• Tag Archives Democrats

  • Speaking of Oscillations

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                     First Moon of the New Year

    Gingrich wins.  Romney won.  Santorum won.  The longer and more divisive the Republican primary season, the better.  Let them shred each other.  It could give Obama a chance he may not deserve, but one I hope he gets.

    On the other hand.  A sharply divided and ideologically splintered opposition can make governing a real headache, especially if the Republicans retain control of the House and take the Senate.  This latter is possible, with seven Democratic seats up and only two Republican.

    The partisan in me wants to watch the Republicans blow themselves up, weaken their party back to the special interest group it used to be, but I know that’s not a good way forward for our country.  We need two parties, a more conservative, fiscally conscious and moderately bellicose one and one dedicated to justice, economic and social.  These are two legitimate strains of  thought when it comes to understanding and creating policy for our country.  The best governance comes from these two impulses fighting it out in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

    Given my druthers we would move toward the democratic socialism of  Europe, covering health care, creating affordable housing, solid support and aid for those who cannot find work, seeing that everyone gets as much education as they can tolerate, and providing solid retirement benefits.

    Martin Luther King said it best:  “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

    I believed that in 1964 and I believe it today.  We must keep working, not become faint-hearted or victims of despair.  Just when greed seems to have gained the high ground, just when hatred seems stronger than love, just when the 1% seem to obscure the 99, just then  will the high ground transform to common ground, love embrace hatred and the 99% become seen and heard and felt.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • Sigh.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                        Waning Harvest Moon

    First the Vikings, now the Democrats.  Geez.

    As I said a while back, the political scene, long a part of my life, a passionate part, has begun to recede for me.  I see this by-election as a cyclical matter, not a rejection of Obama and progressive ideas, but a cry of pain from people injured the great recession.  An angry elephant has stomped through the polls this November election day, an elephant moving with great feeling, a powerful force in politics.  Yes, this will slow down Obama’s progressive agenda.  He will have to work in a more measured, less dramatic way, but, as I’ve read more than one place, that may well be to his advantage in 2012.

    (I’d be happier if I watched the election returns on Ka’anapali beach.)

    It is not so much a time to wonder what went wrong from a Democratic perspective, as it is a time to reconsider how communicating the gains of the past two years has fallen so far short.  It is a time to consider how to pursue the great issues yet unaddressed, like climate change and immigration, in the small ways that will lay the base for further work in the 2012 Congress.  I went into this election proud of my leftist politics and I remain so.  Over time movements toward greater equality erode the opposition, witness the number of conservative women running in this election.  Over time matters of mutual care and compassion like Social Security, Medicare and now the National Health Care legislation become new bricks in a solid foundation for all Americans, rich and poor.  The economy will right itself and the timing of recovery matters more politically than it should, because the tools used to massage the economy are gross and work only over time.

    So, we’ll have to learn how to work with a whole new legislative alignment.  That’s the nature of politics.  This is still a center/right country, so we have to be glad when we have the chance to make progress, philosophical when we can’t.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics 📎and tagged

  • Poison Fruit

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                        Waxing Awakening Moon

    Spring has sprung, then it sprang back.  23 today.  Not prime gardening weather yet.

    The conservative embrace of right wing populists has begun to bear poisoned fruit again.  They referred to Obama and African-American congressmen as niggers, Barney Frank as a faggot and phoned in death threat to several members of the House who switched their votes on health care reform.  The great irony of the moral majority, Christian right, tea-party tea bags is that by all normal political calculation they should vote Democrat.  They are, in the large part, blue collar folks, some living on minimum wage, many no doubt eligible for the health insurance provisions just passed by Congress, but conservative strategists have intentionally chosen to underwrite their social prejudices against people of color, homosexuals and folks with a college education in order to collect them into the party’s ranks.

    This is not a deal with the devil; it is the devil making a deal.

    I know these folks because I grew up with them in Indiana.  They first came to national notice in Indiana when 30% of the Hoosier electorate voted for George Wallace for President.  They were first and second generation folks from Appalachia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee and worked in the automobile and other heavy manufacturing centers in the Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio area, the area long since identified as the rust belt.  Union workers in the 1950’s and 1960’s, these constituencies voted a straight Democratic party ticket in line with their economic self-interest.

