SYNDICATED COLUMN: Boycott the 2012 Election
Hey Liberals! Time to Stop Getting Rolled
We might as well have defaulted.
Regardless of where you stand politically, the deal to raise the federal debt limit came too late for the U.S. to achieve its main objective, avoiding the downgrading of debt issued by the U.S. Treasury that would have followed a default.
“The political and financial world surely thinks less of us now, and one demonstration of that will likely be a downgrading of the credit rating of the U.S., probably imposed in the next few months,” writes John Keefe of CBS’s Moneywatch. “The net result will be higher interest rates on U.S. government debt, which is likely to bleed through ultimately to higher costs for all sorts of other interest rates.”
The buzz on Wall Street says that Standard & Poor’s will soon downgrade T-Notes from a sterling “AAA” either to “AA+” or “AA”, the same as Slovakia. That’s exactly what would have happened had there been a default.
It is true: Our leaders are idiots.
“I have a home in Nevada that I haven’t seen in months,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid on the floor of the Senate. “My pomegranate trees are, I’m told, blossoming.” Too bad. He missed his pretty flowers for nothing.
Liberals got rolled.
Just like on healthcare.
Just like on everything else.
Everything about the way this deal went down, from the initial posturing to a compromise that will make the Great Depression of 2008-? even worse, along with Congress’ total lack of concern for the hardships being faced by the 20 percent-plus of Americans who are unemployed, has people disgusted.
“The big loser after this exercise is Washington,” Republican strategist Scott Reed tells The New York Times. The 2012 election “has the potential to be an anti-incumbent feeling in both parties.” Gee, ya think?
If any good comes out of the debt limit fiasco, it’s that this embarrassing showdown could serve as a long overdue wake-up call to liberals who still have faith in the Democratic Party. Maybe, just maybe, these ideological rubes will finally accept the obvious truth:
Those corrupt corporate-backed pigs just aren’t that into us.
So boycott the pigs. It is time for Real Liberals to kick Team Democrats to the curb. It isn’t hard. Next November all you have to do is…
Nothing.
Just.
Don’t.
Vote.
In other countries voter boycotts have a long and proud tradition as a way to effect pressure on a non-responsive political system. Think the politicians won’t care if you don’t vote? History proves you wrong. Even in dictatorships where only one candidate appears on the ballot, regimes go to desperate lengths to get people to turn out to vote. Why? It proves the government’s legitimacy.
Samuel Huntington cites the example of apartheid-era South Africa in his book “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century”: “In the 1988 municipal elections, the [pro-apartheid] South African government…clamped down on pro-boycott opposition groups and made it unlawful for individuals to urge a boycott.” The African National Congress then upped the ante, declaring its intent to “use revolutionary violence to prevent blacks from collaborating [by casting a vote].”
Extreme, perhaps. Effective, definitely. The ANC is now the majority incumbent party in post-apartheid South Africa.
Are you Real? Or do you play for a Team?
If you’re a Real Liberal, you espouse liberal values and policies that you think would make America a better place. If you’re a partisan of Team Politics, you only care about one thing—whether the Democrats get elected. You couldn’t care less about policy.
Which side are you on?
Like Clinton and Carter before him, Obama has sold out core liberal Democratic principles, such as fighting for the weak and poor and expanding the social safety net, as well as civil liberties. He can’t point to a single major liberal policy achievement. Heck, Obama hasn’t proposed a major liberal bill. Even so, Team Democrats will vote for Obama in 2012. Team Democrats are Democrats first, liberals last.
Real Liberals, on the other hand, have no reason to support the Dems. The debt limit deal makes this painfully clear.
Paul Krugman, the only reason to read The New York Times op/ed page, calls the debt limit deal “a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.”
Krugman is a Real Liberal. Real Liberals care about liberal policies—defending old liberal victories such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as struggling to achieve new gains like a public-works program to put the unemployed to work.
Real Liberals give Democratic politicians the benefit of the doubt. But after they prove themselves to be a DINO (Democrat In Name Only), Real Liberals withhold their support. Classic example: Joe Lieberman, the senator from Connecticut. Current version: Barack Obama and his allies.
Obama has been locked in an epic showdown with House Republicans for weeks. Matador vs. bull. Scary and exciting.
First and foremost, the debt ceiling debate was ridiculous from the start. The economy is at a standstill. Recent GDP numbers came in at a sub-anemic 1.9 percent, so low that the real unemployment rate of 21 percent will continue to increase. Foreclosures are emptying out whole neighborhoods.
The traditional, historically proven Keynesian response to Depression is for the government to spend more. Members of both major parties know this. Yet here they were, both agreeing to spend less, indeed to slash the budget by historic amounts. If the Democrats had an ounce of sense, much less principle, they would have refused to discuss budget cuts at all. (Although an end to the wars would be nice.)
