Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
'Even Charles Manson Could Beat Him Now'
One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?
Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky towards the Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for food and warm second-hand clothes. They come because desperation in this part of America has become a routine part of life.
More than a quarter of the families in Prestonsburg live in poverty; half of the children in Floyd County, where it is situated, are on food stamps. This Appalachian coal mining area has never been rich. But no one can remember when it has ever been this poor either. It sits on the old Route 23 - the country music highway of which Dwight Yoakam (a Floyd Country native) sang in Readin', Rightin', Route 23. It was the road that took people north to factory jobs in places such as Detroit and Cleveland and "the good life they had never seen". Now those cities are broke and there's nowhere left to go.
"We're getting more and more people coming here as time goes by," says Tom Price, who helps administer the church's Feed My Sheep pantry. "The bottom's just fallen out of it all." He blames it on Barack Obama. "Is there a direct correlation [between Obama's victory and the region's bad times]? I don't know. But I do know a lot of people are hurting."
Part 1, Meet the 9-12ers - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Link to this audio
A week may be a long time in politics. But a year has not been enough for the Democratic president to meet the expectations of his candidacy, deal with the situation he inherited or defuse the barbed charges of his detractors. For many the change that Obama promised when he was inaugurated a year on Wednesday has ended up being a change for the worse. Unemployment is rising, houses prices are falling, unpopular wars are still raging. After 100 days only Ronald Reagan had higher approval ratings for his first few months in office than Obama. But as his first year draws to a close nobody has had lower ratings at this stage since Dwight Eisenhower.
Part 2, Miner issue - an excerpt from Opposing Obama
Link to this audio
Keith Bartley, Floyd County's Democratic chairman, says one key reason why Obama's such a tough sell here is because of the effect of his cap and trade policy on the coal industry. Lt Governor Daniel Mongiardo, the Democratic frontrunner in Kentucky's senatorial race later this year, says he would not want Obama to come and stump for him on the campaign trail, particularly because of his environmental policies. "With some of the positions he has taken, especially on coal, no. He certainly can't come into eastern or western Kentucky and help. Nor would I want him to."
But the disenchantment goes beyond one region or one industry. The official narrative of Obama's inauguration - the fairytale most of the US media told itself and that the international community wanted to believe - was that after a rancourous campaign a divided country came together to celebrate the historic election of its first African-American president. The reality was always quite different. The editor of the Grayson County News Gazette in Leitchfield, a small town 230 miles west of Prestonsburg, recalls that the day after the election much of the area wore sombre faces. The week he was elected gun sales across the country leapt about 50% compared with the same period the year before.
For all of his aspirations for bipartisanship, after the first three months Obama had the most polarised early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The gap between how Democrats and Republicans rated him at this stage was greater than George Bush Jr's in 2001 and twice as high as Richard Nixon's during the height of the Vietnam war in 1969. This was partly because Democrats loved him so much - but it was also because so few Republicans were willing to give him a hearing. Obama didn't create that partisan divide, he inherited it. Not only has he not been able to cure it, but his presence seems to have exacerbated it.
Truth be told they never really liked Obama much in Floyd County. He won only 5% of the vote against Hillary Clinton's 94% in the primaries. But until recently they did love Democrats. In the 2004 election John Kerry won the county with a 25-point margin. In 2008, John McCain took it by 2 points - the first time a Republican had won Floyd in living memory. That's to say following hurricane Katrina, the failure in Iraq, the collapse of the economy and the unravelling in Afghanistan, a sizeable portion of Floyd's voters took a look at Obama and decided that this time, for the first time, they would turn their back on the Democrats.
Back at the Feed My Sheep food pantry Cindy Hernandez has just picked up her groceries and is rifling through the secondhand clothes. She has no doubts about why Obama struggled in a county that is 98% white.
"That's because Obama was black. Let's get real," she says with a laugh.
"You mean people are prejudiced in eastern Kentucky?" asks Tom Nelson, the church's pastor who seems genuinely upset by what she said.
"You do not believe that?" replies Hernandez.
"I know some are, but not altogether," says Nelson. Fearing I should get the wrong impression Nelson suggested I talk to Price.
"I voted for McCain," says Price. "Because, well I voted for the old white guy. At least he's American." A few days earlier, the chairman of the Republican party in Jackson County, Arkansas, insisted electing Obama is destroying America in the same way electing Nelson Mandela destroyed South Africa. "Handing it over to the wrong people."
