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(I had so much fun pissing off the Kosers that I decided to do it here!)
You won.
If this election demonstrated anything, it’s that a President no longer has to keep the employment-population ratio up in order to win an election, and that there really is nothing to the left of Barack Obama in government anymore.
In 2008 Barack Obama won the Presidential race, by a sizable margin, over John McCain. To arrange such a victory, Obama made a number of once-significant promises. No insurance mandate, a public option, and so on. Obama no longer needs to make such promises in order to win elections. Perhaps the Democrats will generally no longer have to make such promises in order to win elections. We shall see.
To be truthful, a number of people expressed disappointment with the Obama administration during his first term in office. What this re-election proved is that these people are no longer important to the political process. The great mass of Obama supporters, then, did not qualify their votes for him, did not set conditions upon their willingness to vote for him, and did not withdraw their votes even if they had objections to the way the Obama administration acted. The most popular third-party “left” candidate in the Presidential race this year, Jill Stein, earned less than half a percent of the vote, which reveals more than anything how very few “liberals” took seriously the threats to vote for someone else. And Obama showed Tuesday that he now has a core of unqualified supporters, and no longer has to pander to those whose support for him is qualified — at least not from those who self-identify as “liberals” or “progressives.”
Here we must note that clearly the Obama campaign had re-election help from the Republicans, who ran a campaign of unprecedented obtuseness. But the closeness of the popular vote in this election helped the Democrats to close ranks while Obama’s lead in the electoral system provided a significant margin of victory.
The situation is now such that “left” objections to the President’s policies are completely futile. The people at Firedoglake talk about “putting pressure upon the President,” but this is nonsense. The President is immune from any pressure mere voters might have upon him. He can do what he wants. To be sure, there might be a Republican Congress standing in the way. But this shouldn’t be a problem for Obama, who is smart enough to maneuver around those people. The Republican agenda has become completely pointless — as Matt Stoller has pointed out, the Republican Party no longer wants to win very seriously; its main role today is to provide the requirement of an “opposition” so that America can continue to have a “two party system.” So what is left standing, in this political moment, is Obama’s agenda.
Thus the real beneficiaries of this election are the unqualifying supporters of Obama, the people who will support what he does regardless of what it is. Congratulations, again. You won.
77 Comments
I HOPE he CHANGES. Third World America loves Obama and the Khardashians I fear.
Hope and change! Nice!
Yes, I agree. There are many people commenting here today who are thumping their chests, high-fiving each other, and dissing those of us who withheld our support for Obama, because he had done nothing to earn it. Reading their comments, I realized that the issues I care most about don’t really matter to them. Or maybe they actually think that Obama is not a died-in-the-wool conservative technocrat, and that he will now reverse his terrible record on civil liberties, expanding wars, “drill, baby, drill!, ignoring the foreclosure crisis, labor issues, climate change and the dwindling middle class. As if.
But for the goofballs here and elsewhere, it all boils down to, “our guy won, fuck yeah!”
“…, the people who will support what he does regardless of what it is…”
“WE SUCK LESS” is now a proven formula for success.
Well, it did happen to be true. Given that nothing else in either campaign had any truth value, you got to give Obama some credit here.
If the Republicans had not existed, the Democrats would have to invent them.
You think that’s interesting.
Wait till he privatizes SS. Then I’m personally looking forward to the usual “those bad Rs”, or “he had no choice”, or “that’s what compromise is about”, and then watch as they all clap loudly.
Fiscal cliff? Repeat above terms and clap louder monkeys.
How about more wars? Iran? Africa (the whole bloody, literally when we’re done with it, continent)? Repeat above terms and clap still louder.
How about when he appoints another Kagan Or Soto (I always forget which one is Monsanto’s bitch, and which one’s for privatizing schools)?
Why aren’t you clapping? What are you a Republican?
Jeffrey St. Clair:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/07/victory-of-the-technocrats/
virtually no one agrees with cassiodorus. His candidate received only 0.33% of the vote.
This post should be titled: “Sore Loser.”
Given the routine ballot tampering that’s been going on in this country for some time (see Election 2012 Mop Up re the recent schenanigans), why wouldn’t the plutocrats make sure that the Greens didn’t show 5% as the duopoly serves them so well?
