Saturday, October 25, 2014

Are The Dems Throwing This Election -- Too?

It wouldn't be the first time.

Every indication is that the Dems will lose the Senate and make no substantive gains in the House. A few governorships may switch parties. This will not benefit the People in any way, but even if the Dems were to take control of the House and Senate, it wouldn't much change things.

Politics in this country is a function of a rigid two party system that is essentially a single-party system with two collaborative branches. Years ago, the Dems had a lock on the political apparatus and the government, unbroken for more than 40 years. Now we're getting close to a similar lock for the Rs. The Dems cooperate in allowing R control, just as the Rs cooperated during the era of Dem control. After all, the policies that come out of these parties will be essentially the same.

That's a big problem for the People, because neither party represents the People. Both parties are functions of the will of the Rich. Both serve the Rich. Neither considers the Will of the People to be anything they must attend to.

Consequently, we have a lot of sideshows and nonsense, no progress in the public interest, and massive levels of corruption and increasing incompetence in government. I laugh whenever I hear Rs accusing Dems of "corruption," or vice versa. Both parties are ridiculously corrupt, and there seems to be nothing whatever the People can do about it.

I began to pay attention to this year's election when I read that Colorado's Mark Udall was likely to lose his Senate seat. Now this struck me as important somehow. The Udall family is an institution in the Rocky Mountain states, and there seemed no reason to me that Udall would lose his seat while his cousin Tom is doing very well against a Radical Republican in bordering New Mexico. Why the difference?

Is it because there are so many more Radicals in Colorado? I don't think so. I suspect the difference has to do with the nature of the election itself, and -- perhaps -- the unwillingness of the Dem Party machine to support incumbents or opponents on a broad scale.

In other words, "throwing the election." Dems are quite capable of winning any election they choose to. I've seen how they operate, however, and the party's Big Wigs make their choices of who to support -- and who not to -- based on what they want in the end. Often enough, especially for the last 30 years or so, they don't want political victory or dominance. They seem to prefer being foil to powerful Rs. Thus, election failures where there logically shouldn't be. It happens over and over again.

Since the 50 State Strategy was abandoned after the 2008 election, we've seen repeated failures to elect Democrats, and we've seen a greater policy fusion between Dems and Rs. They're practically indistinguishable these days, and as Harry Truman famously said, "Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time." (Whether he actually said it or not is beside the point.)

So. Here we go again.

(Since neither party represents the People, this post is a point of interest only. Regardless of which party is in charge of the House and Senate, our system assures that policies will be practically identical.)

3 comments:

  1. I would say the Dems are *clearly* throwing the election. The lack of effort put into this mid-term is notable because it has never been so obvious. Our FLOTUS, Michelle Obama, went out a week or so back to speak in "support of" a candidate somewhere and confused the names of the Dem and the Rep so many times that the crowd began yelling at her. Her husband, POTUS, gave a speech here in Md. last week; when he started in on the "improved economy", people got up and walked out in a mass exodus. There are very few ads being run by the Dems and 99% of all the mailers I have gotten have been from the Reps. In my district, we have a number of seats for different spots, from the federal level down, where the Rep is running unopposed. The Dems didn't even try to field anyone. There are one or two Green Party members running as write-ins, but only one or two. Since Md. is a state where Independents don't get to vote in primaries, we never hear about the Greens until almost the day of the election. Not that they are putting forth much effort around here, either.

    While I agree totally that the two major parties are the same, I still find it astonishing that the Reps can run on shit like taking away voting rights and still get people to, uh, vote for them. Want to send us wemmin-folk back to the Dark Ages where we wore pessaries in an attempt to avoid unwanted pregnancies, but women vote for them, too.

    Dismal.





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    1. The Dem candidate for governor here in NM is the current Atty Gen and the son of a well-liked former governor. He's being slaughtered in the polls, but apart from that, he hasn't been able to raise any money, and damn if the Dem Party apparatus barely acknowledges his existence. Seems to me he should be giving Susana La Tejana a run for her beaucoup bucks, but nope. She's sailing along on a cloud.

      The national and state party apparatchiks are really being picky about whom they will give the nod to, and the upshot is that Dems will pick up a few seats in the House (but not a majority) will lose the Senate, will pick up a few governorships but will lose some statehouses (shades of 2010) and the R agenda will go forth relatively less impeded than it already is.

      This should please Mr. Obama, I have little doubt.

      (I heard about the walk out at his Big Speech in Md, but damn, didn't know about Michelle's "confusion of names." That almost sounds deliberate, doesn't it?)

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  2. "This should please Mr. Obama, I have little doubt."

    That is the truth of it. I cannot explain what the stupid voters are thinking.

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