by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy I lost patience long ago with so-called 'progressives' because Democrats are 'imperfect'! Who is perfect? I've never seen such a person on any ballot! I prescribe an introductory course in 'decision making'! So what if the MESSIAH is not on the ballot!? You are stuck with two viable choices in any case. You don't like either though one is clearly superior to the other. NOT voting is not an option; it puts a crooked moron in the Whie House! So --what do you do? You stay home, don't vote and piss and moan about it on FB while a criminal elitist takes over the White House.I actually consulted a GOP campaign once. I wish I could say that it was an act of 'infiltration' to study GOP tactics and attitudes. Though it was not, I did learn --from the inside --how the GOP thinks. I was in the 'Belly of the Beast'. I even picked the 'brains' of one Tom DeLay --the evil genius who delivered Texas to the GOP on a platter. Texas had been a Democratic state for some 100 years prior to Tom DeLay's GOP 'revolution'. The GOP campaign manuals actually cover the art of voter suppression. The GOP does not want you to vote. The GOP wants you to BELIEVE that Dems are not better. And --if you buy that crap --you lose!Short of real revolution, we are stuck with a crappy and inaccurate system, a system that seems designed to keep the very best candidates OFF the ballot. It could not have worked out better for the GOP had they conspired to create it. Come to think of it --they did. That said, the GOP could NEVER, EVER have gone as far as they have of late if idealistic Democrats and Utopian progressives had not decided to boycott the election.
Showing posts with label primaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label primaries. Show all posts
Monday, October 08, 2012
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Revolution Postponed, Perhaps Indefinitely
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
I have been urging a 'peaceful revolution' for some 20 years now! I might have been wasting my breath and keyboard! The time for that has come and gone!
In America, too many progressives seemed content to post ugly caricatures of Bush Jr or the usual and almost always correct assessment of his utterly failed regime. Anyone would have been better, we supposed!
It was too easily forgotten that in the United States there is no 'left wing' with which to mount an effective opposition --let alone revolution. Campaigns are incredibly expensive to 'run' and even more so to 'win'! Only the increasingly concentrated, corporate media benefits. In a nation in which right wing policies --most notably those of Ronald Reagan --have resulted in the enrichment of an increasingly tiny elite, the tiny elite tolerates elections to maintain the appearance of 'Democracy'. I will not bother to post the actual 'Gini Indices' that prove that point --a point that should already have been made, documented, and known by all. In short, American wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer hands with the rise of the GOP. It is not a coincidence --it's policy! Reagan's 'tax cut' and subsequent GOP largesse was and remains a payoff to the base.
But what is to be done about it? Forget about waging revolution in the conventional sense. The only hope left Democrats is a peaceful revolution waged first from within the party. It must be recalled that Hitler's 'Beer Hall Putsch' succeeded in getting Adolph arrested and thrown in jail. It is tragic that he learned from his mistake and eventually won the leadership of what was, at the time, a 'socialist workers' party. It would not remain so long. A. Hitler --like so many American politicians --pulled a 'bait and switch' on the German people.
The Democratic party is reduced to 'sloppy seconds'; they are but a hedged bet for those who buy and finance not just individual politicians but the process itself. We are property! Realistically --how 'radical', how 'progressive', how innovative can a Democratic candidate be when his/her entire campaign is financed by the same folk who brought you Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush --the three worst 'presidents' in U.S. history --the 'three horsemen of the political apocalypse'?
Progressives were content to sit on their asses and bitch about the choices in the general election! In many ways, the general election is the least important aspect of a political campaign. Policy and issues have been long decided. Is it no wonder, then, that elections are increasingly boring. Nothing new is ever said. Indeed, progressive issues are always the target of the right wing, prominently --Social Security.
