Two Parties, Big Differences

One thing I've been seeing a lot in comment threads lately is the idea that there's no real difference between Republicans and Democrats. On too many issues, you could legitimately argue that there isn't enough of a difference between the two, but to say there's no difference is just plain wrong. Part of what's driving the perception is the fact that Democrats made big gains in the last few election cycles, which practically guaranteed that Democratic incumbents would make up a wider band of the political spectrum. In a two party system, both parties have to be coalition parties and, as a result, the larger party will have more centrists. It will also have more people who would normally belong to the other party, but either couldn't get elected in that party in their districts or differ from party orthodoxy on a key issue -- say, abortion or environmentalism.

But I suppose I should've said that "in a two party system, both parties have to be coalition parties most of the time." Republicans did so poorly in recent elections that candidates in all but the most conservative districts lost, for the most part. It acted as a party purge, driving out the ideologically impure and leaving a party where all members are in agreement on almost everything. In short, Democrats look like a lot like the Republicans used to, because the political middle had swung so far toward the Democratic pole that it took some of the Republican coalition with it. And that's what's swinging back again. Check the results in November; you'll see that very few actual progressives have lost, but that many centrists and Blue Dogs will be joining the ranks of the unemployed. A lot of those centrists and Blue Dogs will be replaced by extremely conservative candidates, but that's because the GOP and the Tea Party are only allowing the most ideologically pure wingnuts to run and win their primaries. They're getting way ahead of that swinging middle and I wouldn't expect those gains to hold. In fact, if the gains are as great as some believe, the House of Representatives will become gridlock central -- at the worst possible time -- and the GOP will take most of the blame. While the economy burns, House Republicans will be fiddling with doomed bills to allow guns in churches, declare global warming a hoax, and privatize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and -- oh, I don't know -- national parks or something.

But if you really need convincing that there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats, here ya go:


Click for full size

Tell me -- with a straight face -- that the stimulus would've passed in a Republican-controlled congress.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

If Corporations are People, They're Very Stupid People

Yesterday, we had two environmental near-disasters. In a saner world, this would serve as a reminder that we're dancing on the edge of disaster every day, with global disaster certain unless we make some changes. But this is not that saner world.

The first near-disaster was an explosion on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico -- shades of Deepwater Horizon. One day before the rig -- Marine Energy's Vermillion Block 380 -- blew, one of that company's officials complained about Barack Obama's crazy deepwater drilling moratorium. "I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this administration is trying to break us," Barbara Dianne Hagood said. "The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the gulf coast, gulf coast employees and gulf coast residents."

After warning about financial disaster, Vermillion Block 380 flirted with environmental disaster -- which brings us back to financial disaster again. Maybe Hagood didn't notice, but the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon was really expensive. And it's going to stay expensive for a long time. But corporations are shortsighted -- practically by design. When your top-paid employees do almost nothing but obsess over quarterly returns, spans of five or ten or twenty years become almost foreign concepts. The corporate future lasts about three months.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

It's a Lot Easier for the Rich to Get Richer Without Democracy

One of the few things that left and right can agree on (though the right will only do so grudgingly) is that, regardless of how you counted the disputed votes in Florida, Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. If the concept of "one person, one vote" were anything other than a lie, we wouldn't be talking about "Bush tax cuts" right now. Democracy in America is more of a conceptual thing than an actual thing. And it's becoming more conceptual all the time. As the world changes, our access to democracy is changing as well.

One of the biggest threats to democracy and the average voter has been the rise of capitalism in China. Not because of the competition -- we've had credible competitors many, many times in our history -- but because it has proven to the professional investor class in America that democracy and freedom aren't essential to thriving capitalism. Sure, there have been economic success stories in less than free nations before, but generally speaking these have involved luck; an abundant natural resource that can be exploited, maybe. Saudi Arabia would be an example of this.

But China is an oppressive system that has seen the rise of a manufacturing base. They don't have to worry about environmentalists or (ironically) unions. As a result, they are pure capitalism -- maybe the purest known to exist -- with few restrictions and even fewer beneficiaries. They have gone from communism to oligarchy and there are more than a few would-be oligarchs in the US who look at China with one thought in mind; "I want that."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Right Still Defending Their Pointless War

Barack Obama can't do anything right. It's simply not possible. There are times when the negativity toward the President has some validity, times when it's a bit of a stretch, and times when it's just stupid. This is one of the latter times. In commenting on Barack Obama's formal announcement of the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, the right wing's jerking knees are on full display.

"In 'turning the page' on Iraq, the Great Speechifier could find no words with which to give meaning to our epic struggle there," writes Powerline's Paul Mirengoff. "Let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume this is because he thinks the struggle had no meaning, except as it related to domestic politics in the U.S. But then why give a speech about it?"

Our "epic struggle" was a long quagmire of a war in search of a reason for being. When Obama said we had to "turn the page," he was giving people like Mirengoff an out. "I'm mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home," the President said. "Here, too, it's time to turn the page." This is an argument these people had lost long ago. If you guys want to trot out non-existent WMD and fabricated ties to al Qaeda and the smoking gun coming in the form of a mushroom cloud, it's your funeral. President Obama basically said, "Look, what's done is done. It's over with now and we can't change the past. We could talk about the lies and the incompetence and the brainlessness of the Bush administration and their neoconservative allies in the media, but that won't change anything. We've got bigger fish to fry right now."

CONTINUE TO POST>>