Vice President Biden noted yesterday that he hoped that the Tea Party might finally get Democratic and liberal votes out of their “lethargy.” The comment struck a nerve with me since various Democratic leaders have expressed surprise and mild criticism over the lack of enthusiasm by Democratic voters. What is striking is the fact that Biden and others continue to consider their own failure to give voters a reason to become active after years of broken campaign promises and outright betrayals of core values. The best that they can come up with (yet again) is that the other people are worse than we are.
It is unclear why Biden thinks, for example, civil libertarians should be energized after the Obama Administration embraced and expanded Bush-era policies in the war on terror. President Obama has shielded Bush officials from any investigation, let alone prosecution, for torture and has fought to block any cases that would hold companies or agencies responsible for violations of human rights or privacy.
It is unclear why Biden thinks environmentalists should be energized after the Administration opened up pristine areas of the East Coast for oil exploration and, even after the BP disaster, downplayed the spill damage to lift the moratorium.
It is unclear why Biden thinks that peace advocates should be energized after the Administration continued both wars and the gushing of both American blood and treasure.
It is unclear why Biden thinks gay and lesbian activists should be energized after the Obama Administration fought in court to preserve Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and then appealed to limit the major victory enjoining DADT.
For over a decade, the Democratic Party has based its demands for political support not on its own performance but on the “lesser of two evils” argument. They simply cannot understand why voters would be less than enthusiastic in fighting for them to retain power. Indeed, from the very start of this Administration, the clear message to liberals has been “you have no where else to go.” What the Administration and congressional democrats did not consider is that liberals, civil libertarians, and environmentalists could decide to simply go no where and stay at home.
Biden was speaking(at a fundraiser in Chevy Chase, Md. when he noted that “[m[aybe the best thing to happen to us lately is the Tea Party wins. Maybe it’ll shake some of our constituency out of their lethargy.” Biden seems to welcome that there is finally a compelling reason for voters to take to the streets: even worse people are running for office.
How about another option? The Democratic leaders could actually fight on principle over things like torture and give voters a positive reason to care about their future. If you want voters to care, you can start by giving them something to care about — other than the job security of Democratic officeholders. If the Obama Administration did not actually jettison these issues for political convenience, it might not have been more popular, but it would have been more respected and it would have garnered far more enthusiasm from Democratic and liberal voters. Instead, the Democratic leadership has repeatedly conveyed that they are concerned only about retaining their offices and power at any cost — hardly a motivating message for votes.
So here is my suggestion for a new campaign motto: “Fighting Lethargy With Leadership.”
Source: The Hill
The Dallas Morning News is reporting that when the republicans take over in the fall, the Texas republicans will be taking over the powerful committees again. Some are the same people that held them prior to 2006. So how does throwing the bums out (the democrats) and putting Barton back in charge of energy change anything. That is what we need in charge of energy policy – a denier of global warming. Get rid of Nancy Pelosi and put the Texans back in charge. Maybe we don’t have twenty years with regards to the environment. My congressman Pete Sessions will be a powerful man in Washington along with Jeb Hensarling, the congressman who was sponsored by the Wylie brothers. The list of Texas republicans moving back into power is long. Most are worse than Bush. I went to an SDS meeting when I was young. Their ideas did not work then and I don’t think they they will work now.
Carlyle Moulton,
Your argument reminds me of an old joke:
A man comes home from work early and finds his wife in bed with another man. The husband of the unfaithful wife pulls out his gun and points it at his own head. The man in bed with his wife chuckles. The husband looks at the other man and says, “Don’t laugh–the next bullet’s for you!”
Or passionless:
Christine O’Donnell Will Stop America From Sexing Each Other (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/24/christine-odonnell-will-s_n_738276.html
Speaking of passion:
Fight Breaks Out After Harry Reid-Sharron Angle Candidate Forum
AP/The Huffington Post First Posted: 09-24-10 01:07 PM | Updated: 09-24-10 01:22 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/24/reid-angle-forum-fight_n_737869.html
After all the passion that has been displayed I still can not get this out of my mind,it may explain some things:
In the US representative government does not work, because interposed between voters and the government is the political representative class and public discourse is limited to an acceptable range by the bloviating classes. Neither of these classes has interests aligned with the majority of US citizens, rather their interests align with those of the kleptoplutocratic overclass of billionaires. The political representatives and bloviators see themselves as at the least respectable high status servants of the elite and many consider themselves full members.