To combat socialism Bismarck put through between 1883 and 1889 a program for social security far beyond anything known in other countries. It included compulsory insurance for workers against old age, sickness, accident and incapacity, and though organized by the State it was financed by employers and employees. It cannot be said that it stopped the rise of the Social Democrats or the trade unions, but it did have a profound influence on the working class in that it gradually made them value security over political freedom and caused them to see in the State, however conservative, a benefactor and a protector. Hitler, as we shall see, took full advantage of this state of mind. In this, as in other matters, he learned much from Bismarck. ”I studied Bismarck’s socialist legislation,” Hitler remarks in Mein Kampf (p. 155), ”in its intention, struggle and success.”--Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, as quoted by William Shirrer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p 87.Nazis were attacking 'Social Security' even in the 'Third Reich' and, given a chance, the GOP will attack and finish it off in a 'Fourth Reich' of their creation. As far as 'Social Security' is concerned it is --arguably --the government's ONLY success story, contrary to the following 'specimen' of the kind of fallacious and idiotic thinking that is destroying our nation before our eyes:
Regardless of what you personally think, Social Security is completely illegal and unCONstitutional, if you believe that the CONstitution is legally binding on anybody. I, on the other hand, take Spooner's attitude that it is NOT, and that therefore, the criminal syndicate referred to by dolts as the "federal government" has no legal authority at all. --An idiotIf Social Security were illegal (it is not) it ought NOT to be! Without it, any one of a number of GOP recession/depressions would have decimated millions of productive Americans whose 'work' made the nation strong. For the same reason, the ruling elites of the right wing will cut off their own noses but --sadly --not until they have relegated the rest of us to misery in the land of the worthless dollar! Alas! Comments like the excerpted one above tend to confirm many in the growing belief that we will have deserved our fate.
It is often said that there are no differences between the parties --a simplistic excuse for not getting involved at the local level during the primaries. If there are few differences between the major parties, then millions have been disenfranchised, left with no one to vote for. Any large block reduced to voting 'against' a major candidate has already lost, before the elections, the opportunity to vote 'FOR' a candidate.
The oft repeated excuse is: '...but there are no differences between the candidates'! There never will be if most of the population 'sits out' the primary process. There are, in fact, real differences between Democratic and Republicans not the least of which is the fact that every Democratic President at least since World War II has significantly better GDP and job creation records than any Republican president. There are other less significant differences but real nonetheless. But few people know this and, Democrats seem too timid to mention it during campaigns. Democrats should be beating the fricking GOP over its collective head with the truth!
In summary, the GOP dictates the agenda because it is owned by the ruling elite and, as a result, GOP policies are designed to enrich this elite. As long as the money drives campaigns, the differences between the parties will continue to blur and/or diminish. At present, Democrats get monies from the same people who finance the GOP. The Democratic party is reduced to a 'hedged bet'. The elites have the money, finance the elections. Democrats cannot afford to be truly independent. It's all a self-fulfilling prophecy, an echo chamber in which real people are simply drowned out. If you don't think so, just try getting 'equal time' to counter the bullshit that is spewed by Fox, Limbaugh, Beck, Billo and the boys!
Real reforms that could change things would be opposed by the big corporations. Naturally --when corporations via K-Street dictate policy, nothing will change. The power is entrenched. A real revolution would mandate mass bustups of the entrenched powers --corporations, the corporate kingmakers who 'select' the candidates they like with a check!
By the time, the 'general election' rolls around, the slate is reduced to Frick or Frack, Dumb or Dumber! There are no viable third choices! Nevertheless --not voting concedes the nation to the GOP. That is not an option. The better option --the third option --does not exist: a viable, grassroots, active 'progressive party' (if that is the preferred label these days)!
As I have written time and again --if 'progressives' want a real revolution they must first wage one inside the existing Democratic party. Progressives must take back the Democratic party --the party of Roosevelt and real progressives.
Even Hitler did not start from scratch; he and his goons got involved and took over an existing party, rebuilt it in their image, organized at the local level and eventually became a force to be reckoned with. Read Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'. Read any history of any revolution. Revolutions are not waged nor won by sitting on one's ass watching CNN and bitching about things. Do you think Hitler invented the Nazi party? No --he did not! But neither was he sitting at home --swilling a lager --while listening to 'primary' returns on the radio!
Many people claim to have options, choices, privileges, luxuries that they don't have, perhaps never had! But sitting out the primaries is not one of them if you wish to make a difference. Hitler did not invent the NAZI party; he took it over. With it, he built up a base of support that Hindenburg had to deal with and eventually make concessions to.
Anyone not willing to get involved in local conventions might as well stay home, swill a beer and watch the returns! But don't bother! Because millions think as you do, the end result has all been worked out on K-Street! One of only two viable candidates will win having been financed by the very same big money that bankrolls both major candidates. Interestingly, less money is given to the Dems! The Democrats have been reduced to supporting an illusion of Democracy.
Arrowsmith [Aerosmith] Eat the Rich!
