Daily Archives: October 20, 2010

Why the Democrats Are Having So Much Trouble in This Election

Politics, ,

If you read the newspapers or watch that silly contraption all the new kids are talking about called a “television” set, you might discover that a lot of people think the Democrats are having a bit of a problem heading into the midterm elections. The blame is interesting. Some say it’s the fault of Obama for not living up to his expectations, or because he did things he shouldn’t have done (like that whole Health Care thing I keep hearing about from the intellectual minds of our time, like Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell). Others say it’s because the president’s party tends to lose seats any way during a midterm election, even though two of our recent presidents didn’t (but who pays attention to recent facts when it comes to spouting off statistical information that is out of date?).

But I have a different perspective that might explain why the Democrats are losing seats, or at least are heading into the election with the prospect of losing both the House, and possibly the Senate. I say this knowing that both sides will completely disagree with me, even though I’m right, but this happens every election, and then when it comes to me saying, “I told you so”, everyone lies and says they knew it already, even though they were saving the complete opposite right until what I predicted actually happened. I’m not even going to make a prediction here. I’m just going to tell you what’s already happened, which is pretty funny because people are so good at putting their fingers in their ears and singing “lalalalala” no matter how much they should just listen.

The Democrats are heading into this election losing seats because of two factors. The simple one is obvious. People are pretty pissed, and they need to lash out at someone. The Democrats are in charge of the presidency, the Senate and the House, so who do you think the people are going to lash out at? The Republicans who aren’t actually in charge? Even if the Republicans are responsible for EVERYTHING that’s wrong right now, the people don’t see that. They see who has power and that’s who they’re pissed at.

Now, having said that, I should also point out that the statistical phenomenon of people voting locally but being angry nationally should have actually saved the Democrats from a massive retribution from the people. Unfortunately, another vector is involved in the equation, and that’s the one that I think is making all of the difference.

You see, when Obama ran for president. he was swept into power by a dynamic force of change that was promised by a lot of his biggest fans. I’m not talking about his own team, or even Democrats in general. I’m talking about a lot of people who were so pissed off at the US because of the Bush Administration that they were so enamored by an outsider that they started to invent godlike status to his name. When Obama was swept into office, it was less of an election and more of a piety-filled coronation. People who wanted him were so in love with him that they made it out like he was no only going to do good things, but he was going to usher in a new age for America so that we would be the new Camelot on the hill, and every nation would worship this nation, and its new messiah for all of its greatness.

The media fell into it as well. The articles that were written about him were so gushing that I was beginning to be sickened by the coverage, and I was actually a fan. It was this admiration of him that completely threw Hilary Clinton under the bus, leaving her almost a roadkill on the way to the White House.

Well, those people who bought into this illusion started to wake up when they started to realize there was nothing glowing about Obama but the fantasy of what he was going to be doing. None of the great things happened. Even his biggest legislative achievement has been seen to be so controversial that almost everyone who ushered it in wants absolutely nothing to do with taking credit for it. Right now, Obama is helping his fellow Democrats by sending out his wife because she’s more popular than he is.

The problem the Democrats have right now is that they have a sobering electorate that now needs to be mobilized the last few weeks before the election. How do you do that? How do you convince a bunch of formely drunk drinkers that they need to go out and do it all again, except this time they have to pay for their own beer, and we’re going to be carding everyone going in and breathalizing everyone on the way out? You really can’t.

Instead, they’re facing an election where everyone is having to fend for themselves, and the only record they have to rely on is the one that everyone realizes was part of the drunken party atmosphere. Let’s face it. The Democrats haven’t done anything to gain the advantage going into November other than to not be the Republicans. That’s a pretty shitty herald to have to hang on your head going into an election.

The bigger problem is that the country is waking up to the fact that our elected leaders are a bunch of lawyers who are really only interested in what’s best for themselves. The promises don’t yield results, and the business of politics has shown itself to be a pretty sick animal.

Unfortunately, the people also realize that they’re left with a choice of two candidates in most races that are pretty crappy. And people aren’t really excited about yet ANOTHER election where the better of two evils is the electoral choice. There’s a very poignant Simpson’s episode where two evil aliens are discovered to be the real Clinton and Bob Dole during the 1992 election. Someone yells out: “I’m voting for a third party” and one of the aliens laughs at him, saying: “Sure, throw away your vote!” That’s where Americans are today, and it’s probably not a great position to be in if you’re walking to a voting booth in November.

