None of the Above! (0.00 / 0)

Having been pretty far to the left on the American political spectrum for some decades now, my best guess (and I make no boasts about my prognostication abilities) is D---none of the above.

Door #1 (Democratic party dies):  Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential run has (I would argue) inoculated a significant percentage of liberal Democrats against a 3rd party candidate any time in the near (2012 & 2016) future.  I'd expected the Dems to lose 30-40 House seats in November, largely because of the economy (see: 1982 mid-term election results).

Door #2  (Republican party dies):  Notice what the tea partiers are doing.  For the most part, they're organizing themselves as the "conservative" wing of the Republican party (contesting primaries, running for delegate slots to the state party convention, etc.).  More likely scenario is for Republicans to gain seats short-term, suffer big losses medium-term (e.g., 2012), and go through a painful "wilderness" experience of putting together a majority coalition that could take years.

Door #3  (USA dies):  Long, slow imperial decay and relative loss of global power as BRIC countries grow---pretty likely.  Civil war with millions of casualties, not so much.

Door #4  (Muddling through, moderately hopeful about liberal prospects over the next 10 years):  As long as the Constitution stays pretty much as it is, then we're going to have two major political parties.  The last time one party died and a new one emerged, it was because of America's original sin---racism, as institutionalized in the Constitution.  We've got our problems, but not of that magnitude.

P.S.  My reading of Rick Pearlstein's "Nixonland" is that fear of disorder was a crucial factor in swinging 1/5 of the electorate from Johnson in 1964 to Nixon in 1972.  Chaos and apocalyptic thinking benefit the right more than the left.  

I'm not happy with Gibbs' remarks, but it seems he's already "walked it back", at least somewhat.  I am mostly happy with Obama's new stump speech.  The more we can do to highlight that message, the better.

Paul, as always, thank-you for a stimulating post.

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by: massappeal @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 08:47:03 AM CDT

Fixing Things Is Now Considered Un-American (4.00 / 2)

which is why I think that relying on things just muddling through is utopian thinking at this point.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 09:05:25 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

All together now.... (4.00 / 4)

Muddling through, like the two-state solution in Palestine, is looking more and more like a forlorn hope. It may have been an option in the past -- although one is entitled to wonder if it hasn't always been an illusion -- but the radical willfulness of recent decades has foreclosed it with a finality which anyone not already invested in it simply can't ignore.

Which is a fancy way of saying that we're fucked. A functioning civilization is a delicate edifice. What takes centuries of effort, trust and good luck to build can be torn down in an instant. What amazes me, over and over, despite how familiar I am with the mechanisms involved, is not only that our princes can't see this, but that they giggle at the alarm on the faces of those who can.

He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

And for this we praise him -- not only the horse, but his rider as well. I don't know which is the bigger fool, the prick who reassures us, or we who take him at his word.

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by: William Timberman @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 11:16:31 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Gibbs as sentinel? (4.00 / 7)

Less as a lookout, but more like a sentinel node, a place to tap to see if something ugly is spreading.

I didn't read Gibbs' walk-back until much later in the day yesterday.  And, wasn't aware of his precise wording until I followed a HuffPo prompt in my mail box for Sam Stein's Gibbs' Mockery Of 'Professional Left' Unexpected where I found:

"Day after day, it gets frustrating," Gibbs said, in a statement that a White House aide said was written with sincerity. "Yesterday, I watched as someone called legislation to prevent teacher layoffs a bailout -- but I know that's not a view held by many, nor were the views I was frustrated about."

And, I'm instantly confused, because I can't think of a single "left professional" who would have called that legislation a bailout.  And, although Dylan Ratigan was fingered as a culprit in the Cable line up, I couldn't see Ratigan making that kind of a claim.  Well, apparently, I wasn't the only one confused.  Atrios' reaction was helpful:

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
[...]
So frustration at right wing assholes on cable news make you lash out at The Professional Left, who are busy trying to get teacher funding passed?

I keep wondering just how strung-out, how dense, how wack-a-loon, how ignorant, how off balance, how utterly inept this administration really is and along comes Gibbs and his "reason" for lashing out.  And, it's totally misdirected.  And, it really is a puzzle, because as Glenn Greenwald once highlighted, it's not like Gibbs doesn't have some skilz.

