It may be a bit premature to predict the outcome of todays’ midterm primary elections, but given the unending stream of bad economic and environmental news and the generally sour mood of the electorate, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that incumbents, even if they eke out victories, are in big trouble, and that a variety of raging nutbags, who in normal times would attract scant attention, will probably end up garnering a fair share of the vote.
Like many who lean to the left, I’ve had a tendency to dismiss the Tea Party movement as a loud distraction, a small, misinformed collection of wingnuts. The reality is much more complicated. The economy is bad, and people are hurting. It’s natural at times like this for people to become angry, and they generally vent their anger at the party in power, whether that party is responsible for the economic conditions or not. What I can’t quite understand is why these same folks weren’t out in force when the Bush administration was running up huge deficits, increasing the size and scope of government, a compliant Republican Congress was spending like–well–like they accuse Democrats of spending, banks were ruining the economy and the Bush White House was bailing them out and passing massive stimulus bills. Add to that the Republican party shamelessly shifting the tax burden away from the rich and onto the middle class. I listen to the Tea Partiers rhetoric, and it seems to me that it applies at least equally tot he sins of the Republicans as it does to the Democrats, yet almost all of the anger is aimed at Obama. We haven’t seen this kind of vehemence since Clinton (who balanced the budget and reduced the size of government) was in office. I’m angry, too, but I’m furious with a Republican economic philosophy that has resulted in the decades-long stagnation of the income of us working stiffs while the rich have gained an increasing share of the nation’s wealth.
In a word, the state of the union is ANGRY! The question for the president and for both parties to figure out is, at what? Because we have a two-party system, the only choice people have if they don’t like what’s happening is to vote for the other guy, even if the other guy is largely responsible for what’s happening, and the guy that’s in there now is in there because of the other guy’s mistakes. People are angry at deficits, largely run up by the irresponsibility of the Bush administration, and topped off by Obama. They’re angry that the bankers who got us in this mess are making millions while we lose our shirts, thanks mainly to deregulation promoted primarily by Republicans (but signed off on by Clinton). They’re angry about jobs, but there’d be a lot more of them if the stimulus package had been larger, which would have increased the deficit, which they’re angry about. They’re angry that Washington seems wholly beholden to special interests, so they’re going to vote for the party that loves special interests at least as much as the party in power now. They’re angry at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were started by the party they just voted out a year ago. They’re angry that Obama has accomplished so little of his agenda, so they’re going to vote for the party that has unanimously opposed every single aspect of it.
I’m angry, too, and I get to draw cartoons about what I’m angry about, which doesn’t solve any of the problems, but makes me feel good. I’m a Tea Party of one.
The Democrats were blindsided yesterday in Massachusetts, and they have nobody to blame but themselves. They have badly misjudged the mood of the American people for months, stringing out the health care debate ad infinitum while ignoring the growing anger over the slow pace of the recovery, the loss of jobs, and the obscene unfairness of the Wall Street bonuses. I don’t know what happens to people once they get to Washington, but they seem to lose the ability to understand anything that goes on outside the beltway. Health care reform is a must, but the long dither and the increasing complexity of the bill, not to mention the pork, special favors and lack of cost controls in the current bill have made it unpopular with the public. I don’t know that people actually oppose the bill so much as they have come to view the single-minded attention to it as an unwelcome distraction from more important things–namely easing the economic pain of so many millions.
The irony of the two-party system is that if the electorate has buyer’s remorse, they have only one place to go–back to the party that created so many of the problems to begin with. The Republicans smell blood in the water, but they shouldn’t be complacent, either. So far they’ve offered nothing but total opposition to anything Obama proposes. It’s still a long way to November, and the mood could shift again if they have no program other than more of the same.
The Census Bureau has just released a study that shows that you are more likely not to have health insurance if you live in a state that generally votes Republican. These states (Texas is the worst, surprise, surprise) send people to Congress who oppose health care reform, and their legislatures are stingier in providing child health coverage and Medicaid. None of this should come as a surprise, given the overheated rhetoric we’ve been treated to recently. Still, I’ve often wondered why we Americans are so easily persuaded to vote against our own best interests. How is it that we continue to elect people who make policies that harm us? We put people in power whose true constituency is not the voters in their districts, but the lobbyists for big business and Wall Street. If the Roberts Court, as seems inevitable, grants corporations even more rights, this trend will only worsen.
In an unrelated matter, the head of the California Supreme Court recently noted that his state’s government is totally dysfunction, not because of the partisan divide, but because the referendum process has gotten so out of hand that the state’s constitution is now a mass of impossibly conflicting mandates. Colorado is not far behind, and supporters of our horribly destructive TABOR amendment, which has done such a good job of crippling our budget, continue to push it elsewhere as a model for tax reform. I suppose the citizens of most nations think their countries are nuts, but I’m beginning to think that we’re the craziest of all.
