
stripped them of their liberties, corroded their society,
destroyed their communities and degraded their quality of life,
while diminishing the lives and futures of their own children and
grandchildren. Most Americans apparently cannot break out of the
narrow cognitive structure that has been imposed on their
understanding of reality: i.e., that America is inherently,
ineradicably good, that whatever mistakes it might make here or
there (usually when one’s own preferred faction is out of office,
of course), this essential goodness remains inviolate, forever
untainted by any genuine evil.
<br>
<br>
And so bipartisan perpetrators of enormous evils – mass murder,
aggressive war, torture, brutality, ruination, atrocity and
injustice on a gargantuan scale – are not only never held
accountable, but are instead celebrated, honored, and rewarded
with great wealth and privilege. It is no wonder that
dissatisfaction reigns in the body politic. The people sense that
something is badly wrong; but no one in the system will tell them
that it is the system itself that is wrong. Instead, we get these
circuses and shams, these diversions and delusions that pass for
election campaigns, throwing up a blizzard of false issues and
partisan posturing, sound and fury signifying nothing … then when
it’s all over, it’s back to business as usual for our bipartisan
courtiers, feasting on the bloody swill of empire.
<br>
<br>
Still, the nagging spark of dissatisfaction can often be the
beginning of wisdom, eventually forcing us to look beyond the
confines of our cognitive overlays and unchallenged
understandings. The merry-go-round of factional turnovers, in
election after election, shows that this fertile element of
dissatisfaction is rampant, and chronic, in the American people.
They have not yet, not quite, accepted the system of rapacious
empire and elite domination as the natural order, the settled
status quo. They want something to change, they want things to be
different somehow – but, like people everywhere, they don’t want
to turn the mirror on themselves, and see the reality of the
noxious system they are perpetuating with their yo-yoing between
two utterly corrupt and depraved factions of money-grubbers and
power-seekers.
<br>
<br>
But as long as the dissatisfaction remains, there is still some
hope that it will drive more and more people to see beyond the
cloud of myth, to hear truths outside the echo chamber, and to
begin the long, arduous, quite possibly impossible but morally
imperative work of breaking the stranglehold of these murderous
fools and forging a genuine alternative to the system.
<br>
<br>
Chris Floyd's blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.chris-floyd.com">www.chris-floyd.com</a>.
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/3/10 5:41 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">[With no apologies to David Mamet, here's
the best analysis I've seen of the thoroughly cooked election
and What It Means. --CGE]
<br>
<br>
America the Clueless:
<br>
Gridlock is Good
<br>
<br>
The American people have spoken, but it’s impossible to decode
their incoherent message. Drunk with their capture of the House
of Representatives, the Republicans thunder that the verdict of
ballot boxes from Maine to Hawai’i is clarion-clear: the
ultimate evil in America is government, specifically government
as led by President Barack Obama. But when exit pollsters
questioned voters on their way to those same ballot boxes, as to
who should take the blame for the country’s economic problems,
35 per cent said Wall Street, 30 per cent said Bush and 23 per
cent Obama. The American people want a government that mustn't
govern, a budget that must simultaneously balance and create
jobs, cut spending across the board and leave the Defense budget
intact. Collectively, the election makes clear, they haven't a
clue which way to march.
<br>
<br>
Has the Tea Party changed the political map? Scarcely so. In
concrete terms, it ensured that a significant portion of the
political map didn’t change at all. Unlike the House, the U.S.
Senate will stay in Democratic hands, albeit with only a tiny
edge. As I wrote last week, purely on the basis of cui bono –
who stands to gain – one could make a sound case that the
Democrats invented the Tea Party out of whole cloth. If it
wasn’t for Tea Party lady, Christine O’Donnell, the Republicans
would be counting victory in Delaware. But the sometime-Satanist
ensured the surprise victory of a dreary Democratic unknown,
Chris Coons.
<br>
<br>
No single Democrat was targeted more fiercely by Republicans
than Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic senate majority
leader. His was the symbolic scalp they craved. Right-wing
millions poured into the state, backing Tea Party Republican
Sharron Angle. Tuesday evening one could sense Republicans
holding their breaths, ready to blare their joy at the victory
for Angle suggested by many polls.