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Friday, February 04, 2011
The Winter of Our Political Discontent or How and Why You Only have TWO Choices, Two Parties
by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyWhy is the GOP where it is? Simply --GOP fascists turned out!! Why are the Democrats where they are? Don't ask a Democrat! You are likely to get a denial that he/she is a Democrat --rather, a 'progressive'! Don't bother asking what a 'progressive' is. But if you want to know the truth, here goes: a 'progressive' is a Democrat who does not want or dare to admit that he/she is a Democrat! This deplorable situation has resulted because a critical mass of 'Dems' committed what in politics is the unpardonable sin: they allowed the opposition [GOP] to define them! That's why Clinton found it necessary to 'triangulate' a center. Definition of a center in politics: something that is neither here nor there nor sharp but blurry in the middle!
Bottom line: 'progressive' does not mean a thing and will not result in a net gain of votes! The word owes is very existence to the fact that 'liberals' let the GOP get away with branding the word 'liberal'. Liberal is a perfectly good word! It means FREE! Again --LIBERAL means free! Anyone who runs away from 'freedom' deserves to lose an election and until progressives regain the courage of their convictions, they will continue to get 'ass whuppins' at the hands of ruthless and well-financed right wing nuts!
Things can change but only if Democrats regain their party by turning out. The PRIMARIES are more important than the general election. Sadly --the process itself is designed to REDUCE your choices to only two. I don't like it --but that's the way it is! Whining about it on FB will not change a thing. It's a SOP; someone threw us a BONE!
If you want to change America, so-called 'progressives' must --first --take back the Democratic party. But NO ONE is going to tolerate a long lecture on the kinds of reforms that are necessary AFTER the primaries are over!
[Condorcet] He divided the decision process into three stages. In the first stage, one “discusses the principles that will serve as the basis for decision in a general issue; one examines the various aspects of this issue and the consequences of different ways to make the decision.” At this stage, the opinions are personal, and no attempts are made to form a majority. After this follows a second discussion in which “the question is clarified, opinions approach and combine with each other to a small number of more general opinions.” In this way the decision is reduced to a choice between a manageable set of alternatives. The third stage consists of the actual choice between these alternatives. --Decision Theory: A Brief Introduction, Condorcet, [1793], pp. 342-343)Condorcet's distinction between the "first and second discussion" seems to me to be analagous to the U.S. primary process. In the first case, Democrats (for example) choose between other Democratic hopefuls. Invariably --enough to skew the validity of the primary as a barometer of public opinion --decisions will turn upon which candidate is perceived to have a better chance of winning in the general election.
Seen on FB: "ALL PARTIES SUCK" Well, that's an excuse to sit out the primaries! If you don't like the DEMS, then organize to take them back. That requires that you get involved. Taking back a party begins in the neighborhoods. It is done precinct by precinct. Sorry --there are no magic wands. There is NO INSTANT GRATIFICATION! That's the way it is. That's the system we inherited.
The French waged a real revolution shortly after 'we' separated from England. I can tell you this --no one was sitting at home pissing and moaning about "...oh golly gee...all the parties are the same...oh woe is me..." They MANNED THE BARRICADES.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Why Obama is Flat Wrong About Ronald Reagan
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Barack Obama's timing could not have been worse. His thinly veiled comparison of himself to Ronald Reagan comes at a time when the US is poised precipitously at the brink of what may be the longest, deepest recession since Reaganomics ushered in a two year long depression back in 1982.
I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
--Barack Obama, Washington Post
A Singular Figure???
John Edwards, flat-lined in third place, appears to be the only Democrat in the field who grasped and addressed the fact that U.S. society is endemically unfair and un-equal. The divide is not merely along racial lines though that remains to be sure. American society is one of haves vs have-nots. GOP-types respond with the standard focus group approved epithet: class warfare. My Carville quick response: bring it on!!
Recessions, like the one following Ronald Reagan's improvident tax cut of 1982, harm workers. American recessions, like periods of prosperity, are inequitable in their effects, harming wage earners at the outset and paying off a tiny elite on tax day. The conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter confirmed as much when he compared recessions to a "cleansing douche", a characterization that lifelong goppers must surely apply to everyone but themselves and their country club cronies.
"When you think about what Ronald Reagan did to the American people, to the middle class to the working people," former Sen. John Edwards shot back at an event in Henderson, Nevada.
