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December 14, 2012
The Great American Choice
By Gregory Paul
The probably permanent American Majority made a lot of progessive choices in 2012.
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It is true that the presidential race was not as ideologically stark as it could have been. Especially because Romney went Etch-A-Sketch towards the end, while Obama has not been nearly the lefty progressive that many progressives want him to be. But this election did settle a lot of things for the long term. If the economy had been roaring along then the victory of the 2012 incumbent would not mean much because incumbents do well under those circumstances. But with the economy what it is, and with the vast financial resources that he could tap into, Romney should have walked away with the election. That he and his party lost is of exceptional historical and political importance because it means that the Republican socially conservative and economically libertarian line is not selling. All the more so with the eye popping victories for gays and the pro-pot crowd. It's a disaster for the nearly all white GOP because the rapid expansion of minorities towards majority status means that the Democratic Party is the permanent majority party (click here). The same year The Man from U.N.C.L.E and The Addams Family premiered, Lyndon Johnson wryly observed that he had turned over the south to the GOP by signing the Civil Rights Act. He was right, but he has gotten revenge. The southern strategy backfired by locking the Republican Party into being a southern white political club that is unable to gain majority status in the nation at large.
That the electorate handed the Dems a definitive victory under the current circumstances means that the Repubs have gone so far to the right that the American majority prefers what the more centrist-progressive Democrats are selling. Not just for 2012, but for coming decades. So let's go down the list.
Yes -- Pragmatism.
No -- Ideology.
No -- Hyperindividualism.
No -- The Tea Party.
No -- Full blown plutocracy.
No -- Glorification of the 1% as virtuous "job creators" who should be given ever more boons.
No -- Give the top few percent more tax breaks.
Yes -- Tax the wealthy.
No -- Vampire capitalism.
No -- Libertarian, trickle down Reaganonomics.
No -- Minimalist government.
Yes -- More collectivist government.
Yes -- More public/private sector collaboration.
Yes -- The New Deal.
Yes -- Progressive economics based on promoting the middle class via a hybrid capitalist/socialist economy more like the EuroCanadian model.
Yes -- Obamacare.
No -- More free market health care.
Yes -- Medicare in its current form.
Yes -- Social Security in its current form.
Yes -- Placing serious regulations on the financial and related industries.
No -- Letting the financiers and bankers do pretty much what they please.
Yes -- Enforcing serious safety regulations for consumers and workers.
Yes -- Solid regulations to protect the environment, including lower carbon energy alternatives.
No -- Drill baby drill.
Yes -- More government support for education.
Yes -- Commonsense immigration reform.
No -- Self deportation.
Yes -- Deregulate recreational drugs to some extent.
Yes -- Keeping abortion largely legal.
No -- Overturning Roe versus Wade.
Yes -- Keeping contraceptives widely available.
No -- Allowing religious health care organizations restrict availability of contraceptives.
Yes -- More women running the nation.
No -- The war on women.
Yes -- Gay rights including marriage in liberal states.
No -- Racism.
No -- Angry white males.
No -- The religious right.
Yes -- More secularism.
Yes -- More science based thinking.
No -- The conservative bubble that is their grand denial of reality including the following -- lamestream polls over predict Democratic victories, the American majority is actually conservative, human caused global warming and ocean acidification are fake or not important, women who are really raped don't get pregnant, abortions are not necessary to save the life of the mother, early term abortions are dangerous, evolution, cutting taxes increases revenues, the laissez-faire capitalist American Way produces the most successful overall societies, progressive democratic societies are not the true opportunity socities, Obama is an anti-western socialist from Kenya".
Yes -- Less defense spending.
Yes -- Less overseas involvement, wars especially.
Yes -- Standing up to the right.
Yes -- Compromise policy making.
No -- Hardline obstructionist politics.
No -- Voter suppression.
No -- Releasing minimal tax records when running for President.
No -- Trying to egregiously lie through one's teeth to the White House.
No -- Trying to egregiously flip-flop one's way into the White House.
No -- Trying to egregiously buy one's way into the White House.
No -- A conservative president who wears magic underwear.
No -- Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Paul Ryan, Rush Limbaugh, David Koch, Sarah Palin, Todd Aiken, Richard Mourdock, Eric Cantor, Newt Gingerich, Sheldon Adelson, Pat Robertson, Jim DeMint, Rick Santorum, Ann Coulter, Michelle Bachmann, Allen West, Rick Perry, Sean Hannity, Dennis Miller, James Dobson, Phyllis Schaffly, Ted Nugent, Billy Graham (appeared in full page proRepublican ads), Ralph Reed, Linda Chavez, Richard Viquerie
Ron Paul, Ayn Rand"
Yes -- Elizabeth Warren, Mazie Hirono, Heidi Heitkamp, Tammy Baldwin, Clair McCaskill.
Yes -- Paul Krugman.
Yes -- Nate Silver.
Yes -- Big Bird.
No -- The self-destructive inanity that is FoxNews.
It is not like we have entered progressive nirvana. Nearly half the voters opted for Romney. The new health care regime is Republican in conception and will need major reworking over time. Wall Streeters are high in the Obama administration that has disturbing practices when it comes to individual rights related to the war on terror. The situation for unions continues to be grim (as emphasized by the perfidious events in Michigan), GOP redistricting is allowing them to win state legislature and Congressional majorities with minority votes, and an apparent mechanism for reforming campaign financing is lacking (although one has to admit that a whole lot of right wing PAC money went straight down a hole for minimal return on investment). Conditions for blacks and other minorities remain unacceptable. Gun laws are absurdly proheater (although households containing guns continues to decline). Americans remain unable -- unlike some progressive 1st world nations -- to achieve the fiscal discipline needed to tame the debt. Carbon dioxide is building up fast. Murdoch will keep running FoxNews as long as it is one of his cash cows and he has control of the entity. Nor is the reactionary right and their Republican Party going to collapse over night, and Occupy was a too brief and too internally flawed flare up (although it did have significant political and cultural impact that helped reelect Obama).
But no two ways about it. We are getting there. The United States of America is becoming increasingly like the rest of the 1st world as it drops some of the conservative-libertarian inanity that have made it the socioeconomically least successful prosperous democracy, in favor of the progressive polices that have proven to work in the rest of the west (http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf).
It's kind of fun watching the right run about in panic as they realize they have lost the cultural and political wars and are doomed to increasing irrelevance. Their dream of "taking back" the country has gone up in vapor. It's their fault for living in their bubble of unreality.