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TechnoratiThe Rogue Way: How Sarah Palin Made Herself Indispensable While Destroying the GOP
Sarah Palin's heavily publicized book tour begins in earnest this Monday, but weeks before, her ghostwritten memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, had already vaulted into the number one position at Amazon. Warming up for a tour that will take her across Middle America in a bus, Palin tested her lines in a November 7th speech before a crowd of 5,000 anti-abortion activists in Wisconsin. She promptly cited an urban legend as a "disturbing trend," claiming the Treasury Department had moved the phrase "In God We Trust" from presidential dollar coins. (The rumor most likely originated with a 2006 story on the far-right website WorldNetDaily.)
In fact, a suggested alteration in its position on the coin was shot down in 2007 after pressure from Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. Nonetheless, Palin did not hesitate to take up this "controversy," however false, since it conveniently pits a tyrannical, God-destroying, secular big government against humble God-fearing folk. In doing so, of course, she presented herself as this nation's leading defender of the faith.
In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grassroots, Palin's influence is now unparalleled. Through her Twitter account, she was the one who pushed the rumor of "death panels" into the national healthcare debate, prompting the White House to issue a series of defensive responses. Unfazed by its absurdity, she repeated the charge in her recent speech in Wisconsin. In a special congressional election in New York's 23rd congressional district, Palin's endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican politician, Dede Scozzafava, from the race. In the end, Palin's ideological purge in upstate New York led to an improbable Democratic victory, the first in that GOP-heavy district in more than 100 years.
Though the ideological purge may have backfired, Palin's participation in it magnified her influence in the party. In a telling sign of this, Congressman Mark Kirk, a pro-choice Republican from the posh suburban North Shore of Chicago, running for the Senate in Illinois, issued an anxious call for Palin's support while she campaigned for Hoffman. According to a Kirk campaign memo, the candidate was terrified that Palin would be asked about his candidacy during her scheduled appearance on the Chicago-based Oprah Winfrey Show later this month -- the kick-off for her book tour -- and would not react enthusiastically. With $2.3 million in campaign cash and no viable primary challengers, Kirk was still desperate to avoid Palin-backed attacks from his right flank, however hypothetical they might be.
"She's gangbusters!" a leading conservative radio host exclaimed to me. "There is nobody in the Republican Party who can raise money like her or top her name recognition."
During the 2008 presidential race, some Republican Party elders warned of Palin's destructive influence. They insisted she was a polarizing figure whose extremism would accelerate the Party's slide toward the political and cultural margins. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a card-carrying neocon who had written glowingly of Senator McCain, claimed Palin represented "a fatal cancer to the Republican Party." Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Reagan and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, blasted Palin as "a dope and unqualified from the start." Last June, Steve Schmidt, the former McCain campaign chief of staff, warned that Palin's nomination as the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee would be "catastrophic."
New polling data appears to support such doomsday prophecies. According to an October 19th Gallup poll, the former governor of Alaska has become one of the most polarizing and unpopular politicians in the country. Since she quit the governorship to pursue her lucrative book deal, a move that upset many in Alaska's Republican leadership and cost the state's taxpayers almost $200,000, her unfavorability rating has spiked to 50% while her favorability has sunk to 40%, again according to Gallup's figures. (The only nationally-known politician who is less popular right now, according to the poll, is John Edwards, the former two-term senator who fathered a child out of wedlock and paid his mistress hush money while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination on a social justice platform.)
Queen Esther
If Palin is indeed a cancer on the GOP, why can't the Republican establishment retire her to a quiet life of moose hunting in the political wilderness? Why has her appeal only increased in the wake of her catastrophic political expeditions? Why won't she listen to, or abide by, conventional political wisdom?
The answer lies beyond the realm of polls and punditry in the political psychology of the movement that animates and, to a great degree, controls, the Republican grassroots -- a uniquely evangelical subculture defined by the personal crises of its believers and their perceived persecution at the hands of cosmopolitan elites.
By emphasizing her own crises and her victimization by the "liberal media," Palin has established an invisible, indissoluble bond with adherents of that subculture -- so visceral it transcends any rational political analysis. As a result, her career has become a vehicle through which the right-wing evangelical movement feels it can express its deepest identity in opposition both to secular society and to its representatives in the Obama White House. Palin is perceived by its leaders -- and followers -- not as another cynical politician or even as a self-promoting celebrity, but as a kind of magical helper, the God-fearing glamour girl who parachuted into their backwater towns to lift them from the drudgery of everyday life, assuring them that they represented the "Real America."
If McCain had taken his preferred choice for a running mate in 2008, he would have chosen Joseph Lieberman, the turncoat Democrat and his best friend in the Senate. But with the base of the Republican Party subsumed by a Christian right that detested the senator, his advisors urged him to choose the untested, virtually unknown Alaskan governor to bring the faithful back to him. Their gamble paid off -- at least in the short-term. When Palin was revealed as the vice presidential nominee at an off-the-record gathering of the Council for National Policy, a secretive cabal of the conservative movement's top financiers and activists, Tom Minnery of the Christian right outfit Focus on the Family recalled, "People were on their seats applauding cheering, yelling… that room was electrified."
Before her nomination, the provincial Palin had traveled outside the country only once and demonstrated little, if any, intellectual curiosity. During the campaign, she was flummoxed when CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric simply asked what magazines she read. Yet the fact that she had such a limited understanding of the world actually recommended her to the Republican base.
The gun-toting, snowmobile-cruising former beauty queen became an instant cultural icon. Little understood by those outside this culture was her religious worldview, cultivated during the 20 years she spent worshipping at the Wasilla Assembly of God, a right-wing Pentecostal church in her hometown north of Anchorage. When I visited the church in October 2008, a pastor from Kenya, Bishop Thomas Muthee, was at the podium comparing Palin to Queen Esther, the biblical queen who used her wiles to intercede for her people. The reference was clear enough: Palin, the former beauty pageant contestant who had chosen Esther as her biblical role model when she first entered politics, would topple America's secular tyrants, leading her people, the true Christians, into the kingdom. As he concluded his sermon, Muthee gesticulated wildly and spoke in tongues, urging parishioners to "come against the spirit of witchcraft as the body of Christ."
Three years earlier, in 2005, Muthee had anointed Palin during a public ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God, laying his hand on her forehead while praying to protect her "against all forms of witchcraft." The bishop claimed that he had personally battled a witch in his hometown of Kiambu, Kenya, driving the evildoer from the town and thereby ending an epidemic of crime and licentiousness. The episode was later revealed as a farce by a reporter from Women's eNews who traveled to Kiambu and found the supposed witch, a local healer named Mama Jane, still living happily in her compound. In palling around with Muthee, whom she credited with helping propel her into the governor's mansion by anointing her, Palin revealed herself as an authentic religious zealot. Whatever her flaws might have been, this was what mattered to the movement in 2008 -- and what matters now.
