Republicans have really nothing to show to say they are better than the Democrats at anything positive for the American people. On every single issue I can think of, the Republicans have been less effective, or at least no more effective, than the Democrats. But they’ve done 1 thing far, far better than the Democrats, & that is messaging. They’re a lot more effective at identifying what will move the public, & creating the message that will turn the public their way (or at least against their enemy). The message they put out doesn’t have to be factual, just believable, & that’s all they care about. Democrats are so pusillanimous – afraid to directly take on the issues, or to be associated with certain other politicians like the president, or to make a case for themselves or for the politicians with whom they associate. They are so focused on defending themselves from attacks or not stirring any trouble, that they ignore a lot of issues that favor their side, & fail to make a case why they’re better than their Republican opponents, which should be so easy to do, either by comparing side by side what each party has done for (or against) the country/state/locality & people, & by showing what Republicans say about various issues that are way outside mainstream/rational thought, as well as their hypocrisy, plain stupidity & outright lies. But precious little of this is shown.
Republicans realize that most Americans are ignorant, apathetic, gullible or some combination thereof, & they both take advantage of it & try to keep them that way, & their propaganda machine, Fox News, has very effectively assisted them in that goal; and, in fact, all the major corporate news networks have done the same. This Republican perspicacity was developed well over 30 years ago, & has only gotten more refined & effective through the years. Meanwhile the Democrats have caught on not in the least, & have nothing substantial to match them. In fact, considering how long they’ve been using the same ineffective election strategy -- the country is consistently with them on the issues & has a generally more favorable image of Democrats than Republicans – it almost looks as though the Democratic machine intentionally wants to fail: as if to please some power in the background – perhaps their corporate masters, the same ones that control the Republican party? That could make sense if they are simply 2 faces of the same behind the scenes puppetmaster, as some have claimed.
Republican conservatives learned long ago to keep on pushing for what they really wanted rather than for what they thought they could get in the current environment. At the beginning these ideas were rejected out of hand for being too extreme and often “whacky”, but they wouldn’t let up, and eventually their ideas became part of the everyday political conversation, and people got used to hearing about them and started to feel less threatened by them, and eventually some passed. In fact, more and more of them passed until they became mainstream, and the right figured they could even go more extreme, and those more extreme policies would eventually become familiar & expected, and so it went, and the political conversation went steadily rightward, and the measures passed by our government became more & more extreme, favoring big business and the rich at the expense of everybody else.
The left seems not to have noticed or learned from the success of the right in framing the issues of the day. Rather than proposing what they really think needs to happen, the left tends to think smaller, and propose merely what they think can pass, and usually such half-measures fail, anyway, because the right is so disciplined about rejecting anything that doesn’t conform to their ideology. The left needs to move the rest of the country to the left by proposing ideas they believe are needed in order to make things better in our nation & world, even if there’s no chance of them passing in the current environment, because such an idea must be considered, such a conversation must be started, in order to get people familiar with them, and agreeing that they make sense. More extreme ideas tend to get more passionate support than lukewarm ones or compromises. One rare example of the left doing just that is in gay marriage. When that was first proposed, the whole country considered that an outlandish, preposterous idea, and virtually nobody thought that it was a good idea, it was needed, and certainly that it would ever come to fruition. Even most gays thought it bizarre & unnecessary in the beginning. But that idea kept coming back, and very good reasons came up for having marriage equality. [And by the way, on this issue, the liberals took another tip from the Republican playbook (using popular terms for their favored issues) by increasingly using the term “marriage equality” when talking about this issue, which gets a more favorable public reaction/sympathy than the term “gay marriage”.] Eventually some societies even tried it, with good results. So it spread little by little despite heavy resistance, and now, within a mere generation, it has become a majority view in the US as in the rest of Western society that gay marriage should be legalized, and states are adopting marriage equality (or striking down marriage inequality laws as unconstitutional) at an accelerated pace. Progressives should do that with other issues.
