Stickybuffalo.com

This is mostly just an attempt to review a few things, and examine whether any sense can be made of them, for my own benefit. Though of course, as always, anyone who wishes is welcome to play along at home.

Now then. Here we are with just (thankfully) a couple of weeks left until the 2010 general election.

We’re less than two years removed from an eight year debacle of a Republican presidential administration, which has left us a legacy including:

• growing budget imbalances (after inheriting surpluses from the previous administration)
• military adventures which turned into continuing, and ruinously-expensive, foreign occupations that have made our own country no safer and have probably, on balance, brought only negligible benefit at best to the residents of the occupied countries.
• an enormous financial crisis which led to a deep recession, now technically over but leaving unemployment stuck at the double-digit threshold.

Additionally, America’s vaunted market capitalism private sector has proved itself, essentially, completely bankrupt. Morally, intellectually, and financially. The financial sector imploded through its own reckless greed and the auto manufacturers imploded through their own stupidity (to simplify matters greatly), both requiring government intervention to bail them out. The oil industry presided over a disastrous and humiliating flood of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. And private industry, in general, seems capable only of enriching the ownership class and associated elites whilst, as a job-creation machine, it appears to be entirely unfit for purpose.

The Republican opposition has had nothing to offer in response to any of this, other than meaningless bluster and a constant refrain of “no no no no no” to absolutely any action that the current government takes or even proposes.

So, naturally, reactionary sentiment is apparently “surging” and expected to hand the Republican party increased power at all levels of government along with, perhaps, control of congress.

What am I missing, here?

I can think of various answers, none exactly satisfactory. Is it that

• in troubled times, Americans’ (and probably most people’s) gut instinct is a reactionary one, even if this is often counterproductive?
• Democrats are just, as I suggested a while ago, always the right party at the wrong time: we regained congress just before the financial collapse and won a presidential election, which we probably would have won anyway, shortly thereafter, leaving us to face the really heavy blame once the slow pace of recovery (always the case after a financial crisis) started to truly sink in?
• it’s our own fault, i.e. Americans actually long for a 21st century FDR complete with New Deal, but in order to work around Republican obstructionism, Blue Dogs, etc., we’ve compromised so much that we’ve offered much less than half a loaf. And therefore some who really would like to support us are sitting this one out, while others are opting for a full serving of GOP chili, even though they know they always regret it afterward. (I’m pretty pleased with that metaphor, but otherwise I have doubts about this one.)
• some sort of tectonic cultural shift took place, by complete coincidence, right around the time that Obama was elected, resulting in America suddenly deciding that contrary to previous beliefs, deficits do matter, expanding government power is threatening, wacky people staging demonstrations are relevant, etc.?
• related to the previous, the term “tea party” proved a godsend to lazy (and/or overworked, take your pick) content mill journalists who found in it a recipe for numberless easy-bake election stories about phenomena that, except for their catchy label, are not in any way actually new? And thereby created a much bigger right-wing “surge” than would have occurred were its participants treated with the same “objective” indifference that left-wing equivalents have always received? (Note to American left: get a lot better at branding, soon.)
• all of the above, and/or we’re just perpetually fucked?
• this whole thing is overblown, and actual Republican gains measured in terms of real elected offices are going to prove nowhere near proportionate to the hype?

(I hope it’s a lot to do with that last one, of course, but: Law of Low Expectations. We’ll see.)