Once Palin was nominated, her sixteen-year-old daughter Bristol (named for Bristol Bay, Alaska) became the subject of ferocious media scrutiny. She had, it turned out, been impregnated by Levi Johnston, a local eighteen-year-old jock who identified himself on his MySpace page as "a f**kin' redneck." To media outsiders, Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy was particularly startling, given Palin's advocacy of abstinence-only education. In the eyes of many liberals, Palin had been revealed as but another family-values hypocrite, but to members of the Christian right, she was something quite different -- a glamorized version of themselves. As the Palin family became a staple of late-night comedy monologues, Palin fought back against the secular enemy, slamming David Letterman for "sexually perverted jokes" about her daughter. With that, the movement's adulation for her overflowed.
The Culture of Personal Crisis
Palin's daughter's drama caught vividly a culture of personal crisis that defines so many evangelical communities across the country. That culture is described in a landmark congressionally funded study of adolescent behavior, Add Health, revealing that white evangelical women like Bristol Palin lose their virginity, on average, at age 16 -- earlier, that is, than any group except black Protestants.
Another recent study by sociologists Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner notes that over half of evangelical girls who have pledged to maintain their virginity until marriage wind up having sex before marriage, and with a man other than their future husband. Bearman and Bruckner also disclose that communities with the highest population of girls who attend so-called purity balls, where they vow chastity until marriage before their fathers in a prom-like religious ceremony, also have some of the country's highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases. In Lubbock, Texas, where abstinence education has been mandated since 1995, the rate of gonorrhea is now double the national average, while teen pregnancy has spiked to the highest levels in the state.
"So many families deal with the same issues Sarah Palin is dealing with, so we really can relate to what she is going through," Grace Van Diest, a middle-aged Alaskan delegate from Wasilla, told me on the floor of the 2008 Republican National Convention. Van Diest then described how each of her daughters went on "a date with their dad" to discuss their pledge to "keep themselves pure until marriage."
Palin consolidated her bond with the movement in another very personal way. She cradled her new son Trig, born with Downs Syndrome, before the klieg lights. Her husband Todd had chosen the name believing it was Norse for "strength." ("Trygg" actually means "safe" or "reliable" in Norwegian.) Palin's decision to carry the baby to term excited many evangelicals and anti-abortion activists, including James Dobson, who wrote a letter congratulating her for having what he called "that little Downs Syndrome baby." "What a way to emphasize your pro-life leanings there!" he exclaimed during a radio broadcast in which he endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket, even though he had denounced McCain as a "liberal" only weeks before.
After the market collapsed in the fall of 2008 and the McCain campaign ran off the rails, Palin untethered herself -- as her book title has it, she went "rogue" -- ignoring McCain's rules on attacking Obama. Instead, she lashed out at candidate Obama in her own distinctive way. "This is a man who launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist," she insisted. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America." With these two lines, apparently uttered without the permission of McCain or his top aides, Palin opened up a deep schism within the campaign, while unleashing a flood of emotions from the depths of the Party faithful.
"Kill him!" a man shouted at a campaign rally in Clearwater, Florida, when Palin linked Obama to terrorism, according to Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank.
The next time she mentioned Obama, another man cried out, "Terrorist!" "Treason!"
"Go back to Kenya!" a woman typically screamed during a Palin rally in Des Moines, Iowa.
While Obama entertained visions of a blissful post-partisan, post-racial America, Palin almost single-handedly gave birth to the birthers who would, after his inauguration, dedicate themselves to proving he was not, by birth, an American. By "going rogue," Palin instinctively and craftily propelled her ambitions beyond Election Day, and so anointed herself as the movement's magical helper in the Obama era.
Elevated by yesterday's man, Palin now represents her Party's future -- and the greatest danger it faces. Her intimate bond with the Republican grassroots has made her the indispensable woman, even if she provokes a visceral sense of revulsion from many independents and moderates. Other Republican frontrunners like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty have a debilitating problem to face in any race for the presidency: they are viewed as inauthentic candidates by the movement -- cardboard men in suits who are only pantomiming appeals to cultural resentment.
Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister who understands the nuances of evangelical culture, nonetheless bears the burden of being a 2008 primary loser. At that time, the former governor of Arkansas had a clear field when it came to the religious right, but was unable to expand beyond his Southern bastions of support.
Palin was, after all, chosen. She never lost a primary -- and it was McCain who lost the race. If Huckabee sought to run again for the nomination, he might have to compete against her for the allegiance of the evangelical constituency.
Nor can she be easily criticized. Palin is so well positioned as the darling of the movement that any criticism of her would be experienced by believers as a personal attack on them. In this way, their identification with her through the politics of personal crisis is complete. Any Republican primary challenger assailing Palin will be seen as victimizing her, as channeling the attacks of the liberal elites, and possibly as having a secret liberal agenda. On the other hand, to embrace her is to risk losing the great American center.
For the 2010 mid-term elections, Palin's endorsement is already a coveted commodity -- as Mark Kirk's desperate bid to secure it demonstrates. The more she is attacked, the more the Republican base adores her. As she sets out on her book tour, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune only propel her forward. Her influence on a party largely devoid of leadership is expanding. If she doesn't prove to be the Party's future queen, she may have positioned herself to be its future king-maker -- and potentially its destroyer. You betcha.
76 Comments so far
Show AllI just heard on a (right wing!) radio station last night that only 48% of white evangelicals would like to see her run again, and only 44% or all Republicans. Over 60% of independents didn't want to see her run.
This tells me that the woman is not nearly as popular as is made out, and that this is all hype attached to a book promotion tour.
"Palin is perceived ... not as another cynical politician or even as a self-promoting celebrity, but as a kind of magical helper, the God-fearing glamour girl who parachuted into their backwater towns to lift them from the drudgery of everyday life, assuring them that they represented the "Real America." "
Can you spell F-U-H-R-E-R?
"In Lubbock, Texas, where abstinence education has been mandated since 1995, the rate of gonorrhea is now double the national average, while teen pregnancy has spiked to the highest levels in the state."
As usual, the younger generation provides new hope for progressives. They could become hippies and think they invented it.
Woodstock, TX?
Yeah, yeah, we wierd...
Palin/Prejean 2012: The Victimhood Ticket
One is a disingenuous, incomprehensible, uninformed, grasping, overreaxhing, unqualified, gay-hating, ultra-right wing failed beauty queen who constantly claims that her moronic self inflicted wounds are the result of "the liberals" who hate her.......and the other one made a sex tape
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.
The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.
DRILL BABY DRILL!
Actually, Rogue seems an apt description of her...
American Heritage Dictionary
rogue (rg) KEY
NOUN:
1) An unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a scoundrel or rascal.
2) A wandering beggar; a vagrant.
3) A vicious and solitary animal, especially an elephant that has separated itself from its herd.
4) An organism, especially a plant, that shows an undesirable variation from a standard.
ADJECTIVE:
1) Vicious and solitary. Used of an animal, especially an elephant.
2) Large, destructive, and anomalous or unpredictable: a rogue wave; a rogue tornado.
VERB:
rogued , rogu·ing , rogues
VERB:
tr.
1) To defraud.
Let's remember Hitler was dismissed as a wing nut joke also.
