I started this as a reply to a comment on Booman’s recent article How to Lose a Voter for Life. It grew.
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Here is Jordan Orlando’s comment:
Marie, I’ve come to admire your contribution to this discussion area over the months (as I think I’ve said before). As with Greenwald, and others, I like commentators who refuse to let emotional whims or ideological loyalty get in the way of their observations and judgment. (Meaning, you can see what’s bad and you’re not going to stop seeing it even if it’s inconvenient or depressing, unlike many others.)
That said, don’t you think we’re seeing something remarkable this cycle? Yes, they control the legislature, but hasn’t it been (since the days of Goldwater or Nixon — I know you have a good historical perspective) an essentially fraudulent game they’ve played with their constituents? And aren’t they, finally, paying the piper right now?
For me, the salient point of Jordan’s comment is as follows:
…but hasn’t it been…an essentially fraudulent game [the Republicans have played] with their constituents? And aren’t they, finally, paying the piper right now?
Read on for more.
We do not really know who will be paying the piper in November, Jordan. The results are not even close to being in. Both parties have been playing the same kinds of fraudulent games for 50 years or more. Right now, the middle ground between the two parties has become more permeable than ever before in living memory. For every long-time Republican who has become disgusted…for whatever reasons…with the Republican Party as it now stands, how many more long-time Dem voters (and perhaps more importantly, habitual non-voters) are flocking to the Trumpist ranks?
It’s all well and good that some small business-running Muslim in a Mercedes changes parties because of Trump’s racist act, but is his vote worth any more than the vote of a hard-drinking, clapped-out Chevy-driving sanitation guy from Queens or a nearly brain-dead, reality show watching Minneapolis housewife? How about people who are going to vote for the very first time because they finally have someone like Trump who speaks for them? Let alone the heretofore fairly solid white working class Dem voters who are jumping the Dem ship because of Trump’s (quite accurate) rhetoric regarding the plain fact that both parties have over the previous 30 years or so sold the U.S. economy down the river to third world countries in the name of corporate profit?
Yeah, isn’t it great that Booman chooses one subject of that looooong Washingtoon Post article to illustrate his so-called “progressive” point. But…damn, man…did you read the article? Even in a so-called “liberal” newspaper, the article basically says “We don’t have a clue about what’s going to happen in November!!!”
It sums itself up early on:
The Great Unsettling
So much anger out there in America.
Anger at Wall Street. Anger at Muslims. Anger at trade deals. Anger at Washington. Anger at police shootings of young black men. Anger at President Obama. Anger at Republican obstructionists. Anger about political correctness. Anger about the role of big money in campaigns. Anger about the poisoned water of Flint, Mich. Anger about deportations. Anger about undocumented immigrants. Anger about a career that didn’t go as expected. Anger about a lost way of life. Mob anger at groups of protesters in their midst. Specific anger and undefined anger and even anger about anger.
—snip—
For every disgruntled person out there who felt undone by the system and threatened by the way the country was changing, caught in the bind of stagnant wages or longing for an America of the past, we found someone who had endured decades of discrimination and hardship and yet still felt optimistic about the future and had no desire to go back. In this season of discontent, there were still as many expressions of hope as of fear. On a larger level, there were as many communities enjoying a sense of revival as there were fighting against deterioration and despair.
It’s a tie ballgame, brother…top of the third inning.
The umpires are crooked; both sides are using steroids and the stadium is packed with fans of both teams, plus a good half of the audience is undecided as to which team is worse than the other.
As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said:
It ain’t over till it’s over.
It ain’t even half over, Jordan. Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched. Especially when someone from a partisan side tells you to do so.
You may get a nasty surprise.
As the punchline from the wonderful old “Foobird” joke suggests:
If the foo shits, wear it.
Them foobirds comin’ home to roost.
As we speak.
At the very least…wear a hat!!!
Bet on it.
Later…
AG