OpEdNews - Diary: The candidates ignore the 2006 major shift in US politics at their peril

May 9, 2008 at 13:19:57 Permalink
The candidates ignore the 2006 major shift in US politics at their peril

Diary Entry by Ed Martin (about the author)

The candidates are ignoring the most important political issue of the last 14 years. The 2006 election of a Democratic controlled congress in preference to Republican control was a clear message to the politicians that the major issue now is not about the candidates, its about getting the Republicans out of government.

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The candidates, Clinton, Obama and McCain, are ignoring the most important political issue of the last 14 years. The 2006 election of a Democratic controlled congress in preference to Republican control was a clear message to the politicians that the major issue now is not about the candidates, its about getting the Republicans out of government.

In 1912, Alfred Wegener proposed the theory that the continents were drifting, a process known as plate tectonics. He was ridiculed and his theories were dismissed as geological heresy by the leading geologists of the day. It wasn't until the late 1950s and early 1960s that evidence to confirm Wegener's theories was found, leaving the leading, condemning geologists denying the theory while the very ground under their feet was actually shifting.

A corresponding major shift of political plate tectonics occured in 2006, and has gone as little noticed by the candidates as Wegener's awareness of geological plate tectonics. In 2006, for the first time in 12 years, people who had been supporting the Republican control of congress found reason to reject that control and hand it to the Democrats. The elevation of the Democrats to control was not about the Democrats as much as it was the default way to get rid of the Republicans.

The reason all these people who had been voting for Republicans shifted their support to the Democrats after 12 years was the bright, shining light thrown on Republicanism by one man. That one man brought the Republican lack of values, the hypocrisy, the cronyism, the corruption, the elevation of incompetence, the regressive, repressive agenda for the country, the arrogance and the pride in ignorance, unashamedly out into the open as public policy. That one man was George Bush the cultish Republican figure, who, being perfectly representative of the above negative qualities, was the best thing, ever, to happen, to the great delight of the Republicans.

It took the nation until 2006 to realize what had happened to them at the hands of the Republicans. It took that long because its hard to understand that people who look pretty much like we do can be so ideologically self-serving and have your worst interests as their primary goal. But, the people figured it out and said, We've had enough. No more Republicans, we're putting the Democrats in charge.

The three candidates have ignored this glaringly obvious message. The worst of them, McCain, is still preaching the Bush approved, Republican ideological message, and seems completely unaware that that message was rejected with repugnance, repudiated, dismissed as totally unacceptable by the voting public in 2006.

Clinton and Obama, likewise, are not paying attention to what we told them in 2006. They're not focused on, not addressing the main concern of the people, who expressed their will by routing the Republicans in 2006.

They're running against themselves and each other instead of against the Republicans.

They keep saying how great they are at this and how good they are at that, and how the other one hardly knows how to tie their shoes. They don't understand that we're not interested in any of that. As we showed them in 2006, we're ony interested in not having another Republican in the office of president. If they would just run on that one issue, either one of them could be easily elected.

If either one of them would say, I'm not a Republican and my opponent is not a Republican, so, if you elect my opponent or me, we'll all come out with what we want, we'll all come out ahead.

The first one to acknowledge that that is what the people of the United States want, as shown in the major shift from Republican to Democrat in 2006, that candidate would be elected president.

As I pointed out in a previous article, a two year campaign gives the candidates sufficient time to show us just how unqualified and unsuited they are to be president. And, that is exactly what has happened. The frightening thing is that with Obama and Clinton being so obsessed with themselves and ignoring what the voters really want, the voters can get so disgusted with their wishes being ignored, that McCain might start looking pretty good, in spite of the fact that he's a Republican.

Anybody but a Republican is not an iron-clad rule, guaranteeing the election of any Democrat, when the Democrats running show themselves to be so completely out of touch with the primary concerns of the voters that the voters figure that if they elect them, anyway, they'll be ignored and not listened to then, either.

Obama and Clinton ignore at their peril the fact that their self-obsession has caused the voters, who switched from the Republicans to the Democrats in 2006, to consider that they can just as easily switch back, and start looking more favorably at the other guy.

Ed Martin is an unindicted curmudgeon. He is not a Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, deist, atheist, or a member of any -ism.

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