Labor Day weekend in a year where labor is being screwed and since Badabing hadn't done it yet I was going to go write an angry rant. But then I read The Regressive Antidote and saw that David Michael Green had already done that and much better than I conceivably ever could. Just a teaser to convince you to follow the link and read what he wrote
Now, think about this for a second, and bear in mind that when it comes to the GOP we are talking about a political party that the very same polls show voters still hating. How astonishingly inept do you have to be to turn the world upside down on its axis and hand not only resurrection but in fact control of Congress to such thugs, and hugely despised ones at that? What kind of a full-blown multiple-car crash of a politician do you have to be to make the party of Bush, Cheney, Boehner and McConnell seem preferable to the public, by a wide margin?
So instead let's discuss a question Professor Green raises - what motivates regressives?
Dr. Green rules out some motivations already:
- Money. These people are already rich beyond the point where more money is a reasonable motivator.
- Legacy. History is not going to record any of this kindly.
- Career. The Democrats are, if anything, sacrificing their careers by allowing Regressives to flourish.
So I am mostly looking for comments with possible explanations but let me throw out some possibilities - "coolness" tops my list. I think it is probable that our elites move in circles where furthering regressive causes is somehow seen as doing "God's work". Seriously (not) perhaps they believe enforcing austerity will reduce the birth rate and so save the planet. Or maybe it's simply that, in their zeal for class warfare, they have gone too far in pushing for the rights of rich people. As Hunter Lewis points out in "Are the Rich Necessary?" the argument for insanely rich people existing is that the government is too incompetent to save and invest for society. So if you really believe that then almost any regressive campaign becomes not only reasonable but even necessary and moral.
Imagine for a minute that you are excessively wealthy. How do you justify to yourself such huge resources while the average American grows more impoverished by the minute? You are forced to either convince yourself that the average American does not deserve the good life the American middle class traditionally had or that your "stewardship" of the money will somehow ultimately benefit the average American more than your paying it in taxes or to charities. And if you maintain either illusion then it would follow that if you had more money then society would be even better off.
Any reader of the bible will be familiar with this line of reasoning - in an impoverished society the mere possession of great wealth will have a horribly corrosive affect on your soul. But this affect alone does not satisfactorily explain our current politics. First people from the elite classes have stepped up before to save society. Second as Dr. Green points out it is one thing to hold these beliefs while America was growing in technology, house ownership etc. But it's quite another thing to stand on a crumbling precipice and not yield an inch.
Dr. Green also somewhat suggests that we are dealing, perhaps, with an entire elite army of sociopaths. Certainly we have a nation of over 310 million and only a very small handful of true leadership positions. So it's not inconceivable that corporate coercion could have fielded a dream team of veritable psychopaths. The problem with this explanation is that, President Obama obviously not being a psychopath, why don't we just play populist and finish off the Regressives.
Honestly I don't have an explanation adequate to the whole of the phenomena. I open the floor to those that can explain how a nation self destructs like this. But don't bother with angry rant because the link above has it covered
Whatever the explanation, the effect could not be clearer. Obama came into his presidency with more wind in his sails than perhaps anyone since Johnson in 1964, and this for a black man with an Islamic name, no less. He then blew it, utterly and completely. The indications of this are everywhere, starting with all the subsequent by-elections which he has turned into ‘bye’ elections for candidates from his party. Meanwhile, there are Democrats running for Congress today who are literally running TV ads dissing Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. And even those who are not mostly don’t want the president showing up in their districts before this election.
Now the latest polls are showing Republicans with a ten percent lead in generic congressional ballots. This is the biggest they’ve ever had in the 68 year history of polling. Meanwhile, half of Republican voters are enthusiastic about voting this November, while only one-fourth of Democrats are. On top of everything else, Republicans are doing this well despite offering nothing in terms of a plan for solving the problems that are upsetting voters. They will cut taxes on the rich. That’s it. The entirety of the rest of what they stand for is simply “NO!!!” to all things Demon Obama.