- This election should have been a total cakewalk.
- We have a president elected on a populist platform who immediately set out to do--guess what?--pretty much what he was elected to do! In fact, according to politifact.com, of 506 campaign promises, he has already kept 122 with another 236 "in the works." 41 others have been compromised on, 82 have been stalled, and only 22 have been "broken," but most of these are items with first year time limits that still are likely to be completed in the first term. AsSteve Benen pointed out in his Washington Monthly column back in June--long before the Consumer Protection Agency was founded as a part of the administration's latest achievement in financial reform--"President Obama's record of accomplishments, after just 17 month in office, is as impressive as anything we've seen in generations."
To this we add a GOP in such disarray that it has managed to nominate a host of candidates who are, by any objective standards, simply the worst slate ever produced by any major party in history. To call them fanatical and lunatic is to risk libel suits by representatives of fanatical loonies. And this batch of insane chowderheads has continued to make one crazy statement after another after another throughout the entire cycle. Further, even the actual GOP leadership is joining in the fun, with Boehner and McConnell and Ensign and others competing against each other in a game of Which Republican Can Say the Dumbest Things? I won't bother to recount them here, though I'm sure that a diary of GOP Greatest Hits of Stupid would go straight to the Rec List (and I do want a call-out, whoever writes it), but honestly: when Orrin Hatch has become the voice of reason for your party, something has gone seriously wrong.
And this absurd Bizarro-World version of the GOP campaigned from the very beginning on two basic premises: first, that it would block Obama from doing anything that it could succeed in blocking him from doing, and second, that--if sent back into power--it would do the exact same things that it did before, when it had power. You know: the things that drove us to the edge of destruction.
I mean, there is No Way On Earth this should even be close!
But three factors, I think, have mitigated things.
First, there is the incredible power of the only 24/7 political megaphone, Fox Noise, as it bleats its non-stop GOP infomercials to the masses, twisting stories until they are unrecognizable under layers of lies, making things up completely, and ultimately doing even more damage than the utterly unprovoked assault on the Constitution that the Supreme Court made in its Citizens United decision. And let's face it: any network that is responsible for unleashing both Hannity and Beck on the world deserves a special place in the Broadcasting Hall of Shame.
The second factor is the Democrats themselves, who have behaved like morons during this campaign season, listening to the beltway pundits and the Fox talking heads instead of the people who elected them in the first place and running away from their very strong record of legislative achievement. Sure, the legislature has been watered down because of the need to appease Blue Dogs and enough GOP senators to pass cloture, but the point is that Obama and this Congress achieved what few--if any--others ever had. Yet they hide from their achievements and allow the other side to define them as poor.
The final factor are the American people, who a mere two years ago proclaimed that they understood that the economy was a disaster that had taken eight years to create and that Obama could not possibly solve it in two years or even a single term. A Wall Street Journal polljust before his inauguration showed 71% approval of the efforts of the incoming executive in readying his economic team, yet 57% believed that the recession could go on for 1-3 years at that point, and another 17% believed it would go on much longer. We "got it" back then, until the GOP and Fox started their nonstop bleating, and we kept hearing them say it should be over even though it was partly their insistence on tax breaks in the stimulus that slowed recovery down, and we didn't have jobs, so we listened. Like sheep we followed. And those who knew nothing or a tiny bit about politics decided to follow their Fearless Leader into Glennbeckistan and Teapartistan and proved once mroe that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
But it is not only them. It is us, too. The Left. The educated. The liberals. Even those of us who allegedly understand how politics works. We became lost in the starlight that reflected Hope at us, and we Believed that it would all happen at once because we wanted it so badly after eight years in the dark. And maybe without Boehner's artificial orange glow it might have worked, but he did his job well. The man is a wart on humanity, but give him that much credit. And we saw that Obama was being forced to compromise, and that in fact his default game plan was to compromise, and we disliked that after years of a GOP who neer once thought to compromise with us. But that's just it: they should have. THEY SHOULD HAVE. So we are. And the game plan, if given time to work, will eventually pay dividends.
But...In our annoyance, we are hurt. Justifiably. We expected more, and it was a reasonable expectation. But the man we put into the White House has been making decisions about how to prioritize, what order to do things in, and how to do them. Some of these decisions piss me off too. I'm transgendered; I'd like him to be doing more right now for LGBT folks, but still... We have been hearing it for months now:
Obama has not done enough for {fill in name of liberal interest group du jour}. We don't think we will be supporting him this November. That will show him to take us for granted.
No. It won't. There is an old expression for this insane action: cutting off your nose to spite your face. It will solve absolutely nothing. Do you think for one second that the GOP will care more for your liberal special interest than even the bluest of blue dogs? THIS GOP? Because you are wrong. They won't. And they not only will not help your cause; they very likely will fight tooth and nail against it.
So go ahead, gay people and all other disaffected left wingers everywhere. Sit it out. Or, hey, what the heck: vote for the GOP candidate in your state. What the heck: if you're going to vote against your own interests, you might as well go nuts. Then, as you watch the government completely go to hell and your civil rights get legally stomped upon and, should there be another Supreme Court justice to name, yet another conservative added to the mix, you can just smile and say to yourself:
It didn't matter anyway.
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