"He was openly --openly-- intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country...He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment."Edwards added, "I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."
Washington Post, Obama's Reagan Comparison Sparks DebateWhen I think about what Ronald Reagan did to this nation, I think of how he struck at and perhaps killed-off a viable labor movement. I think about how middle class families made homeless lived under bridges and overpasses in boomtown Houston. I think about how Reagan, like Bush, waged a phony war on terrorism during which terrorist attacks increased some three fold. I think about how Ed Meece waged a war on porn even as a gay prostitution ring operated right out of the White House. I think about how Ronald Reagan neutered affirmative action, the fairness doctrine, and the industries that had kept the middle class in the middle class. I remember how Ronald Reagan was worshipped by the gullible who remembered Reagan's reign at the Republican National convention of 1992: "Reagan made us feel good about ourselves", they swooned.
It was not so long ago that Bush played guitar while New Orleans drowned and in doing so, Bush became the symbol of his own failures. Nothing had been learned from the Reagan experience. The intellectually bankrupt GOP can be counted on to repeat failed strategies in the expectation of a different outcome. Bush stays the failed course amid warnings that our nation is falling apart at the seams heading for third world status and catastrophe.
The warnings come amid the valid assessment that Bush's tax cut for the rich failed to make good on two empty promises: it did not trickle down or prime the economic pump and it did not pay for itself as Bush himself had promised it would. Just one year after Congress bowed to Bush and passed the tax cut of 2001, the Brookings Institution would write:
The official federal budget outlook has deteriorated dramatically since early 2001, due to last year's tax cut, the economic slowdown, and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In addition to the pressures from the long-anticipated increase in entitlement spending as the nation ages, the government now also faces growing spending needs for defense and homeland security. These trends imply that future taxes must rise, future spending outside of defense and the elderly must decline, or obligations to the elderly and to defense be reduced.
—Alan Auerbach, William G. Gale, and Peter R. Orszag, June 2002, The Budget Outlook: Options for Restoring Fiscal Discipline, Brooking InstitutionBut GOP supply side, trickle down economics also promises more opportunity, a growing economy, more jobs.
Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit….Today’s numbers show that that was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send our tax revenues soaring. That’s what has happened.
—George W. BushBut that's not what happened. Wealth has never trickled down and there is no "higher pie". A Treasury Department analysis refuted Bush directly, confirming in its analysis what many experts and Bush critics had been saying all along: tax cuts do not come remotely close to paying for themselves. [PDF] . In other words, the two promises of "trickle down" theory are dead wrong: wealth does not trickle down and tax revenues do not increase to make up the short fall.
As Dizzy Dean said: it's deja vu all over again!
Why does the GOP insist upon repeating failed strategies. Reaganites promised that the stimulated economy would outgrow the deficit and the budget would be balanced "...within three years, maybe even two." It didn't! Reagan tripled the deficit and, on the way, he doubled the size of the federal bureaucracy. Reagan's tax cuts were followed promptly by the longest and worst recession since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. As Robert Freeman correctly points out: "...Jimmy Carter's last budget deficit was $77 billion. Reagan's first deficit was $128 billion. His second deficit exploded to $208 billion. By the time the "Reagan Revolution" was over, George H.W. Bush was running an annual deficit of $290 billion per year."
How will Bush compare to Reagan? By the year 2002, Citizens for Tax Justice were already writing:
Over the ten-year period, the richest Americans—the best-off one percent—are slated toreceive tax cuts totaling almost half a trillion dollars. The $477 billion in tax breaks the Bush administration has targeted to this elite group will average $342,000 each over the decade.
By 2010, when (and if) the Bush tax reductions are fully in place, an astonishing 52 percent of the total tax cuts will go to the richest one percent—whose average 2010 income will be $1.5 million. Their tax-cut windfall in that year alone will average $85,000 each. Put another way, of the estimated $234 billion in tax cuts scheduled for the year 2010, $121 billion will go just 1.4 million taxpayers.
Although the rich have already received a hefty down payment on their Bush tax cuts—averaging just under $12,000 each this year—80 percent of their windfall is scheduled to come from tax changes that won’t take effect until after this year, mostly from items that phase in after 2005.
1968 was the year in which measured postwar income was at its most equal for families. The Gini index for households indicates that there has been growing income inequality over the past quarter-century. Inequality grew slowly in the 1970's and rapidly during the early 1980's. ...Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459.