To ask where racism ends and politics begins in all of this is to set up a false dichotomy - America's politics has always been steeped in race and racism is a political force. The psychic scars of centuries are not removed in one election or as a result of one person. Indeed they may be deepened and made even more raw as a result of them.
The movement that has emerged to oppose him is almost exclusively white. In Little Rock, Arkansas, a city that is 40% black in a state that is 80% white, an anti-tax Tea party rally of several hundred had not one black attendee - apart from an anti-abortion speaker. The doubts they have cast about his Christianity and his birthplace (some claim Obama wasn't born in America) are really proxies for race - a bid to cast him as the ultimate "other". At an anti-healthcare reform rally in Washington in September several racist placards were spotted. One bore a picture a lion and the words, "The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin' African"; another said "'Cap' Congress and 'trade' Obama back to Kenya".
But while racism might inform the intensity and shape the nature of the attacks on Obama they do not drive them. Obama's administration has raised taxes on the rich, expanded public spending, pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq and argued - if only halfheartedly - for universal healthcare. Conservatives have good reasons to be against him that have nothing to do with race.
"It's hard to specify a single source for the opposition," says Rev Wendell Griffin, a Baptist pastor and judge in Arkansas. "Part of the opposition to Obama is philosophical. There is in every society a strand of thought that glories in the myth of rugged individualism [and] he challenges that notion. He believes that the idea of a government is to have a concern not just for the individual but for the society as a whole. Some people don't like that." Griffin went on to list racism, economic desperation and the fact that he is no longer an underdog as other reasons.
His rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially exclusive but they have also proved highly effective. They have a populist message that excoriates Bush and the bank bailouts as well as Obama and a TV channel - Fox News - to which they are devoted and which is happy to promote their work. A recent poll showed that if the Tea party - a protest movement set up earlier this year to rally opposition to the stimulus bill and "big government" - were a party it would beat the Republican party.
Every week a "9/12" group meet at the non-alcoholic All Bar None in Lexington, Kentucky. This was an initiative started by Fox presenter Glenn Beck, in order to return America to the values of patriotism and godliness that he says America embraced the day after 11 September. Fourteen showed up the night I was there. A straw poll revealed that none of them blamed Obama exclusively for America heading in the wrong direction, with all preferring to blame the entire political establishment. Half believed Obama is a Muslim, just one thought he's a Christian and the overwhelming majority thought he was a communist, socialist and Marxist. None believe that he was born in America; most said they did not know.
"A lot of information about Obama's background is missing," says Abigail Billings. "The media in America is not doing any research. They're not asking any questions. They're not reporting any longer. They're now opinionated talk shows. They're no longer offering factual news coverage." They all watch Fox News.
Many on America's left are also disgruntled with Obama. They believe the healthcare reform, without a public option, will be inadequate, that the war in Afghanistan will unravel, the stimulus bill was insufficient to kick-start the economy and that his economic team is being run by Wall Street. But unlike the right they have so far failed to turn their disillusionment into a potent political force.
"I'd have thought in the past that if Charles Manson ran against a Republican in Floyd County he would win," says Bartley. "But Charles Manson could beat Barack Obama here right now. Thousands of miners out of work, the entire local economy in the tank. But he's got a couple of years where he could turn this round. If he does that he could win. If he doesn't, Charles Manson could come in and win."
- Posted in
74 Comments so far
Show All"a year has not been enough for the Democratic president to meet the expectations of his candidacy" is a false premise. You assume that Obama really tried to fulfill all the promises he made during the campaign, but just didn't have the time or congressional support. This is not what happened. What actually happened is that Obama placed in power people who would never have fulfilled his campaign promises; people who, in fact, were responsible for the country's problems and who profit from those problems. He put all the foxes in charge of the chicken coops. From Summers, Geithner and Emanuel to Clinton, Gates amd McCrystal, Obama has made bad choices, disastrous choices, that only perpetuated the economic crisis, Wall Street greed, wars and war profiteering, the Mideast conflict, a rotten health care system, and unemployment. Obama has been on the side of big industry, the generals, and Israel's right-wing fascists from the start of his presidency. This is no way to bring about change.
Naomi Kline seems to say it was all planned this way.
Oh Obama has brought about change alright -- for the worse...