Scenerio: Obama runs, just because he's prez. He'll have lost most support from his base by then. Maybe a third party lefty, feeling giddy because Palin's the nominee, will jump in. The Dem vote is split. Hello President Palin.
Wow. Some pre-emptive lesser-evilism right here on Common Dreams. After all that's happened.
Obama, failing at every turn, delivering legislation that he actually announces as designed to get Republican votes rather then Democrats (no matter how many times Republicans vote in complete lockstep against the right-leaning texts anyway), and continuing almost all the Bush policies he gave us "hope" he'd "change," still has three years to act in ways that would make third-party lefties relatively disinterested in running. That's plenty of time. Even if he were to continue to fail to get things passed, at least we'd be able to blame Congress instead of Obama, and still have reason to vote for him instead of a third-party candidate, and maybe deliver him a more supportive Congress as well. But if he stays on the tack he's on now, he (and you) are telling us that at least half the country can expect to be disenfrachised in a Presidential election yet again, and we should just lie there and take it. And that's just from an ideological point of view -- he'll also be asking us to vote for someone who has failed and is giving us no reason to believe he'll succeed at even his centrist plans in a second term. Are we really supposed to just lie back and take that, too?
Nader will be 78 in 2012. There are no left candidates with meaningful public service histories popular enough to draw fearsome numbers of votes. That's our failure as activists over the last decade, but it's true. Of course, we have three years to change that, too.
Whether or not that happens is going to be mostly in Obama's hands, not Palin's. If it is of concern to you, send those concerns to the White House, not to Common Dreams.
The one good thing about this:
arent "memoires" something that you write ... when your
time is over?! Aint that the last thing you normally do
in your life?
Not that I wish Sarah Palin any bad thing to happen ... to
the contrary. I do hope that God himself personally sends
an angel down to here ... to touch hear shoulder and give
her the greatest gift of all: awareness.
So she might actually understand the damage she is
causing ... before taking
her hand and guiding her down to hell, where she has to
stay for all times ...
The GOP is still running things in this country, it hasn't been destroyed. The GOP agenda's moving forward like never before under Obama and his corporate congress, both are defending the interests of the corporate elite even better than McCain and Palin would, since they have very little opposition from the left compared to what Republicans would face.
So this article is idiotic and dishonest, it sells the idea that Democrats are somehow preferable than Palin and her ilk.
If Sarah Palin is destroying the GOP we owe her a debt of gratitude. Like Dubya, who turned out to be terrorism's best friend, rot from within proves far more effective than rot from without.
Thanks, Sarah!
Nanoo
Really now, is'nt true that the media has made Sarah Palin indispensible for their SLOW news days.
Palin / Bachmann in 2012
"One good nut deserves another"
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
My ersatz dollar coin has E Pluribus and the date relegated to edge scratchings
but In Gop We Trust is on the face.
When did "rogue" and "idiot" become synonyms?
I cede Blumenthal the point that there may be some value in analysing this, enough that I find myself reading yet another Sarah Palin article looking for it.
I dunno. I'm drowning here. Sarah Palin, so what?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"...destroyed the GOP." Right. Watch the "destroyed" GOP rise up like Dracula in 2012 the longer President Otoken takes to create substantial numbers of jobs. Where is Obama this weekend? In Asia trying to push another jobs killing "free trade" treaty on South Korea.
The post-Clinton Dimocrats are clueless.
What we are likely to see is bad or worse: Bad - A cycle of one term Rethuglicans and Dimocrats in succession for the next four or five presidential election cycles (at least) as they fail to create enough jobs and keep getting tossed out on their asses as the country continues to go down the tubes; Worse - A Rethuglican regime one jot worse than the Bush-Cheney Junta that declares absolute martial law and suspends elections for the duration of a greatly expanded, open-ended Terror (oil/pipellines) War replete with Pearl Harbor-like events as needed to periodically whip up the Orwellian fear quotient in the public.
You got it right friend. Whether the new political alignment is a radicalized and scourged Republican Party or a new reactionary party which crushes and replaces it, Palin represents its future, and your worst case scenario is IMHO, just about a done deal. In fact, I think this is the result of a set of lonnnnnnng range plans by the likes of Viguerie, Armey, Richard Scaife Mellon, Grover Norquist, etc. etc., begun back during Raygun's regime. These guys are in for the long haul, and have been setting up an economic/political/social implosion for many years which will enable them to destroy the country's "democratic" institutions. Clinton's NAFTA was no accident. Bush's tax cuts for the rich was no accident, 9-11 was no accident. (flying all those Saudis out of the country - are you shitting me!!??) Clinton's deregulation leading to the banking collapse and subsequent gigantic giveaways and destabilization of the economy, no accident. (Remember Glass-Steagall?) Invading Iraq, no accident. The Patriot Act, no accident. And on and on.
And Obama? Obama is a fraud. Whether he knows it or not, he's helping this fascist agenda. And yet, what else can he do? Can he really deconstruct the huge Wall Street/banking establishment? Can he implement a "balls to the wall" investigation of the CIA, military torture complex? That would require wholesale arrests of the highest echelons of the armed forces and intelligence community! Can he expose the domination of the county's economy by an entrenched elite of unimaginable wealth and power? Please. Even if he wants to, and I don't think he does, he knows what happened to the last guy who tried. He got his brains shot out in broad daylight for his trouble.
All the Democrat/liberals who think the Republican party or conservative politics are dying are in for a horrible awakening. One which many of them will not survive.
A dystopian projection that is all the more true in that is exactly that: Dystopian.
But it is a dystopia of the 'norm,' not the aberrant or the novel.
America will not suffer a point of clearly delineated demarcation where it can finally be said it has arrived at complete fascist incoherence; rather it will be realized it has been living through a right-wing political disaster for decades–if not since its historical inception.
Professional historians of the revisionist bent will have a field day acknowledging what the rest of the world has always known.
Bizarrely, the 'suspension of elections' would be strangely refreshing as the ongoing catastrophe of American politics would finally be laid bare, dispensing with all the dissembling equivocations and fraudulent nostrums of 'American democracy.'
Myth is what America has lived on; it is time it died by it.
Bring on Sarah Palin! America deserves no less, and certainly no more.
Strangely, she might even kill less innocents than Obama, but then again, probably not. Either way the difference will be negligible.
–(Jill Bains)
" Bring on Sarah Palin"! America deserves no less". Unfortunately true Jill. If America gets the leaders it deserves, then it certainly deserves the pistol packin mama from Alaska!
Whether or not Obama ends up as a one-term president probably depends on whether or not he runs against Palin in 2012. Her ever narrowing appeal will make her probably the only Republican he will by then be able to beat, if he continues to walk away from his own progressive base.
Yup. Palin is Obama's insurance policy for 2012. Don't be surprised if Wall Street/Corporate America arranges a Obama/Palin matchup. The media ratings will go through the roof, freaked-out normal people will cling to Obama for dear life, the yahoos will scream for Sarah, the campaign will climax in an surge of "democratic particiaption", and when the election is over pundits will praise our "democracy". Either way Wall Street will be laughing all the way to the bank (which we propped up for them).