Obama and Congressional Democrats went along with trillions in cuts, cuts that may lead to Soviet-style collapse. The Dems’ only demand was that a final agreement include tax increases on the wealthy.
In the end, the Hopey Changey matador hopped the fence and fled the stadium. The GOP got their cuts. The Dems didn’t get a cent of taxes on the rich.
OK, Real Liberals. It’s been three years. You know Obama’s record. Obama never fights. When he does, it’s for conservative values, like slashing the federal budget and giving our money to millionaire bankers.
Why would you vote for him, or any Democrat, next year?
I know, I know: the Even More Insane Evil Republicans would take over. Après nous, la deluge. To which I ask, really, truly, no sarcasm—what difference would it make?
What if John McCain had won in 2008? Do you think we’d be at war in more countries than Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya? Would the Republicans have done less than Obama for the unemployed and homeowners getting evicted from their homes?
How much longer are you going to tolerate the sellout Democrats? How many more times are you going to stand in line to cast a vote for these treacherous scum?
(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2011 TED RALL
And this week’s Kunstler, good enough to weave into a cartoon?:
“I’d like to know why the fuck the president is even out campaigning more than a year before the election. And hasn’t the mainstream news media noticed that there’s something a little peculiar about a cycle of perpetual election with no governing in between?”
Ted, what struck me far more than that sense that Whimsical keeps repeating what once was true but is no longer…. is the strange conceit that there is only one boat. That’s what the communists used to say. Only one boat, us. And if it’s leaking, it’s YOUR fault! Heh. Totalitarian thinking refuses to die.
At this point it is hard to say how the Dems are less evil than the Republicans. They used to scale differently; no longer.
>>There are Bush bankster bailouts, and there are Obama bankster bailouts. There is GOP revolving door between Wall Street and government, and Dem revolving door. There is GOP sponsored corporate welfare, and there is Democrat sponsored corporate welfare. There are endless billions wasted on weapons and wars by Bushites, and then those wasted by Obamaites. Two wars for Bush, is it 5 wars now for Obama? I lost count.
Massive oversimplification. You’re capable of much deeper thinking then that. There are real, substantive differences between the two parties, and your failure to address them hurts your “pull together” message by making you appear biased.
>>A fingernail vs a lead pipe?!
I exaggerated to make a point- you’ve never heard of hyperbole? The basic point is still correct, however.
>>You are so deep in denial you will need a crane to pull you out.
Heh. Obviously, I disagree. The left has been in denial for thirty years; I’m offering a way out that actually stands a chance in hell of getting what they want.
>>And btw, in order to get out of a hole, first, you have to stop digging.
Good advice, cept we’re not in a hole. We’re in a boat, and some of the folks in the boat have knocked holes in the bottom and are trying to enlarge them.
If enough of us stop bailing like hell, we’re all dead. I think that outcome should be avoided.
See you around.
There are Bush bankster bailouts, and there are Obama bankster bailouts. There is GOP revolving door between Wall Street and government, and Dem revolving door. There is GOP sponsored corporate welfare, and there is Democrat sponsored corporate welfare. There are endless billions wasted on weapons and wars by Bushites, and then those wasted by Obamaites. Two wars for Bush, is it 5 wars now for Obama? I lost count.
A fingernail vs a lead pipe?! You are so deep in denial you will need a crane to pull you out. And btw, in order to get out of a hole, first, you have to stop digging. Good luck with that. Enjoyed our discussion.
>>The salient point is that both sides are unable to govern responsibly.
You’re doing it AGAIN. Even if I accepted the above statement as true (which I most certainly do not- a broken system allows irresponsible Republicans to block Democratic attempts at responsible government; which is vastly different than Democrats being unable to govern responsibly) it is still wrong to lump both sides together in a context free statement like the one above.
It’d be like telling a sentencing jury “These men hurt the defendant. Pass sentence”, without telling them that one of the men scratched the defendant once with a fingernail, while the other beat the defendant with a lead pipe for an hour.
It is NOT equivalent, and to even imply it is equivalent is at best misleading and at worst deliberately deceptive. It taints the entire discussion and makes focusing on the real problem- the broken system- impossible.
People will not be able to come together in an honest discussion until false equivalencies; even unintended ones, are dead.
As for the rest of your post, it’s an interesting theory, but I see little real-world application for it. If I have cancer, it might be briefly interesting to discuss why I got cancer, but I’d prefer the majority of the discussion be about what I was going to do to not have cancer any more.
After all, in the words of the great Yogi Berra; “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. “
Whimsical: “as long as people are saying, even by implication, that both sides are equally bad.”