At one time most most people thought that the world was flat, and that blood loss through leeches actually cured people, and that dunking people in water would reveal who was a witch, and so on, and so on.
So what exactly is your point other than to prove your cred for being a good little member of the herd?
No, a sore loser wouldn’t be offering congratulations.
Is there some reason you’re unhappy?
I suppose it would take a lot for that 5% to actually survive ballot tampering.
Until the election, I would have disagreed with you and said that most people who consider themselves liberals or progressives did agree with Jill Stein – public works program, Medicare for All, end the wars and reduce the global military footprint, pro-choice, supporter of LGBT rights, no cuts to SS, etc.
However, since there were so many people, who may still feel that Obama is less evil, in solidly blue or red states where they could have voted for her without changing the outcome of the election, and didn’t, it isn’t clear to me what they agree or disagree with.
A vote for Stein would have been a vote for many good programs, a way to get enough votes in some states to facilitate ballot access in future elections, and what I saw as a last chance before the Grand Bargain to communicate to the Democrats that there was another way to go.
I don’t know how much of the outcome was due to people not knowing about their choices, due to financial and institutional barriers to media access, among other factors, or how much was due to an unwillingness to step outside 2-party frame, or how much was due to not agreeing on the issues.
A look through the county level election results would be a good vacation right now, cassiodorus. Where Democrats are defeated, it isn’t third parties who are winning and the New York Times is stoking the narrative that the US drifted rightward between 2008 and 2012.
The political (as opposed to policy) problem is that Democrats no longer go into certain parts of the country anymore to campaign or to sell their positions (well maybe to sell in the other sense of the word). There are huge swaths of the country where the Democratic party organization is dormant and only one view is heard. There are rural parts of the country from which you never escape right wing radio no matter how many stations you try (which provides a market for XM).
But there is not county in the country without Democratic voters and presumably progressive voters as well.
Take back the turf and you take back the policy. And when you take back the turf, the local folks will make sure there is no election shenanigans.
You want to beat both the Democrats and Republicans, get something going in Oklahoma. There’re 115 frustrated Democrats in Cimmaron County, which went for Romney by 90.4% or Utah or Alaska or the central valley of California. Places where the Democratic establishment is dysfunctional when it comes to winning.
IMO, the biggest elephant in the room is the media blackout imposed on third parties.
If the media gave third parties the same coverage afforded the duoploy, I can’t help but think that third party support would have been much, much higher. High enough to scare the bollocks out of PTB, I’ll bet.
Exactly, Tarheel, they need to resurrect Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy, encouraging and nurturing real Progressive candidates, not DLC
foolstools…!Great diary, cass.
In the days prior to the election, the NPA’s Facebook page was visited by the usual horde of lesser-evilists decrying our determination to create real electoral alternatives and instead preaching the need to, “Take over the Democratic Party from the inside, just as the Tea Party took over the GOP.” What eludes these Laughable “Liberals” is that the GOP of Ronald Reagan still exists, but with a new name: The Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, a reality symptomatic of just how solidly right America’s voter have become is the Libertarians – whose candidate, Gary Johnson, had the best showing ever of anyone from that essentially rightist org.
The bottom line is that Democratic Party “lefties” have convinced themselves that as long as the “Democrat” brand exists, liberalism must, too. They’s rather put a finger in each ear and say “la-la-la” than admit that America is now a place where “unions” (very loosely, I’m using that term) are owned by the businesses they claim to keep in check; where the drift toward military-abetted intolerance of peaceniks grows stronger daily; where torture is a foreign policy tool; where insurance companies own people’s access to health care; where education means students cannot think critically (just like their Democratic Party parents!); and where climate change is merely a theoretical can to be kicked a little further down the road.
The Reagan Revolution is complete. And the Obots haven’t even noticed.
Sorry OG, but, imo, your comment is obviously born out of a panoply of tragic ignorance. I suggest you read cassiodorus’ (sorry if the plural is wrong, I always forget when to use an s after an s) other thoughtful reasoned diaries.
From my less than educated mind, he’s not advocating for candidate “A”, or against candidate “B”, but advocating more for shedding light on our broken system. Cassiodorus can correct me if I’m wrong
Or third parties need to initiate their 50-state party-building strategy right now.
