Watch What You Say

“If it had been Dubya you’d be climbing the walls, but since it’s Obama…”

/snark on

Yeah, because I never had an unkind word to say about congress or the SCOTUS when Bush the dimmer was POTUS.

/snark off

“That’s an interesting assertion.”

Here’s the way I see it; far too many states are RW extremist.

This affects the electoral college, which affects the POTUS elections, and ultimately the SCOTUS. There are states where the “D” doesn’t even have to campaign (CA, NY, MA), and states where the “R” doesn’t have to campaign (TX, the bible belt, most of the Midwest). So if you want “your guy” to win the national election (screw the primaries) “he” has to win over “the center” of a small number of states that lean more right than left; FL, OH, VA, maybe CO, NV, MO, probably a couple of others.

It also guarantees the GOP a sizable number of Senators and Congressmen. Maybe not a majority, but a near-majority, so at any time all the extreme RW needs is a handful of Senators and Congressmen from right-leaning but not yet solid “R” states. The reverse is nearly as true, but I’ve run the numbers (you saw them, so I won’t look for them now) and the Democrats need more Senators than there are “blue” states to hold a majority in the Senate. This leads to the illusion that “the Democrats are in the majority”, when in reality they have Senators like Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu…

Do you recall the largest “group” that got slaughtered in the mid-terms? It was the blue dog dems. The red states turned them out in droves, even if they’d moved to the right to try to hold their seats.

Please note that I’m not necessarily arguing that “the country is moving to the right”. I’m arguing that “stupid people can vote, too” and the GOP knows how to turn them out on election day. Organizing in churches to get out the phundie vote, which seems to be only concerned with those social issues you hold in disdain. Getting out the racist vote in the South. Falsely claiming “Obama’s gonna git yer guns!” to get out the gun nut vote. The list goes on, you know the drill.

That’s what I don’t know how to “fix”; too much power in the hands of the red states, an inordinate amount of power based on population, given the electoral college and the way we elect Senators, means we really don’t live in a democracy. And how to turn those red states purple, or even blue.

The only way I can think of to counter “the rage vote”, which goes to the GOP, is to give “liberals” a reason to go to the polls, too. If we had 100% voter turnout I’m betting the GOP would be out of power permanently. But how do you motivate a “liberal” to go to the polls when the minute you start listing things that good Democrats have done, or tried to do, the immediate response is “yeah, but it’s not enough, not my issue, not happening fast enough, and I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils”? Do you think the teabaggers are happy with rMoney? I don’t, but I think they’ll vote for the lesser of two evils, such is their rage that we elected the socialist from Kenya. They may not like Orrin Hatch, but they’ll put him back in office if he gets his party’s nomination. And so on.

How do you get otherwise intelligent people to show a little patience and remember that things in the US change slowly? Social Security is a perfect example;

“No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt’s original Social Security Act… If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start.”

Indeed when Social Security was first passed it left out African Americans and migrant workers. It was an imperfect piece of legislation but one that progressives built on to create the program we know today…

Maybe we’ve lost sight of the future.