—Income Inequality, Census BureauThe trend began then has continued: October 2003 figures from the US Census Bureau make stark reading:
Median household incomes are falling The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 5.7 percent to 43.6 million individuals.
The number of people living below the poverty line ($18,392 for a family of four) climbed to 12.1 percent — 34.6 million people.
Wages make up the majority of income for most American families. As "Downward Mobility," NOW's report on workers and wages illustrates, many American workers are facing corporate efforts to cut pay and benefits, which could lead to more American families struggling to stay out of poverty.The results in black and white:
- Twenty percent of the population owns 84% of our private assets, leaving the other 80 percent of the population with 15.6 percent of the assets.
- In 1960, the wealth gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of Americans was thirty fold. Four decades later it’s more than seventy-five-fold.
- Either way -- wealth or income – America is more unequal, economists generally agree, than at any time since the start of the Great Depression…
- And more unequal than any other developed nation today.
I was in the automotive field at the time, and dozens and dozens of established tool manufacturers, unionized shops, producing high quality tools, small companies with deep roots and real a commitment to the towns they were in all across the Midwest and the local communities, went out of business.
Why? Because with deregulation any hustler could get virtually unlimited financing and set up manufacturing plants overseas producing exact copies of American made tools and flood the US market with them with no fear of the Reagan administration enforcing any laws against them. It also became easier, and far less risky, to get financing to set up a thousand junky identical chain outlets than it did for small local businesses to get credit or tax relief - restaurants, auto parts stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, florists - thousands and thousands of small businesses chewed up and destroyed.
We have a younger generation of people who have no personal experience with so many things - local businesses and tight knit communities, affordable, convenient and efficient public transportation, wages that allowed one person in a household enough income to support the family, homes that were homes, not investments, easy access to public recreation, confidence in the safety of food and other consumer items, all regulated and inspected for the public welfare, freedom from the relentless intrusion of corporations into our lives, and on and on and on.
Reagan destroyed the country, and if we try to gloss over that (which at the very least Obama's remarks have done) or if we buy into the dishonest rationales and excuses and obfuscations that the Reagan administration used to disguise their agenda and to sell it to the public, we surrender any chance at real change, we bury the coffin forever into which the right wingers have put the left - and by extension, the majority of the American people, and we condemn ourselves to living in this ongoing nightmare of destruction and human suffering.
It is not time to make nice with the Reagan legacy propagandists, even by implication or omission. It is time to relentlessly and fearlessly point out that the crisis the country is in is best described and analyzed as the chickens coming home to roost from the Reagan era.
It is time to fight.
It is not time to heal or move on—no matter how attractive and appealing this may be—it is not time to paper over the profound divide in the country, it is not time to accommodate or apologize for
--Found on the Democratic UndergroundPaul Krugman can always be depended upon to to put this kind of thing in perspective.
Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”
Contrast that with Mr. Obama’s recent statement, in an interview with a Nevada newspaper, that Reagan offered a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Maybe Mr. Obama was, as his supporters insist, simply praising Reagan’s political skills. (I think he was trying to curry favor with a conservative editorial board, which did in fact endorse him.) But where in his remarks was the clear declaration that Reaganomics failed?
For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.
When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House. Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.
--Paul Krugman, Debunking the Reagan MythReagan/Bush tax cuts are payoffs to the already rich for their support. The GOP prescription is simple: just take another dose of what's making you sick.
That US capitalism is dependent upon never ending growth is problematic when the world has reached the limits to growth. There are limits to the amount of pollutants that we can spew into the air, dump in landfills, and trickle down into the oceans that feed us. There are limits to growth when the burning of fossil fuels is now proven to be slow killing the planet. There are limits to growth when habitats shrink or disappear, when productive acreage is reduced exponentially. But whatever your views on limitless growth, capitalism cannot long survive extended periods in which new jobs are not created. For some time now, the Bush economy has been a train wreck waiting to happen and it waits just 'round the bend.
Bush Sr called Reagan's policies voodoo economics. It was one of only two thing the Senior Bush was right about. Even so, the Senior Bush did not go far enough. He did not tell Americans that "wealth" does not originate with "capital"; it originates with labor. Every major economist since Aristotle, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, have known this. Nevertheless, there is a caste of people in the US --GOP Brahmans --who leach off the labors of others and dare to call it "free enterprise". The real GOP platform shifts the tax burden to the middle and lower classes. It's a payoff to the filthy rich for their support. The truth of that statement is found in Bush's own words. When he addressed a meeting consisting of some of the "upper one percent" of the population, he smirkingly called them his "base".