Gary
Obama's support was almost entirely from half of the electorate; the other half always hated him and still does. The drop in Obama's polling numbers is due to a drop in support from the left; they've come to despise him as a sellout. Hatred of Obama from both sides of the political spectrum is now fueled by the crappy enonomy. Race is just a catalyst for hatred of Obama by the part of the population which has always hated him.
The left is disusted with him and the right hates him. Where is his constituency now? Who wants his center right agenda to succeed? Maybe career Democratic politicians who want to shake down corporate lobbyists. When Brown wins in Mass. even these guys will begin to fall off the wagon.
No need for a constituency. The electorate can easily be manipulated on issues not in their own self-interest. This last election was the proverbial nail.
"Who wants his center right agenda to succeed?"
The Transnational Corporations, especially the Insurance Companies that are getting exactly what they wanted from this shell game called reform. They were masterful in their con. They got their lap dogs, the Republicans, to do the duty of attacking the bill as a means of convincing enough people that this scam was actually reform so that even the most progressive Senator in the country ended up feeling compelled to vote for it. Brilliant.
On the right it seems only appropriate to ask here whether anyone would shed a tear if the present pres was murdered. Now of course, the media would rent its clothing and talk about all the good the guys done-- you know -- health care for the poor, stabilize the economy, quick gun on the draw in Haiti, black guy godly against all odds yada yada.
Now many on the Left and Right back a year ago (including a nobel laurete) were whimsically contemplating just this prospect. So back to the Tea Party.. where da ya stand ??
The reason Barkakus Obombus is so low in popularity is the very fact that he is so damn bipartisan. The fact is throwing away one's base as a rule will get a politician into deep do do and lead to his unpopularity. Dwight D Eisnhower, a great man and the worthless, Bill Klanton got away with it for more than one reason. One was those was basically good times. Another in Ike's case waa he was a great man, which Klanton could never on any good evidence be accused of. Three especially in Klanton's case, in good times bipartisanship and throwing one's base with special attention to triangulation may work, but once hard times hit, that's the end of the line for bipartisanship.
Obombus sold out to the power elites on Wall Street, at the Pentagon, and else where and that's his version of bipartisan. People especially don't want that in hard time. With such lack of vision or actions to match such vision, the people perish.
Partisanship is actually a good thing, as it forces accountability on the politicians. Without it, accountability goes. Only when a great man such as Ike is president will things hold together with bipartisan ship, and we haven't but any of those as president in the last 30 years. Jimmy Carter was the last president even fit to be president.
AD
Presidents. They're always either honest and inept, as in the case of Carter, or dishonest and adept, as in the cases of Reagan & Clinton, or dishonest & inept as in the cases of Bush I & 2. The moral is: honesty and politics in this day and age do not mix. An honest President could never get elected (Carter was a fluke) so if you people are holding out for someone who will right this sinking ship I just hope you're not all holding your collective breath.
the right NEVER supported Obama..... his drop in the polls is occuring on the left!
leave it to the MSM to not get the point.....
progressives are abandoing Obama in droves as he increasingly is seen as the rightwinger he really is....
wow - are democrats actually waking up?
I'm afraid that Gary Younge is an English reporter--a good one, too--who happens to be of West Indian descent and who, in his reporting of "foreign parts," has a tendency to home in on "the racial factor." I don't know if this is his brief from The Guardian or his own choice. Of course, there's no doubt that there's a huge element of racism from the usual quarters in the rejection of Obama, but it's sad that in articles like this Younge's bias suggests that the precipitously declining popularity of Obama at this point in his presidency boils down to racism. I've no doubt that that factor exists, but to suggest that the sizable majority Obama won in the election has turned into negative numbers because of racism--in West Virginia or anywhere else--is stunningly wrong. Obama is simply a truly wretched excuse for a president, especially when, after 2 terms of Dubya, the country really needed wrenching over to the left just to get back to the middle.
Instead Obama became the third term of Dubya.
odoco
Obama and the Democratic Party Elite have created distrust among not only their more Leftist elements, but also a growing segment of the rank and file party membership. They continue to underestimate and downplay this situation, as they continue to believe that none will actually leave the Party once election day rolls around. WRONG.