The Sarah bubble is as American as apple pie, NASCAR, and mindless violence.
"...as American as apple pie, NASCAR, and mindless violence." –(waigouren)
–If America's violence was of the merely 'mindless' sort instead of a deliberate, abstract imperative and spiritual emanation of its very being, humanity itself could be said to have indulged a reprieve.
–(Jill Bains)
I like Sarah Palin for the following reason only: she is obviously a human headline who will do anything to push her own (self-)interest to stay in the news, even if it means behaving like a moron (although much of that is acting naturally I think). At least you know what to expect from her, and there will be no disappointments.
If more politicians were like her people might see the political game for the sham it is.
Rush sychophant and water carrier for the pistol packin mama from Alaska says her book "Going Rogue" is one of the best books he has ever read. I think he read "Going Rouge" and probably does not know the difference.
Sarah who?
Sarah Palin is the archetype of just about everything that is wrong about US "culture". She is mean, has all the sartorial savvy of a cheap streetwalker, a loudmouth, proudly ignorant, belligerant and bellicose--as well as soap-opera maudlin: Social Darwinism in a publically-paid-for red leather hooker suit from Dallas.
I understand from an article in Vanity Fair that she also doesn't have sex with her husband.
(Maybe he doesn't want to pay for it?)
What more could one ask for?
Her public persona may be very different from her private persona. Politics is theater (aka 'show business for ugly people', though Sarah is hot looking) and always has been (read ancient history (Tacitus/Seutonius,etc.); the same stuff went on in the ancient world and throughout history in all cultures (court ceremonies/rituals, etc.)). Politicians are no different from show business personalities, in fact they're often the same people (e.g. Reagan) and the narrative and the stage is created and managed by the media and political consultant/agents. Most players and agents involved in the show make money and some even get some influence/following. Palin and Oprah, Rush and Rachel all occupy the same stage and play to the same audience, some of whom root for one and the rest for the other. Every 4 years we get to vote for one, just like American Idol. In the mean time the financiers/CEOs get rich in the background by fleecing the crowd while it's distracted.
You betcha!
And in spite of this she could be the next President of the USA. What does THAT tell you?
That I need to move to another country.
"And in spite of this she could be the next President of the USA. What does THAT tell you?" –(GwNorth)
–Unfortunately it tells one nothing one did not know already. There is no way Palin's ascendency to the top could ever come as a surprise. Only those in denial of the complete institutional degeneracy–morally and spiritually– of America would be shocked.
There are no real 'politics' in America but there is an ongoing carnival of grotesque dread as the corpse, steeped in blood, lurches on with no end in sight. In true post modern fashion it is simultaneously both farce and tragedy, with the final result being a comedic 'sit-com.'
It is not that one must 'prepare for the worst' but to know it has already happened and one is living through it. The contempt for the institution of American politics is absolute and corrosive. And that is as it should be. That future avatars must come from the right is inevitable.
–(Jill Bains)
that was truly hysterically fu*%ing funny. thanks
Sarah has shown her lack of personal responsibility for even concieving a child at her age, while serving in the office of governor. Her schedule now does not look like any responsible 'family first' ideal, and we know that she has no tolerance for anything outside her own beliefs ie. no respect for diversity...she is much like those(if not one) who ride around with the "In case of Rapture this car will be driverless" bumper sticker, not caring about if that became a reality, a driverless car could do alot of serious damage, veering around in mindless destruction...again, lack of responsibility. Her fickle behavior, "I'll do what I want, until I'm tired of it" should not be what any true person of faith would want to invest in...even the commandment of "Thou shall not Kill" only seems to resonate with these people when the object is a fetus, and not a living breathing person,animal,or ecosystem. Watch out, America, don't be duped.
Question for all Dem Reps and Senators:
What is the 'middle ground' between normal, and R-nut Palin cultists?
Question 2: why do we give a flying f**k what a tiny band of fruit loops does/thinks/whatever? (Unless that tiny band of fruit loops frankly owns the place...)
Wanna have some fun? Whenever the name Sarah Palin comes up in conversation, esp w/R-nuts, say, "Who?" And no matter how much they try to explain who she supposedly is, maintain the pretense that you're wholly ignorant. Drives em batty...
An excellent stratagem! Nothing is worse than expressing outrage about Sarah Palin. I think the fascists would eat you for breakfast if you went apoplectic.
Now all I have to do is meet some Republicans to try this out on them.
I do too good a job not contriving to know any.
But then the same holds true for Democrats.
One of the proudest moments in my life was being ejected by force (with my then 8 year old daughter!) at a party filled with Dianne Feinstein supporters in putatively 'liberal' San Francisco. –(Jill Bains)
Frank1569, that was a good answer, I’ll be using that…Sarah who?
On the other hand, the only reason they are hyped up over “Sarah Who” is because there is no-one in the party that is worth voting for…. what is sickening is the fact that they keep bringing up a dead guy (Reagan). I’ll admit that Reagan had a way with words but it also comes from the fact that his earlier profession was being an actor! He was good at acting the part, but nothing else!
Why anyone is paying attention to this so-called person is beyond me. We don't need to encourage book sales or other publicity for racist right-wing airheads.
Blumenthal: "Why has her appeal only increased... The answer lies... in the political psychology of the movement that animates... the Republican grassroots -- a uniquely evangelical subculture defined by the personal crises of its believers and their perceived persecution at the hands of cosmopolitan elites. "
It doesn't help that the rural 'heartland' subculture of America has been dependent on the 'cosmopolitans' for much of their civil infrastructure for 80 years: paved roads, electric lines, communications, schools. Rural Red states like Palins have NEVER paid their own way in Federal taxes, and to this day rely on 'cosmopolitan' urban dwellers to make up the difference. Check out http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html
and you'll see that the Federal government the Palin crowd supposedly hates is a huge machine transferring tax dollars from urban 'cosmopolitans' to rural 'real Americans'. Over the last 80 years, probably trillions of dollars has been transferred in this way.
It seems odd to have to say it, because rural evangelicals struggle through life like the rest of us, but in a real, fundamental way, they are SPOILED. They preach 'pay your own way' but, conveniently, they DONT practice what they preach. If they had to, rural Red-state America would look a lot like Siberia: few bridges, no paved roads, no electric lines.
Sadly, the billions of tax dollars urbanites pay out to rural communities in America helps fund these 'grassroots' movements that want nothing better than to BURY the 'cosmopolitan' urbanites. How much longer should Blue state America pay for its own hard, angry, and increasingly well-armed, opposition??
What do you expect from an electorate educated(NOT) by policies starting with Reagan to intentionally 'dumb down' the populace?
One has only to look at the relative rankings of students worldwide to see the results. In all categories, US students do not even rank in the top ten in some categories after being number 1 or 2 historically (until the early nineties).
Universal education in the U.S. has become a myth in the U.S. I have listened to young people from rich families deny the right to education exists - it is only for those who can afford it.