Obama is viciously attacked by the right to an extreme I’ve never seen before. Yet if you look at his policies & what he has achieved, it is hard to imagine something conforming more to the goals of the corporate mainstream. I really think the fact that he has accomplished them so much better than Republicans is what has drawn their ire. They don’t want to admit it, so they vilify him. His signature accomplishment has been to implement a national health care plan virtually identical to one conceived of by Republicans. It makes sure that people depend on insurance companies (the liberal nemesis), rather than government (the conservative nemesis), for their health insurance. It brings overall health costs down. At the beginning of his presidency, he was confronted with the greatest financial crisis the US had seen since the Great Depression, & unlike Herbert Hoover, the Republican president at the time of the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, following 8 years of corrupt & laissez-faire governance by previous Republican presidents Warren Harding & Calvin Coolidge, who was unable to prevent our slide into a huge economic collapse with 25% unemployment, Obama, after 8 years of corrupt & laissez-faire governance by previous Republican president George W Bush, was able to limit the economic downturn & official unemployment didn’t go over 10%. GW Bush had 2 recessions during his term, including the Great Recession, & Obama kept that Great Recession from becoming a Great Depression, & has had steady recovery ever since, presently growing at a higher rate than it has in over a decade. Obama has reduced the deficit by a third. The stock market dropped under Bush – a rare feat for any president, especially 1 with 2 terms – while it has more than doubled (over 10,000 points) since Obama took over. Bush lowered capital gains taxes & income taxes for the rich. Obama has largely maintained those low taxes on the rich, who have had unprecedented prosperity, & the divide between rich & poor has grown (not good for the country, but remember, we’re talking about from the plutocratic viewpoint). Also the conversion from democracy to plutocracy started under Reagan & accelerated under Bush II, was continued to near fruition under Obama with plenty assistance from the Judiciary & Congress.
With the Patriot Act, Bush began limiting certain freedoms, started national surveillance over Americans & foreigners alike, initiated drone attacks on certain countries, & began arming the police with heavy duty military equipment, as we head toward a police state; Obama has intensified all of these policies – the military industrial complex should be very pleased. Bush allowed a terrorist attack on our soil that killed nearly 3000 innocent people, & despite going to war in 2 countries over this, failed to track down the accused perpetrator, whilst Obama surreptitiously took out said perpetrator with no American casualties. Despite the hugest oil disaster in the Gulf that destroyed so much wildlife, shoreland & regional businesses, Obama in relatively short order allowed oil companies to drill there once again, & in fact expanded oil & gas drilling in the Atlantic – the fossil fuel companies’ dream. During his watch, our nation long heavily dependent on foreign oil, has become nearly self-sufficient, & a world leader in production of fossil fuels.
In all areas that Republicans keep talking about wanting to do, Obama has been more successful, many times far more successful, at it than his predecessor Republican Bush. So if corporatist Republicans weren’t hypocrites, they’d be fawning all over Obama for all he has accomplished on behalf of their masters: but of course they are hypocrites, & Obama is nominally a Democrat, & they can never admit being wrong or being poorer at accomplishing their goals (even though they inevitably are) than a Democrat, so out of extreme jealousy they keep demonizing him, & the Democrats let them without coming to Obama’s defense (running away from any association with him), & the ignorant, apathetic, gullible public keeps buying it. And this is not the first time. Democrat Bill Clinton’s term in office was extremely favorable to business, to the stock market, & he even turned a budget deficit into a growing budget surplus at the end of his term (which, Bush reversed after less than a year in office), after Republican Reagan had tripled our national debt during his tenure. Really, the vast majority of any prosperity that has happened in the US over the past 3+ decades can be attributed to Democratic administrations, yet Democrats are so poor at messaging compared to the Republicans, much of the public believes the opposite.
Now before I finish, lest you think I’m some rabid Democratic partisan, I think both parties have been disastrously neglectful in facing the most important problems this nation faces: climate change & environmental destruction, the huge & constantly growing wealth gap, our gigantic national debt, our lagging education, our neglected infrastructure, & the subversion of our democracy into a fascist corporatocracy. We have had only 2 extraordinary presidents since Lincoln, both with the same last name, one Republican, one Democrat. What made them better than the others is that they governed clearly on behalf of the people while resisting corporate power: Theodore took on the rich corporate monopolies ruling over society & infesting governments at the time; while Franklin led the recovery from the Depression, helping out the poor & middle class through government jobs, supporting unions, creating Social Security, & making our income tax system very progressive. We are facing similar economic conditions as took place during their times, & a social situation increasingly reminiscent of the decade before the Civil War. We desperately need another Roosevelt.
But if the Democrats lose this election it is all due to messaging. The data all favors the Democrats as governing much better & having the better ideas. Based on the record, liberals should overwhelmingly vote for Democrats (not for having accomplished great liberal goals, but for not being as nearly obstructive or destructive of them as the Republicans are), moderates should vote overwhelmingly for Democrats (as extremist as Republicans are, how could anybody considering himself or herself moderate vote for them?), conservatives should vote overwhelmingly for Democrats (again for the extremism of the Republicans, their fiscal irresponsibility & the conservative goals recent Democratic presidents have accomplished), corporatists should vote overwhelmingly for Democrats (because they’re so much more effective at achieving corporatist policies), & populists should vote overwhelmingly for Democrats (because they are willing to still allow a small amount of say by the people in government, while Republicans are totally beholden to corporations). Only libertarians might have second thoughts, but they should shun both major parties & look toward minor parties. In fact all those groups, except corporatists, should look to 3rd parties & independents for much more enlightened policies than either major party, & eventually let a 3rd party replace 1 of the major parties.