"Donna - 9:52 am" speaks eloquently of why the Democratic base - those that actually worked the streets and phones for Obama - will not come back. They now perceive the Party's leader as, at best, a practical politician, and at worst, simply a liar and a continuation of the power / shadow elite who now control this country's government. This could sound the end of the newly configured Democratic majority in Congress, but it could also give rise to an actual demcratic movement among a growing number of Americans who now collectively understand that this country is one of the most corrupt on the face of the earth. Who profits - who pays? That is the question Obama cannot answer with truth - but one he continually attempts to avoid with rhetoric.
Someone once said,"Patience is a virtue". Americans may simply be lacking in virtue. We shall see. There is a New America emerging and I don't know how comfortable life in America is going to be.
I know a lot of things that no longer will do and we are getting the change promised. The last has become the first and the backfill has already begun. Change in America is a rising tide. It's going to be a wild ride.
My congratulations to Mr. Obama for his attempt to moderate the process. Glad we have him at the helm right now. My Dad used to say "The whipping you need you couldn't stand". That is true for America. I made it through. America will too. But first lets get this Government on the path to a true Democracy, where its word can become consistent with its deed. This is the starting point, bye bye current legislators, hello Citizens.
"Obama and the Democratic Party Elite" still think it's 1993 and we haven't caught on yet.
Odoco, they probably won't vote Republican, they just won't bother to vote. The Republicans will win in many races by default.
Once Ted Kennedy's seat flips to the Rethug pary, watch the right-wing MSM pundits talk of how the losses were a result of the party going "too far left" Then watch as the feckless Pres. Oreo and his band of spineless Dems take this adivce to heart and further abandon and betray the very people who worked for his election. Watch the pathetic and unseemly spectacle of Oreo's further kowtowing to the political ideoogues who will never, ever, ever give him their support or their vote..
Wait and see? They have already been there and done that! That's what happens when you keep putting corporate prostitutes in office!
He reneged.
"We do not use the word Negro or reneg in public speech." Harry Reid (D-NV)
boysgramps:
I disagree. He didn't renege at all. Many of us on the left never saw in Obama what his groupies saw. He gave wonderfully mellifluous speeches (did he take "all-purpose speechmaking" in college?) but they were totally without content; they certainly never suggested any kind of reform, still less left-wing reform which is the only direction from which we can rescue this country from 3 decades of right-wing destruction.
In short, the country got what it was left to vote for--aka "anything but McCain-Palin."
Maybe we should have let McCain-Palin win. Maybe THEN Americans would wake up.
Nah . . . I doubt anything, at this point, would wake Americans up.
When I look back at how energized the Romans, the Greeks, the English in their heydays of democracy and, yes, the Americans used to be about elections, I despair.
"Maybe we should have let McCain-Palin win. Maybe THEN Americans would wake up."
No, we would have been wishing they'd elected St. Barry.
So many people around here used to think the Democrats were lesser evil than Republicans.
Now, since Mr. Obama stepped in, many people around here think that Democrats are as evil as Republicans. Or, at least they sound that way.
You know what show I'd pay to see? I'd like to watch white people cleaning the White House. Cleaning Mr. Obama's house. I'd pay to watch that. I don't see anything like that on Fox channels, though, not down here in southernest California.
In case it matters, I am for all intensive purposes* white.
*or is it all intents and purposes? porpoises?
I think that Progressives should do all they can to make a success out of Mr. Obama's Presidency.
Baloney, locust!!
The Democrats, with RARE exceptions, have gone lockstep along with the GOP on pretty much everything, including and especially our wars, the FISA Bill, NAFTA and CAFTA, the Patriot Act, not to mention most everything else. I think that the Progressives got totally fooled by Obama's rhetorical speeches full of "hope, change, unity"--yada yada yada, and by his hype-ridden, BS "Change you can believe in" campaign, because they didn't see all the way through. Americans are too drawn to charisma to realize that all that glitters isn't gold. I didn't vote for Obama, because I knew he was a slithering snake long before he even got elected to office.
You're right. That's who the Dems are. Center right is where they are comfortable. It's where they want to be. Let them go there. We don't have to follow. We can form our own party and assuming we don't get corrupted by the same forces that ruined them, (probably a big if) we can make the center right corporate Democrats into the dying minority.
The Pacific Green Party held a nominating convention in Portland, Oregon on Saturday. Candidates are lining up to run, yet the party is looking for many more. There are a lot of Democrats to replace! If you have good suggestions for candidates, don't keep it to yourself. Contact your local Green Party.