All of that led to last night's masterful appearance by Robert Gibbs on Hannity & Colmes after the debate. - Glenn Greenwald

So, someone who once was able to perform masterfully on Hannity & Colmes ... and, it was, Glenn has the video... comes out and takes a cut at the "professional left"... in a sit down interview where you aren't obligated to be quick on your feet...  because of something someone on the "professional Left" never said?

Take advantage of the juicy plum Digby says Mike Pence served them up?  Do they even recognize it?  At this point, can they recognize it?  And, even if they recognize it, do they have a clue what to do with it?

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by: bystander @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 09:00:52 AM CDT

So Inept That There ARE No Words (4.00 / 1)

This thing with Gibbs is just one of those moments when the whole facade just melts away.

Well, what did you expect?  All that pseudo-competence and we're still fighting fire with gasoline in the Middle East.  Because why?  Because Liz Cheney would say something mean if we didn't?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 09:12:07 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

From Obama on down, they're in way over their heads. (4.00 / 6)

(Even by Obama's own corporatist standards.) And they know it. Hence the flailing and lashing out- surely it HAS to be somebody else's fault, because their shit doesn't stink. They are very arrogant people- Obama and Larry Summers are two of the most supremely arrogant humans on the planet- and never expected to be the manifest failures that they are. (Not that Summers didn't already have plenty of experience at being a failure, as the worst president in Harvard's history.)

Entitled jackasses who think they're geniuses, the lot of them.

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by: Steve LaBonne @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 09:28:52 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

So basically (4.00 / 1)

Robert Gibbs is frustrated that MSNBC doesn't serve the same function for the left that Fox News does for the right.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

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by: Anthony de Jesus @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 09:34:32 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Round up the usual suspects... (4.00 / 5)

LIke a beleaguered Sheriff in a crime ridden town, when something bad happens, round up the usual suspects. Or perhaps a DA who's been handed to tough case who just needs to put someone, anyone in jail. It's incompetent, to be sure, but it's also an incompetence borne of cynicism.

If these people were in the WH in 1941, they would have invaded Mexico in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. (hyperbole!)

This administration has been seeking the approval of the Right and has been openly hostile to the "left" since it's inception. So we shouldn't be surprised to hear Gibbs assigning RW talking points about bailouts to "left" commentators, because those are the people they prefer to do battle with. It's still grossly incompetent, of course, but it's not the usual stupidity. Since these are right-wingers, we are their natural enemies, not the buffoons on the Right. So they will attack us instead. Our job, it seems, is simply to shut up, give them our money and vote for them. They don't like it when people talk back to them. It's an authoritarian impulse, methinks.

So two things are becoming obvious now: 1) the WH is feeling a lot of stress over the crap they're getting from the proles AND the Right; 2) they're only answer is to attack the proles and somehow make them prostrate themselves before the alter of neo-liberalism. Well, that won't work and that's further evidence of incompetence. But it's not innocent or good natured.

As long as this administration sees no real downside to attacking it's left flank, they will continue to do so. Governing from the corporatist right as they do, I can understand this. All of their perceived incentives run in that direction. They need to shut down dissent on their left and this is merely the latest attempt to do that.

But it's still politically incompetent. It reminds me of the Replacement's song, Bastards of Young:

The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please
If it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them

We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates

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by: Emocrat @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 13:12:57 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Something I did not know (4.00 / 3)

...flagged by someone in Greenwald's threads:

On November 7, 2003, a strange new group no one had ever heard of called "Americans for Jobs & Healthcare" was quietly formed and soon thereafter began running a million dollar operation including political ads against then-frontrunner Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. The commercials ripped Dean over his positions or past record on gun rights, trade and Medicare growth. But the most inflammatory ad used the visual image of Osama bin Laden as a way to raise questions about Dean's foreign policy credibility. While the spots ran, Americans for Jobs through its then-spokesman, Robert Gibbs, a former Kerry campaign employee refused to disclose its donors.

