A lot of the chatter around the presidential election has to do with which of the Republican candidates a Democrat will have to face. What the nation has to face is that it really won't matter. Any Republican president will allow the Republican machine that currently forwards its corporatist, proto-fascist agenda to linger for another four to eight years and even more deeply entrench itself. We will see more whorehouse capitalism, more crass merchandising, more redistribution of the goodies to the richest and most powerful, more militarism, more death and destruction.
We are constantly being given hints by the fates about what Republican rule will mean. Katrina was one such hint, revealing a nation that has no money for infrastructure and certainly no money to bring its poorest to some decent standard of living. Republicans are so arrogant and oblivious that they allowed the Katrina debacle to go on day after day before they realized that it was not good politics to have the results of their policies on display. New York City--either the capital of the world or the place the rest of America loves to hate--has had a series of mini-Katrinas over recent months. Hurricanes and storms will occur, and New Yorkers learned that it is not only mid-Westerners whose rooftops are vulnerable, not just the "trailer trash" they love to deride who are vulnerable to suffering. They also learned that federal dollars are no more available to New Yorkers than they are to any other Americans. Con Edison pays handsome dividends to its shareholders while old cables burn out and steam pipes explode.
The bridge in Minnesota, the subway system in New York, the mining disasters are all reminders of how ignoring infrastructure, disinvesting in the needs of ordinary people, and tearing up regulations faster than we tear up our treaty agreements all threaten to turn this nation into a third class failed state. A U.S. without New Orleans may be spiritless; a U.S. without New York is basically Australia--and the Mad Max version of the place, to boot.
Any Republican president will allow the thugs and Know-Nothings in expensive suits who have run down our nation to stick around Washington. The Democrats may not be as different from the Republicans as we would like them to be, but just by nature of their rhetoric and promises, will be obliged to behave more decently. We need a Democrat in the White House in January of '09. Any Democrat. If they shoot themselves in the foot this time, it will not only mean the end of the Democrats, it may well mean the end of the nation in any recognizable form.