The Greens have ballot lines in most states so candidates can run (assuming they pass the Green test) without having to spend time gathering signatures. Nader ran as an independent and was sabotaged by Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. He had to then create the Peace Party, which took a lot of extra time and energy. It does pay to run on an existing party ticket.
Let's all get out there and work for this. I used to say, If not now, when? I've change that a bit. Now its: If not now, never!
Spread the word: The Green Party is recruiting!
Lede sentence of article:
"Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky towards the Town Branch church."
Prestonsburg is in eastern, not western, Kentucky.
-30-
That tells it all, Cuz.
I am now so cynical I think my face will cave in and become a black hole.
You're not a cynic. You're pessimistic. Obama, George Wanker Bush, Cheesedick Cheney . . . they're the cynics. To people like that, we're just bugs awaiting extermination.
It was implied in this article that Teabaggery is the only coherent voice to be heard in opposition in the political sphere. If this means that we have to believe that the pres. is not a US citizen, affordable and available health care is a Communist plot, that the Federal Government is "The Enemy" then maybe it is the time to emigrate to a rational nation in Europe where such ideas are not given credence.
From the article:
"Obama's administration has raised taxes on the rich, expanded public spending,..."
What taxes on the rich have been raised? I know of none, and I doubt that if they were it would cause the ire of the teabaggers.
What NET public spending has been expanded? Several economists have compared "Stimulus" spending with state and local government job losses and project cutbacks and the stimulus comes up way short.
Despite his sociological approach, I don't think Gary Younge really gets it.
-30-
Obama is the black face of corporate America. It is truly stunning to read these stories of people who think he is some kind of liberal, when all his policies are mirror images of Bush.
Facts, are, apparently, irrelevant to these people. No actual reading of issues and ideas is relevant to them.
The belief persistent is truly amazing.
People believe what they want to, even when reality says the opposite, and especially when the news they get contains deliberate ommissions and commissions.
- all his policies are mirror images of Bush. -
This is a generalization and thus untrue, however handy a term.
all his policies? even when he says "that an open-ended commitment by Washington on Iraq was a "strategic mistake"".
That's the spitting image of the moron's* idea of world justice?
C'mon, people. CommonDreams has enough problems without such unsubstantiated vitriol.
* George W. Bush for anybody in a coma the last 8 years.
uhhh...
...you do realize we are still in Iraq don't you?
You also realize that the withdrawal that Obama is supposedly doing is the one that Bush negotiated with Iraq? You also realize, don't you, that we will continue with the largest "embassy" in the world in Baghdad, hordes of "non combat" troops, and the right to intervene any time we want?
Sounds like what Bush was doing to me.
Good article on the utterly fantasy-based views of so many USAn's - and not just in eastern Kentucky.
Where does one even start with such views. So, they think that government regulations, which don't even exist yet, against an industry which is the obvious cause of their poverty, will cause poverty. (Coal extraction correlates perfectly with poverty in E. Kentucky counties).
It seems remarkable that people would admit to such racist views to Mr. Younge, a black Brit.
But, his observations of the utterly fantastical views of the US right notwithstanding, Mr. Younge seems to be completely unaware of the much more critical collapse of support of Obama from the US left. I suspect that he spends most of his time among the affluent-urban-liberal set.
Yesterday, I too my first long walk about Pittsburgh's rich and liberal and Jewish neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in about a year, and I was stunned at all the cars still sporting their Obama-brand bumper stickers. The ones in Hebrew are my favorite. But, unlike the Bush days, there is no longer any anti-war bumper sticker or yard sign to be seen.
"I was stunned at all the cars still sporting their Obama-brand bumper stickers."
Yea, I see the same thing in the nice part of Santa Monica.
The Democrats and the Republicans are two branches of the same corrupt tree and that tree is: The Military,Industrial, Media,Congressional Complex. An apt analogy would be James Carville and his wife Madeline. They are a Democrat and Republican who go on the whore media and debate and argue two sides of an irrelevant issue, but are married to each other and sleep together at night! When will people realize that with very few exceptions, the Dem o rats and the Repugs have been in bed together for a long, long time. Vote third party.
"apt analogy": a "telling example" would be more apt.
synonyms for analogy: Comparison, likeness, resemblance, similitude. I still will stick with analogy as being more apt to my post, but thanks anyway.
One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?