There are ways to combat a media blackout. Until maybe 2004, there was a media blackout on any progressive Democrats as well. There were an number of things that changed that. (1) David Brock broke with the Republican media machine and outlined how the media had stacked the political deck beginning with the Powell memo; (2) progressives financed the start up of left-wing radio (some independent and some captive Democratic progressives) and promoted it through the internet; (3) progressives and Democrats stopped being idle between elections; (4) Howard Dean’s campaign brought in some grassroots savvy people who later helped with 50-state organizing for Democratic parties (that later was allowed to wither, but the activity could be reduplicated by any party); (5) social media is becoming a major end run around media blackouts; there is not a continuing publicity placement operation (official PR-type spokespersons) in most local third parties (the Occupy movement has at least mastered this political function).
The main problem that the Green Party and other progressive parties face is geographical. They do not yet have the national infrastructure that can tap resources and provide the interest to make them newsworthy. Think of a story “the rise of progressive third parties (fill in your blank with your preferred one”) similar to the rise of the Tea Party.
It is possible to end run the blackout and when there is enough interest, the sheer numbers will be the story.
I dunno, maybe the adoring supporters of Obama like it that they don’t to think about policy and can merely shower their President with praise. It would be nice if they relaxed — after all, they’ve won. But maybe the Obot narrative is like the Republican narrative — the more they win, the more they must pretend to be “victims” in order to cover for the emptiness of what exactly it is that they’ve “won.”
I’m not sure that blaming it on the “system” is really going to solve our problem here. After all, the “system” didn’t prevent me from voting for Jill Stein, although I must admit that it did prevent me from downticket voting for Greens because I live in California and here we have the idiocy known as “top two.”
I rather think we have vastly underestimated the ritual aspects of voting. The Democratic Party of this era has mastered the ritual aspect of voting like no other party before it — it encompasses all perspectives without really defending any of them. All you need to do is register (D) and believe in President Obama’s empty pieties and you’re good to go. There is really no need to expect results because Republicanism is the root of all evil. The Republicans play along with this drama because their base is shrinking (you have, what, Appalachia and the Great Plains?) and because their access to money is guaranteed if they can continue to exclude the public from the game (as Matt Stoller observed in the link I provided above). Voting isn’t a means to an end — it’s a ritual aspect of a world view.
The fly in the ointment is that the Democrats (as also the Republicans) believe their world view is going to last forever. Capitalism will never die; global warming will not challenge industrialism to any significant degree. There will always be jobs and resources. Technology will make utopia available online while preserving the economic hierarchy currently in place. Nature is merely a tool and education is something you do to get a good job. Education, moreover, is a ritual performed in a classroom with desks in rows facing the teacher. That’s what they believe.
As long as the media extensively covers events with people walking around wearing Uncle Sam costumes and wearing teabags on their heads while ignoring events such as a presidential and vice-presidential candidate being arrested and shackled to chairs for more than eight hours, the deck is still stacked, and tremendously so, against progressive and liberal ideas getting heard by the average voter.
The average voter believes what they hear on the news, or see on their web-portal news pages, neither of which does much, if anything, to present progressive alternatives to the current policy of both the Dems and the Repubs.
Until that changes, the sheer numbers of which you speak will be excruciatingly difficult to achieve, social media end-runs, or not.
To what purpose? A minimally successful third party on the Left would only work to empower the Right.
Recognition of this by Left leaning voters is why Stein garnered only 0.33% of the vote.
Rather than this third party nonsense, the Left needs to work at reforming and informing the Democratic party.
There is something that can be spun as positive about this selection and that is that 10 million additional people decided, for whatever reason, to not participate in this sham system.
It is sad that such a mlcro-minority voted for Stein but that just shows what quislings most Liberals actually are.
The short of it is that I voted for Jill Stein, among
other things, as our real “public option.”
Me too
Although it will never happen ever, a Third Party helping to destroy the Democrat Party would be a beautiful thing.
Thanks – your diary’s title made me wonder for a moment where you were coming down on this issue.
There are one or two reasons to be a bit less pessimistic, though. My impression is that total voter turnout is noticeably down from 2008, which, when combined with the narrower margins of victory, suggests to me that a fair number of disgusted progressives ‘just stayed home’ (as they did two years ago across the country and, even more dramatically, in Massachusetts just under three years ago). These represent people whom Obama managed to motivate once with his lies, so they (and perhaps also some of those who stay home habitually) could be motivated by someone with more substance and, of course, some visibility.
