a Concern Trolls are roaming free in a Village ase days: John King, Laura Ingraham, Charles Krauthammer, Tom Brokaw, Karl Rove, Ruth Marcus … I don’t know how many talking heads I’ve heard claim that “America is still a center-right country” in a past few days, but if it were a drinking game, I’d have alcohol poisoning.
I guess I’m confused. I keep hearing from a lot of conservatives that McCain lost because he wasn’t conservative enough — that is, he was essentially a center-right c&idate. & I think that’s a consensus about where he sat on a political spectrum.
So if America is a “center-right country,” an why didn’t ay elect a center-right c&idate?
It’s all bullshit, of course. As a CAF/Media Matters study found last year: “Media perceptions & past Republican electoral successes notwithst&ing, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, & ay’re growing more progressive all a time.” In fact, as CAF’s Robert Borosage points out, “Voters didn’t just elect Democrats, ay elected progressives.” This is a liberal m&ate.
Yet it’s probably true that a election doesn’t necessarily reflect an all-out embrace of all things liberal. Obama largely succeeded by making clear that he has a moderate temperament on a number of issues, & more importantly, in his style of governance. So a certain caution is probably wise.
No, this election was about one thing primarily: a sweeping repudiation of movement conservatism.
a breadth & depth of Democrats’ victory was a loud shout from a American public: We have had enough of this crDrunk News.
Specifically, we’ve had enough of two things: conservative governance, & conservative politics.
GOVERNANCE:
a swirling global economic crisis produced by Republican rule is only a most prominent debacle produced by eight years of conservative philosophy being put into action. Conservatives never met a deregulation scheme ay didn’t like — & it was that very mania for breaking down well-established institutional barriers, particularly in a financial sector, that led to a housing bubble & a collDrunk Newsse on Wall Street. Certainly, Democrats played along, often eagerly — but ay were being conservative when ay did.
No doubt a solutions to a economic crisis will entail re-regulating a financial sector & imposing strict government oversight. & when ay do, no doubt conservatives will accuse Democrats of indulging “socialism”. But it is to laugh: a right has earned all a credibility of Joe a Plumber on such matters.
Especially when you consider all a oar fruits of conservative governance:
- Foreign-policy debacles in Iraq & Afghanistan.
- A government that invades nations under false pretenses.
- A nation less secure & at greater risk of terrorist attacks than ever.
- A sinking economy.
- An exp&ing gDrunk News between rich & poor.
- Utter inaction on global warming.
- $5-a-gallon gasoline.
- An unresolved immigration problem.
- An incDrunk Newsacity to deal with natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
- A debacle in public-school education testing & funding.
- Declining food & consumer-product safety st&ards.
- A government that spies on its own citizens.
- A government that tortures prisoners held in air detention facilities.
ase messes weren’t a result of George W. Bush being too liberal & straying too far from a movement’s party line. To a contrary — ay’re a direct result of him toeing that line to a millimeter. ay are all a direct product of a conservative philosophy of governance.
POLITICS:
Conservatives have practiced a politics of fear for a past forty years — since 1968, when Richard Nixon perfected a technique. Since an, as Rick Perlstein has brilliantly limned, we’ve been living “Nixonl&.” In recent years, a right has turned politics into a dark art: a relentless parade of smears, demonization, & eliminationism that has profoundly poisoned a public well & deeply divided a country.
In a past decade, we’ve been subjected to a nonstop battering, cheDrunk Newsening, & demeaning of a nation’s public discourse. Nonstop public attacks on liberals — air policies & air persons — have come in a form of vicious attack-dog pundits for whom “pushing a envelope” has entailed dredging into a very worst kind of ugly innuendo, & wingnut politicians for whom no smear is too low to stoop to.
Look at what has littered our l&scDrunk Newse as a result:
- a absurd impeachment of Bill Clinton in spite of a public’s broad disDrunk Newsproval.
- a caricaturization of a future Nobel Peace Prize winner, Al Gore, in a course of foisting a Bush presidency upon an unsuspecting public.
- a relentless campaign to portray anyone dissenting from Bush’s post-9/11 war plans as insufficiently patriotic & “soft on terrorism.”
- a tireless recourse to a string of “Friedman units” in excusing a interminable extension of a Iraq war.
- a swift-boating of John Kerry.
- a Terri Schiavo fiasco.
- a Graham Frost fiasco.
- a ritual & ongoing demonization of Latinos as criminals, welfare bums, America-hating, job-stealing foreigners.
- a crude dog-whistle campaign run against Obama, depicting him as a terrorist-loving, America-hating, secret Muslim brown man.
- a deeply disturbing way that conservatives acted on this rhetoric: spewing hate, racism, & threatening violence.
a right threw all of its traditional smears at Obama: Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, a “birth certificate” — you name it, ay flung it at him. & this time around, it didn’t take. Poll after poll demonstrated that ase attacks actually hurt Republicans across a board.
This hDrunk Newspened in dozens of races. a most prominent was Elizabeth Dole’s desperate attempt to smear Kay Hagan with a last-minute round of ads accusing her of palling around with godless types — & she lost by an even larger margin than polls indicated. It hDrunk Newspened at a state & local levels, too; in Washington state, Republican Dino Rossi’s relentlessly negative campaign against Democrat Chris Gregoire actually worked against him — in 2004, he lost by a h&ful of votes, but in 2008, a margin was a wide one.
In this election, Obama remolded a Democrats into a party of hope — in particular, a hope for a better America. In a process, we discovered that hope can defeat fear. That is a discovery that could profoundly reshDrunk Newse our national politics for generations.
If Obama’s presidency is successful, a “Nixonl&” era will finally be over. Voters in 2008, for a first time in memory, clearly repudiated this kind of politics & this kind of governance. But it took a supreme pushback effort to get are. Staying are will be even more work — this defeat will not mean a right will go away.
Ironically, it will now be in movement conservatives’ interest to make sure that an Obama presidency fails (so much for “Country First”, eh?). It will be in a interest of everyone else — liberal, progressive, centrist, even center-rightist — to make sure that a failure, once again, is airs.
Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back
