The expectations of 2008 turned into the disappointment of 2010. It's tiresome re-hashing all of the bullshit that's gone under the bridge, the Clown Halls of 2009, the emergence of the Firebaggers and their sticky embrace of Grover Norquist, the staggering inability of some people to understand Blue Dog Democrats, the mechanics of the Senate, and the reality that we elected a Centrist President.
But in the final analysis we, the Progressives of this nation, put our own foot in this bear trap. We cut off our nose to spite our faces, and it's time we grew up, faced the fact that this was our own doing, and got on with the business of fixing it. Blaming Obama is pointless. Blaming Harry Reid is pointless. Blaming Nancy Pelsoi is pointless.
We had the power to prevent the Rand Pauls and the Scott Walkers and the Paul Ryans from getting into office, and we sat on our asses and didn't exercise that power.
A plurality of Americans describe themselves as conservative, and a majority of Americans do not describe themselves as liberal. Forget about the labels not matching the policy. Politics is not about policy. It is about identification. We have less of a reason here on the left to identify with power because modern American liberalism was formed in the crucible of anti-authoritarianism in the 1960's. Therefore, we do not identify with power because it is authority.
Conservative voters have no trouble identifying with authority because they personally are terrified of taking responsibility for their own decisions. We've all seen it. We all know it. Millions of rubes listen to Rush Limbaugh because they are confused, frightened, and too ignorant to even understand what is going on in their immediate surroundings. So they let an angry gasbag on the radio tell them. And they're comfortable with this. People who can't synthesize knowledge or understanding and just want the Bible to tell them what to do. People who refuse to read anything that might make them uncomfortable, or read at all for that matter. That's a significant proportion of our population and as soon as someone is propped up in front of them with the right signs, signals, totems, or whatever, they will accede to that person's authority even if he's a stuttering dipshit like George W. Bush. He's got the fucking flag pin. That's all that matters. They don't even pay attention when he simultaneously cuts the benefits of the veterans he is carelessly sending off to war -- he's SUPPORTING THE TROOPS and if you aren't you're not a real Murkin.
We've had a good time making fun of the incredible disconnect between what Teabaggers say and what they actually do. But the sad fact is, most voters won't make that connection, or care, unless it directly impacts them directly after a vote. I've done plenty of reading, and arguing with, and making fun of teabaggers online. They are truly Quixotic in their devotion to slaying the windmill of government and by that I mean they have no fucking idea what their enemy is or what is really going on around them. They are some of the most sadly ignorant, misinformed people alive and you just CAN'T FIX STUPID. They are never going to get it no matter what you say to them.
Few Options
The details of this debt deal truly do suck. On the positive side, the President is going to have debt limit crises off the table until 2013. That is actually a very good thing. And I think I've just about had it up to here listening to people moan and piss about trillion-dollar coins and the 14th Amendment. The problem is that our credibility to the world would have suffered irreversable damage had the President simply decided to pull the authority to coin money or ignore Congress dripping and steaming right out of his ass. Whether or not they are sane, qualified, or credible the Teabaggers in Congress have one thing that we do not -- a House majority by party affiliation. Defying that even in the face of how insane they obviously are would have taken the huge, droopy clown hat that the Teabaggers are now wearing and draped it over the President, not just now, but for all time.
Had Obama simply unilaterally extended the debt limit, I am quite certain that the next time the government went to issue bonds, they would have found few buyers for them, and the buyers would have been looking for "junk" bonds, not AAA-rated bonds. Credibility matters. Even if you have to wrest it from complete fucking lunatics, it matters. The deal sucks, and the deal sucks, and the deal sucks. But the people who should be smarting right now, who should be learning a lesson, who should be grabbing a mirror -- those people are US.