In most other industrialized countries, a qualified student is PAID to attend a tuition-free university system. Yes, universal education at its best. Children of US citizens are also able to attend - FREE - on a space available basis. Compare this to our system of charging higher and higher tuitions to students, making the concept of universal access a laugh. The Univ of Cal. is now implementing higher tuition than private schools for the first time. Once upon a time, it only charged for books and fees to qualified entrants - supported by the state.
BTW, I have a friend whose daughters were educated for free at the Sorbonne in Paris - one is currently getting a masters at Cambridge, for free tuition.
There should be no mystery for Palin's popularity given these conditions.
Let me re phrase the '"If I Only Had A Brain!!"' statement to "If They Only Had Been Encouraged to Use Their Brain"
But I could be wrong !
curmudgeon99, a heavy "Amen" to your observation about ever higher tuitions. Here in Wisconsin, and likely elsewhere, funding cuts to our university system are ameliorated, though only slightly, by exploiting the students. They've become the "cash cow" with tuition hikes far exceeding the rate of inflation.
indeed, and where is that money even going? certainly not to faculty and staff, as the UC strikes exemplify to us. it goes, as i suspect, to lining the pockets of presidents whose only interest is buttressing the existing system of exploitation with research that eschews critical for analytic research. what happened to marxist economists?
amazing how extreme right wing views command mainstream media's attention! we know all about obama's minister, but how many knew that sarah's minister actually laid hands on her to protect her from witchcraft. now the romneys, huckabees , and pawlentys of the world see her as its leading practitioner. rarely reported, i'd say, just like todd's membership in an alaskan successionist group. again, the so-called liberal media reports on sarah without really giving us the flavor of all her wierdnesses. she is a charismatic woman who will never be elected, but will take the republican party down with her. she's an authentic individualist, of sorts, and won't play by the party's rules. a faux populist, no doubt, distracting those who ought to be progressives from the economic and foreign policies disasters that they disproportionately bear.
"but how many knew that sarah's minister actually laid hands on her to protect her from witchcraft. " –( johnny u)
–I think the point Max Blumenthal is making here is that it does not matter at all how 'weird' Sarah Palin is or how many people actually know that.
The weirder and the more murderous the better.
America is a death state. That is a hand that cannot be overplayed. –(Jill Bains)
While Obama entertained visions of a blissful post-partisan, post-racial America . . .
What Obama really entertained were visions of himself as a cross between Mr. Rogers and George Wanker Bush. The mojo from this fraud was evident months ago and has already worn off. He is now revealed simply as George Wanker Bush by way of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I'm sure Obama and the legion of totally corrupt sycophants he is surrounded by think the vicious pogrom known as the Republican party is gone with the wind. No such luck. The Republicans await the inevitable and utter failure of Barry's ersatz mojo. Palin may be too stupid and too brutal even for a political party dedicated to stupidity and brutality. But they'll come up with some Abercrombie and Fitch model, dripping blood, to do what she herself will probably never get the chance to do - finish destroying the United States.
The GOP will never be destroyed when the only alternative is their co-conspiritors, the Dems, who continue to share power.
When voting, ignore all those with a D or R after their name.
Nobody is discussing that what has really happened is that the Democratic Party was destroyed by this. This has been a slow process in which the gurus and financiers of both parties have worked hand in hand. It is now in its end game.
After 1976 the Republicans were faced with very dim national prospects. In 1980, youngsters Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, and Karl Rove developed strategies to turn millions of socially conservative non-voters into Republicans. Evangelicals were large in number, and fearful and reactionary by training, so it was easy to appeal to them with promises to support guns and oppose gays, communism, and abortion, but trying to be a part of secular government was of the earth, Satan's domain, and they'd always stayed away in droves. By working with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, the new voting block was solidified and put into play. From a numerical point of view it was a great success.
After 12 years of this, a group of heavily financed Democrats, fronted by Bill Clinton, decided to make a play for the non-rabble Republicans (and gobs of funding) by going Wall Street, calculating correctly that liberals, who, unlike Christians had always been voters and would likely remain so, had nowhere else to go. This play turned out to be successful, too. But it set up today's situation, where we progressives are totally out of the calculus.
Unlike liberals in the early '90's, Wall Street Republicans actually do have a good place to go when the Palinates take full control of their party -- the place many of them went in 2008 and where more of them will go in 2012 when the Republican primary process establishes its expected outcome -- the Democratic Party, already controlled by the New Democrats/DLC. The problem is not that the Republican Party is going to disappear. The problem is the traditional New Deal/Great Society Democrats are going to disappear. The Republicans are just going to change their name to Democrat. The new people in charge of the Republican machinery will keep the name, but they'll be cultural zealots rather than qualified managers. That's what makes them so dangerous, in so many ways, especially since unlike leftists, they have so much money. The people in charge of the Democrat machinery will be totally of the DLC/Clintonite/Romneyite corporatist power structure. So the only people left homeless from a party point of view will be progressives. I hate to say "I told you so" to the PDA, but I can actually post the speech I gave to the PDA in New York City in early 2006 when I and Jonathan Tasini were both seeking support for a left run against Hillary Clinton in that year's Senate primary in NY. I actually did tell them so, just as they were getting themselves up and running, and naturally, they gave their endorsement to the other guy, who told them what a great program they'd developed and how likely it was to succeed in "recapturing" the Democratic Party.
Before all the Greens chime in with "what do you think we're here for?" some of you already know that I already worked my butt off on that route and it turned out to be an off-ramp from the highway of productive progressive politics. That was a choice the Green Party made in 2004 and again in 2008. For those who don't know, they've been bankrupt for several years, have no members in most state, lost most of their state ballot lines, and have lost their best organizers to other pursuits, leaving only the 9-11 truthers, the unicorns-and-rainbows types, stoners, and other marginal, organizationally incapacitated people in charge of the tattered remains of what Nader and his volunteers had built in 2000. So it's not so much that you'll be barking up the wrong tree by turning there -- it's that there's no tree to bark up, and no way to revive the tree that used to be there.
This isn't the place to discuss what to do about it. All I'm trying to do is point out that the party being killed by Palin is not the Republicans -- it's the Democrats. All progressives have to get hip to that. It would be nice if we could find some way to get a couple of mainstream pundits to get hip to that, too, or at least some popular progressive pundits, so that people will understand and a groundwork can be laid by which to respond.
Steve
www.commonplans.blogspot.com
You are inconsistent, Steve. You say there is no way to "revive" the Greens, yet you would support the PDA "taking over" the Greens.
Personally, I haven't seen the great organizing skills of the PDA, but I will agree about the dysfunction of the Green leadership. I will also agree that there is a desperate need of organization.
Although I was a Green county council member in California for many years and had discussions on state and national matters, I have been out of it for a number of years (due to a long-term family illness.) I'm sure you are much more informed than I am, but it kind of strains my credulity to imagine that a "unicorn" crowd is in control. I still know many Greens and that term wouldn't characterize many of them. Are you sure you are not caricaturing rather than characterizing?
At any rate, "no way" is rather self-limiting. A surge in Green registrations would itself change the nature of the leadership and organization. It would not be necessary for the PDA to take over, although if there was some organizational skill there, so much the better.
On a local level, isn't it true that more Greens ran this year than ever before? Doesn't sound like the party is quite dead yet.
