Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone had an essay about two weeks ago called "The Case For Obama." There he detailed all the bills he passed in his first two years in office. Even though I don't need to be converted, Dickinson is persuasive enough to cement my all-Democrat vote this year.
This conclusion is fused by two things. First off, I remember back in 2000, when Vice-President Al Gore was trying to succeed his boss, Bill Clinton. I've thought for a long time that elections are where people who are running have to pay for their sins. I thought then, and I still think now, that punishment must go to people in the same administration as well. And even though in the end I know Clinton was a good president (a rosy image made rosier in the ensuing years), I was pissed off as hell at how he squirmed and parried and "what the definition of is is"-ed his way into impeachment. It was totally unnecessary and really a ploy for right-wingnuts to show their people how powerful they are. But President Clinton, and the American people, had to go through that impeachment bullshit partly because he cheated on his wife by fucking around with a fat intern. He brought this on himself. And Gore had to pay for his higher-ups intransigence, stupidity, and horniness. And as smart and humanitarian Clinton is, I still believe that.
Now, if there wasn't a viable, or even semi-known, third-party candidate in 2000, I still would have voted for Gore. But there was that crusader Ralph Nader, yay! I liked (and continue to like) many of his suggestions at the time -- who cares if he was kind of an asshole? So I voted for Nader. Moreover, in the days leading up to Election Day, I chided many of the people I know, nearly all of them older than me and left-leaning if not liberal, for being "Gore pragmatists." I believed back then that you vote for the candidate that you feel is worthy of your idea of what a person holding that particular office should be and have.
Well, I think y'all remember what happened afterward, all of it. Changing my vote wouldn't've changed anything. But now I think I understand why those old farts held their noses and selected Gore. Now I'm their age, and I'm scared as hell that, for example, the youth of Minnesota will vote for Independence candidate Tom Horner, thereby siphoning votes from DFL'er Mark Dayton and handing Minnesota's governor's spot to Tim Pawlenty's buttboy, drunkard Tom Emmer.
Second, even though he had to do a lot of horse-trading, I can see that President Obama has been busy working. Yes, I would've been happier with a public option, even single payer. And no, financial regulation reform doesn't have as much teeth as it should. But Obama has passed those huge, complicated, politically toxic pieces of legislation, plus started work on repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell," using stimulus money to reorient the direction of American ingenuity towards green technology, and making sure the bailout money banks and the auto industry begged for is paid back to the American people, us, the people he swore to work for, with interest.
That's a fucking lot of things. And you may not agree with some or even most of the legislation passed. But the President is at least, you know, working. And that is something President W Bush refused to do. He is of the extreme right-wing ideology that there is no government work to be done and he can go down to his ranch and clear brush while corporations and their heavyweights can exploit his laziness for gigantic financial gain, the health and welfare of the American people, the people W swore to work for, be damned. He only comes back if someone is going to be unplugged.
And yet, as Dickinson tries to unpack in his great story, that series of legislative wins has fallen on deaf ears over the country. Either they don't know or appreciate Obama's productivity. And what little bills they know passed they despise. Most of the electorate are pissed off, and when you're pissed off, you don't really care about the facts. And they will vote to let go of many of the President's men (and women) in Congress because of lies, fear and hate.
I want to believe that this firestorm of teabagging is what they call "astroturfing," not real groundswell activism from citizens. And there are a lot of Republican shadow groups giving money and then quickly hiding behind a corner to see what prevaricating damage their money has wreaked. But I think these corporate interests interested only to do away with government just so they can line their pockets with legal tender tapped into something genuine.
Specifically, I believe that there are a lot of people who hate that Barack Hussein Obama is our president because he's not white. Simple as that. And I still believe that to be the case. The signs and the hateful rhetoric comes from a sincere hate, an emotion instilled in these people in their childhood and fomented with every sideways glance and every put-down about black music or black fashion or black demeanor or black something in adolesence. And so, when an adult so willingly demonizes someone who is different from him or her, it is easy to believe the lies said about him or her because you want evidence to hate him or her. Trust me, I do that all the time about sports teams. Only those lies are all true.
That's what's fueling all this teabagger venom. And because they refuse to believe that it'll take a hell of a long time to undo the fucking mess Bush and his boys did his eights years in office, they're mad as fuck and they're not gonna take it anymore. So-called independents seem to feel that way too, and they're abandoning Obama two years after rushing towards him.
That means that Republicans are just about creaming their pants (don't tell anyone, that'd be a sin) about what's about to go down today. According to Nate Silver on his fivethirtyeight blog (in conjunction with the New York Times), the Democrats are going to lose the House with seats to spare. They will keep the Senate, with a minimum score of 52-48, but it looks like they will lose their Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. And there will be 30 Republicans governing states just in time for them to either veto or pass new redistricting plans, thereby ensuring more red seats in the House and, maybe, more dedicated electoral votes for any Republican candidate running for President. Such as Sarah Palin. Or Tim Pawlenty.
And once they win, Republicans have stated for a fact that all they're going to do is say no, obstruct, stall, and do their best to bring down Obama in 2012. Not legislating. Not passing bills that will help the country. Just getting in the way and making the President look bad. Well, fuck them. Sharron Angle, the shadowy cunt who's too chickenshit to give interviews and still is poised to bring down Reid, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and all the rest of the new right-wingnut teabagger freshman class will sit in the back rows of chairs along with new Speaker Of The House George Hamilton and throw spitballs at the President while he's trying to teach. And then they'll laugh and laugh and laugh, and even occasionally insult him in front of the whole class, er, country. Because they're Republicans and teabaggers, and fundamental liars and assholes. And they're going to go after Obama with everything they've got.
Tomorrow is just the first step. Maybe the projections are wrong; these statistical models fucked me over in baseball and football recently. But if things go the way Silver says they're going to go, these juvenile GOPers will make life miserable for the president and just act like a bunch of lazy, entitled, corrput pricks.
So, if you don't want to live under that scenario, you better vote. And not vote for a goddamn Republican. And if they still win, well, be afraid -- be very, very afraid.
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