Jeb Lund: On CNN, while Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper stood around like the only people who can see themselves in mirrors, well-compensated political experts were explaining how to double down on or undo this great loss. They giddily moved on to 2016 — two years swept aside before they even happened, like Hitler in the bunker moving paper armies unburdened by flesh and blood. Overlooked was that not much has changed. Apparently, this is great news for the Democrats plan, which doesnt exist, or the Republicans, which doesnt either. Refusal is not a legislative plan, and neither is the Democrats pleading cooommme onnnnnnn! reply, but this is the settlement weve long achieved, and the idea that the Democrats lost control Tuesday misses the point. As an anti-government party, Republicans have no incentive to do anything. As a pro-government party, the Democrats have to find every avenue for compromise. Thus you can have an Ebola outbreak and no confirmed Surgeon General, dozens of unconfirmed federal judges and the constant threat of credit default, and you know one side will almost always choose to lose this game of chicken and hope that every 2-4 years something will bail them out. In that way, no is a form of perpetual control. GOP candidates ran on saying no to Obama this cycle, which is tactically great but answers nothing for the longterm. The trouble with sticking your fingers in your ears, stomping around and saying No! is that it looks really weird when you are in charge. While Obama resolutely pledged in a press conference yesterday to do everything within his power to use the Executive Branch to reform American immigration policy, his reiterated willingness to reach across the aisle finally sounded as doomed in his voice as it did to everyone else back in 2008 and perhaps as hollowly ironic as it did to conservatives at that 2009 Inauguration cabal. So far the game plan seems to be, Hillary, do something! If, like CNNs august panel pulling down seven figures while despoiling the last vestiges of dignity in the commonwealth, you assume that the next two years dont matter, this might be a good plan. A record turnout of women voters could potentially carry down to the congressional slate and recapture the Senate in 2016—at which point, the GOPs gerrymandered control of the House and budgetary obduracy will still be there. The complement to Save Us, Hillary! is naturally, Save Us, Elizabeth Warren! Again, its not a national platform or cohesive party strategy down the ticket. Instead, what will happen is that Elizabeth Warren — someone who is not running for president — will run for president and in the process drive Hillary to the left, so when she wins, shell have to be a liberal. And if we had some eggs, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some ham. Hillary suffering a Damascene (re?)conversion and suddenly remembering what life is like without money, power-suits and only a few tantalizing steps from the presidency is a pretty tall order considering that, when asked if she was a liberal, did her best to rebrand herself as a progressive. After decades of seeing conservatives demonize that word, Hillary instead hoped that borrowing another word would save her. It didnt. It took all of a year of Glenn Beck amplifying history rewritten by a paranoid Bircher to get his panicky white victim audience as scared shitless of progressive as they were of liberal. Besides, shes not alone. Her entire party has been running screaming in the opposite direction from George McGovern for 42 years. Which brings us to the last planning problem: Whether liberal or progressive, neither name indicates how wildly inapplicable either term is to the modern Democratic party, nor what it might do to correct that. The gulf between the chosen appellation and the enacted policies is broader than the gulf between the rugged manliness of an Xbox gamer handle and the 14-year-old who picked it. The Democrats might as well go the Xbox route and just call themselves AWESOME SQUAD. As long as everyone else is pushing paper for the next two years, it cant really hurt. The danger is that Democrats might run for something and lose anyway. The comforting fairytale liberals tell themselves is that everyone would vote for them if they just got their message across, and of course its wrong. The yawning chasm at the heart of American liberalism is that it insufficiently addresses humans capacity for fear and resentment, which the GOP message sends straight to the brain like a rail of uncut cocaine. Some people cant be reached, but at least turning them away on purpose is an ethos. In the meantime, the GOP response to the last six and the next two years is unmistakable. It doesnt change, and the circumstances dont change with it. John Earl Write a comment...
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 14:48:07 +0000
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