On that last note, while the mass media blackout on ALL alternative parties was indeed thorough (making Ron Paul’s visibility earlier in the process all the more significant: that no national Democrat was willing to do the same kind of thing seems telling), it’s regrettably also true that even the Greens are woefully deficient in presenting their case. Here in NH there is no visible Green presence – not even a one-person official Web site – NOTHING beyond whatever word-of-mouth activity may exist (and if it does, it never reached me). For a party organization which has existed for decades this is inexcusable, and is a large part of the reason I wound up voting for Anderson (who at least had the excuse of being a new-born by comparison). I almost wish I had voted for Romney (which I seriously considered doing) as that would have had a more visible impact (though one also far more likely to have been misconstrued), but voting for Anderson certainly FELT a lot better. Discussing how to correct this fatal deficiency (whether in the Greens or in some other progressive organization) should be high on anyone’s agenda, starting today – and examining how equivalent groups on the right have managed to do so much better at both infiltrating and cleaving off sections of the Republican party should likely be a part of this.
Another possible ray of hope is that another 4 years of Obama may be more effective at opening the eyes of more Democratic loyalists. Given how little interest he showed in helping the party in the 2010 elections (one might even suspect that he WANTED to have a Republican House to run against this year) and the fact that, like then, he won’t have reelection to be worried about in either 2014 or 2016, it seems possible that the next 4 years will be even more devastating than the past 4 were (unless the Democrats in Congress develop some kind of a spine) – which could lead to the kind of defeat that it appears the national Democratic establishment MUST suffer before any kind of progress can be made.
Bleak basis for hope, admittedly, but better than nothing.
I’ve felt so for the past 8 years. Also, I forgot to mention just above that for the first time I helped count votes in our town, and the percentage of split-tickets (had to have been at least 30%, and I think it was more) astonished me. People (at least in this tiny town) ARE willing to think outside their ‘party’ boxes if someone gives them a reason to.
Had the situation been that a long-time protester had become a candidate and in the middle of the campaign gotten arrested, the media would have had more incentive to cover it. As it was it was easily dismissed by the media as a campaign stunt, regardless of the real situation. Anticipate how the media operates and use it. And build personal relationships with the media people covering your activities. Well before you need them.
Media blackout, state elections laws, etc. are all real impediments. The job is to figure out how to win on an unlevel playing field instead of complaining about the playing field. Because the playing field is not going to change unless you win and you change it. (That’s indefinite generic “you” btw)
Given the electoral geography, it depends on where that third party is as to whether it empowers the right. It’s not a clear cut zero-sum game.
Question to all where is a super rich progressive who might bankroll the Green Party. Is there no Adelson, Gates, or Buffet with a fucking conscience in these United States. If I had even a lousy Billion dollars Jill Stein would have been plastered on every bus in America.
As things degrade for the 47% and more of the rest of the 99% see their future being dictated by the Social Darwinists maybe the movement will get legs.
I thought no one could ever coax me to link to dailykos again.
Indeed, having been banned, I rejected, in words directed at Moulitsas himself, the opportunity to re-up which their weak partisan spines allowed for.
But you proved me wrong cassiodorus. Bravo you!
Am eager to read the comments. It’s always a hoot to see the Stepford Dems crap themselves silly.
A stunt somehow more newsworthy than the relentless coverage of tea party people wearing costumes and tea-bags and carrying misspelled signs. We have common ground on what is being ignored, but we’ll have to agree to disagree on the reasons why.
News media is not designed to inform, but to entertain and to feed the us-vs-them binary thinking of the duopoly. Ignoring alternatives, especially progressive ones is intentional. The “stunts” chosen for reportage show that.
I’m not sure what you think the value of building personal relationships will be since news coverage is decided at the corporate level and they already have their preferred personal relationships.