Now, a voting critic would probably then say, don’t vote, but that’s not my advice. If you find that you abhor the candidates, go into the booth and vote for the issues that are of interest to you. Not every issue in an election is a vote for a candidate. Take advantage of your right to vote, go in there and vote for the issues that mean something to you and then leave the candidate crap blank. When someone here’s you complain and asks you if you voted, you can say you did; you just didn’t vote for any of the shitty choices that you were given. Until this country enacts a law that says you have to have 50 percent of the population vote for you, and not just the majority of the people who bothered to show up, then we might have people in office who realize they have to do something to actually earn a vote. But I don’t anticipate that happening any time soon.

The Rent is Too Damn High and Other Third Party Fun

Economics, Politics, , , , , ,

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, there was an immediate move to capitlism and democratization. If you read any normalized history or political book about the period of change, you read it as a collective move of the populations towards democracy, but that’s not really what happened. What really happened was it was a move towards capitalism. Democracy was just one of those buy one get one free things that came with capitalism. During the Cold War, people were interested in the things capitalism could bring, like food and shelves filled with products. They thought democracy had to be part of the deal, so they accepted it freely. It was only after they realized what democracy actually was that a lot of these newly “free” countries started moving back towards authoritarianism. The interesting part is that they still wanted capitalism; democracy just wasn’t all that important.

It is probably important to point out that one of the first things that came from this new formed freedom of democracy was a new sense of political parties. It might surprise you that one of the most popular political parties to arise was the Beer Party. Its platform was simple: “Vote for us and you get lots of beer.” They actually got a lot more seats than almost every other non-main political party. In the Czech Republic, they were so powerful they actually shared power in the coalition government.

Why am I talking about this? Well, in the United States, we don’t really have third parties that have any power or significance, but we do have third parties. Most of the time they’re marginalized and looked over as a joke, like the Green Party or the Communist Party, but in some cases they actually gain a bit of standing, like the Reform Party. And then they become marginalized like the rest of them and no longer stand for anything.

Yet, every now and then one of those parties comes along that has a leader who is so outrageous that he or she essentially becomes bigger than the party. This was discovered at the recent debate for the governorship of New York, when the debate was practically won by Jimmy McMillan, who is the governor nominee from a party called, wait for it…The Rent is Too Damn High Party. And as expected, Jimmy made every attempt to utter that phrase during his one opportunity to speak to the masses during the debate.

The strange thing is that he came off as the most interesting and most popular of the speakers during the debate mainly because he came off as being completely nuts. Will that translate to votes? Probably not, but it sure would be interesting if it did.

Which brings to mind a situation that happened when I was in California. There was an interesting individual who was running for president during the 2008 election. He was this guy that used to hang out at Carls Jr every morning, and by coincidence so did I. I had this theory that crazy people used to hang out at Carls Jr every morning and…um, I mean crazy people AND I used to hang out there. Anyway, so during the Obama election, I was minding my own business and this guy comes over to my table and says: “Aren’t you a political science professor?”

Now, other than the fact that I used to walk around with my graduate graduation attire on every day after I graduated, I have no idea how he figured that out, but I said yes, I was. So, he started to tell me about how he’s been running for president for the last 20 years, and the media never pays any attention to him.

Then he proceeded to pull out a briefcase with all of his papers. Okay, it wasn’t really a briefcase. It was a Manila envelope that was tattered with paper hanging out all over the place, but he called it his briefcase, so I’m sticking to that. He then began to show me, in no uncertain terms (well, uncertain if you’re certifiably nuts) the linkage between the Kennedy election, 911, and something called the Koala Bear Effect. I listened to him for about an hour, before I realized I was slowly beginning to understand and believe him, so I bid him fairwell and then ran home, screaming.

I wrote an article about this for the local newspaper, and then immediately started receiving inquiries from larger newspaper reporters, wanting to know how I was able to find this guy, as they’ve been looking to interview him for years now but never could. I said that he eats at Carls Jr every morning, and they didn’t believe me. Eventually, the calls stopped coming. I realized then and there that some reporters are extremely lazy when it comes to following up on a lead.

The point is: There are third parties out there that have some very interesting people running for office. And yes, there are nutcases out there, too. But as long as we keep focusing only on the main runners, we’re never going to change the system or even have new ideas. Unfortunately, there’s no one out there even trying to make a difference.

So, until the next election, all I can say is that yes, the damn rent is too high. Unfortunately, no one is planning to do anything about it.