That these influential "tea partiers" turn out to be familiar right-wing insiders -- "longtime political players," as the Post put it, who since the 1980s "have used their resources and know-how to help elect a number of candidates" -- shouldn't be much of a shock. Nor can it be so surprising that familiar right-wing political operatives are intent on creating a kind of political mayhem under the Tea Party label. Still, if that's not dispiriting, what is?
...And Where It Landed
As for the TV set that's been filling your living room with the sound and fury of an epochal election that may, in itself, signify relatively little, take a moment to consider the context for all the noise. We know how the money went up and we've all been watching it coming down. Isn't it curious, though, how little attention all the commentators, pundits, and talking heads on that screen pay to where so much of that money is actually landing? I mean, of course, in the hands of their bosses. Vast amounts of it have come down on the media itself, particularly television. I'm talking about all those screaming "attack ads," including the ones sponsored by those unnamed outside interest groups, that are probably driving you completely nuts by now, and that the talking heads just love to analyze, show bits of, and discuss endlessly?
For the companies behind the screen, in other words, those ads are manna from heaven. If, in another context, someone was selling you on the importance of a phenomenon and was at the same time directly benefiting from that phenomenon, it would be considered a self-evident conflict of interest. In this particular case, all those ad dollars are visibly to the benefit of the very media promoting the world-shaking importance of this election season. But remind me, when was the last time you saw anyone on television, or really just about anywhere, even suggest that this might represent a conflict of interest?
The media aren't just reporting on the next election season, they're also filling the space between your ears, and every other space they can imagine with boosterism for just the kinds of elections we now experience. They are, in a sense, modern-day carnies, offering endless election spiels to usher you inside the tent. However they themselves may individually think about it, they are working to boost the profitability of their companies just as surely as any of those right-wing funders are boosting their corporate (or personal) profits. They are, that is, not outsiders looking in, but a basic part of the hermetic, noisy, profitable system we think of as an election campaign.
Oh, and as for the election itself, none of us really had to wait for the results of midterm 2010, the Anger Extravaganza, to know that it won't be transformative, not even if the Republicans take both houses of Congress. This isn't rocket science. You already know what the Democrats were capable of (or, more exactly, not capable of) with 60 theoretical votes in the Senate and a humongous advantage in the House of Representatives. So you should have a perfectly realistic assessment of how much less of "the people's business" is likely to be done in a more closely divided Congress, or even in one in which the Republicans hold a seat or two advantage in the Senate -- and with Democrat Barack Obama as president.
After the election, whatever the results, you already know that Obama will move more toward "the center," even if for decades it has been drifting ever rightward without ever settling on a home; that he will try to "work with" the Republicans; that this will prove the usual joke, and that the election, however breathlessly reported as a Republican triumph or Democratic save or Tea Party miracle (or anything else), will essentially be a gum-it-up-more event.
Though none of the voluble prognosticators and interpreters you'll listen to or read are likely to say so, those right-wing fundraisers and outside interest groups pouring money into Tea Party candidates, angry maniacs, dopes, and whoever else is on the landscape undoubtedly could care less. Yes, a Congress that gave them everything they wanted on a proverbial silver platter would be a wonder, but gum-it-up works pretty darn well, too. For most Americans, a Washington in congressional gridlock in a moment of roiling national crisis may be nothing to write home about, but for those fundraisers and outside interest groups, it only guarantees more manna from heaven.
And the good news, as far as they are concerned, is that the state that matters, the national security, war-making one, hardly needs Congress at all, or rather knows that no Congress will ever vote "no" to moneys for such matters. Meanwhile, the media will begin cranking up for the even more expensive Election 2012. Long before this election season came to a close, my hometown paper was already sporting its first pieces with headlines like "Looking Ahead to the 2012 Race" and beginning to handicap the presidential run to come. ("Although [President Obama] will not say so, there is at least a plausible argument that he might be better off if [the Democrats] lose" [I]f Republicans capture Congress, Mr. Obama will finally have a foil heading toward his own re-election battle in 2012.") And don't think for a second that the New York Times wasn't in good company. On the weekend before November 2nd, the first Associated Press-Knowledge Network poll was already out asking Democrats if they wanted Obama challenged in the 2012 primaries.
Whether the country I once wanted to represent was ever there in the form I imagined is a question I'll leave to the historians. What I can say is that it's sure not there now. What remains, angry or depressed, has made for a toxic brew as well as the most dispiriting election of my life. For what it's worth, consider that my ballot box blues on this dreary Tuesday in November 2010.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books). You can catch him discussing war American-style and that book in a Timothy MacBain TomCast video by clicking here.
Copyright 2010 Tom Engelhardt
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