Three years ago today.
All day was nothing but anxiety. They lied to the pollsters. They’re going to panic at the last minute and go running back to Daddy. Something will go wrong, because we’re not going to be able to elect a black man President of the country while Selma and Birmingham and Indianola County are living memory.
And yet, when it went down, when the polls closed, there it was. National championship. The music hit in Grant Park – “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” – and our man walked out and cracked that grin, and we exploded. It had happened, and it really did feel like anything was possible.
That was three years ago.
Basically, it’s been downhill ever since. Not to say I told you so, but I totally did…
“If you’re looking for some changes to the way things run in this country, forget that too. The Senate Republicans have shattered the record for filibusters in a single session these last two years, and that’s with a President who could still veto things if they somehow got out of Congress. With a Democrat-controlled Congress (and probably by a larger margin in both houses) and a Democratic President, they’re going to dig in their heels. Scorched Earth, just like 1992-94. Every initiative will be tied up forever in the Senate, while the usual talk-radio scum bellow on about how the GOP is saving America from the depredations of the horrible socialist terrorist-worshipping Democrats…and the political media will bemoan the fact that Obama has failed to change the tone in Washington and cannot get his program through Congress.”
That was two days after Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at the RNC, when it became obvious that they were going to go the full Atwater with the fall campaign. And I nailed it. “Scorched earth” doesn’t even begin to cover the range of actions and initiatives that have drawn 100% opposition from the GOP from day one, whether it’s the stimulus package (now revealed as way too small for what was required), the health care reform bill, or even the most routine procedural matters. And it got worse in 2010, when the GOP took the house and got more than 40 in the Senate – thus giving them effective control of the chamber, since the current interpretation of the cloture rule basically makes everything a 60-vote threshold in defiance of the Constitution and two hundred years of history and established practice.
And now people are out there asking whether the Republicans are engaged in active sabotage. What a fucking crock. They’ve been engaged in active sabotage since November 5, 2008. From the day Barack Obama was elected, the GOP committed itself to one goal and one goal only: undoing the results of that election, in practice if not in fact. It should have been obvious to anyone, and it was easily preventable if only Harry Reid had the balls to lay down the law and order Senate Democrats to support all cloture votes – or better yet, to do away with the filibuster altogether. “But the Senate won’t be the Senate anymore!” – guess what, moron, it’s not the Senate now. Ask Sinclair or Ornstein or Oppenheimer or anyone with a pair of eyes and an IQ above room temperature.
Meanwhile, as respected a source as the Economist runs articles about “the missing middle”. Never mind the US media, in thrall to the golden mean fallacy. False equivalence plus scorched earth equals no future. I wish I knew the way out, but as good as I used to be, I don’t have one.