The Cretinization of American Politics

I sometimes say that Americans get the government deserve since so many voters are oblivious to what is going on a either a local, state, or federal level.  During the "straight phase" of my life, this might be exemplified by the so-called soccer moms of Virginia Beach who worried about kids' sport, squabbles and back stabbing on the local PTA front and other overall insignificant things but who could not have an intelligent conversation on any aspect of politics.  If asked, the typical response would be "I don't follow politics" or "politics is boring."  Never mind that every aspect of your life and that of you children is being impacted.  Multiply this phenomenon a million times over and we soon discover why American government is largely pluralized and why so many misfits get elected to public office.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the abysmal state of politics with so many Americans who act as if they've had lobotomies.  Here are highlights:

At this late stage in the prostitution, cretinization, and putrefaction of the American political system, it’s hard to get worked up about anything, and that, doubtless, explains why most voters aren’t paying much attention to the midterm elections. Or, rather, they are trying to pay no attention. If you are unfortunate enough to live in one of the states or districts where there is a close contest, you can’t escape so easily. 

Some high-minded folks dismiss campaign ads like these as trivial and unimportant, but that’s an error. Most Americans don’t attend campaign rallies, or make political donations, or read much political coverage, or watch political shows such as “Meet the Press,” or even Fox News. To these sorts of folks, ads aren’t just an annoying sideline to, or a distraction from, the real issues in the campaign. To a large extent, they are the campaign: they represent perhaps the main source of information about candidates and issues. Which, if you think about it, is pretty alarming.

It’s not that all the ads lack a legitimate purpose. Health care is an important issue. So are law and order, gun control, abortion, and many of the other subjects featured in the thirty-second spots. If Congressman Gardner is still sponsoring a federal personhood bill that could lead to the banning of I.U.D.s—which, again, he is—Colorado voters deserve to be informed of this. Udall’s latest television ad does just that.

The problem with the ads, and with the campaign in general, is that they tend to twist reality, raising what is incendiary above what is genuinely important, and substituting political point-scoring for genuine debate. Take Obamacare. While it hasn’t dominated the midterms in the way that some people thought it would a year or two ago, it’s still a major issue. From New Hampshire to Louisiana and Colorado, Republican candidates are demanding its “repeal.” But what, if anything, are they offering in its place? On this, there is mostly silence or deliberate obfuscation.

[W]hat does the repeal pledge actually amount to? Beyond offering Republicans another opportunity to bring up Obama, not very much. The same goes for campaign discussions, such as they’ve been, about another topic sure to play a big role in Washington in the coming years: the budget. If Republicans take over the Senate, will they pass bills supporting a balanced-budget amendment, the replacement of Medicare with a voucher system, and the shifting of Medicaid back to the states, with a much-reduced federal contribution? The former policy is a long-standing G.O.P. demand. 

With many Democrats also reluctant to focus on the substance rather than on the caricature of the Obama agenda, we have an election with no clear theme, no overriding trend, and, inevitably, no clear mandate. If the Republicans do eke out a majority in the Senate, which remains the most likely outcome, they will return to Washington determined to make life even more difficult for the President. But what sort of achievement will that be? We’ve just lived through four years of gridlock, during which we’ve seen very little in the way of significant legislation. More of the same won’t change anything, it will just make voters feel more powerless, disgusted, and alienated.

And the American dream which can now best be found in Canada will continue to evaporate in America.  In large part due to complacency and laziness on the part of Americans.  We may be getting exactly what many of us deserve. 

Millennials Prepare to Destroy GOP

There is no doubt in my mind that the Republican Party in its current incarnation that is dominated by religious extremism, racism, greed and bigotry needs to be destroyed.  The GOP has simply become something incredibly ugly and it all traces, in my view, to the rise of the Christofascists within the Party.  This element despite it feigned piety is comprised of people who simply are not nice and decent.  Sadly, they see others as things rather than living, breathing human beings and display a callousness towards others that is reminiscent of the way the Nazis dehumanized the Jews of Europe.  Thankfully, a new study by the Pew Research group suggests that the Milennial generation may be poised to destroy today's GOP.   Here are highlights from the Daily Kos:

Millennials (those born roughly since 1980 or so, depending on your definition) are the most progressive generation since FDR.

That's the headline from this fascinating infographic from Pew, which examines the voting preferences of various generational cohorts over the last two decades.  We've heard this before of course.  Pew grouped voters into categories not based solely on birth year, but also on the year in which a voter turned 18 -- noting under what President this occurred (fascinating concept).  They then looked across the last 10 elections to see where deviations from the national average occurred.

Takeways --

1) The obvious lede -- every election Millennials have voted in, they've skewed Democratic. Almost as important?  Ditto for young Gen Xers (who turned 18 under Clinton) -- in every election except 2004 (when they skewed GOP) and 2000 (when they tracked with national averages), they skew Democratic as well.  

2) Millennials and young Gen Xers deviated from the norm in 11 of 12 opportunities.

3) . . . . the Clinton group (today age 30-37) skewed Democratic in 5 of 7 elections and skewed Republican in only one.  Powerful argument that this is the fault line: voters age 37 and younger, vs. those 38 and older.  Not Gen X vs. Millennial.  Everyone born after Star Wars came out is basically a Democrat.

4) The idea that young, idealistic, naive voters tend to side with progressives until they age into mature, worldly realists and start voting for conservatives seems to be (at least partially) debunked by this chart.  Only the Reagan/Bush Gen Xers exhibit anything like this behavior.  Other groups were either a) more consistent over time, or b) inconsistent but in unpredictable ways, not just "older = more conservative."

In short, this chart seems to confirm much of what we've been talking about for years -- Millennials seem to consistently prefer progressive ideals, and predictably vote for Democratic candidates that (theoretically) espouse those ideals.  This is not changing, and it's a bit of an historical aberration.

If you were a Republican strategist, this is just more heartburn.

Yet despite this demographic reality, the GOP continues to pander increasingly to an aging voter pool that is literally dying off.  And in the process, the GOP is alienating the younger generations that are repulsed by the GOP's racism, homophobia and rejection of modernity.  Long term, it is political suicide.  But then, of course, the Christofascists are utterly detached from reality, so perhaps this phenomenon should be no surprise.