The Party Is Over
From Mike Lofgren at Truthout:
Of course people like the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson are engaging in a rational exercise to maximize their wealth. Their contributions will come back manifold in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and exclusive franchises. The primary purpose of the GOP these days is to provide tax breaks and other financial advantages (such as not regulating pollution and other socially costly externalities) to their wealthy donor base. All the rest of their platform, all the culture wars stuff, is simply rube bait…
The problem is that when militaristic empires (which we’ve become) get into trouble, their elites tend to double down on the same failed policies that got them into trouble in the first place. Realistically, a country with a $15-trillion debt, failing infrastructure, and very mediocre world rankings in terms of life expectancy, social mobility, and poverty, simply cannot afford the extravagance of reckless interventionism combined with a fiscal policy that hollows out the country in order to reward rich political contributors. Yet what is definitely not in the long-term national interest certainly is in the short-term selfish interest of the people who got rich from scamming us in the first place…
We can devise all the clever schemes imaginable to clean up politics and get money out of campaigns, but it won’t work until the American people collectively give up on certain fond illusions: the Horatio Alger myth, American Exceptionalism, and the whole mass of magical thinking that boils down to the belief that God loves America because we’re so virtuous, handsome, and smart, and that we, too, could win the lottery.
The problem is that, for years, liberals coasted on the coattails of FDR, got very complacent and generated no new ideas. So, when the GOP came to the waterhole and stole their clothes, they didn’t know what to do; they thought they had hegemony. Group one retreated to the ivory tower: effete crybabies, they became useless politically. Group two, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), became GOP-lite and a pure fundraising operation…
I know how to beat Republicans. Progressives do not know how to beat Republicans. You have to stick with a simple theme and keep pushing it.
I agree. I know it gets boring, but I’ve been trying to drive a simple message.
Pat McCrory brings it to state politics with his sad/laughable ad proclaiming North Carolina is “the best state in the nation.” Good grief.
And Robbie Perkins brings it to city council with his country club obsession with other cities.
Indeed. Authenticity seems illusive.