Living through the last year is like being told you've been diagnosed with a dread disease guaranteed eventually to end your life. If you've been paying the least bit attention, no one needs an essay to explain Obama and the Democrats. The lies and betrayal just keep coming down like a rain storm that will not end.
Shit storm may be a bit closer...
Much like the rabid Zionists policies lead to increases in Anti-semitism (and yes I understand the word misued and abused by those same Zionists) , Obama as "Black President" will retrench racist views amongst many Americans.
While the underlying problems facing Americans are to do with corporatism and Militarism, too many will choose to turn in into a "Black and White Issue".
It might well be that the single worst thing that happened for Black Americans in the USA for the past 30 years was the election of Barack Obama as President.
People have to remember that it nor important whether he White or Black. What is important is that he is a Corporatist.
The Corporations and the Media will do all in their power to make this a "Black and White" issue.
Younge wites, “Obama's administration has raised taxes on the rich, expanded public spending, pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq and argued - if only halfheartedly - for universal healthcare."
Really? Mostly mistaken, except about expanded public spending---for banksters and MIC mercenaries. Stimulus and domestic infrastructure investment is only a tiny fraction, hence such stubborn unemployment, nationwide, not just in Appalachia.
“Conservatives have good reasons to be against him that have nothing to do with race.”
Even so, Younge makes Obama’s tailspin about racism anyway, which is self-evident nonsense. “The movement that has emerged to oppose him is almost exclusively white.” Emerged? Review two years of armed McCain-Palin rallies. Sure racism exists, but rednecks in the hollers of coal country have nothing to do with Obama's nosedive, nor do Palin’s ‘real American’ tea-baggers. They never supported him.
Rather, Obama’s declining approval has everything to do with broken promises and hope betrayed. He faked left and bolted right---oversold transformative change and hope like a charismatic snake-oil salesman, and when America needed it most, he turned out to be a great deceiver. His fall from grace is coming from those who had supported him and were euphoric about the promise of a renewed, post-racial America. With his maddening insistence on faux bipartisanship, he sold out to Wall Street and the MIC---so completely that many of us now believe it was his cynical intent all along.
“Obama's such a tough sell here is because of the effect of his cap and trade policy on the coal industry.” What? Legislation is not even close---and IF, IF it comes, it will be fat, self-serving lobbyist sausage designed to ream the people (BOHICA) just as the profit-insurance and drug-lord-protection bill has been presented as “healthcare reform”.
A colossal understatement: “Many on America's left are also disgruntled with Obama. They believe the healthcare reform, without a public option, will be inadequate, that the war in Afghanistan will unravel, the stimulus bill was insufficient to kick-start the economy and that his economic team is being run by Wall Street.”
Ya think? That should be the theme of Younge’s article, not an afterthought to 14 ignorant 9-12ers in a country bar. Obama’s wounds are not from crackers in Appalachia; they are self-inflicted.
Well said. Obama has been consistent. Regardless of his Orwellian rhetoric not just about promises but about ficticious accomplishments, this administration is as bad or worse than the Cheney-Bush dictatorship.
You are a very ignorant person.
"So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?"
The oligarchy planned it that way.
I agree. They ran out of lipstick for the pig's face (the republican end) so they decided to make the pig's democrat ass really shitty.
I don't think it worked.
Thanks for reminding me why I don't live in Kentucky. They didn't need Faux News to remind them of their own deep-seated racism. It's just the propaganda that offers a sheen of plausible deniability to their racism.
"unlike the right[,the left] have so far failed to turn their disillusionment into a potent political force." You mean, like the one that put Obama and overwhelming Dem majorities into both houses? The problem for Beck, the 9/12'ers, and the Tea Partiers is that wealth inequity can never be identified by the individualist right as having any relationship to our deteriorating society and communities. Yet, with the wealthiest 1% of America now (thanks to Reagan) owning 50% of America (and 70% of America's financial resources: hence the critical need to bailout WallStreet and its bondholders), it's increasinly obvious to anyone with eyes what the problem is, and its the problem the Tea Partiers won't let themselves consider.
I saw a bumper sticker, which said: "This is America, we don't redistribute wealth. We Earn It!"
And so, that's the face of America's enemy. Paris Hilton earned it, cuz she's rich. You didn't earn it, cuz you're poor. Simple. And, by enemy I don't mean Paris Hilton. I mean the people who sign up for such romantic nonsense.