Shift to the Center
Daily Kos is a site dedicated to the election of more and better Democrats to office. That's been the mission of the site since I arrived here in the wake of the horrifying 2004 elections. But it is incumbent upon those of us who are Progressives and believe in Progress and believe in this nation doing more than just treading water, to realize what kind of struggle we are having. And the disappointment and doldrums that I see from Progressives, the glum faces and the angy, demoralizing words all seem to stem from a basic misunderstanding of the composition of the Democratic Party. They are not liberals and have not been for several decades. The Democrats are the Centrist party in this nation. That is the role we had to take after winning the Civil Rights struggle in the 1960's. The very natural backlash from the body politic was extreme-right conservatism, and the impetus to keep driving further left had been exhausted by 1965 -- it had been going, as it might be useful to recall, since the 1930's. The political left of America had run out of momentum.
The New Left coming up is having somewhat of a confusing time figuring out where the levers to power are. They are not in the office of the President and honestly never will be. A President is not ever, ever, ever, ever going to lead from the left unless he is forced to by the Legislative branch. FDR wouldn't. LBJ wouldn't. Even Clinton wouldn't. His job is to keep the country together as much as possible. He has to be President of all of us.
The Left dropped the ball in the 2010 elections. We didn't get our pony, we didn't get single-payer, hell we didn't even get Bush in front of a criminal trial. And thinking that teaching the Democrats a lesson would help us get those things, we promptly set about depriving the centrist party in this country of the power we'd just finished giving them in 2006 and 2008. The right saw an opportunity and pounced. Conservative politics never asks permission. Conservatives never try to see which way the populace is shifting, or where our moods are taking us. They wait for the rules to favor their regressive positions, and then they just do what they're going to do and to hell with the consequences.
Standing Firm
The people who have to stand firm are we, the voters. If we won't stand firm, our elected representatives sure as hell won't. I am flabbergasted at all the times I've listened to people shriek about getting our Dems to stand firm when the minute we have a negotation in front of us we all apparently turn into Teatoddlers and have a vaporous hissy fit if we don't get it our way. That WON'T HELP US KEEP SANE PEOPLE ELECTED and SURE AS HELL WON'T HELP US ELECT LIBERALS. The only way to keep winning the fight is to KEEP SHOWING UP AT THE POLLS and KEEP THE CONSERVATIVES OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT.
A Very Weak Opponent Is Still An Opponent
The GOP is at a crucial point in history. They have done tremendous damage to party identification, they have let certifiable lunatics run wild with their leadership, they've vacated their bench of serious credible people and let the clowns have the driver's seat. Staying home in 2010 let the ever-more-extreme elements of the party think they'd won some sort of backlash victory. I have had to tiresomely correct I don't know how many teabagger droid-trolls online who think that the 2010 elections were a mandate to "Stop Obama's Socialist Agenda." They seriously believe that.
Make A Vacuum
As long as the GOP has a toehold in our government they are going to continue to enable these teatoddler, teabagger, shit-for-brains extremists. The only way to stop this madness is to SHOW UP IN FORCE at the polls in 2012, REMOVE AS MANY CONSERVATIVES AS POSSIBLE, and force a power vacuum in our political system. Make the Democrats the ONLY party that has power, and most of the sane conservative elements will turn and cling to the Dems (as indeed many of them are to Obama). This will delegitimize the Teatoddlers and end this destructive conversation about dismantling our government. And then there will be a vacuum, and momentum to the left.
That is when true progressives can form an "opposition" party to the Democrats, and start dragging them to the left.
The GOP is, as most of us should be aware, neither Grand, nor Old in comparison to the Democrats, who have been here more or less since the very beginning of the Republic. Being the oldest political party in the longest-running democracy currently functioning in human history, they are going to have long-running traditions and tremendous inertia.
This is the pragmatist in me talking. I am old enough that I realize I won't get everything I want right away in a political movement. I am old enough to realize that pragmatism will win over extremism in the long run. And I've got enough experience living through these things to understand that the people who really need to stick to their guns are us. If we won't stand for them, our representatives have no support. We did that in 2010. Please, please, please, please, let's not do it to them again in 2012. None of our Democratic representatives "learned" a lesson in 2010 except that they can't depend on the voters.