Making observations about reality, IE, “complaining”, is a necessary requisite to getting people to understand a point of view, in itself a requisite to getting them on board with working to change the status quo.
x2
timesthree @ 36 Edit:
The first sentence should start off with “A stunt somehow less newsworthy…”
I wholeheartedly agree. At least as google was reporting, the percentages for third parties seemed fixed, and there were even candidates showing exactly the same number of votes through the evening, at least the two times I checked and recorded what they were showing. It did not make sense – at the minimum it was a shocking disregard for any respectable reflection of what was actually happening with respect to third party votes. However you want to disparage them, they should have been just as important to count and to report as any – unless third party voters are somehow only second class citizens.
But then, Jill and Cheri were handcuffed to chairs for eight hours, so what can we expect? Thank you, Jill. Thank you, Cheri.
This is very true.
Hello cassiodorus? Anthony? Please reply to this comment post if you are there? Thanks…
That is one thing to remember. How did Jill Stein’s arrest come across as entertaining or even novel? Occupy folks camping out in a city for weeks in spite of being harassed and injured by police was novel (and for some folks entertaining). There was an implicit narrative of the little guy fighting back against giant Wall Street. The arrests there were news over against the narrative of 1%-99%. It took two weeks before the media began to cover OWS at all. And it was the huge numbers of people and not just the pepper-spraying of two ladies on a sidewalk behind police netting that drew media attention—but only after it went viral on the internet including copying it to media. The story had to be shoved into the limelight.
The narrative of the reason for Jill Stein’s arrests never broke through. There were no crowds in support, no sense of a grassroots movement taking off like there was say in the Eugene McCarthy campaign in 1968. No narrative that framed how what Jill Stein was doing make sense in the context of a campaign, like the “get clean for Gene” narrative in 1968. Nothing at all newsworthy about a third party candidate complaining about being locked out of a debate. By contrast, the Democracy Now debates and the other two third party debates could have been newsworthy if they had come earlier in the campaign cycle, say a week before the duopoly first debate. The leverage there were the names involved as moderators–Amy Goodman, the Larry King; those names brought it within the realm of the media.
And the Tar Sands pipeline action suffered from the blackout on the protesters already out there and the fact that it was in the boonies of Texas. Raising the question. Was it covered by the local network affiliates as local news? That could be leveraged to bring wider attention. And again there was not a clear narrative that made it other than “ho-hum another environmentalist protest; we’ve seen them for 40 years”.
News coverage is only partially decided at the corporate level. There are limits, but there is wiggle room for real journalists. Personal relationships allow you to have an idea of what the story angles usually are of interest and allow you to sense which areas are off limits although you won’t be told directly. They are more valuable for local reporting; Obama got better press locally from network affiliates covering his 2008 campaign that he did from the national newsrooms. Local folks are thrilled to get a “real” news story instead of the last county commission meeting or school controversy.
IMO, a better use of the blogosphere and social media to create the basic story will get the word out an at some point break through even the corporate wall; the duopoly wants to be aware of honest-to-goodness threats to its power too. And those folks use the news media to find out stuff as well. (Politico has made a mint on the Washington Village audience.) And third parties need to conduct and publicize their own polling–on issues first and once Labor Day of an election year hits, opinion poll numbers as well. (If you don’t have the popular support by Labor Day, you’re not going to get it through media by election day.)
Third parties in New Jersey and Virginia have the opportunity to try some new tactics in state elections next year. It will be interesting to see whether third party organizers have learned anything. (New Jersey has 14 electoral votes and Virgina 13 in a Presidential race, or 10% of the electoral votes needed for election.)
Since both parties of the two party system have been empowering the Right for the past four decades, this is pretty much an idle threat. “Reforming the Democratic Party” has been the consensus ideology of the “Left” in this country for the past four decades. It’s obvious how well this has worked.
Do you have any further comments about how I am a “sore loser,” or is that no longer fun for you?
“News media is not designed to inform, but to entertain and to feed the us-vs-them binary thinking of the duopoly.”
And also (indeed, some would argue primarily here) to deliver an audience to advertisers (per an instructor in a college course on communications I took a while ago).
Signing off now — Anthony Noel, please look for an email message from me soon. Thanks.
Here is the county results for Massachusetts for third party candidates:
Totals for third party candidates statewide for Massachusetts:
This is Jill Stein’s home state. It looks like the Green Party there just phoned it in. Just depended on the blog conversations and Facebook to deliver turnout without canvassing. Just assumed that because they thought that Jill Stein was a good candidate everyone else would just jump to the same conclusion.
