Lughnasa Waxing Honey Extraction Moon
My representative. Michele, my belle, Bachmann. Even the very low tide of American political consciousness that washes up on our civic beach heads these days has the collective will to turn back Michele. My instincts have been wrong before, but I cannot imagine an American election where a person with the ideological baggage Michele has wins. I think the election in recent memory that seems similar is McGovern-Nixon in 1972. That time, I was a member of the analog to the Tea Party, the anti-war movement, New Left wing of the Democratic Party.
Nixon was not a popular president, but he was lucky. He ended the Vietnam War and opened a way to China. The economy was ok, too. McGovern’s nomination felt like a real victory for the American left. Finally, a banner carrier in the race.
Oops. Forgot. The American electorate votes centrist politics, perhaps center-right a bit. Think Bill Clinton or Gerald Ford, even George Bush in his first race. Michele’s power right now comes from her energized base, a cohesive and well-funded movement on the far right of even her own party, the Republican. To win a national election she has to widen her base beyond the Tea-Party and Libertarian right and I don’t see that happening.
Here’s a cynical thought I’ve had lately, though. You know the gaffes that keep on coming? Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire. Congratulating Elvis on his birthday which turned out to be the date he died. And most recently her admonishment to watch out for the rise of the Soviet Union.
What if these are a carefully orchestrated attempt to separate her from the “elites”, that is, most of you who read this blog, the college-educated upper middle class and upper class folks who run most of the countries businesses and institutions. And the reporters, artists, intellectuals and political operatives of the left like union organizers and community organizers.
Here’s how I imagine it goes. Michelle makes a gaffe. The elite delights in running articles proving how stupid and unaware she is. Just like the Bushisms and now Perryisms. The result is that those Americans who wouldn’t know how to answer the questions either–general knowledge is at an all time low in America–have a moment of fellow feeling with one of their own, a victim of the elite’s petty insistence on knowing everything. This fellow feeling gives her a wide margin of error with those folks, in fact a presumptive imprimatur.
We need to debate her on the substance of her proposals and their impact on middle and working class families, not sit on our degrees and howl with laughter at the rube, my representative, Michele, my belle.