Elaine, Blouise and Swathmore Mum.
In my previous post to Elaine and Swathmore Mum I meant to address Blouise as well but forgot, my previous comments were intended for all three of you.
Lottakatz.
I agree with you 120%.
By the way, being able to say things in few words is not a gift, it is a skill learned through much practice in writing to newspapers and more recently posting on blogs.
My English writing used to be appalling, the worst aspect being my inability to hold arguments to a decent length. Whenever I wrote an essay meant not to exceed 800 words, I would submit 10,000 and generating these 10,000 used to be a painful process, but practice improves things and writing is now pretty effortless. I did not really start to write until I had access to a text editor on an IBM compatible mainframe computer in the eighties to write computer documentation. This allowed me to get beyond the barrier of rewriting over and over and filling waste baskets full of mistyped or blotchy misspelled handwriting. The text editor allowed me to change things without having to retype everything, and now reediting is not normally needed.
So practice trying to say the same things over again when an appropriate blog thread presents itself. Over time one’s brain condenses the arguments and one builds up pithy phrases for reuse in the same argument.
Elaine and Swathmore Mum.
I hope my previous post is better at getting across what I have been trying to say to you in posts on other threads.
Buddah is correct.
Much of the argument on this thread is from people who think choosing “hell the fast way” is crazy when there is the option of “hell the slow way”. I in Australia and presumably safe from the chaos that will result when the US reaches destination Hell, the riots, the death camps, the mass abuse of human rights no longer confined to just poor people and blacks, so it is probably impertinent of me to suggest to you poor Americans of an evil liberal inclination that you should choose “Hell the fast way”, nevertheless I enjoy being impertinent.
The fact is that the American political system as it is now is incapable of dealing with America’s problems and only a crisis sufficiently severe as to banish the illusions that there exist relatively small and costless solutions will change that. In other words you need to reach Hell before you can escape from Hell. Disaster is inevitable, you can choose actions that will delay the disaster at the cost of making it worse or hasten it with the possibility that it may be of less impact, but you cannot prevent it, therefore I recommend taking actions that would speed up the inevitable. Yes the Republican Party and the Tea Baggers are beyond insanity and if given power are only capable of doing things that hasten the disaster, whereas Democrats will just sufficiently better managers as to delay disaster at the cost of making it worse.
The catastrophe may be of the same order of magnitude as that that occurred with Europe under Hitler. The US is now in a pre-facist phase, it may need the lesson of a period of from 10 to 40 years under full blown fascism complete with torture squads and death camps and exiled dissidents before a sufficient number lose the blinding illusions that prevent them throwing out the Republican/democratic duopoly power elite.
I suggest not just failing to vote Democrat, choose and support the most looney and incompetent tea party candidates that you can find. Advocate to let Israel nuke Iran and force the US to extend its war into as many Muslim countries as it can. Let the wars bleed your country insolvent and kill the US pretensions to being an Empire. The illusion of empire is the problem, no reform can occur until their is a consensus that the US empire is dead.
Elaine and Swathmore Mom, I hope this
Swarthmore mom: “Blouise I have a republican brother in law who is like that. He could not vote for Palin and ended up voting for Obama in the end.”
Blouise: “SwM, There are a lot of them … they would never donate to the democratic party but they will not vote for a crazy for they do love their country and they know what the crazies are all about.”
———
I think you ladies have hit on something that is greatly under rated in the equation: the “I’m crazy but I’m not THAT crazy’ aspect of voters. I know racist bigots that voted for Obama. The Bush Administration was simply killing them economically. They had to hold on to their bigotry and vote for McCain or vote for Obama and a chance at some relief.
Give people, even people that have political views (and vote those views)we would label as extremist enough of a taste of real extremism and what it can do to them and they start making better choices simply because they need the relief.
Slartibartfast: “Lottakatz,
What I want to know is why don’t the Democrats (and Harry Reid in particular) force the Republicans to actually stand up and talk every time they want to filibuster – a simple way within the rules to make unprecedented Republican obstructionism apparent…”
Carlyle Moulton: “When people say that they can’t do something it often really means we won’t do it because we don’t want to do it,…”
——-
Slarti, I actually started answering your question but it morphed and got weird the longer I explored the thought.