When you say that, I feel disappointed, because I am hoping to be heard on my own terms.
Let me try again. The point here is not whether the two sides are equally bad. The salient point is that both sides are unable to govern responsibly.
As for Buffett, he has been saying that for some time. Are we supposed to hold our breath in anticipation while the broken down system debates endlessly whether the top 0.1% ought to pay more taxes, and how much?! Perhaps you will find it riveting. Argh.
Here is something I just came across (a book called Reports from a wild country). It eloquently explores the issue of narcissistic ideation that systems of narrower and narrower power fall prey to. I would be interested in your thoughts in response.
“A crucial feature of the system is that others never get to talk back on their own terms. Communication is all one way as the pole of power refuses to receive the feedback that would cause it to change itself, or to open itself into dialogue. Power lies in the ability not to hear what is being said, not to experience the consequences of one’s actions, but rather to go one’s own self-centric and insulated way. Plumwood (2002:27) notes two key moves in sustaining hierarchical dualism and the illusion of autonomy – dependency and denial. The pole of power depends on the subordinated other, and simultaneously denies this dependence.
The image of bi-polarity thus masks what is, in effect, a singular pole of self. The self sets itself within a hall of mirrors; it mistakes its reflection for the world, sees its own reflections endlessly, talks endlessly to itself, and, not surprisingly, finds continual verification of itself and its world view. This is monologue masquerading as conversation, masturbation posing as productive interaction; it is a narcissism so profound that it purports to provide a universal knowledge when in fact its violent erasures are universalizing its own singular and powerful isolation.”
Yes.
Oh, and Ted, if you’re still reading this this far in:
Given that we appear to have shaken off most of, if not all of the effects of the downgrade, is it still your position that “we might as well have defaulted?”
>>Whether the will is there nowadays? So far, I don’t see it.
Interesting you should say this on the day Warren Buffet’s piece on taxing the rich comes out. If he’s saying it, I can promise you a lot of the rich are thinking it. The will to raise taxes on them may come from the rich themselves.
>>Yes, but that is the crux of the problem, isn’t it? Concentrated in fewer and fewer hands?
Ironically, it is the same thing that makes letting go of some of it easier. Much easier to convince 100 people to ease up on their chokehold on the cash flow or face the angry mob that it would be 1000, or 10,000. I’d actually say this makes re-regulation MORE likely, not less.
>>I am saying that if we are to effect deep change, we all have to start pulling together.
And I’m telling you that won’t be possible until we get an honest accounting of the state of affairs. And that an honest accounting of America’s state of affairs will not be possible to have as long as people are saying, even by implication, that both sides are equally bad.
Re Wisconsin: Interesting. You make some good points. Will keep an eye on it.
>>Yet history shows, painfully, that elites tend to run the system into the ground despite damaging their own long term prospects.
“American history says otherwise, actually. FDR went to the wealthy and pointed out that they were outnumbered and suggested they either share a little of their wealth or lose a lot of it when they got over-run. They saw the light then and allowed for regulation of the economy; and if the same case was made today they’d see the light now.”
Well, I said “tend to.” Yes, FDR made a dent. Whether the will is there nowadays? So far, I don’t see it. I see Obummer as their craven tool, and nothing else in the offing. (I believe the political system once centered on Constantinople was able once to make significant reforms as well, and extend its life. In the end, it perished anyway.)
>>Will the depression shift things? Well, it remains to be seen; so far it hasn’t. In the 30s, there was a lot of wealth to throw at the problem. Different times…
“Well, that’s because what we’re in now is far more analogous to Japan’s “lost decade” than the Great Depression. And there’s still plenty of wealth to throw at the problem, it’s just concentrated in far fewer hands these days.”
Yes, but that is the crux of the problem, isn’t it? Concentrated in fewer and fewer hands?
>>I don’t buy all this frantic vilification of the right any more than I buy their endless sneers and lies about the left. Plague on both your houses!
“This blatantly false equivalency, that both sides are equally bad, is a huge part of America’s current problems (and a favored right wing talking point). This zombie lie needs to die, ASAP.”
Ha. How about you actually argued your point? Besides, I am not claiming “equivalency.” I am saying that if we are to effect deep change, we all have to start pulling together. ‘Divide and conquer’ is an old and worn trick of the elites who precisely do NOT want people to unite, for obvious reasons. Enough of this poison in the body politic.
A great cartoon, btw:
http://garrisongraphics.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html
>>I suggest you deepen your understanding of them. For example, Bouton’s Taming Democracy is highly instructive.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
>>Why don’t you stop fighting us unvoters, and fight a corrupt and malfunctioning voting system instead?