Nothing inconsistent. The Green Party cannot be revived on its own, or by individuals joining to help it out. The PDA organizers have good skills, and a bit of money, but cannot accomplish anything if they keep working within the Democratic Party, and maintaining their two losing strategies of committing to support regressive primary winners and the "inside-outside" nonsense, which does nothing to incorporate the interests of movements into the party, and much to harm the interests of movements by formally attaching them to the Democratic Party candidates who do not support their goals. However, if sufficient numbers and dollars attached to the numerous failing progressive movements were to surrender their failing strategies and take the reins of the remaining GP ballot lines, and leadership positions, with a new commitment to full independence from the Democrats (historical note: GPUS National Committee formally rejected making independence from the Democrats and all corporate parties its policy at the National Convention of 2005, which led directly to my resignation), they might bring along the "oomph," membership numbers, dollars, and organizing skills to make a go of it. But you'll also note I said it won't happen, so not to worry. The Democratic Party corporatists remain safe under the protection of the PDA and GPUS.
On the candidacy question, no, the exact opposite, the Greens actually had their lowest historical number of candidacies this year. I don't know where you heard otherwise. The GPUS website keeps the history of its races here: http://www.gp.org/elections/candidates/index.php Green candidacies have declined steadily from their peak in 2002. Starting in the fall of 2004, following the rigged convention that sent many of the party's best organizers to the independent Nader campaign that fall, candidacies took a dramatic downward turn, and have been going down sharply ever since. If anyone told you otherwise, they told you wrong. Victories and total vote counts for candidates who did run have also been steadily declining. The treasury has been in the red for three years, and the continued existence of the party, in name only, has been sustained by loans, not donations, from its own officers. Membership has also nose-dived. Surely you can look at the California elections website and see that for yourself. You are down to only 114,000 members from a peak of 162,000 in 2004, and total enrollment in CA has gone up considerably, meaning the Green's relative numbers have declined even more than the "hard" numbers. In New York, the state with the second-highest Green membership, numbers declined from 40,000 at the peak in early 2004 to only 23,000 now. These are facts.
Only 24 Greens won elections this year out of 143 races, the lowest number of races and victories since the formative days in the mid to late 1990's. 25% of those winners ran in unopposed races where they took or retained seats with only a handful of votes. I don't know if I'd be including those in the bragging rights. Comparing the odd-year elections to 2009: In 2005, 46 Greens were elected out of 179 candidacies, a much higher victory ratio with more candidacies than now. But in 2003 there were 267 Green races, and 64 elected, the peak for odd years. The rigged convention happened in summer 2004. You can see what happened in 2005, and where they are now. For the even year peak, in 2002, 82 Greens got elected out of 550 races mounted. Bottom line is this: anyone who told you anything other than the fact that total Green candidacies, total votes received, and total offices won have been anything but steadily declining from 2004 right up to the present day is telling you a falsehood. Luckily there's real data that shows the truth. The refusal of the leadership to acknowledge the data leads to the inattention to solving the problem. If there's no problem, then there's nothing to solve, right? The utter lack of integrity regarding facts, as well as lack organizing skills, displayed by the overwhelming majority of the leadership is the crux of the problem. An increase in membership will not solve the problem, because GPUS bylaws do not permit one-person, one-vote decision-making. The "empty" states will continue to have voting rights exceeding those that have memberships, thereby denying the ability of new membership to influence party direction. That's why I discourage people from turning to the Greens. It's a black hole in party-organizing space. It sucks good people away from productive work for long periods of time, many of them never to return. It hurts the chances for successful progressive party building. Don't do it.
As of last year, new progressive parties were arising in several states, under the auspices of former Greens who have been reaching their own breaking points but still believe in third party candidacies. That includes California, where many former Greens announced last year an effort to revivify the Peace and Freedom party and even try to spread it to other states. Barring a surprise intervention by substantial outside forces, the Green Party is gone.
Thanks for the reply, Steve. I'm pretty much offline today and tomorrow, and this is not really the place for an in-depth discussion of this subject, but I don't quite see why bylaws can't be changed. My point about increased registration is that a significant change in mass has the effect of changing the nature of the organization. It is no longer ingrown. And if one thing doesn't work, another, more radical approach will.
It doesn't have to be a "surprise intervention". It could be a well-planned and executed intervention.
If you think chipping away at the Democratic establishment will be easier or will bring you to your goals, I think you are mistaken.
About the candidacy numbers, this is what I saw: http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=243
You have no idea how hard many of us tried to change the bylaws from 2004 through 2007 before the last of us quit. We had an organization of Greens throughout America, including a lot of National Committee members. We were called GDI, Greens For Democracy and Independence. Democracy was to change our internal rules to one-person, one-vote. The independence was to not support Democrats or other corporate party candidates. We lost, over and over, till the last of us couldn't take it anymore. The reason it can't be changed is because it takes a 2/3 vote to change a bylaw. With the National Committee representation skewed so heavily towards states with few or no members, and with delegates from those states interested in surrendering their seats, it is impossible to must a 2/3 majority for the change. And that's that.
As for the press release, it's just the next in a lengthy series of total BS press releases from Scott McClarty. You can see from the main database that this year's candidacies were only 1/4th of the actual record year. And the BS from the Steering Committee as distributed through the press office further diminishes the prospects for change. If the party is running record numbers of candidates, then things are great, and anyone who wants to change it is a provocateur, and if you say the press release is a lie, then you're engaging in character assassination, and since late 2005 they've actually had "net nanny" rules that allows them to kick you off the National Committee listserve for saying stuff like that. I know it's hard to believe, but that's what's really going on over there. I lived it.
The bylaws were built to break the party, and to be unbreakable themselves. Plus the people who run the place keep themselves running the place by lying about everything. It's a black hole in space. Stay away.
You raise some fine points here. I would further add that the reason that the Democratic Party is the one being destroyed is because of their insistence upon working with the Ruthless party, which never ever has rewarded the Dems for their triangulation and bipartisanship.
You lose me, though, when you insist upon mocking dismissal of the Greens. It is erroneous to credit only the Nader camp with all the hard work of ballot access and other gains around 2000. It is also unhappily redolent of right wing cant to generalize the party now as "only the 9-11 truthers, the unicorns-and-rainbows types, stoners, and other marginal, organizationally incapacitated people." There must be a better way of indicating you don't support them.
Policy is what matters to me. I was always under the impression that policy was the reason for unhappiness with the Democratic party, and even "9-11 truthers, the unicorns-and-rainbows types, stoners, and other marginal, organizationally incapacitated people" are capable of taking a worthwhile position. Or do you somehow disagree?
I didn't say they couldn't take a position. Anyone can do that. What I said is they are "organizationally incapacitated." That means they can't put together a program that can deliver on those positions. I know a lot of people who will take a good position, light a candle, close their eyes, and clear all thoughts so that the universal magnetic fields will balance into their naturally peaceful state. This is about as useful as asking Santa Claus to bring peace down the chimney.
It takes work. Some people won't do it. Others can't do it. The sorry, crumbled shell of what was once the Green Party is controlled by those two elements.
