Ratf**king

Some time back I posted an opinion that this year's presidential election may turn into something like 1964's blowout for Lyndon Johnson. The 1964 election was bizarre in part because of the circumstances -- coming off the assassination of President Kennedy only a year before, perhaps the most traumatic single event in the nation's 20th century history; and the selection of arch-conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater as the Republican standard-bearer.

LBJ was roundly criticized and despised in the aftermath of the assassination (some suspected him of having a role in it.) He was satirized unrelentingly, demonized, and held in wide contempt by Democrats and Republicans alike. His election to the presidency was by no means foregone. He had "acquired" the Presidency by misfortune, and it was not his office by electoral incumbency.

The near-certainty that LBJ would be elected president in 1964 came after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater. By today's standards, Goldwater was a "moderate" but in those days he was seen as a radical, borderline crazy, and deeply, fundamentally dangerous to the future the nation and the world.

The nation wasn't ready for anyone like Goldwater in the White House with his finger on The Button.

LBJ has a mixed legacy: Civil Rights for the disincluded, Medicare and other Great Society programs are to his credit; the appalling war in Vietnam which he expanded exponentially, and the uprisings in the inner cities and on college campuses nationwide, not so much.

Ultimately, LBJ chose not to run for a second term and Nixon was elected in 1968 (after several more traumatic assassinations and a police riot at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago) only to be forced out of office in turn in 1973 upon discovery and disclosure of his many high crimes and misdemeanors that would have led to his impeachment if he hadn't resigned.

Presidential politics has been a roller coaster ride ever since.

More and ever more, the Presidency has become the public face of a shadowy Neolibcon control apparatus, keeping the masses entertained and tame while wrack and ruin, plunder and destruction, rape and rapine are loosed around the world.

More and more the public's say in who shall sit in the Big Chair is reduced to irrelevance.

Comes now a likely contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for the prize -- the Big Chair, the Throne, the White House -- in November. Neither has been officially nominated yet, but the signs and portents strongly suggest that they will ultimately be the contenders.

If so, Hillary wins in a landslide, no? Of course, many are trying to make it not so, through various stratagems to Stop Trump. But they seem to be failing monumentally. On the other hand, a suspicion has arisen that the Trump candidacy is a ratfuck.

Oh. My. Goodness. Could it be? Yes, it could.

Whether it is, I don't know. But the signs are interesting.

Who actually is behind this ratfuck, if it is a ratfuck, is something of a mystery, but supposedly, the Clintons and the Trumps are best buds, and supposedly, Trump is doing this to enhance Hillary's likelihood of electoral success -- also to cripple the Republican Party for a good long time, a "revenge ratfuck" you might say.

Perhaps those who control the world are  simply fed up with the Republicans and their chronic tomfoolery. Who knows.

Trouble is, there are at least some signs that Trump could beat Hillary in a head-to-head (though I doubt it.)

Now that would be something. If it were to happen somehow, I suspect the election results would be invalidated by strategy (one that's being tested now through voter suppression and other means), and who can say where that would lead.

Uncharted waters yet again.

Ain't politics grand?

Will Obama Pull an LBJ?

I've mentioned here and there in comments around the web and have alluded in posts here that Barack Obama has never shown himself to be all that interested in being elected and I've suggested that as a consequence of the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal, his reign is essentially done.

He seems to be out of ideas, and if you watch and listen to him on the stump in the Midwest, he really is not into it at all. He has little to say, and what he does say is not very reassuring, to say the least. There is little "hope" in his eye.

I was talking to a friend, a black friend, a few minutes ago, and he said that he's been hearing from all kinds of people that Obama doesn't have a chance next year, and that we'd better be prepared for President Perry or Bachmann, and he said he's been trying to tell them that Obama knows exactly what he is doing, and he will be re-elected.

And I said, "Are you sure? Have you seen his eyes lately?"

My friend said, affirmatively, "He will be re-elected because the alternative is too crazy to even consider."

Oh? Maybe.

Yes, it's possible, sure. There's always the possibility that no matter what he does, or doesn't do as the case may be, he'll be re-elected. We, the People, actually have very little say in the end. If his sponsors and owners want him on the Throne, there he will be.

But have you listened to him lately? Have you seen his eyes?

He's not into it. He's thinking of something else, and it is probably Hawaii.

So. Will he pull an LBJ next spring and announce (on Facebook?) that he shall not seek nor shall he accept the nomination of his party for the Presidency -- and for approximately the same reasons LBJ cited in 1968: the nation was too polarized, the factions were too rigid in their beliefs, and for the Good of the Nation, he would not participate in further factionalizing and polarizing the country?

Here are the key statements of the LBJ speech. I haven't seen it since I watched in astonishment (and yes, excitement) all those years ago:



It was thrilling to hear him say he wasn't going to run again, but not so thrilling was what followed. The assassinations. The riots. The crackdowns and oppression. The installation of that paranoid drunk in the White House. The hundreds of thousands of additional needless deaths in the Indochina Wars.

Be careful what you ask for.

1968 was a seminal year, and that murdering, drugged out freak in Norway cited 1968 as the year that Europe "surrendered" to the Marxists/Islamists/Multiculturalists. I suppose there are lots of people who still think that 1968 was the year that the Hippies won the Revolution right here at home. Some of the Liberationist objectives of the Revolution were achieved, yes. Even under Nixon. But the cost was much heavier than many people understood at the time or do now. The repression was severe, and we are still living with it in the criminalization of so many black and brown men, in the surveillance and police state that has arisen practically unchallenged, and in the consequences of the liberation of capitalism from any obligation to the nation or the People of the United States.

There was a huge trade off that I don't think many people are recognizing even now.

So I wouldn't doubt that if Obama pulls out of the presidential contest next year there will be as much of a social, political and governmental upheaval as there was in 1968, and I wouldn't doubt that the results won't be pretty.

John Ellis over at the Business Insider puts the question of whether Obama will resign or pull and LBJ and just not run this way:

So, at a time when the only issue that really matters is jobs and falling living standards, the president will head into the fall campaign next year with not much to say except "it could have been worse." That's not a winning message, obviously. Which leaves him with a campaign based almost entirely on (what Bill Clinton used to call) "the politics of personal destruction."

Such a campaign would leave President Obama stone cold, even if he's perfectly willing to do it to get the job done. He would hate every minute of it. He didn't travel the road he traveled and scale the mountains he climbed, to have the capstone of his political career read: "Mitt Romney is a Mormon weirdo" or "Rick Perry is a psychopath."

In Washington, the "plugged-in" people will tell you gravely that the president isn't enjoying the work. He feels, it is said, "beleaguered" and "unappreciated" and "deeply unhappy" about the state of our politics. The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has been nibbling around this Obama gloom for a while; she's always had great radar for presidential funks. If you read between the lines of her columns, you get an almost tactile sense of Obama's blues.

A long-time Democratic politician told me the other day that he would not be "terribly" surprised if Obama called it quits early next year. When I asked him if he really believed that, he said "no, not really, but you can smell it. It's in the air around him."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-obama-collapse-accelerates-2011-8#ixzz1VPSrCgHq

Well. There you are then.

We'll see, won't we?

♫LBJ took the IRT
Down to 4th Street USA
When he got there what did he see?
The youth of America on LSD...♪

Such an innocent age.