Still think liberalism is politically viable in the USA in 2008?
Reconsider.
(I am posting this for the third time. The first two times it was not available long enough to engender a response. That could be because you're simply not interested.)
Point: The Democratic candidate for president has voted to legitimize warrantless phone taps on Americans against whom there is no evidence of wrongdoing.
Point: Said presidential candidate's most formidable rival sponsored a bill in such clear violation of free political speech that it caused unity between the ACLU and Antonin Scalia.
Point: If said presidential candidate loses the election, it is likely to be at least somewhat the result of the color of skin.
Point: The Republican candidate for president revitalized his campaign by selecting a corrupt, totally unqualified running mate whose qualifications seem to be that she is a member of an ultra-right Christian cult.
Point: Said vice-presidential candidate is picking up votes from women who formerly supported the Democratic runner-up for the presidential nomination.
Point: In any country where liberalism were viable, this election would have already been a clear runaway in every demographic in every state. It would would make the 1972 and 1988 elections look like photo finishes, but with the other horse in the lead.
Point: The Republican Party is still advancing its causes and candidates by misleading the electorate about Democrats' intentions to raise taxes on the middle class even as the middle class shrinks, wages drop, and services disappear.
Point: The Republican Party is still advancing its causes and candidates by stressing right-wing "values," even when their candidates repeatedly and obviously demonstrate that they hold such values in contempt in their private lives.
Point: If the Republican Party loses the election in 2008, it may very well be because a significant block of its voters defected to an even more radically conservative candidate.
Point: The Democrats managed a take-over of both houses of congress in 2006 mostly by nominating young Democratic conservatives to face unpopular Republican conservatives. One of the Senators the Democrats installed in 2006 was actually a member of the administration of Ronald Reagan.
Point: On this supposedly liberal blog, a number of the more prolific reader/bloggers habitually rail against liberals. One blog recently referred to the "liberal media" twice, the "liberal press" twice, and generic liberals twice. These references were not challenged. A very prolific commenter referred to Washington, DC as "yidland" in a thread authored by TPM Cafe's most iconic Jewish blogger. That commenter's reference was also unchallenged, then mildly and briefly challenged.
Point: The second-most disastrous president in American history, dead for several years now, is still referred to in hallowed terms by Republicans, Democrats and independents.
Point: The most disastrous president in American history keeps his Democratic congressional opposition cowed and keeps them busy financing his imperial and authoritarian wet dreams by allowing them to believe they are pandering to the electorate even when surveys show the public supports the Democrats. Even, in fact, when it is clear the opposition congresspersons were sent to Washington specificly to thwart said imperial and authoritarian wet dreams.
Some think the pendulum is swinging back toward the liberal side of the political trajectory, but the evidence would seem to indicate that the pendulum has fallen from its pivot and is permanently stuck in the ground far to the right of its inflection point.





Point: You have no concept of strategy and tactics or what it will take to win this race.
Point: You have even less understanding of how you are being manipulated by a well-funded vocal minority, the corporate media and polls. McCain hit his ceiling with voters before the race even started. He was gaining no democratic converts in large numbers and will continue to hemorrhage republican votes until November.
Point: Obama will win in an electoral college landslide and with a convincing lead in the popular vote, though by how much is hard to predict exactly given his new voter registration efforts and the number of republicans moving his way.
Conclusion: This entire long-ass blog is pointless.
September 10, 2008 7:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the predictions, Jason. It would be nice if you would provide some references to support them, but your opinion is welcome, too.
September 10, 2008 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
You need to differentiate between the Democratic Party itself, and the nation as a whole.
Most people rely on their Senators and Reps to take care of the 'arcane' issues such as FISA. We are seeing a massive failure of Congress to do this so people are reading the Constitution themselves, as demonstrated by the fact that the vast majority of Obama's own backers opposed his FISA and telecom stance.