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Wednesday, December 12, 2007
GOP Front-Runners Run Out of Wiggle Room
None of the GOP presidential hopefuls are supported above a level of about 23 percent according to polls released by New York Times and CBS News. Mitt Romney's dilemma typifies the party's dilemma. Romney, a Mormon, must get the religious extremist vote to get the nomination. If he gets it, he risks losing the White House. The GOP is now paying for having made a Faustian pact with religious right and other extremists. The numbers come from a CBS story headlined: Huckabee Soars Into GOP's Top Tier. (CBS) Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's meteoric rise in the polls is not, it turns out, an Iowa-only phenomenon. According to a new CBS News/New York Times poll, the former Arkansas governor is running neck-and-neck with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the race for the support of GOP primary voters nationwide, and all the momentum is on Huckabee's side.Huckabee just pulled off a cart-wheeling flanking maneuver to strike at Romney's rear --the source of Romney's support. To be fair, Romney could not have done otherrwise. But with only 23 percent to work with, there is no chance that any Republican can find mainstream running room. That goes for Rudi Giuliani --equally insane by any standard.
Huckabee was supported by 21 percent in the poll, up from a mere 4 percent in October, thanks largely to a swell in support from Christian conservatives. He trails Giuliani by only 1 percentage point - a statistically insignificant margin. While Huckabee's support has more than quintupled in the past two months, Giuliani has seen his fall by 7 percent.--CBS News
Stuart Rothernberg, editor of the Rothernberg Political Report points out that none of the candidates have been able "to coalesce support behind him". Unless Rudi Giuliani turns over some rocks, it is unlikely he will find enough support to beat any Democrat. There is an explanation. Carl Jung stated that as much as thirty percent of any population consists of incipient psychos, presumably kept in check by a majority of some two-thirds. Having accused the GOP of mass insanity on numerous occassions, I would venture that the GOP is down to its base of some 23 percent: nut cases, religious fanatics, and other right wing extremists, a GOP base that is 180 degrees out of phase with the rest of the populuation, the principles of our founding, common sense, decency. The fanatics represent the party's hard core which finds in George Bush's failures, his only successes. I am increasingly confident that sane folk will call them what they truly are. Abysmal, miserable failures. The GOP will lose against any Democratic candidate because it is unprepared to condemn what Bush has done to the nation. No GOP candidate is prepared to tell the truth: George W. Bush is a traitor to the US and its Constitution. Nevertheless, this miserable excuse for a party should pay the price for having supported the overthrow of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and our every international obligation since George Washington.While Giuliani and Huckabee led among GOP primary voters, Mitt Romney - seen as Huckabee's top rival for the support of Christian conservative voters - also saw his support increase slightly, from 12 percent in October to 16 percent now. Both John McCain and Fred Thompson have seen their support crumble. Thompson has seen the most dramatic drop, falling from 21 percent in October - good enough for second place - to 7 percent now, tying him with McCain for fourth place.However, Republican primary voters, as a group, remain fluid, suggesting there is still room for movement in the GOP field.
--CBS News
There ought to be a price to be paid for having been criminal, stupid, and arrogant! Fuck the GOP!
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
PEJ Study: Big Media "tabloidizes" US political journalism
I recently blamed punditry for much of what's wrong with American politics. I decried how the US public tends to read polls and columns to make positioning calculations. Political coverage is confined to candidates with "star quality". Instead of issues, policy, and analysis, we get the tabloidization of American political journalism. Would John Edwards beat Guiliani? Can Hillary Clinton win the center? Can Obama keep the black vote while courting a "white" center? Tragically for America, decisions based on who might "win" rather than who is right or best qualified almost always result in the election of candidates that are neither right nor qualified.
Now --I've got a hard study to back me up. It's by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
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Spread the word:
Now --I've got a hard study to back me up. It's by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
In the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, the media had already winnowed the race to mostly five candidates and offered Americans relatively little information about their records or what they would do if elected, according to a comprehensive new study of the election coverage across the media.The study has the hard numbers to back up a summary conclusion:
In all, 63% of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign. That is nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates (17%) or the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals (15%). And just 1% of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance, the study found.Nor is the media without bias. Some candidates can't seem to buy favorable coverage. Others -like Barack Obama and Fred Thompson -seem to be enjoying a honeymoon.
