The Democrats are climbing out of hibernation now and mounting a valiant Custer’s Last Stand to fend-off the hostile charge of whooping Republican Indian cavalry. Three harbingers come to mind in a newly realized resurgence for the sleepy Democrats.
First is Obama’s visit to the University of Wisconsin last week, where 26,000 of the apathetic youth-vote were seen with their blessed little ballot-batteries recharged. Second is an enthusiastic gathering yesterday of the One Nation Working Together rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Third is the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that shows that the Republican advantage in recapturing congress has narrowed from 9 points to just 3.
This can be explained by a renewed enthusiasm for the Blue Party by African-Americans and Hispanics. Meg Whitman’s housekeeper imbroglio this week probably is angering Hispanics, perhaps as much as the shouting Teabaggers who label any poor soul with a four-year degree as an Elitist.
Go and figure. An article I read in The New York Times last night (In Fluid Race, House Majority Is Uncertain, G.O.P.Says) even questions whether the Republicans will be able to take back the House. And as for the Senate, that’s definitely out!
But what strategies can Democrats use to postpone a pummeling by arrow-shooting Rep-Indians circling a broken wagon? One thing that would help, is if Democrats would stop trying to duck out from an association with President Obama.
Obama’s approval rating is actually fairly high, at 48 percent. Bill Clinton’s was at 36 percent in 1994, which was low enough to warrant the Republican revolution of Newt Gingrich. Yet, Obama is capable of re-energizing his base, which means the youth vote to a large extent, in the final month before the moment of truth, when we enter a curtained-voter booth.
One thing that Democrats should do is to stop shying away from the achievements of the 111th Congress. Michael Kazin, an actual history professor at Georgetown University, has written an excellent piece (111th Congress: History will be kind) for Politico, which extols the legislative record of this recent Congress.
By contrast, the Tea Partiers never take a close look at what happened in our early historical developments, but instead project-out fantasies of a warped folklore that says our forefather patriots would relish the chance to jettison Medicare, Social Security and even The Veterans Administration (such as Sharron Angle has advocated).
Drastic measures used to stimulate the economy were clearly necessary in order to avert another Great Depression. When Obama took office, the economy was in freefall, and we could have seen automaker institutions such as Ford Motors and GM fail and morph to misty ghosts of our fiscal past.
Democrats should stand up to Teabaggers on the practical virtues of the health reform bill. A fundamental idea of our democracy lies behind its passage: it is a basic right (not a privilege) of every American to have good medical care.
Michael Kazin points out an interesting analogy between the Social Security Act, passed in 1935, and the newly passed health care reform bill. It’s a work in progress that can be improved on, such as possibly adding the Public Option at a later date. Social Security experienced a great deal of evolution itself.
Kazin points out that Social Security did not cover many Americans until the 1950s, and minorities didn’t experience these benefits until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So some evolution will have to come about first before the health care bill takes on a proper shape. Oh yea, I nearly forgot, Rand Paul wants to kill the Civil Rights Act, and require our senior citizens to pay a $2,000 deductible on their guaranteed Medicare benefits!
So Democrats need to sound-off with pride for these recent congressional enactments. I was pleased with the neoteric small-business bill, which will help to unleash all the cash sitting on the sideline by way of loans to small businesses. These small companies will then be capable of hiring a fraction of the plethora of unemployed workers, who need so desperately to rejoin the ranks of ‘lost American opportunity.’
Nearly a half a century ago, other historic lawmaking revolutions, such as the health care reform, were vehemently criticized. Just look back to LBJ’s Great Society programs; by 1966, there were riots in the streets of our major cities and Vietnam was identified as a hopeless cause, a quagmire of a fiasco. The Great Society was completely abandoned!
(As a historical paradigm) the Right will come back to life after the Left has its heyday in the sun. For historians who realize consistent recurring patterns, majestic fluctuations in the bio-rhythms of nation-states, this is known as the Thermo-Dorian Reaction.
In schematics of Hegelian-Dialectics, every time the electorate moves to the Left, it will move equally over to the Right, after it scoots down the timeline. An example of the radical changes in a Post-French Revolution political climate is often cited. Napoleon reasserted a totalitarian regime (in sheep’s cloth), that marginalized, if not nullified, gains of the Revolution.
So yes, the Republicans will pick-up some seats in congress on November 2nd, but the triumph may be muted, if Democrats spring back to life and mobilize their base just one month out (right in the nick of time). The example of California is often referenced, where Barbara Boxer is pulling away from Carly Fiorina in the polls for the senate race.
The only thing that Carly Fiorina ever did when she was CEO of HP, was export American jobs and Meg Whitman is spending her way to defeat, with the irony of the wealthy, whose house was so big, she didn’t even know her own housekeeper, who had worked for her illegally for 9 full years!
The most important strategy that the Democrats should use in these final days (I probably shouldn’t tip my mitt, but it smacks of Occam’s razor, and I just can’t resist), is contained in the old adage, DIVIDE AND CONQUER. The Tea Party and moderate Republicans are not really in full agreement, nor do their philosophies really gel.
And Democrats should make a point to pound away at the extremist views of these Teabaggers, who distort our ancient heritage, threaten entitlements for the elderly, and espouse racist views towards Muslim Americans.
The matted-eyes of slumberous Democrats are beginning to clear up (with an antidote of Teabagger-vitriol-Visine-medicine). Grass Roots, action-packed Spartan political-machinery revs up its engine at the local level, such as occurred in 2008.
College students need to dust off those musty registration cards (filed in notebooks they never study). Hispanics, African-Americans, gays, the elderly, the poor, the unemployed, a dwindling middle class, or actually ANYBODY left behind-NEED TO WAKE UP! Glen Beck lies, says the left will violently foment revolution.
It’s hard to believe that nut-jobs like Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and Rand Paul are candidates running for the U.S. Senate. Privatize Social Security? Get rid of Medicare? More tax cuts for Billionaires, like Meg Whitman? Incarcerate Muslim Americans?
Burn our American History books (like Nazi GoonSquads) and replace them with mind-numbing propaganda (ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS)? And Charles Darwin as a Creationist thinks that Planet of the Apes got it wrong? (I know that Charlton Heston got it wrong!) Get out of the sack, Democrats, before it’s too late!
