Saturday, October 30, 2010

Black Tuesday

The Democrats are on the eve of an historic election defeat. While there is evidence that African Americans are at least as energized about this election as the previous one, all other demographics are moving against them and toward the GOP. As of this writing, it looks like the GOP will take the House with about 55% of the seats or around 240 of 435. The Senate is likely to stay Democratic at 51-49, but the Senate was nearly unworkable for Democrats at 60-40. Thus, like after the 1994 election, this should pit a Democratic president against a Republican House. Many prognosticators are predicting that this will be a political windfall to the president. I am not so sure. Given the state of the economy and the stated goals of the Republican party leaders, this is likely to spell disaster for the country. If that translates into good politics for Mr. Obama, he might as well step down right now.


Divided, immobilized government is the last thing we need right now. The modern Know-Nothings (AKA The Tea Party) are shouting about government spending and taxes (which, you might note, were actually cut by the stimulus) but this is much like a cancer patient condemning their doctor for the chemotherapy treatments they are receiving. The national cancer patient, the US economy, is about to go off her treatments with only half of them administered. So far, they have staved off any further progression of the disease, and a few other brands of mild treatment have been administered, like financial reform, but these alone are unlikely to protect the patient from a further deterioration of her condition without further stimulus chemotherapy. Lady Liberty is very sick and she is likely to get much sicker. At best, she'll remain bedridden just as she is now for a very long time.


None of this had to happen. Mr. Obama and the Democrats have been overly timid, politically stupid and they have done exactly what Rahm Emanuel swore they would not do: they have wasted the opportunities the economic crisis presented them. Opportunities that may not come again in our life-times. And if they do come again, they are likely to reemerge with such a ferocity that it may be beyond the grasp of either political party to control it. The Tea Party's most extreme elements might be the "moderate, reasonable" voices under such conditions of social desperation.


As for the Republicans, they have earned a place of unprecedented national shame...they just don't know it yet. They are no longer a party of governors, but instead a party of poll-watching, political operatives intent on only two major goals: winning elections at all costs and protecting the obscene wealth of their plutocratic benefactors. Instead of reigning in the fascistic, racist elements of the Tea Party (no, not all of them are fascists or racists), they have largely embraced them, a move I fear will come back to haunt them in more than one way. Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated all over again.


While the road here was fairly easy to see, the road back is not.


To move the economy from where it is as of this writing (9.6% unemployment) to full employment (estimated conservatively at 5.2%) one would need to spend about $1.3 trillion in new stimulus, by my calculations. The president nor the Democrats in congress have ever been willing to do that.


Instead, with ineffective, but expensive government programs passed in the last congressional session, they have allowed the GOP to paint them not only as inept, but the entire concept of government intervention is itself now highly distrusted by the American public. So, the Democratic political leadership has managed to fail both in the short term by getting trounced in the up-coming election and by allowing their organizing ideology to be defined as once again, unworkable. Something, I feel justified in saying was entirely avoidable and predictable. And this means that we are now at the functional equivalent of being a cancer patient who no longer believes in medicine. The moniker "Great Recession" may just become a lot more apt than many people ever intended as the long road out of this hole gets longer and harder.


After Tuesday, what the hell anyone can do about it, is beyond me.