"...and even "9-11 truthers, the unicorns-and-rainbows types, stoners, and other marginal, organizationally incapacitated people" are capable of taking a worthwhile position."
–(serious professor)
–They are indeed "worthwhile positions" and you are correct to take umbrage about the insults levied upon them.
In fact, these 'positions' are much more worthwhile than the tired nostrums of your de facto rightist, establishmentarian interlocutor.
All this political 'expert' can do is denigrate what he is incapable of ever understanding and label as 'trolls' anyone who cites him on his nonsense.
.–(Jill Bains)
I did the Green Party thing myself, deep on the inside. I was a member of the GPUS National Committee from late summer 2003 to late fall 2005. I was elected to that position subsequent to work from summer 2001 to summer of 2003 that ran from me running for Congress against a popular Dem member of the Progressive Caucus through building a local party that got the first Greens in the history of NY State elected to office. That became national news centered around the name Jason West, Mayor. I was a member of the media outreach team that transformed a couple of small town weddings into significant national news. The reason I no longer support them has nothing to do with the platform, which, like the PDA's, is pretty damned good. It has to do with what I wrote -- everyone left is organizationally incapacitated. Most of the capable people left in 2004 to work for the independent Nader campaign after a rigged convention resulted in an unknown stealing the nomination and running history's most pathetic third-party campaign. Some of us stuck around long enough to fight to put things back together, but we failed, and then almost all of the few remaining skilled, sane people left. GPUS then promptly went bankrupt, lost half its remaining ballot lines, lost its rented office, and is truly gone. I'm not making fun of them. I'm just reporting. They're done. They cannot be revived because they do not make their internal decisions on the basis of one-person, one vote. States with two members get as many National Committee votes as states with thousands. And it takes a 2/3 vote to change those ratios, which cannot be obtained because the states with no members won't voluntarily vote to reduce their own delegation size. They are stuck in a limbo of their own design from which there is no retrieval. Anyone who wants to fight corporate power by joining GPUS is taking themselves out of the struggle. Sorry, but true. I could send you links to all kinds of documentation of the decline and fall of GPUS.
I can imagine a scenario where the entire Congressional Progressive Caucus votes to leave the Democratic Party and become Greens, and simultaneously all the skilled organizers from progressive think tanks and the PDA did the same, and also the smaller institutions left behind by the last two Nader campaigns, and together they could a) overwhelm the small number of people still running GPUS just by sheer numbers; and b) have a fighting party run by skilled people who can see the prize and don't have all kinds of weird, unicorn-and-truther distractions to take their eyes off it. But nobody in those groups is talking in those terms, and articles like the one above show just how far we are from anyone getting started talking in those terms.
Bottom line, the platform is a veneer. Millions of people believe in what's right and just. You have to have an organization that can make it happen. Neither the Greens nor the PDA have that. So if you want to get things done, I advise that you not hook up with either of those groups, unless your tactic is to join the PDA in an effort to have them leave the Democratic Party and take over the Greens. I'd support that.
Steve Greenfield. Hello. Nice analysis. I query thou; Might Voting in the US be guaranteed to do no good in America at this point? Might corporations control the mechanisms too totally?
(Like having Ray Inman, a CIA Spook being head of SAIC, Diebold's software as Presidential elections 00 & 04 were OPENLY STOLEN?)
You may organize until the Revolution. It won't alter a thing. After that you won't need to.
Respectfully joe; if I'm wrong, please give me JUST ONE recent example when voting in the US did MUCH, tangible good for the many, the "masses," the poor. 1. just 1....???
I know that in my town the election of Jason West and Rebecca Rotzler in 2003 did that, and consecutive elections for school board in 2007, 08 (my own, I happen to be an elected official and not merely a gadfly) and 09 did the same, as well as the most recent retention of one "green" Democrat on our Town Board whom the Democratic chairperson was urgently seeking to replace, and the sending home of a Democrat 8 year incumbent as highway superintendent for an environmental steward. That's a whole bunch of examples where voting did much for the poorer citizens as well as the earth.
Now please don't jump on me to tell me you meant nationally. That wasn't your question. I answered your question the way you asked it. The reasons I'm giving you a local example is because a) it answers your question; b) it's all any of us can influence right now; and c) once you have a few thousand local areas under control, the statewide or national will take care of itself. Everyone wants a quick fix solution. This situation wasn't built quickly, and you're not going to build anything that can fight it very quickly -- certainly not if you don't get started.
In my town the Democrats have a roughly 70% enrollment advantage. In theory anything their committee decides should be enacted. But the Democratic Committee in my town don't control anything, not even their own ballot line, as we just showed them at their last caucus by having our candidate defeat theirs by more than a 2-1 margin. Wouldn't you love to be able to say that stuff about your own town?
Stolen elections? Big whoop. We saw in former Soviet Georgia how you handle that. They surrounded the palace in sub-zero temperatures for days on end until the right candidate took office. We can't even do that for 24 hours in balmy Florida. We are a soft, weak, pliant population. The people who join in your local movement will be the opposite. Stolen elections will have consequences. You will see to that. We can pass new laws outlawing the electronic machines, but not unless we elect people who will insist on that. We are by far not history's most devoid-of-resources oppressed population, and many with far less, opposed by relatively far more, have succeeded. We have everything we need except the desire.
Get to work. Stick to the plan. www.commonplans.blogspot.com
No Steve, that is how I asked the question, carefully too; The "masses," the poor. By this conjunction I clearly meant the masses of poor; a NATIONAL phenomena.
I see why you started there. I play chess. And that is your threatened King.
No, I meant exactly what I said; NO election of late has helped the masses, the US poor in any concrete way.
You mentioned Education and elections and improvements? I just finished raising 3 kids watching the system gutted as they went. Ironic example on your part.
So, not one example!! Thank you though. I respect your belief's, actions and perspectives, these merely differ from mine. We may share some.
Soviet Georgia? Elections? Brings to mind mccain's involvement in the affair during his election campaign. Via his campaign mgr.
You're free to feel defeated and use that as your reason to do nothing. But in doing nothing, you're becoming one of the people of good will who allow evil to triumph.
Nobody empowered you to determine the geography of "the masses." Why not make the boundaries the whole world instead of the United States? Then you can be even more hopeless. We have our small portion of "the masses" right here in my town and county. They have their low-paying jobs here. Those who do not have jobs get their unemployment insurance and social services from the county, not Washington. Our rate of sales tax, the biggest regressive tax in existence, is set by the county, not NY State or Washington. If the local streams in which they want to fish are toxic, it's because of chemically adulterated farms in our county, and industrial dumping. To the extent that we now have access to naturally grown CSA farms that make wholesome, local food at rates "the masses" can afford, that don't send toxic runoff into our local streams, and to the extent that dumping is prevented, and wetlands buffer zones significantly expanded, and vast tracts of open space being protected from development in perpetuity through purchase of development rights by public bonds, it's because of recent local policy revisions accomplished by progressive organizing. There are towns in my county that forbid chain stores from entering. We're still working on that one in my town. It's a hard one, just like all the things we've already accomplished. Even without that law, we have repeatedly beaten back all recent efforts by chains to move here, on a case-by-case basis. It works, but only if you work it, and work it like you mean it.