Who says I can’t do both? [/snark]
In all seriousness, I’m NOT fighting you. I’m trying to make you understand that you cannot fix the system without keeping the country alive, or something much worse will take it’s place.
Unvoting is the equivelent of ignoring the nicked artery on the body politic because you’re too busy cutting out the cancer. “The operation was a success but the patient died”; is that an outcome you can be proud of? Or even accept?
I’m all for fixing the system, but not at the expense of killing the political body. And IMO, that’s EXACTLY what unvoting will lead to. And I’m almost positive you’re not going to like the zombie that rises in its place. I know I won’t.
>>As for Wisconsin, I read online that 2 recalls are insufficient to change the situation. True?
Again, I’m going with the Clintonian “depends on what you mean by ‘change the situation’”.
If you mean “pro-worker legislation can now get through, despite a govenor’s veto”, no, two victories wont change that. But, neither would three (and there still may be three once the investigation is done).
If you mean “anti worker legislation can now be stopped”, my answer is “Much more likely now than before the recall.” One of the Republicans has consistently voted with the Democrats against Walker’s anti-worker agenda. If he continues along that path (and there is no reason to believe he will not) any anti-worker legislation Walker proposes is dead, dead, dead.
Plus, lets not overlook the value of example. It’s very possible that we put the fear of voters into some of the other Republicans and they may change their votes accordingly; especially since Walker himself is certain to face recall.
So, even though we didn’t officially re-take the majority, I firmly believe we “changed the situation” in Wisconsin. And we did it by voting! Imagine that!
>>Yet history shows, painfully, that elites tend to run the system into the ground despite damaging their own long term prospects.
American history says otherwise, actually. FDR went to the wealthy and pointed out that they were outnumbered and suggested they either share a little of their wealth or lose a lot of it when they got over-run. They saw the light then and allowed for regulation of the economy; and if the same case was made today they’d see the light now.
>>Will the depression shift things? Well, it remains to be seen; so far it hasn’t. In the 30s, there was a lot of wealth to throw at the problem. Different times…
Well, that’s because what we’re in now is far more analogous to Japan’s “lost decade” than the Great Depression. And there’s still plenty of wealth to throw at the problem, it’s just concentrated in far fewer hands these days.
>>I don’t buy all this frantic vilification of the right any more than I buy their endless sneers and lies about the left. Plague on both your houses!
This blatantly false equivalency, that both sides are equally bad, is a huge part of America’s current problems (and a favored right wing talking point). This zombie lie needs to die, ASAP.
Whimsical: “And if you have any quotes where they endorse not voting, I would honestly love to see them. From my understanding of the founding fathers, they would be deeply ashamed of people who didn’t vote.”
I suggest you deepen your understanding of them. For example, Bouton’s Taming Democracy is highly instructive. You will learn, for example, how common Pennsylvanians stopped voting en masse after getting shafted by the fraudulent IOU scheme and other Federalist shenanigans. And I doubt you will find evidence that either Franklin or Jefferson tried to shame them. That would be adding insult to the injury. – It’s too bad that lesson was later forgotten.
Why don’t you stop fighting us unvoters, and fight a corrupt and malfunctioning voting system instead?
“none of your complaints have legitimacy”
That’s your opinion. I look at it another way, and so do many others. For many good reasons. And that is all I have to say about it; since in your eyes I do not have legitimacy in this area, why keep talking?
As for Wisconsin, I read online that 2 recalls are insufficient to change the situation. True?
Local governments are going bankrupt with the help of the economic elites. It seems to me that when you want to take various perks away from people, that’s a good way to do it. Now that they have finally gotten closer to their goal of killing “entitlements” why would they turn around reinstituting them? Yes, it is a powerful argument you make; they should for their own safety. Yet history shows, painfully, that elites tend to run the system into the ground despite damaging their own long term prospects. Perhaps they feel so insulated by their wealth and power they don’t believe the writing on the wall. And perhaps they have bought so much into sociopathic thinking patterns that denial and inability to plan ahead becomes their daily bread.
Common folks everywhere, like in Ohio, are on the defensive. Here and there, they will be able to defend, elsewhere, they will keep on losing. Will the depression shift things? Well, it remains to be seen; so far it hasn’t. In the 30s, there was a lot of wealth to throw at the problem. Different times…
If people were serious about getting the country on track, they would have to unite past all the divisions the ‘divide and conquer’ masters of ceremonies throw at us. Which means uniting past the right-left labels. I don’t buy all this frantic vilification of the right any more than I buy their endless sneers and lies about the left. Plague on both your houses!
Eh, I think Whimsical is right… I kinda overreacted. Will sit on it and respond tomorra.