<br>
<br>
Around midnight east coast time it became clear that Angle had
gone down, victim of the political suicide she actually
committed several days ago, dint of one of the most racist,
anti-Hispanic campaign ads in many years. It had escaped the
attention of that supposedly consummate Republican political
strategist Karl Rove – born in Sparks, Nevada, -- that the
Hispanic vote in Nevada is not insignificant. Hispanics went for
Reid by a factor of about 75 per cent and he slid through to
victory.
<br>
<br>
It should be added that the powerful corporate and labor
interests in the state of Nevada , most notably in the gambling
and entertainment and construction sector, were all aghast at
the possibility that economically stricken Nevada might cease to
have its cause promoted in Washington DC by the most powerful
man in the U.S. Senate, and instead have as their tribune a
racist dingbat with zero political clout. If ever there was a
need for the fix to be in, and seasoned fixers available to face
the task, it was surely in Nevada. But that said, Angle and the
Tea Party may have engineered defeat all on their own.
<br>
<br>
Just over half of the 17,000 respondents to a national exit poll
said that their votes in House races had nothing to do with the
Tea Party, pro or con. The other half was split, pro and con.
Over 60 per cent said the all-important issue is jobs; 87 per
cent said they are worried about economic conditions. Between
government laying out money to create jobs and government
slashing expenditures to reduce the deficit there’s also pretty
much an even split.
<br>
<br>
Is there anything new in all this? Of course not. Republicans
always campaign on homely pledges – economically illiterate – to
balance the government’s books the same way as their household
budgets. Pressed, as many triumphant Republicans were last
night, as to exactly where they would start cutting the federal
budget to achieve this end, they invariably slid into the
programmatic shadows, with hoarse ranting about freezes and
“across the board” budgetary carnage, except for military
spending. As California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, now even
more unpopular than the man he ousted, demonstrated, it’s easier
to terminate in a movie script than in a legislature. The
incoming California governor, Jerry Brown, demonstrated, that
even if you spend more of your money than any other candidate in
US political history, around $150 million (as did his opponent,
Meg Whitman) you still need to treat your maid right if you want
to win.
<br>
<br>
The second craziest victory speech of the evening came from a
Tea Party man, Rand Paul, now the Republican senator from
Kentucky. “We’re enslaved by debt,” he screamed at his cheering
supporters and followed this by savage diatribes about any
constructive role for government. Now it’s possible that Paul,
inflamed with libertarian principle, could actually try to
filibuster the next vote in the US Senate to authorize an
increase in the US national debt. As awed commentators swiftly
noted, he could plunge the United States into default, bring
economic devastation to the world.
<br>
<br>
On the other hand, the history of the Republican Party is
supposed crazies, like Ronald Reagan who campaigned against the
deficit in 1980, coming to heel and plunging the United States
into a vast new ocean of red ink, courtesy of his tax cuts. It’s
what drives the Tea Partiers crazy. They do know one basic truth
- that to govern is to betray and they are in line for betrayal.
The craziest speech? The visibly psychotic Republican
gubernatorial candidate in New York, Carl Paladino, soundly
thrashed by Andrew Cuomo, swinging a red baseball bat with the
transparent desire to dashing it into Cuomo’s skull.
<br>
<br>
The landscape has changed. The Republican swing in the House was
as dramatic as in 1994, after two years of Bill Clinton.
Democrats who entered Congress on Obama’s coattails have now
been ousted. What lies ahead is a war of maneuver, between the
White House and the Republican leadership. Obama has been
weakened -- deservedly so, because a large part of Tuesday’s
disaster for his party can be laid at his door. He laid down no
convincing political theme, mounted no effective offense, relied
on a team of advisors of dubious competence, which had run out
of steam. He himself tried to run for and against an effective
role for government, made the same childish equations of
domestic and federal budgets, sent out mixed messages, lost the
confidence of the young and of a vital slice of the
independents.
<br>
<br>
All the same, after two years, the polls show Obama is no more
unpopular than was Clinton in 1994. By 1996 Clinton had
outmaneuvered the Republican leadership and won reelection in
1996. Today the economic situation is far worse than it was in
1994. No effective political and economic strategy for recovery
is on the cards in the current atmosphere. As always, these days
in America, our last best friend will be gridlock.
<br>
<br>
###
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