You hear it every day on the news. Dems can expect a drubbing this election year, inevitable as the tides, really. They’ll talk about how in a regular election cycle the majority party just about always loses seats and gosh, the economy is so bad and <wags finger> it’s the economy stupid and jobs, jobs, jobs, then they‘ll couple that with stats and polls from who knows where and then within no time flat there’s a bunch of distinguished, well suited heads all bobbing in unison at how very obvious it all is.
This is what’s called conventional wisdom. And, in these times, with this President specifically, Conventional Wisdom is wrong just about every time...
Hearken back to November of ’07 when it was all about "the Mayor of Nine Eleven vs the Clinton Machine!!!" They had their narrative and what a grand one it was, remember? Title fight of the century, right? Hey, it’s a great story, inevitable really. Clinton has the name and fame and the money to match. Giuliani can Out Terror all comers all the way to the nomination. Clinton versus Giuliani. Makes too much sense not to be. Inevitable as the tides. Who else comes close to either of them? Least of all some skinny black kid fresh out of high school with a name of Hussein or a cash-poor and half-crazed octagenarian? Well, we all know how that turned out.
What the Media never got the pulse of and still doesn’t (perhaps willfully) was that Bush had broken things soooooo badly that your Average Joe (non-plumber) didn’t want anything to do with the existing system, with business as usual. Hillary, as strong as she was (IS) couldn’t be the big Change due at least partially to the last name alone. But the real story was that it turned out Obama was the unstoppable one due to who he is, due to the dream he could lay out before the American people and due to the newness, freshness and positivity he beamed out after a very dark 8 years.
Of course, once Giuliani failed (and God alone knows what the Mayor thought he was doing in that campaign), Conventional Wisdom had Mormon Mitt as the presumptive nominee or else it was the upstart evangelical Huckabee (who saw a bump in the polls as ‘divine providence’), but many of us saw through that too. Many of us thought that the Republican field was actually so bad, so shallow, so unelectable that McCain of all peoplewas actually starting to look...electable? Who knew? Well, a lot of us, it turns out, though certainly none of the highly vaunted suits and suitpanted would-be geniuses of the mainstream media. And so it goes.
I can do this all day. I was going to go about how all this ‘Year of the Anti-Incunbent’ talk had proven itself wrong but how could I say it better than Maddow did last night? Probably my favorite utterly smashed media generated "Conventional Wisdom" was that somehow the fact that some former centerfold asshole who drives a truck around won an election in Massachusetts meant it was impossible and probably political suicide for Obama to keep trying to pass Health Care Reform. Really guys? Really? The man who, in Hillary Clinton, had beat out one of the most ambitious and tenacious contenders in presidential run history? He’s gonna toss in the towel because some hick won a single election in one State? Really? It’s actually laughable when you look back at it, isn’t it? But it was without a doubt the conventional wisdom of the time. So what do we do with that?
At this stage in the game when I want to make a prediction about what’s going to happen in American politics, the solution is simple: watch the news for a few days, pick up the "Conventional Wisdom" they so studiously lay down and bet on precisely the opposite thing happening (Free Plug: I like InTrade. Made a ton of money betting on Biden as VPwhen everybody else was talking Edwards or Webb)
So what does Conventional Wisdom say about the impending November elections? Conventional wisdom is, this time, that the Democrats are going to take a bath and again, it’s as inevitable as the tides, ain’t it? Except what if we assume the paradigm is consistent and conventional wisdom is wrong, what’s your only logical assumption? The Dems necessarily should kick ass this November, repeat KICK ASS. And you know what? Cognitively, it’s possible and for two reasons.
- The Media still has this President and this era all bolloxed up in their teeny little collective mind. They think that if they keep saying the Big Business Best Case Scenario over and over again then Reality will follow and why not? It's worked plenty of times before. Just not with this President. This President is one of the most gifted speakers in American political history. A case has to be made, a case can be made and there is absolutely nobody better to make that case. People that think he's going to be a liability are all wrapped up and warped into the Conventional Wisdom of the Mainstream Media Chickenheads, which is a fine place to be if you want to always be surprised at political results. Point is that somehow he's been underestimated again. And probably by all of us.
- As far as Republican presidents go, George ‘Dubya’ Bush was a full-on REPUBLICAN FREAKING SUPERHERO!!! Huge tax cuts for the rich? CHECK! Great big wars in far off lands? HE GOT ‘EM TWO! WOULDA PICKED UP IRAN IF HE COULD’VE!!! "Less regulation on Big Business???" DONE! BANG! POW! ZAP! Find one mistake that George Bush routinely made and see how the Repubs are absolutely barking-mad, frothing-at-the-chops for the chance to go ahead and repeat that very. same. mistake. right. fucking. now.
The simple realization that needs to be brought home is that George Bush is a Republican and the Republicans ARE George Bush and nothing they’ve done since Obama took office says anything different, in fact it proves it. This shit is checkers, not chess. Said it before and I’ll say it again: this election is every bit as winnable as McCain-Obama.
-iSenseChange
p.s. It is also Conventional Wisdom that America is a Center-Right country. Very well established. Yep. Certain as the tides...