Thankfully Carlyle Moulton has a gift for ‘short and sweet’ I lack. I agree with his assessment.
Slartibartfast: (Re: BIL the Berzerker)
“Buddha, I’m just arguing that we pick ‘Hell the Slow Way’ in order to give ourselves more time to find a third path… Do you see any reason to pick ‘Hell the Fast Way’?”
———
And here I thought you’d naturally have an affinity for the call to ‘chaos’. 🙂
***
The answer to your question, though I’m not BIL and just want to take a shot at it, is that it works. Incremental change provides just enough validation to an existing system to keep people from taking a chance, out of the streets, cities from burning, or fundamental demands from being made by the citizenry. I’ve seen how fast the process can react to deliver on its promise’s and responsibilities during time of strife and challenge. It’s an impressive and horrible thing to see.
I read an article about 6-12 months ago that detailed some experiments done to determine the level of risk-taking among people that had few of something and others that had moderate to many of something. The upshot was that the less of something a subject had the more conservative and anxious that subject was about losing it, even if it was inadequate to sustain the subject throughout the duration of the sequence of events in the experiment. I believe that the experiments were set up as betting events that would require betting often enough to win enough to be able to remain in the experiment to the end.
I forget the exact particulars and haven’t been able t find the paper though I have searched for it several times since I read it. What I do recall clearly though is that people with little tend to be more conservative even when it is not in their best interest and behave in a more docile manner when confronted with choices and the possibility of taking even small actions that could help them.
I also recall reading a book on the Soviet system (written by someone that lived there several years) that marveled for a chapter or two at the docility of citizens in the face of perpetual shortages. This was a good 30-40 years ago. The author went into great detail about the ways citizens coped with shortages including queues that lasted for a day or more for announced deliveries of simple consumables like meat and onions. That people carried around a couple of months wages and upon seeing a queue would get in it first and ask what its purpose was afterward. He detailed a host of labor intensive tactics used by the prols to provide for their own basic welfare.
The author, in response to his own question of why people in Moscow can’t buy onions in summer, postulated that the shortages were not the fault of a bumbling government agency entrusted with the allocation and distribution of said onions and other foodstuffs but a concerted policy of the government. Queuing and scrambling for even modest amounts of basic items simply left people too preoccupied and tired for revolution. It was the only explanation that made sense in a country where the citizens would have as their natural enemy a corrupt and indifferent government that worked to protect the wealth and power of a few over the needs of the many.
It was a sophisticated control mechanism that sapped energy and stifled dissent without having to expend great amounts of time and energy using other means. The oppression of a few high profile people within the intelligence was simply a way to keep them in line as a group since an educated class was needed but, they were not really a threat, with the great bulk of the citizenry being completely demoralized and preoccupied.
I see resonances within our own political system. It’s a short hop for me to see corollary between the Soviets of the 50’s-60’s queueing up for onions and Americans mortgaging their future choices for a line of credit. If you wanted people to think they were well off and resist change to an established political (or class system) then credit is the perfect vehicle. Wages don’t have to rise, the actual wealth held by the prols don’t have to increase, the only thing that needs to increase is the line of credit. It acts as an economic engine, it allows great and real wealth to be created and float upward, and it will take a long time to crash so long as jobs are reasonably plentiful.
When the crash comes, you are left with a population that is rendered docile and exhausted by either attempting to salvage something of their lifestyle or due to their impoverishment. You have a majority of the population with just enough that they can’t afford to lose more. The same political and economic interests that benefited during phase I benefit during phase II. The laws passed and policies developed in phase I make phase II inevitable. I don’t see this as an accident or bumbling or stupidity on the part of out elected’. I do see the road back to fiscal responsibility, for individuals and the country to take decades. And those are decades that build in small, incremental changes that are little more than band-aids that do little more than make it appear that some progress in addressing the country’s needs and desires are being made.
I am of the mind that if the last 25 years and the coming 20-25 years had not been planned it should have been because it works beautifully. 50 years of wealth and power being consolidated while all the while giving every impression that anything you want is at your fingertips, just visit any grocery store or Wal-Mart, no shortages here so everything must be ok.