Those aren’t numbers worth the PtB’s effort to suppress.
“Here we must note that clearly the Obama campaign had re-election help from the Republicans, who ran a campaign of unprecedented obtuseness.”
The Reps also helped Obama in that so many Dems believed the repressive, fundie, hyper-patriotic rhetoric spewed by Romney for consumption by the Rep base (a la the Rove playbook). One person’s super hero is another’s boogeyman–no matter how fictitious the character.
What the reelection of Obama represents is the normalization of all the Bush policies of torture, GWOT, extrajudicial murder, indefinite detention, illegal war, and above all the Fuehrerprinzip. Dems did for Obama in this election what Reps did for George W. in 2004. Dems demonstrated that the Reps have no lock on tribalism or authoritarianism, and that it is not just the candidates that share far more similarities than differences.
What sort of folks define their identity solely in opposition to an irrevocably evil other?
People who say, “At least we aren’t those evil pricks!” have nothing to offer.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” —H L Mencken
Oh, we’re here… not sure what to say…
I’m sure that a different third party, other than the Green Party, will finally make it once America has another 1856 moment.
Your comment sounds “sore” to me, but I’m probably wrong.
Sour grapes should be drinked, or drunken.
Who’s crying now?
IMO, for the reasons I stated, those numbers are in large part the result of decades of not only constant and sustained suppression of third party alternatives to the status quo by the news media, but also of the derision and mockery of third party alternatives to the status quo by the news media when they do deign to provide coverage.
Without exposure and friendly media mouthpieces, it is virtually impossible to get the financial support they need to compete with the uniparty GOTV. Support they will never get from the PTB that fuel the Dems and Repubs ability to GOTV. Support that is exceedingly difficult to get from the average voter as long as the news media acts as it does.
Third parties have no news media providing constant exposure to their platforms and they have no corporate sectors providing the mega millions needed to compete in our electoral process. The deck is truly stacked against them and you seem to be essentially saying that the fault is theirs for not trying hard enough to overcome virtually insurmountable odds.
Without knowing anything about it first-hand, my guess is that any critique and lessons learned about the campaign would have to distinguish among the roles played by Stein and the campaign, the national party, and the state parties. What did they expect and need from each other, did everyone deliver, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the individual state organizations, did the communications work, etc. That analysis, plus working out new roles, and new financial relationships between the party and whatever the campaign organization and people are going to do next.
Well put.
Nice comment, Mary.
I appreciate your considered mind.
“But maybe the Obot narrative is like the Republican narrative — the more they win, the more they must pretend to be “victims” in order to cover for the emptiness of what exactly it is that they’ve “won.””
As religions with the same zero-sum, binary perspective on the world, the Dems and Reps share this imperative with Christians. “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdome of heaven.” Matt 5:10 Such a construction makes victimization mandatory.
Well said.
But here is what progressives of all parties are up against. Look at the map and the cartogram at the county level (state data obscures the real story). Maps tend to “red-shift” the data.
Cartogram Map of the 2012 Election Results
To win, progressives either have to expand the number of blue areas or transform red areas into third party areas. That is not a trivial task.
Yes, daunting. I don’t know that the Green Party as it is or has been historically, is where the full answer lies. Jill Stein talks about the party as part of the broader social movement. Maybe that’s where a lot of the important organizing and networking happens that we may be seeing with the Occupy, environmental, housing, student, etc. movements, and the political movement evolves as the representative of the larger social movement. The latter also includes those currently disenfranchised by law or circumstance. So in my more optimistic moments I think maybe we’re seeing a different kind of possibility. But those are just impressions, not the result of any organizing experience or knowledge on my part.
…good diary cd and many good comments too…recommended…
Concur with ottogrendel’s comment @ 46 above…so it seems…
I hear my conservative friends say, “Oh no, Obama can’t be President. He’ll take away our guns!” I hear my liberal friends say, “Oh no, Romney can’t be President. He’ll take away our abortions!”
Both are impervious to evidence that might undermine their articles of faith. Both sides imagine that their team leader is the lesser of two evils. Both sides ignore the fact that TV campaign rhetoric is just so much talk, so much empty advertising, designed to push the emotional buttons of the candidates’ respective bases. There is nothing more to it than that. Such rhetoric is as likely to come true as it is that you will become more attractive if you drink Budweiser.