    After LBJ and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, George Wallace made an independent run for the Presidency aiming himself squarely at southern Democrats, the diaspora of southerners working in the north and those other bigots nationally willing to sign up.  This came to the attention of Kevin Phillips, then a strategist for Richard Nixon.  He conceived of the moral majority, corralling the Wallace voters and conservative Christians, sometimes the same group into a winning base for conservative Republican politics.  This was the time of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson.

    Right wing populism has a long and unsavory history in the US.  The KKK, anti-semite, homophobes, anti-Darwinists and love it or leave it patriots are just a few examples.  The Southern Poverty Law Center has made a career for Morris Dees and his compatriots filing suit against various organizational expressions of these folks.  When economic insecurity marries the all-too human propensity for discrimination, a violent firestorm will result.  It is no different now than it was in the post-Reconstruction days, the days during the Great Depression or the years after passage of the Civil Rights act.

    True conservatives should be ashamed.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Commentary on the news Memories Politics US History 📎and tagged

  • OH, Yeah!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                    Waxing Awakening Moon

    You’re traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: deciphering Medicare!  I’m not kidding here.  Kate and I have given this day to determining a post retirement budget and one of the most difficult things to understand is not the cost of medicare, but just what goes with what.  If the explanatory booklet that simplifies Medicare, from a local senior citizen organization, is any indication of what health care reform promises, God help us.

    On the other hand this is an exciting time for both of us, investigating life when Kate no longer has work demands, figuring out the wonders of budgeting when such terms as dissaving begin to make sense.  Dissaving is, you guessed it, spending money you’ve saved.  That’s the basic idea in retirement unless you’re stuck behind the counter at Mac and Don’s with a silly hat and the smell of grease in your gray hair.

    After a while we gave up and went to lunch.  Then a nap.  Now we’re refreshed and ready to get back at the budget process.

    Say, did I mention that I’m proud of the Democrats?  Damn.  Gutsy politics.  The last time we had truly historic reform came under a former senator, Lyndon Baines Johnson who gave us Model Cities and Civil Rights.  Remember the Great Society?  I do.  Except for that pesky war in Vietnam Johnson was a great one.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Politics 📎and tagged

  • Bald Guys Are Athletic, too.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                            Waxing Wild Moon

    “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

    I don’t know who this guy is and I don’t care.  I just love the fact that there is a bald athlete competing in the games.  This guy gives me hope.  2014 here I come.

    The games don’t last forever, do they?  Or does it just seem like it?  Some of these sports I enjoy, but two full weeks of reruns?  Geez.

    The quote by Einstein is one of my favorites.  I have it on a t-shirt that a different sized me used to wear a lot.  When you think about it, knowledge is useless without imagination.  I mean, what would you do with all those climate statistics if you couldn’t drive the conservatives crazy with them by imagining a cooked planet?

    Lets hope the Democrats in Congress grow some balls and pass some health care legislation.  Pull private health insurance out of the cold dead hands of the right wing nut jobs and stick it where it belongs.  C’mon.  Use your imagination.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics Sport 📎and tagged

  • An Old Guy Observation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    56  bar steady 20.00 ompn NE  dew-point 44  sunrise 6:28  sunset 8:02  Lughnasa

    Waning Crescent of the Corn Moon

    The Democratic convention.  Ironically for our family, in Denver where our clan has strong roots.  The Republican convention.  Equally ironical, here in St. Paul.

    Here’s an, oh my god I’m an old guy thought, but conventions aren’t what they were when I was a kid.  When primaries began to take the decision about party nominees out of the hands of power brokers and the politics of a particular convention, conventions became mass marketing.  No fun.  Not interesting.  In the past I watched convention coverage as eagerly as the final 4 in the NCAA or the Indianapolis 500.  No more.

    My gut tells me that Obama will sit down with his folks, figure out a strategy to focus his campaign on two or three issues-probably the economy, health care reform and energy independence.  He and Biden will punch those home.  They will be more dynamic, more thoughtful, and not Republican.  In the end this should be enough.

    Obama needs help, no doubt about that.  He’s a young, inexperienced politician running against a Washington insider, again.  I mean, Hillary was a prime example of an insider.  He’s black.  He’s smart.  He needed this non-incumbent race following an unpopular presidency to give his way outside the box personal situation a chance.  He has it and I think he’ll win pulling away.

    Gazpacho tomorrow and planting.  Gazpacho first.


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