The press also gave some candidates measurably more favorable coverage than others. Democrat Barack Obama, the junior Senator from Illinois, enjoyed by far the most positive treatment of the major candidates during the first five months of the year—followed closely by Fred Thompson, the actor who at the time was only considering running. Arizona Senator John McCain received the most negative coverage—much worse than his main GOP rivals.I suppose that just proves how out of touch I am. I have yet to hear Obama say anything that was not obviously vetted, coached and rehearsed. As for Thompson --ah well! What can one say about an ugly mug and uglier political philosophy? I might as well shout at a wall. Big Media has already decided that Thompson, the least attractive candidate in any party, is, nevertheless "Presidential" material. How bloody absurd!
The press’ focus on fundraising, tactics and polling is even more evident if one looks at how stories were framed rather than the topic of the story. Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election, while nearly nine-out-of-ten stories (86%) focused on matters that largely impacted only the parties and the candidates. Those numbers, incidentally, match almost exactly the campaign-centric orientation of coverage found on the eve of the primaries eight years ago.The public, however, shares my sense of disaffection and outrage. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press reports that the public is just as fed up with this evil system as am I. Seventy-seven percent against 17 percent want more coverage of issues and less punditry, bullshit and claptrap. Fifty-seven percent want real debates. Only 42 percent want more news about which candidate is leading in the poll du jour while fifty five percent want more news about candidates that are not deemed by big media to be "front-runners". Among other findings from the PEJ-Shorenstein study:
- Just five candidates have been the focus of more than half of all the coverage. Hillary Clinton received the most (17% of stories), though she can thank the overwhelming and largely negative attention of conservative talk radio hosts for much of the edge in total volume. Barack Obama was next (14%), with Republicans Giuliani, McCain, and Romney measurably behind (9% and 7% and 5% respectively). As for the rest of the pack, Elizabeth Edwards, a candidate spouse, received more attention than 10 of them, and nearly as much as her husband.
- Democrats generally got more coverage than Republicans, (49% of stories vs. 31%.) One reason was that major Democratic candidates began announcing their candidacies a month earlier than key Republicans, but that alone does not fully explain the discrepancy.
- Overall, Democrats also have received more positive coverage than Republicans (35% of stories vs. 26%), while Republicans received more negative coverage than Democrats (35% vs. 26%). For both parties, a plurality of stories, 39%, were neutral or balanced.
- Most of that difference in tone, however, can be attributed to the friendly coverage of Obama (47% positive) and the critical coverage of McCain (just 12% positive.) When those two candidates are removed from the field, the tone of coverage for the two parties is virtually identical.
- There were also distinct coverage differences in different media. Newspapers were more positive than other media about Democrats and more citizen-oriented in framing stories. Talk radio was more negative about almost every candidate than any other outlet. Network television was more focused than other media on the personal backgrounds of candidates. For all sectors, however, strategy and horse race were front and center.
Why can't we have a system in which one may vote one's conscience? Why must we have a system in which one worries about "wasting" one's vote on a third party candidate who may be the best in the field. Why can't we abandon the absurd electoral college? Why can't we select the eventual winner based upon national totals via a Borda count, a range vote or some other system that has been shown to better and more accurately reflect the will of the "people".
A better system will encourage a richer field, especially if the reforms should coincide with the abolition of the absurdly long and boring system of primaries. If elections had been conducted on a more scientific basis, George W. Bush could not have stolen the White House --even with help from DieBold. There is much literature available about alternative voting systems. The science dates back, at least, to the 18th Century. Google "range voting", "Borda Count", "alternative voting systems". You'll get plenty of reading material.
It's bad enough that my votes are stolen by DieBold. It's bad enough that the US Supreme Court would presume to anoint a phony President with a creative, "Alice in Wonderland" interpretation of the 14th Amendment. It is bad enough that candidates are bought and paid for because the very expense of a campaign militates against those who may be most qualified. But a system about which it is accurately charged that by supporting either candidate, my vote is wasted is absolutely intolerable. As long as this evil status quo is maintained and supported, America will continue to get --not the brightest and best --but the slick, the bought and the paid for.
The Existentialist Cowboy
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