America and the Mid Term Elections 2010

When we are pursued by deep fear in America we tend to respond with rage and in that self-
induced state we do some very stupid things. A perfect example is the hysteria that swept across
the country following the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. After eight years of two
miserably prosecuted wars, hundreds of thousands dead and a marvelously inflamed era of
unbridled terrorism around the world we are of course no closer to anything resembling safety.
America, we remain more troubled than ever before with issues concerning religious tolerance.
We have a huge new bureaucracy in Homeland Security which is arguably less effective than its
counterparts in other countries and issues of torture and electronic surveillance continue to plague
individual citizens and the legal system. These efforts have bought us almost nothing in terms of
real security in the world. Add to that the current economic crisis, delivered through the
mechanism of a culture of greed and deregulation and you can sense why we remain so deeply
disturbed. And most disturbing of all, the hapless overseer of it all has simply walked quietly out
the back door of the White House never to be heard from again.

Fast forward to the current recession and the mid term elections. Again the rage is everywhere
apparent, and even though as a country we voted for a very clearly stated political and social
agenda with President Obama the hue and cry over the last two years would leave you to believe
that some kind of secret socialist reversal had been implemented, that a cruel hoax has been in
play and we were all going to be ruined. Obviously this is not the case. The health care bill,
regulation as a general concept, financial support for all our critical financial institutions (the
banks) and industry (auto manufacturers) and federal stimulus spending to motivate the economy
were all out in the open prior to the 2008 election.

Obviously the same thing that you might have voted for in 2008 can’t be something else entirely
in 2010. So the question is what happened? What happened is that the American public got very
scared and as I mentioned before, when hysteria is in the air we do some very stupid things. The
credit or the blame goes to the Tea Party for shouting and raging loudly for many months first in
small groups, then increasingly with the support of the conservative “journalistic” community and
eventually, massive big money involvement. Of course, a grass roots group can’t accomplish
these things. But in the end they weren’t a grass roots movement and we can thank the Citizens
United decision for enabling that transformation. The big money unleashed by the ruling allowed
a group with a kind of folksy political message to morph into the current reincarnation of
something resembling the DeLav permanent conservative majority. This has already been
mentioned as an objective by Republican leaders in both the House and Senate along with a
dedicated effort to remove President Obama from office in the 2012 election cycle.

Conservatives now think that they are the possessors of the only sensible ideology around
(primarily because of the big government issue) and that whether they are in the majority or the
minority their notion of leadership is what really counts. Of course they have been short on any
legislation with names attached to it, especially their own. Taking a position means you actually
have to have something concrete in hand and Republicans have managed to steer clear of offering
anything like that. They have refined the art of Nancy Reagan’s just say no mantra into an all
exclusive philosophy. Of course, failing to govern by not putting specific policy forward means
you can’t hurt anyone , but it also means you can’t offer any help either. In the end not creating
legislation is different than advocating smaller government. Congress exists to move legislation,
not simply to make itself irrelevant through inaction.

Egan’s excellent recent article on his New York Times blog made a simple point that the guy who
saved the capitalist banking system from ruin and did the same for the capitalist automotive
industry (by shoring up hundreds of thousands of jobs, vast shareholder investment wealth and
pension obligations) and who repositioned billions to fund infrastructure projects, small business
incentives and prime the business environment for private enterprise can’t also be the socialist
boogeyman. The real socialist boogeyman would have demanded much more government control
than Obama finally settled for. Of course, when you are dealing with rage stoked voters who harp
on their nonexistent knowledge of the constitution and reference the intent of the founding fathers
at every opportunity, actual thinking comes in a poor second. The people making the anti-Obama
case counted on this in order to prevail. Perhaps if Obama had gotten on his horse with some
bold language and pursued the opposite viewpoint with the ardor visible with Tea Partiers the mid
term elections would have gone better. But that was really the job of the candidates themselves
and the Democratic Party. They played it too cool to engage the voters that first put Obama in
office. They were too scared simply stick up for themselves.

So, what of these people, those who put Obama in office and who positioned the Democratic
majority in the 111th Congress. Many of them simply didn’t show up to vote in the mid term
election. The polling numbers support this. I know this for a fact, because for more than a
month, I walked precincts, made phone calls and did whatever I could to get these folks fired up.
There was a lot of voter laziness out there. Hispanics, African Americans, college students and
the twenty something crowd all were less engaged with voting in this election. That kind of
apathy is particularly damaging to the Democratic vote and it came home to roost in the recent
elections.