It seems easy enough to argue that the Obama administration can't seem to find its way out of campaign mode as a reason why they cannot seem to - you know - actually govern.  But, it can also seem as though they have absolutely no intention of governing.  They might be mere milkmaids determined to pull as much wealth as they can out of what's left in the productive remnants of the American cow.

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by: bystander @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 09:58:24 AM CDT

A Tempting Explanation (4.00 / 1)

but ultimately, too simple.

They all want to govern.  And they all imagine that they'd be supremely good at it.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 10:14:37 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Stuck on history (4.00 / 3)

Both the Federalists and the Whigs were weak parties. Federalists elected one President to one term (John Adams) with all of 51.4% of the electoral vote.  They controlled the House twice (1796, 1798) by relatively small margins and the Senate three times (1794,1796,1798).  It took the Federalists over 20 years to die out and they made a comeback towards relevance during the War of 1812 winning 86 electoral votes (40.8%) with DeWitt Clinton in the Presidential election. Federalists held the trifecta for four years.  

The Whigs won two Presidential elections (1840, largely due to a major recession) and 1848 with a war hero.  That overstates their importance.  Whigs controlled the House twice (1840, 1846).  In 1846 that control meant they won 116 of 230 seats.  One of those seats was Abraham Lincoln's.  They controlled the Senate twice (1840, 1842).  Whigs held the trifecta for two years following the election of 1840 and that was that.

The Whigs died quicker as the Federalists still got House seats in 1822, 26 years after their only Presidential win.  The Whigs were essentially dead by 1856 just four years after leaving the White House.  The Constitutional Unionists of 1860 could be seen as a Whig revival but they were a small regional party and very short lived.

What this says is that if a major crisis is the cause of a Party's demise it will happen sooner.  The Republicans seem to be doing a better job of catering to their base.  This may not win elections but it does keep them in business.  Their moderate wing is pretty much relegated to Scott Brown and the two Maine ladies in the Senate. The most progressive Republican in the House?  According to Progressive Punch it's now Walter Jones of North Carolina followed by Libertarian Ron Paul. The hard right would seem to allow a rump party with 30-35 Senators and 100 to 150 House members.

The Democratic base is probably both smaller and more likely to dessert.Nonetheless, the Democrats are the first political party in the world and the longest lasting.  We ought to be able to survive Obama and Rahm and certainly Gibbs.

So it is most likely that no party will be eliminated but if one goes it will be the Democrats.

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by: David Kowalski @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 10:14:56 AM CDT

Parties Ain't What They Used To Be (4.00 / 1)

Look at how little money is going through the RNC, for example.

And look how much is going through multi-millionaire candidates.

The entire political system is going through a period of flux, and there's no telling when or how it ends.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 10:52:20 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Exactly (4.00 / 2)

Washington Dems have an establishment mindset - born of those 60 years of almost unbroken partisan supremacy up to Clinton's first Congress.

The Washington GOP ever since 1994 have had small majorities at best; starting with a wreck in the mid 60s, they learned endurance, unity and patience whilst the Southern Dem anomaly unwound over the following generation. Their mindset is a beleaguered guerilla band, even when they have the majority.

The wider GOP coalition - Main Street/Wall Street and Goldwaterites - works because the corporate and fundie elements don't tread on each other's toes.

The old Washington Dem coalition - machine North and segregated South - long had great partisan coherence, for exactly the same reason: satisfying Southern 'pecularities' was no skin off the machines' noses (they were not notable for being progressive on race!) and vice versa.

Right now, Washington Dems are pretty much exclusively corporate - connection with their New Deal constituencies is thin to cosmetic. Progressives have no effective representation in Congress (remember the CPC and their 'robust public option'?) and their minimum demands are incompatible with Washington Dems' necessary servicing of the corporates.

Plus Dem Washington victories over the last generation have largely been won without prog support being crucial.

The existence of the Dem wing of the Corporate Party (that's what it really is) is a product of Duverger's Law, not any ideological divide.

Plus - there is no issue likely slavery which is foreseeable.

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by: skeptic06 @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 11:08:13 AM CDT

[ Parent ]