The historical and political science conventions that voters can "send a message" and pick a set of fiscal, social or ruling principals by what party or candidate they vote for is close to dead in America now.
At least with the two parties that hold all the power. When are progressives going to flex their collective muscle and start voting for alternative candidates?
Family dinners in my house were sometimes banal or eat and run without much else. But mostly what I remember was great political discourse... discussions about current events with historical context. One of my father's favorite ways to frame a major news event was the pendulum. It was regularly swinging back and forth, he always stressed. The free wheeling 60's were a direct reaction to the Eisenhower white bread 50's; Nixon's win was a result of the overreaching and drug culture that middle of the road Americans attributed to Democrats. Carter's win was a reaction to Watergate and the citizen's disgust with the corruption of the Republican administration. Reagan came along due to the message that the current recession in the late 70s was due to government bureaucracy and waste via Carter. And so on, this was what I learned in mostly historical context (I was not yet born or very young through many of these eras.)
Since I became politically involved I've been waiting for the pendulum to swing. It seems we've been stuck right of center for quite some time now - since Reagan. Last week's election in Massachusetts is a fine example. The citizens of one of the most liberal states in the union demonstrated their anger at Democrats for being too vested in corporate interests by shaking their fists and voting for... a Republican? Do they really think that Brown is going to fight for the middle class?
I tasted my first bitter pill with Clinton and it is still stuck in the back of my throat. The wheel is lodged in this country so it only turns in one direction. It means that we're driving around in circles like a ship stuck in a maelstrom. Where is my father's faithful pendulum?
The voters act like it's still there - they've been hitting that ball across the net faster than pros at the US Open. They sent their message in 2006. Or so they thought, but nothing really happened. Maybe it would take something drastic, like voting for a candidate that scared the crap out of the Right.
So came the big swing: the 2008 election of a progressive mixed race man to the White House. Turnout was huge preceded by the largest crowds coming out to see an inspirational candidate than any politician had seen in generations.
Flash forward. Here we are again. That bitter pill. The crumbs of populist rhetoric Obama threw at us this past week after the MA special election by his wheeling out Volker to enact Sweeping Financial Regulation represent the first hat tipping to most of those that voted for him than we've had since he signed an order to close Guantanamo.
It's been a long year. I'm not buying it.
Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me. When are we - the voters - going to continue to go to the polls and pull the lever for one corporate candidate over the next again and again and again? How much worse is it going to have to get before we use this powerful forum of the web to pick and mobilize behind a new party not beholden to the fat banks, the weapons contractors and the private health insurance corporations?
This "spending freeze" - don't be fooled - we won't benefit from it, nor will future generations as the beltway bleaters are circulating. The plutocrats want to know: how can we turn this rage to our benefit once again? I know! We'll tell them we need to cut spending, or else! (I find it also interesting that a story about terrorists using a weapon of mass destruction Sometime Soon also broke today. We can't cut that Pentagon budget, now can we, scared little campers?)
The cuts will gouge into our domestic programs, maybe not the well known ones at first, but we the people will be the losers.
This can still be a thriving democracy with a egalitarian economy some day. We just have to stop voting against ourselves. The powers-that-be have glued the original pendulum into place. When are we going to stop playing their game and pick the alternative candidates?