Do we think that an entity like JPMorgan Chase, who gives these candidates the money they need to buy these TV ads, gives a fuck about guns or abortions?
The even stranger thing is that Rep and Dem voters not only believe the TV rhetoric of their team leader, but also that of the other team, too.
x2
cassio, have you ever been arrested for protesting against Obama’s policies?
Are you going to file, but not pay your federal taxes?
The word is “drunk.” I thought you’d want to know, since you’ve previously said your grammar is normally “flawless.”
But, please, clap louder. Obama won! Now he has a mandate to do whatever he wants! The blood from the flesh of more dead Pakistani drone babies will mist the air, and Obama voters said that’s okay with them! Yay! Obama won!
What are you doing to protect the babies?
Are you contributing to FDL?
Have you been arrested in a demonstration?
Have you demonstrated?
No, and no. As a committed vegetarian I can’t stand the thought of jail food (and prob. would refuse to eat it), and my employer takes my taxes out of my paycheck before I get it.
Good post Cass.
Another bread and election circus on shit that doesn’t matter in the long run.
When, if ever, we can afford to educate humans beyond the domain of the political psychology of ‘Sheeple,’ there might be a chance to save some of the habitable land of our spaceship for the last vestiges of our species for the expected 10K years for the earth to begin cooling back down.
Antartica real estate is cheap today, the only livable refuge of humanity will be priceless in 2212.
But Ok, yea for whatever small hope we may have succeeded in garnering by another four years of leadership that might consider the science of extinction when he is taking a dump.
In order for a third party candidate to compete or holy crap… win…you have to have someone with name recognition, charisma, huge amounts of money, and a platform that millions of people grab onto. You won’t have the media until the end… I think that’s just a daunting list, but one can still hope. I think people wish they had someone else to vote for, but they are too lazy to find them…..they want the perfect person to land in their lap….a la Obama.
thanks Hermit.
My impression of the NJ Greens is that they don’t want to put their backs into it. Politics is a lot of work and I have some first hand acquaintance with the NJ Greens unwillingness to hit the bricks. Hot air doesn’t cover the territory. The NJ Socialist Party couldn’t get 800 signatures, plus about 300 more to cover rejections, on a petition to put Stewart Alexander on the ballot. Armchair politics doesn’t cut it.
The really interesting vote was Rocky Anderson’s: didn’t make 100,000, if I read correctly. There are lots of regional third parties around and some of them have been in business a long time. The Whigs have resurrected themselves as the Modern Whig Party, http://www.modernwhig.org/ I think regional third parties actually can influence national politics and policies, but only if they demonstrate that they have muscle and they’re willing to use it. Politics is a contact sport and it’s not for delicate sensibilities. Or people who would love to, but………..
I also see too much reliance on the net. You can’t retail politics that way. Gathering on your special website and hanging your ballot petitions on the web won’t get the job done. Kind of lazy, as well, but that was my point about the Greens in the first place.
Campaigns that can pay people make this problem irrelevant, for money candidates. Perhaps it’s that folks need to make a living.
Here’s a IRS withholding calculator, what are your options?
I had no idea only meat-eaters had the responsibility to perform acts of civil disobedience. Can you link to anyone besides you who has made that claim? Is being a vegetarian the moral equivalent of a college deferment during the Vietnam War?
The fear of having to eat meat to survive in prison is enough to keep your from performing acts of civil disobedience. Doesn’t sound to me like you’re very resolute in your opposition to Obama’s policies.
What about demonstrations? You can’t go to a demonstration and try not to get arrested?
SARCASM
The elites must be shaking in their boots at the robust and passionate level of opposition that you provide.
/sarcasm.
I do go to demos, and have been to many of them. Did I say otherwise?
Relax.
Great, please name the last ten. Can you link to some photos? Since you’ve been to so “many,” that shouldn’t be hard.
Relax?
So your diaries are wrong? Now Obama’s a great moral leader and we can all just put our feet up?
When you name the last ten, please include location and date.
Who the hell are you to demand this of me?
Excellent post. Spot on. Wooooh! Go TEAM Blue! Wooooh!
For the pretend progressives it was all about them picking a team and having that team win. Nothing else matters.
Great diary. Reccd.