Gary Younge writes: At a dinner table in Akron, Ohio, recently half a dozen Democratic activists took a break from trashing Ralph Nader for allowing a Bush victory in 2000 to discuss the material benefits of Barack Obama’s first term. One had been able to keep his children on his healthcare plan after graduation; another with a pre-existing condition had been able to move plans without penalty. Then there was an awkward silence, broken by the mention of the jobs saved in Toledo, 140 miles away, by the auto bailout. That brought us on to Republican Mitt Romney’s call to “Let Detroit go bankrupt“. And soon, the conversation is flowing as easily as the beer as talk turns to how bad things might have been – and could yet be – with Republicans at the helm.
Such are the cramped parameters within which Democratic loyalists converse. Questions about poverty, bankers, inequality, climate change or drone attacks are not engaged with a defence of Obama’s record on the economy, regulation, the environment or foreign policy but avoided with a threat: Romney. Speculation about what Obama might have done differently are met with arguments about what Bush did do wrong. Inquire if Obama will get more done if elected, and they shrug and point to the obstructionist Republicans in Congress.
Dare to prod further as to why anyone should vote for him given the likelihood that Republicans will win in Congress and they’ll take you right back where you started: Romney. Any question about the good things that might have happened as a result of Obama’s victory in 2008 is short-circuited by a response about the bad things that might happen as a result of his defeat in 2012. Hope curdled to fear. Everyone can tell you how things get worse; no one can tell you how they get better. [Continue reading…]
Wow. Not much left to say after that, is there. As I’ve said before, the choice is between catastrophe and a bandaid. That the bandaid is the best America can do illustrates how far down the slippery slope it already is.
Hard to believe that Dems are still whining about Nader in 2000 — an election that should have been a slam dunk for Gore, who put his brain in neutral and parroted his gutless handlers.
There is only one solution — a coup.
Let’s face it all western democracies suffer from the same disease. We are fed a concept of democracy which is in fact usually a duopoly – a left party or a right party – with the left only being badged left because they are not as right as their opponents.
They all survive on corporate “donations” which are called, po faced, investments in democracy rather than the payments for future services they really are.
Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right this system is terribly imperfect but it’s all we have.
The infatuation with Obama and the Fear if Romney is even greater when you talk to the lefty Brits. But frankly they are clueless:
“. During the eight years prior to Obama’s presidency they ballooned the deficit, crashed the economy, increased the power of the state over the individual, and sent America’s standing plummeting throughout the world. They built that.”
And how exactly has Obama done anything differently?
The lesser of two evils mantra is so old.