“This election marks the victory of a new politics in America, an emerging populism that is neither left nor right, Republican nor Democrat, but is fiercely pro-worker, pro-community, pro-opportunity and pro-American dream.
It all started when the disillusioned right and the disillusioned left came together. Tuesday night, they tied the knot.”
Yeah, that was me insisting the Tea Party had some crazies carrying racist signs. And yeah, that was Eric Bolling denying it.
The protesters are not anti-American radicals. They are the defenders of the American Dream, the decision from the birth of our nation that success should be determined by hard work not royal bloodlines.
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I weigh in, along with Frances Fox Piven, Eric Alterman and others.
There’s this great line from Lily Tomlin’s “Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe” in which the central character is trying to explain to space aliens the difference between a can of Campbell’s soup and Warhol’s painting of said can. The aliens go to see a play but ultimately — taken by the intriguing reactions from the crowd — decide that “the play is soup, the audience is art”.
And so it was tonight. The candidates on the stage were soup, but the audience was a fascinating, impressionistic portrait of today’s conservative American electorate.
First, there was a lot of booing. They booed at Ron Paul for suggesting that Muslim extremists may have reasons for attacking America other than just “hating our freedom.” They booed Mitt Romney for not giving a knee-jerk endorsement of the so-called “Fair Tax”. And they booed Rick Perry for giving in-state tuition access to undocumented immigrants, although just moments later whooping it up when Michelle Bachmann suggested forcing immigrants to speak English — failing to see the contradiction that undocumented immigrants going to college probably, uh, speak English. In fact, much of the booing reflected a horrifying disinterest in nuance among the crowd. They didn’t want to hear anything about how government might work, how taxes could be justified or how immigrants could strengthen America. It’s no wonder the gravitational pull of the Tea Party has been not only ideological but pedagogical, creating a Republican Party that is more dogmatic and less nuanced than ever.
Second, the audience was markedly divided. There were numerous answers to which, when the camera panned to the audience, only some people were clapping but certainly not all. Repeal Obamacare? Thunderous, universal applause. But on issue after issue of domestic economic policy and foreign policy, the audience demonstrated a clear lack of unanimity that has oozed from the Tea Party and infected the once-united Republican Party. Today’s Republican Party is clearly more united around what it opposes — everything associated with Barack Obama — than what it supports. Post-debate commentators talked about the desire of candidates on the stage to “play to the Tea Party audience” but the Tea Party audience made their hard-to-pinpoint political schizophrenia and numerous ideological contradictions abundantly clear, such that through the lens of an applause-o-meter, the debate seemed like an impossible game of pin the tail on the moving elephant.
I won’t weigh in on which candidate came out on top tonight, but I will say that the Tea Party clearly came out on the bottom. An audience that literally shouts its support that someone without health insurance should be left to die, among other base and immoral notions, reveals that the Tea Party’s political taste and temperament are as far removed from the American mainstream as imaginable. Not necessarily a pretty picture, but a very accurate portrait indeed.
Union leader James Hoffa’s remarks may have been out of line, but his point was right on. Check out this clip of me talking with host Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Channel.
Former Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell isn’t the smartest witch in the coven. But apparently, even she was wise enough to know that bloviating against same-sex marriage on primetime television wouldn’t win her any fans.
My copy of O’Donnell’s book hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m sure looking forward to it. Meanwhile, though, I’ll trust sources that say she writes about her opposition to gay marriage in the book. But undoubtedly, in the jurassic book publishing world, she wrote those words at least a year ago. To paraphrase the ol’ saying, change is slow except when it’s fast. The tide on marriage equality has changed quickly over the last year — almost as quickly, I’d say, as the tide of public opinion has shifted against the Tea Party. Could it be that O’Donnell, who now wants to sell books not win office, is smarter than we think — realizing that if she aims for mainstream appeal, she’ll have to stop spouting such fringe viewpoints?
Perhaps. Though since most of mainstream America, including us gays, can actually read, O’Donnell’s true feelings on the matter aren’t likely to stay hidden….
