Steve Benen over at the Washington Monthly Blog asks a very important question this morning, what do we do when an entire political party moves to Bizarro World?. I don't think there is an easy answer . I blogged last week about Who is Killing Our Democracy and argued that it was our elites, especially our politicans and the talking heads of the MSM.
But Steve's analysis brings home the fact that the political blame is not evenly divided. Republicans must bear the greater guilt. In discussing the multiple crisis we face, there is NO other reasonable conclusion. Therein lies the problem, the reasonable part. For to discuss our current situation reasonably, we must agree to be reasonable, to appeal to facts and not ideological presumptions. Sane people on all sides of the Liberal/Conservative/Moderate-Independent divide can do that. Not so Tea Baggers, Dittoheads, and rabid partisans of the left or right.
A recent article from the Boston Globe tells us How Facts Fail.
While voters in our groups gave the president higher marks on the economy after the speech than before, that was clearly driven by his new priority, jobs, and perhaps a clearer understanding of the difference between Bush era policies and the new one. Still, the president and the Democrats in Congress do not yet have a narrative or a framework to explain their economic policies in a period where the gap grows between macro and micro growth.
To make matters worse, there is the perception by some fairly smart people that there may not be a narrative to be found. We may be living in an America that is ungovernable.
System Failure Toward the end of the decade, as the establishment definitively rebuked Bush and sought to distance itself from his failures, the big-tent center-left coalition took on an influential constituency--the Colin Powells and Warren Buffetts--who didn't want reform so much as they wanted restoration. This was reflected in a strange internal tension in the Obama campaign rhetoric that simultaneously promised both: change you can believe in and, as Obama said at a March 2008 appearance in Pennsylvania, a foreign policy that is "actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father."
If the working hypothesis that bound this unwieldy coalition together--independents, most liberals and the Washington establishment--was that the nation's troubles were chiefly caused by the occupants of the White House, then this past year has served as a kind of natural experiment. We changed the independent variable (the party and people in power) and can observe the results. It is hard, I think, to come to any conclusion but that the former hypothesis was insufficient.
The Teabaggers, Sarah Palin, they are a natural outgrowth of the elemental , gut level perception that things have become fundamentally unhinged. The pain that this movement seems to represent is all to real. The fear that this pain spawns leads them to flail about for reasons, causes, ways out, and heaven help anyone who has the responsibility, the job of trying to fix the mess - which maybe in the short term unfixable.
Here in Texas, the fallout of misgovernance is all around us. Recall our rankings in education, child welfare, prisons, care for the mentally ill, juvenile justice. Don't forget our defective revenue system make worse and worse by the Governor's mindless mantra of cutting taxes.
Two in five Democratic voters either consider themselves unlikely to vote at this point in time, or have already made the firm decision to remove themselves from the 2010 electorate pool. Indeed, Democrats were three times more likely to say that they will "definitely not vote" in 2010 than are Republicans.
I can't find any numbers specifically for Texas, but if the Governor's race heats up with Bill White entering for the Dems, I suspect we will get much better statewide numbers.
The conclusion that DailyKos draws from these numbers is the importance of a viable Heath Care bill being passed. I agree. Having spent this much energy on this policy, we damn well better be able to have something positive to show for it.
The poll also included this bad news: a -17 in the right versus wrong direction for the country question.
Anybody in the dark as to why all the lying and manufactured outrage on the other side? I thought not.
Cross-Posted at Project Vote's Voting Matter's Blog Weekly Voting Rights News Update
by Erin Ferns
As we predicted last December, legislation designed to prevent so-called voter fraud has dominated election law debates in several states this year. Last week alone, Georgia's controversial voter ID law was upheld by a federal appeals panel, the Texas Senate "sparked deep partisan tensions" by eliminating the majority rule in order to aid the passage of a voter ID law, and nine more states introduced numerous voter ID bills.
When will we get it? I was far from the perfect candidate in '06, but I think I did my part for the greater good. My race was a complete longshot and most had written it off before I even got started, and I knew that, yet I still agreed to do it.
We are 12 months away from the election, and why do I still feel like Democrats are still in hiding? Wake up people....if we can sell out a Hannah Montana concert, we can certainly fill the same venue with voters!
A piece from Washington Post says not universally, and not much, but maybe just enough? The author shows that in no poll before or after the 2006 elections did corruption break single digits of importance to pollees
It is not clear whether all those polled were voters or likely voters and this would make a difference in how we interpet the results. Maybe it matters more to these groups and therefore to our chances if we push the meme "culture of corruption" one more time.
