As soon as the recent primary election results came I heard many on the left cheering the nomination of tea-party candidates over GOP endorsed candidates as a victory for democrats, and this may indeed become the case. However progressives cannot become complacent nor can they underestimate the stupidity of the normal everyday American.
First off one of the main reasons why these right wing fringe candidates are being elected is that people are sick of the corrupt political system that plagues this country and on that count they may indeed be correct. However one has to look at the people they want to send in to reform this system; they are, I believe, much more likely to be corruptible. Case in point- Christine Odonnell, the new senate nominee for Delaware.
This woman's former campaign manager said she used to live off campaign funds, and records show she has a tremendous amount of personal debt. Is someone really going to tell me that she won't accept money from the first lobbyist that comes her way, or govern for her own interests and not those of the people if she is elected? or take Linda McMahon, candidate in Connecticut, who has had more shady and underhanded dealings during her tenure as CEO of the WWE than most politicians could hope of having. But again this gets to the point that the people on the right wing of this country (and most people in the middle and even many liberals) are not well educated enough to see the difference. All they know is that they are angry and they want to "take back their country". But do they even know where they want to take it to? Ask them what they want and they'll say less spending and more tax cuts! Ok then what programs would you like to cut? Medicare? Defense spending? Social security? Infrastructure spending? Police and firemen salaries? Well no not any of those they'll say. Well then how do you propose to cut taxes and still pay for all these things? ..... That's what I thought. And even as all these people buy into the republican line that tax cuts must be extended to the wealthy, the rich laugh all the way to the bank as the rest suffer. If these people support policies that clearly hurt them can we really expect them to be able to tell the difference between a candidate who will go to work for them and one who will try to exploit them? As my favorite political commentator, Bill Maher once said, "you can never underestimate the stupidity of the American people".