Meanwhile, the interview below is an interesting microcosm of the evolving ideological opportunism of the Right — sensing that, at least for voters outside of Iowa, social conservativism is out and fiscal conservativism is in. But while Americans may be dumb enough to buy Christine O’Donnell’s book (I already bought mine!) we’re not dumb enough to buy the wolves of Bible thumping, moralizing yesterday disguised as anti-government sheep today.
Debating civility in political rhetoric with the head of Tea Party Nation who has called liberals Nazis.
The Democratic Party desperately shoved through a debt deal that manages to be wildly unpopular with the American public, disastrous to economic growth and job creation and, not incidentally, opposed to every core principle of shared sacrifice that liberals supposedly hold dear. This will go down in history as the moment Democratic liberalism died. Finally brought down by the repeated blows from the far Right? No. The fatal wounds were entirely self-inflicted.
The vast majority of Americans favor raising taxes on the very rich and oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Let me repeat that. The vast majority of Americans favor raising taxes. That includes majorities of Independents and Republicans. Nonetheless, Obama refused to force-feed the Republicans heaping spoonfuls of tax increase peas with a glass of persuasive poling on the side to wash it down. Instead we got the proverbial shit sandwich, which given that no one is happy with the deal and partisanship is even greater now as a result, may have solved the economic crisis but enshrined a political one. Even with the prevailing winds of public opinion strongly at their back, Democrats caved to Republican threats and grandstanding.
Of course, the fact that raising the debt ceiling was coupled with deficit cuts was a Democratic capitulation from the start. The wise and independent Economic Policy Institute writes in its post-mortem:
This proposed debt ceiling deal tentatively concludes a needlessly manufactured crisis and will do great harm to our nation. The debt we are undertaking now and scheduled to undertake over the next ten years is solely the product of past decisions (primarily unfunded wars, an unfunded prescription drug benefit and two rounds of tax cuts under President George W. Bush) and the recession-related revenue losses caused by the financial crisis generated by financial deregulation and weak oversight…. There is no economic necessity to undertake spending cuts or deficit reduction plans at this point in the economic recovery, when high unemployment is expected to persist for several more years. Jobs should be the priority and jobs are the path to get our nation’s fiscal situation to a responsible place.
In other words, what’s needed to cure our economic stagnation is not spending cuts that will further cripple the middle class but more spending on infrastructure and jobs to kick start the future. Yet at precisely the moment that we should have been talking about spending more instead of cutting spending, Republicans pigeonholed the political conversation into slashing Social Security, food stamps and Medicare. Democrats agreed to play ball on Republican’s ideological home field. And then kicked the ball through the other side’s goal. It is, unfortunately, my liberal suckers thesis played out to the letter.
I voted for Barack Obama. I volunteered to help him win. And yes, I was swept up by the fantastical Camelot of hopes and dreams. But like many progressives, I’m reminded today that 2008 was about the mission, not the man. And if we cling to the hope that Barack Obama, as one of the few charismatic leaders on our side, might any minute now take up the mantle of progressive ideals that he has so clearly eschewed so far, that is a reflection less on his power over us than our own power of self-delusion and desperation.
Michael Tomasky brilliantly observes that while Republicans fear their base in the sense that they treat them with respect and kid gloves. Democrats fear being associated with their base and thus make “aggressive public moves to demonstrate that they aren’t really like their base.” Which is all the more absurd — or pathetic, really — given that the Republican base is in fact an extreme fringe while the Democratic base represents a very large, very mainstream segment of America. More voters stayed home in the 2010 mid-term elections than voted, and yet the Tea Party has managed to hold a powerful ideological sway not only over the Republican establishment but, clearly, President Obama and many Democrats. The Tea Party is an audacious fringe with mainstream influence. Meanwhile, progressives represent the moral mainstream yet have barely fringe influence.
I’m sick of being taken for granted, in general but especially when something like basic tax increases on the very rich are not only good for our economic future but something that the American people overwhelmingly support. If the President isn’t listening to us now, when will he? Obama didn’t just stab Democratic liberalism in the back — he may have cut himself off from his base permanently.
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