BIL wants to short-circuit the next 20 years and thinks chaos (my word)in the political system will lead to some healthy measure of chaos in the real world. He needs to elaborate n his thesis.
I too think things will get worse before they get better. I think that means oppression: personal, economic and/or political as I see it. BIL may be thinking that push will come to shove and people will just keep throwing the bums out, as things get worse, until a new political generation of leaders emerge that no longer think of the citizenry as a periodic inconvenience and act in a responsible and responsive manner to the needs of the citizenry and country.
I think it’s a crap-shoot, it could be America during the Great Depression giving rise to a Roosevelt or Germany ala’ 1925-1932.
Throwing the bums (of whatever stripe) out has a great appeal to me also. On principle. If it’s done regularly you don’t end up where the very thought of it is, in and of itself, terrifying. That only show that we haven’t done it enough.
The relationship between the Democratic Party and The Democratic party voter base is analogous to that between an abusive husband and a wife now surplus to requirements that the husband wants to ditch but also wants to do so without initiating the divorce proceedings himself. An escalating campaign of insults fails to get the message through to the wife because she having dependant personality disorder is afraid to face the truth.
All.
Professor Turley’s analysis is 100% correct, but it is necessary to go beyond it.
People who are mystified by the failures of the Democratic party elite to enact the policies they promised and to reverse those they promised to reverse are confused by their own inability to recognize and distinguish among the different concepts of “can’t” “won’t” and “don’t want to”. When people say that they can’t do something it often really means we won’t do it because we don’t want to do it, and that is the case with the poor weak, powerless Democrats who need so many unobtainable things such as bipartisanship from Republicans and consent from powerful businesses for their power of those businesses to be wound back.
The Democrats are Light republicans or RIABN for Republican In All But Name. They agree with real Republicans that rich people are inherently better and more deserving than the other 99% of the population and that it right and proper and just that the terms of trade between the gazillionare class and the rest should be tilted still further in favour the former. What distinguishes Democrats from Real Republicans is that Dems do not try to appeal to the kind of people who oppose abortion but support the death penalty so that unwanted fetuses can be born into poverty and squalor and grow up to be psychopathic serial killers sitting on death row awaiting lethal injection.
Professor Turley.
Sometimes I wait for an article from you on some issues, but such an article never comes. I really think your ideas on the affairs of Aafia Siddiqui just sentenced to 86 years for shooting at US soldiers would be interesting, also your views on Guantanamo Bay and the failure of Habeas Corpus petitions for so many of its inmates. Andy Worthington’s blog, The Talking Dog and The Guantanamo Blog are the go to sites for a quick primer on these things.
HenMan,
As I said before, I highly doubt that any Democrat could have held Blanche Lincoln’s seat in this environment. That being the case, I thought that the progressive push to primary her was a good idea (even though I don’t think her opponent had a prayer in the general either). Also, I don’t see a problem with the Democratic establishment supporting her over her primary challenger – it seems likely that such support would have been part of a deal for her vote on health care reform (or other bills). In general, I’d rather have a moderate candidate with a chance of winning than a true progressive that will go down in noble defeat.
Couldn’t sleep
HenMan,
You are honestly and truly a person after my own heart … I also wanted Hillary and I know she would have been a better president if for no other reason than that she possess a much stronger work ethic. Ditto on almost everything else you said especially Dennis.
Lottakatz, from now on your name is Lottasense in my book and I will only address you as such.
Keep on pushin’ people … he’s a politician and he wants to be loved … use it!
Lottakatz: You make Lottasense. The Democratic Party also brought the worthless Blanche Lincoln back from the dead with a last minute infusion of cash to defeat a progressive candidate in the Arkansas Primary. At least he would have gotten the Democratic vote in the general election. I can’t imagine anyone in either party voting for Lincoln, but I guess this year insanity is the norm. Get crazy, get noticed, get elected- or at least get rich.
Lottakatz,
What I want to know is why don’t the Democrats (and Harry Reid in particular) force the Republicans to actually stand up and talk every time they want to filibuster – a simple way within the rules to make unprecedented Republican obstructionism apparent…
HenMan,
I never thought that your goals were substantially different from mine, just that your tactics are counterproductive towards achieving them…