There's an old saying that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it'll jump right out again. But if you put a frog into a pot of lukewarm water, and heat it up slowly enough, the frog will never notice how hot the water is getting and never jump out, until it's frog soup.
Now, I don't think that literally works, but my diary title was intended to drop you directly into the hot water, so you'd notice it. "Oh, hell no!" was probably your response. But here's the thing I didn't say: it's not literally Michelle Bachmann running as a Democrat, just someone else with the same ideology and same policies. And the Republican running against him/her is worse, way worse. Would you vote for Michelle Bachmann then?
In the last 15 or so years, the politics of this country has shifted significantly rightward. What was mainstream Republican ideas in the mid-90s has now become the Democrats position. Nowhere is this more apparent than in health care reform- the biggest difference between RomneyCare and ObamaCare is that RomneyCare covers abortions. Obama put Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table. He calls the deficit commission. He staffed the deficit commission. He's either a complete imbecile or he knew what the recommendations were going to be. We're already getting the chance to vote for Citizen Dole (or worse) running as a Democrat, and the main defense being offered is that President Bachmann would be worse.
But here's the problem- what is stopping this rightward shift from continuing? If the Democratic mainstream of today is the Republican mainstream of 15 years ago, what is stopping the Democratic mainstream of fifteen years from now being the Republican mainstream of today? What is stopping the Democratic candidate for President in 2028 being politically indistinguishable from Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin, the way that the Democratic candidate for President in 2012 is politically indistinguishable from Dole?
There is only one thing that can stop this slide- if the Democratic candidates stop being able to win elections while moving to the right. If the Democratic voters reach a point where they say "No- I don't care how much worse the Republican candidate is, I can't vote for this." Democratic candidates win accolades from the pundicracy and donations from the corporate elites every time they move right. Behavior that is rewarded is repeated, behavior that is punished is avoided. Until Democratic candidates and elected officials start getting punished for moving to the right, there is no reason for them to not keep moving to the right.
There is one silver lining in this whole debt ceiling fiasco that I think has been overlooked- and that is that a populist movement still has a shot at forcing elected officials to adopt their program even over the strongest objections of Wall Street and the corporate elites. I mean, think about it- what the debate is at this point is who is more powerful- the Tea Party, or Wall Street. You really think that the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and that crowd want the US to default? Granted, what the Tea Party is demanding is bugfuck insane. And Wall Street will (probably) win- but only because everyone else is joining them. But the point has been made- Wall Street can be defeated.
So what makes the Tea Party so powerful, and why can't Liberals be as powerful? Part of it is the sympathetic exposure the media gives them. But more powerful is the sure and certain knowledge that every Republican elected official or candidate has that if they cross the tea party, they will lose or get primaried. The tea party is willing to risk losing the seat in order to punish those who defect.
We don't need to be, and shouldn't be, as ideologically strict as the Tea Party. But being unwilling to punish (unelect) our elected representatives for any reason simply means that we have no ideology at all. Other than "we're not Republicans". It's perfectly OK for Democratic officials to cut Social Security, for example. That's not a core Democratic principle. Nor is cutting Medicare, Medicaid, education, etc.
We are so terrified of losing battles that we are losing the war. And the more we lose the war, the more we obsess about not losing the battles. The battle is the election, the war is the overall economic climate. We've been losing the war for forty years. We're going to get a Bachmann presidency sooner or later anyways if we don't stop this slide to the right- if not a Republican Bachmann in 2012, then we'll get a Democratic Bachmann in 2028 or thereabouts. At what point does our obsession with not losing the battles finally give way? At what point do we finally notice how hot the water is, and jump out of the pot? At what point do we say "No, I can not vote for this person, no matter how bad the opposition is"?