You want some bolt of lightning to come down and destroy all the oppressors and liberate "the masses." It doesn't happen that way. It takes work. Hard work, and sacrifice. If you can't show a trend towards victories, not many people are going to be inspired to join in and help you grow. Local action makes significant gains for your local portion of "the masses." If everyone were doing what we're doing in our local area, the entire masses would be helped. I can't run a nationwide organization, but my organization has made plenty of progress for its own portion of "the masses." Too bad you're unwilling to try the same. It's because of too many defeatists like you, and the rest waiting for a Messiah, that the masses are in the position they're in. Don't pretend to be their advocate. You harm them as much as the corporatists by telling them there's no point in local action. Local action is the only thing that has a point. Until a critical mass of local action is reached, there is no such thing as national action. A house is built from bricks put together in an organized fashion. If you don't lift and place your own brick, there will never be a house.
Put away childish things. There's no magic lightning bolt and no Messiah. It takes work. Tips on fashioning your own brick are here: www.commonplans.blogspot.com
Steve, I enjoyed your analysis here. Are you recommending running candidates from the left in primary runoffs against sitting Democrats? Where do we go now that we have electorally been given no place to go?
In order to run against corporatist Dems from the left, you have to have an organization. We don't have that. If you read my comments here, you know I recommend we take a step back and do field organizing to make local groups that may then stitch themselves together into something that can organize for power. The only purpose for putting the cart before the horse in running candidates in next year's primaries is to use that effort to announce to your regional audience that an organizing drive is under way. That's what I did in 2002, although I was running against an actual member of the Progressive Caucus (who had just sold out, as they always do, by voting for the Patriot Act, the invasion of Afgahnistan, No Child Left Behind, and several other Bush initiatives) who was, along with his traditional voters, in serious need of a wake-up. Making my work known to the public was helped by the perceived audacity of that act.
But you have to be fully set up for follow-through, or else it's for nothing. Where the PDA loses steam is their bylaw that says their members MUST support the primary winner even if he or she is a feakin' Blue Dog. If you're going to use the ballot booth to build a movement, you have to be clear in the primary that you are loyal to your platform, not a party, and if you lose in the primary you're going to continue to oppose the bad Democrat as an independent, or endorse some other progressive independent, in the general election that follows. Caving in to lesser-evilism after primary day is the glass ceiling. You have to tell that candidate "if you want my voters' votes, you have to support the things they'll vote for. Otherwise, I'm going to be there so that voters of conscience aren't disenfranchised, and if you're worried that that could make you lose to the Republican, you can either get with the program or go on unemployment." People are attracted to leaders who have guts. Which leads me to Part 2, the heavy lifting.
Part 2 of follow through is to make sure the people on your campaign team are prepared to stay together after November to focus on institution-building, public education and outreach, and membership drives. In other words, nobody gets to go home and watch cable. They get a week off, and that's it. Organizing is a serious commitment, just like being in the volunteer fire department as I refer to in my blog. You have to think of becoming strong enough to fight mainstream power the same way volunteer fire and EMS people think of training and responding in a way that puts out fires and saves lives. And if you don't think it's that important, then you're not reading the news. You have to find the dedicated people, and don't work with anyone else, and never work with people who want to veer off-topic, like truthers and spiritualists.
www.commonplans.blogspot.com
The FDR/New Deal Democrats have already disappeared in the 1980s. The Rockefellar Republicans have made their way into the Democrats in the 1990s. To expect a return of the FDR/New Deal Democrats is to expect a return of the Teddy Roosevelt Republicans.
OH, to be simply BORN a hypochristian: "The Mendacity of Hype"!
More like enTROYed the party; not a horse but a pig, with lipstick, as I recall.
Sioux Rose
I remember when she was in the news before the election I related that her astrological chart was quite favorable, and I suggested she might end up with a TV talk show. I guess the book tour didn't occur to me as her stupidity is beyond the pale, and must be an international joke to those with intellects observing America (and its breakdown) from a distant shoreline.
Although astrologers do not agree on the specific date of the new age/Aquarius, its influence is permeating U.S. culture profoundly. Oprah is an Aquarian, as is Ellen Degeneres, as is Ms. Palin. This electric sign, ruled by Uranus, is known for imparting charisma. Although I find Palin absolutely repugnant, and the thought of her or her politics gaining any greater ascendancy enough to make me think seriously about migrating to a distant land, unfortunately many do resonate with her "aw shucks" know nothingness about the world. She appears to be Bush's soulmate, the female equivalent of that same manner of unapologetic don't give a f-k about anything apart from home grown country cookin and its intellectually deficient equivalent... and kill all those UNLIKE US, those not part of our exclusive little club, which asserts itself with a violence taken for holiness. Insane doesn't do this "movement" justice. A new word needs to be created to encompass the expanse of its powers to destroy all things worthy, sacred, unifying, beautiful, decent, or just. Generations of poverty, an education in false history, added to religious evangelism and that species of pride that comes from decades of denial as per the truth of one's ancestors' actions appear to be the building blocks to lead to this warped condition (and conditioning). Is the cure even out there?
Astological chart for Palin favorable? Are you kidding? She may not ever be president but she'll always be a rich drag queen and play public jackass. It doesn't take a high IQ to figure that one out.
Let's get down to earth. She's just another politician and a member of the good old boys' club.
The cure you ask? You tell us. You're the high IQ one with all that education.
.......
The possibility of Palin ending up as a TV talk show host is still there. If Mike Huckabee were to run for president 2012, she could easily replace him. If the GOP were needing to reach out to female voters, Faux could set up a lucrative contract for Palin to help the GOP lure the moderate to hardcore conservative women over. Politics is tough to predict.
Rather than a 'savior' for the Repukes and the US - Palin strikes me as more of the 'anti-christ'.
Every time I see her and listen to parts of her 'speeches', I just hear the words of that great song from the "Wizard of Oz" spewing forth from her thin, crooked lips :
"If I Only Had A Brain!!"
What are Max's predictions for the "destroyed" GOP in the 2010 elections? The current pole trends suggest they'll do well.
Everyone knows the "current pole" is a rudder, not an oracle.
Or perhaps like a wind vane, that there *pole*. :-)
But can they do it if they are "destroyed"? Can they get the *traditional* gain expected two years out? Or maybe more? We'll see.
It's not just the polling but the actual results from this year's biggest elections, the gubernatorial elections in VA and NJ that are a bad omen for the Democratic Party in 2010 and likely 2012. In both states, the Republicans won not only because of the local issues but Washington's pathetic performance worse than previous years especially on health care spilled into these races. If the Democratic Party expects Sarah Palin to be the "Walter Mondale" of 2012, I'd say forget it. Paweltry, Mcdonnell, and Christee are already looking like dark horse candidates that could play the populist card and defeat Obama similar to Reagan defeating Carter.
We'll see.
Who would God trust in?
Certainly not the US dollar.