As Jason says the media are manipulated to reflect a Republican fantasy. The media cannot win two wars, or create jobs, or persuade people that the economy is not collapsing. If the Republicans win it will be because the vote was stolen. And we know they abuse voters' rights. It will be a question of scale- Musharraf in Pakistan could not rig the election sufficiently to produce a win for him, and neither, I hope, will the Republicans.
September 10, 2008 9:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only way the neoconservatives steal another election is with low turnout. Their tactics are only effective in the 55% to 60% turnout range. If we get 70% or 75% - doable based on the primary numbers - those tactics won't work. Too much margin.
I think the Obamicans and new voters are the untold story of this election, the monster in the corner that the media refuses to acknowledge. I am not even a little worried based on what we have seen so far this year.
We The People are really paying attention for the first time in 40 years.
September 10, 2008 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Diachronic: You need to differentiate between the Democratic Party itself, and the nation as a whole.
My experience is that the conservative infection is so widespread and so insidious that it is nearly ubiquitous, affecting all political
entities. Most people who call themselves Dems espouse a political philosophy that we would have called right-of-center before Reagan. The Republicans are off the chart.
September 10, 2008 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Barry Goldwater, who by the way repudiated John McCain and had nothing to do with him, is considerably to the left of the Republican party in his stance on civil liberties and the role of the Constitution- although it seems absurd that the Constitution itself is now a "left-wing issue."
Goldwater was seen as representing the extreme right wing of the Republican Party in 1964, and lost because of this perception. So, you can argue that the entire playing field has shifted since then, which is true- but it actually isn;t a 'left-right' issue (and Goldwater is an interesting case, so I will focus on him to address this topic).
Two citations, both from wikipedia.
The first:
"When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."- (Barry Goldwater, 1994)
Note- kiss POLITICS goodbye. Right and left just vanish if POLITICS is conflated with THEOLOGY. In fact you have a sick union of plutocracy and theocracy, which I suppose you can argue are political arrangements, but are not the ones permissible under our laws.
Second:
Goldwater also had harsh words for his one-time political protege, President Reagan, particularly after the Iran-Contra Affair became public in 1986. Journalist Robert MacNeil, a friend of Goldwater's from the 1964 Presidential campaign, recalled interviewing him in his office shortly afterward. "He was sitting in his office with his hands on his cane...and he said to me, 'Well, aren't you going to ask me about the Iran arms sales?' It had just been announced that the Reagan administration had sold arms to Iran. And I said, 'Well, if I asked you, what would you say?' He said, 'I'd say it's the god-damned stupidest foreign policy blunder this country's ever made!'"
This was the total subversion of transparency, of accountability, without which we simply do not have a political system worthy of the name. I am one of those who agrees with Goldwater's assessment, at least as the stupidest blunder UP TO THAT TIME.
Dick Cheney and cronies were the masterminds behinds Iran-contra. Cheney wrote a scummy Minority Opinion on it that reads like the generic template for Hatch's and Bond's Minority Opinion on Rockefeller's Phase II report on the Iraq intelligence... problems. Essentially, shameless lying, endless deference to Executive Power, slurring the Democrats as non-patriots while they themselves aid and comfort the enemy.
Plutocracy provides the money to control the media and corrupt every politician, theocracy terrifies the opposition with hellfire at the polls.
Really, when Goldwater is not even right wing, the distinction means nothing anyway, at least not to the ordinary citizen, and I suspect not to anyone.
September 10, 2008 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Strange, it suddenly emerged as soon as i pronounced the magic words below.. anyway the two paragraphs, that immediately follow the colons, are from wikipedia; everything else is my own writing.
September 10, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
This post was intended to be more of a comment on the state of the politcal climate in our country than a springboard for a discussion of the election, partisan strategy or the manipulative effect of the MSM.
And I certainly do not present myself as an expert on presidential elections. I'm the guy who said there was no way Bush 41 could win.
But whatever you people want to discuss is fine with me.
September 10, 2008 9:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
You'll get my lengthy reply to your reply to me, as soon as it emerges from electronic limbo.
September 10, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink