People really thought voting for and electing Obama meant Change. ("The more fools they," he said cynically.) There is no doubt Obama is better than Bush and was better than McCain. There is no doubt, in my mind, Obama has shown himself a Tweak Around the Edges Centerist who is unable to accomplish or ignorant of what needs to be done to get the US out of the mess.
The key to change is the 2010 Senate races. Unfortunately I don't see any substantial change in the way Democratic candidates are selected, thus, the way their campaigns are run. IF the Dems run the same campaigns they've been running for the last 20 years November could get real ugly.
The only hope I see is the GOP is in even worse shape. Palin seems to have been an attempt by the GOP Leadership to rein-in the Looney Right and, by and large, it has seemed to fail. Huckabee seems to have faded, tho' it's too soon to count him out. The person who seems to be doing the best out of the mess, and even creating a Left-Right alliance, is: Ron Paul.
And THAT I don't understand.
On the left, he is (or claims to be) against torture, corporate welfare and colonial wars. Sadly, this puts him well ahead of some congresscritters with D after their names.
On the right, he is in favour of killing social security and medicare stone dead, wants to downsize taxes and appeals to the small-minded small-government fanatics.
But one should be careful not to overestimate his base. They are very vocal, and they - like the the disenfranchised left (such as it is and what there is of it) - are pretty savvy at using grassroot media to their advantage. Furthermore, like the Austrians, Creationists and Teabaggers, they have a cadre of fanatics who are very good at making noise and polluting open fora. That cadre also has the rhetorical advantage of having a rather platonic relationship with empirical reality, which makes it easier for them to produce propaganda than it would be for people in the sanity-based community.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
That cadre also has the rhetorical advantage of having a rather platonic relationship with empirical reality...
LOL
