A lot of Republican pundits are upset that there were no questions last night about abortion or gays or prayer in school or the war on Christmas. But, think about it. As George Packer asks:
When will the class war ever finally drown out the culture war, if not in 2008? Under Republican rule in Washington, wages have stayed flat while income inequality has increased; the numbers of uninsured have soared; unemployment recently passed six per cent, its highest level since the early nineteen-nineties; gas and heating-oil prices have doubled, while basic food prices have gone up by fifty per cent; and the country’s financial system has come closer to collapse than at any moment since 1929. More profoundly, Republican dogma no longer offers convincing solutions, and in some cases it doesn’t even acknowledge the problems.
In fact, the Republicans are the problem. And that is the central reality in this campaign. The GOP desperately wants to shift the conversation onto the Culture Wars…going so far as to revive the phenomenon of the Weather Underground, an organization that ceased to exist over thirty years ago, and that was radicalized in opposition to the Vietnam War. But, the people, left to their own devices, ask questions about health care and the environment and jobs and inflation. And the mighty right-wing wurlitzer now has too much competition to drown out and distort the concerns of the people.
The Democrats job when this election is over, will be to make the working class believe in them again. Do that, and we’ll have an enduring majority.
These were all wedge issues of the last 8-24 years to rally the base and shift the indepentents/moderates.
Like Pavlov’s dogs they are waiting for the bell to ring, but other real, financial, strategic, diplomatic issues have finally overwhelmed us because we focused on petty wedge issues to the point of being truly fucked.
And the electorate now knows it.
“The Democrats job when this election is over, will be to make the working class believe in them again. Do that, and we’ll have an enduring majority.”
ABSOLUTELY!
But with the Congressional leadership we have? I doubt they will do much for the working class.
I will hope, I will believe for awhile. But I have had my ‘spouse’ hit me too many times to be anything but a cynic.
nalbar
Harry Reid needs to be replaced with a Majority Leader who will make the Republicans filibuster Jimmy Stewart style at the very least. Or would threaten the “nuclear option” as the Republicans did. Or would play hard ball as Lyndon Johnson did and threaten a total pork wipeout and base closures for states with obstructionist Senators. How do you think Johnson got 99 votes for the 1965 Civil Rights Act in a Senate full of segregationists? They all suddenly felt guilty? Or they felt Johnson’s hand where it hurt?
As for Nancy Pelosi, the way she scurries to do Bush’s bidding makes her as great an embarrassment to Italian-Americans as Scalia.
Excellent post VITW. I agree completely. I think it is probably more important to replace Reid. I consider him a Republican.
nalbar
God darn it, BooMan, you sound more and more like me ranting about those nefarious Republicans and their impeccable devotion to the ultra rich. Yes, hats off to the working man and working woman and let’s get on with a New Deal for the common folk.
Maybe those 80 undecided voters didn’t want to waste their questioning on abortion and gay marriage when keeping the home warm in the next 20 winters seems more important these days. I must say, the tone of this final stretch of the election season (all 15+ months of it) has not allowed the candidates to get all cuddly and sugar-coated, all red-white-&-blue over petty issues. The polling by campaigns must be showing deep concern for long- and short-term economic viability of households, and the picayune “values” issues drop aside as a luxury. The people now feel the vise of the CheneyCo. years, and they are beginning to know they’ve been had.