Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, August 06, 2012

Democrats Need to Make Waves

Republicans don't like what they see and so they are just making stuff up (see Dick Morris and the post right before this one) and are praying for a miracle. There are few miracles in politics you know. What exactly do they see? Harry Reid's kept the Olympics from providing Romney with an out on his tax evasion, that narrative is still going strong and sinking the R-money-bot day by day deeper in stink. And it isn't clear anymore if even the GOP convention can extricate him from that mess, let alone give him the momentary bounce he so desperately needs to re-set the narrative. It's getting hard to see where Romney goes from here: his numbers are plummeting, his relationship with the press is on the thin ice, his electoral college pathways are vanishing, his campaign keeps getting outmaneuvered, the GOP rats are starting to leave the sinking ship.

Romney needs a consummate VP pick and excellent convention to staunch the bleeding. But it's looking like his choices are a toxic Palin Hail Mary (like doll-eyed dolt Randroid Ryan whose budget is so insane that the only reason people haven't taken out the torches and pitchforks is because when polled they literally do not believe anybody would propose anything so evil, literally they do not believe it) or a bland T-Paw variant (who will submerge the Base in utter alienated gloom as they see their dream of a bloodsoaked rise of the neo-Confederacy fade in a whitebread sandwich with no meat and extra mayo). Meanwhile the speaker lineup for the Republican convention is out and it looks like a cross between an Amway convention and a creaky country fair in the parking lot of a closed down K-Mart.

Look, people, Obama needs to win with the coattails to retain the Senate and regain the House if he is to have a chance to enact the mandate the American people re-elect him with. That is a tall order, maybe a well nigh impossible one. But I thought the Curiosity landing was a longshot with all those crazy stunts it had to perform flawlessly in order to work, and that puppy is on the surface of Mars raising hell. Smart people with the good will of millions at their backs can accomplish great things.

Romney is setting the stage for a wave. If Obama gets the numbers, we can get a second stimulus, we can boost public sector employment, we can get comprehensive immigration reform, we can get EFCA, we can protect Roe v Wade by appointing sane judges to the courts, healthcare outcomes for women and for people of color can improve significantly by way of the kicking in of provisions of the Affordable Care Act that address underlying structural features of inequity in our society, we can avoid war with Iran, we can strengthen financial regulation instead of observing it die from a thousand cuts, we can put a nail through the heart of Citizen's United.

I'm to the left of Obama myself, and I am sick at heart with his amplification of the Unitary Executive and his ongoing abuses of civil liberties in the so-called Global War on Terror, but everything I disapprove in Obama would be incomparably worse under Romney, and there is much to approve of in Obama which I cannot say of Romney, including the fact that Obama is beholden to Democrats among whom are the only people in power who disapprove of what I disapprove of in Obama in ways that might do any good to meliorate them. In politics we must know how to walk and chew gum at the same time. We need to make this election outcome a strong win for Democrats at every layer of governance. We can do it. Romney and the killer clowns of the Republican Party would seem to be aiding and abetting us in our efforts through their incompetence and transparent awfulness. Let's do this!

No comments: