It is November 2012.
How is our country and the world doing?
What will we have done over since today through Election Day 2012?
For one thing, timing is destiny, and economy trumps everything else. And one likely reality is that regardless of what Republicans or Democrats do or say, it is likely that the economy will be slightly better. Just as a matter of the business cycle, natural post-bubble recovery, and yes even the stimulus, unemployment will be down a little and GDP growth will be up. So will federal tax receipts, so the apparent short-term deficit will be looking better.
Who will claim credit, and who will benefit in the election of 2012?
Of course, wages and income will likely still be relatively stagnant, and inequality will probably still be increasing. Will anybody bring this issue to forefront, or will it continue to be widely ignored?
The Republicans will still have the selfish right wing corporate and rich individuals behind them, just as they always have. They will still have all of Fox, and most of the corporate media.
The Democrats will have fewer elected officials. Relatively less money. Redistricting will have kicked in.
The tea party, the populist right, will still be going... though perhaps with some rumblings outside of D.C. of sellout to both politics as usual, being too moderate, and maybe just maybe to coporate/rich/lobbyists.
Will the progressive, liberal left have learned anything from our failures over the past three years? And I say failure since this should have been our time. Over thirty years of conservative ideology with consistent cutting taxes for the wealthy, increased total tax burden on the middle and working class; stagnant wages and weakening of labor rights; corporate and wall street deregulation and deliberate non-enforcement... it all blows up in ways that are too obvious to ignore.
And we still lost most of the battles and all of the narrative.
What are we going to do DIFFERENTLY between now and then?