In the Big Rock Candy mountain, you never change your socks. And the little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks The Big Rock Candy Mountain
We are about to see something that we have never seen before. Before the sudden dethroning of Emperor Numbus Nuttus, the last time we had a one term President was in the 1992 And that was a freak occurrence.
In 1991, President George HW Bush was riding high. Coming off of his successful prosecution of the first Gulf War, where he led a coalition of nations in pushing Saddam Hussein back inside his own borders, Bush was golden. Then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton ran more with the idea of creating national name recognition for 1996 rather than winning outright in 1992. But the end of the Gulf war brought on a recession, Bush fumbled the response, and Clinton won the election. But Bush’s record of accomplishments was enough to fire off the GOP House revolution of 1994, giving Georgia idiot Newt Gingrich the Speakers gavel.
In 2008, Bush’s moron progeny, George to propel the Tea Party revolution of 2091 W Bush, oversaw the collapse of the global economy. As a result, his failure led to the inauguration of the country’s first black President. But President Bush also accomplished some positive things, such as the Medicare Drug Prescription Act, and it was enough, along with white backlash, to propel the Tea Party Revolution of 2010.
That’s the thing about politics. Presidents occasionally fuck up, and when they do, they and their party tend to get spanked in elections. But for the most part, sitting Presidents also tend to accomplish things, and as a result, when a new party comes to power, nostalgia tends to cause a swing the other direction in the first midterms of the new President.
But the other thing about politics is that political party’s tend to stand for something! They have policies and platforms, and even if the party is out of power, they provide positive messaging to give their voters a reason to show up and vote. After all, we Americans tend to be a cheery, positive lot.
And that’s why the Republican party is heading directly into an electoral hurricane in 2022. Because in four years in office, the only accomplishment that the El Pendejo Presidente administration has to show is a $2 trillion tax cut that only the richest 1% of the population felt the love from. And meanwhile, he oversaw the most racist, divisive, exclusionary regime that we have seen since Berlin in 1945.
And even worse, the Republican party has nothing left to offer. They bought in, heart and soul, to the Trump racist, exclusionary dogma. At least, in 2010, they could point to the positive accomplishments of the Bush Presidency. The official RNC party platform coning out of the 2020 convention was, What Trump says, goes. Literally.
President Biden is literally riding the rocket. He just passed and signed a wildly popular Covid relief bill that will not only quash the Trump virus once and for all, but will jump start the American economy, and lift millions of lower and lower middle class Americans out of poverty. And he’ll follow that up with a massive, progressive infrastructure bill that will infuse literally trillions of dollars into the economy, create millions of high paying union jobs, and start the country on the road to clean energy independence.
And what is the GOP’s measured, considered response? They’re busy bitching about Dr. Seuss, the cancel culture, and women in the military. That’s it. Not a single word or positive message about where they want to take the country, because this is what Trump left them with. Trombies may love that shit, but pretty much everybody else is going to go with what works.
Normally, the incoming administration lives in deadly fear of the first midterm elections. But that is based on the opposition party having positive accomplishments from the last administration to brag about, and to use to try to provide a brake from the current administrations excesses. But the Democrats are going to be going in with popular accomplishments up the wazoo, and all the GOP is going to have is racism, hatred, and counter culture. Doesn’t really seem like a fair fight.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
I tend to share your optimism about 2022. I think we’re going to beat this virus, and the exuberance over that is going to help Democrats maintain and keep their majorities. There are no sure things in life…it’s going to be a fight…we have some California districts we need to take back…but I believe we’re positioned to make the midterms look more like 2002 than any other in my life.
As far as the right…I honestly don’t know what’s going on over there. It’s astonishing how meek their reaction to the relief bill has been. After all the fire and fury of the insurrection, they had nothing. I remember the marches in 2010, the protests, the noise. Maybe they’re in shock and they’ll re-energize and come back en force to irritate us. But they’re really beat down and pathetic right now.
What’s going on, Rory? I would think that obvious: no leadership and no in-house messaging to counter the narrative. The effective folks for the latter have defected from the Republicans for normalizing Trump with an eye towards demolishing Mr. Tangerine Man’s poisonous legacy. The former is made up of opportunists, scam artists and tired old men who have lived long enough to watch everything they built destroyed. Add in the exit of reliable financial support via the soon-to-be-defunct NRA and the recently deceased Sheldon Adelson and the chaos is to be expected.
Ok, yes, that’s totally what’s going on, lol. I more meant that I don’t know who’s going to come out on top on the right, or how their whole crisis will play out.
Tell me in two years the GOP split into two viable collaborating parties, I’m not shocked. Tell me they split them one collapses, not shocked. Tell me they become a white supremacist nationalist party, not shocked. They push white supremacists out of the party and treat them like they treated Muslims after 9/11, not shocked.
I don’t know what would shock me that’s even in the realm of possibility. I guess if they pulled out the Bush 2009 analysis that said they need to become a socially liberal,fiscally Conservative party inclusive to women and minorities, and if they truly pursued that, it’d be pretty shocking.
Don’t agree about Old Man Bush being taken down by a freak accident, Murf. He was just a rank incompetent due to being a ditherer. He thought he could ride the Gulf War to easy reelection but didn’t know what the hell to do when the recession hit. So he did nothing…and got the appropriate response for it. W was only marginally more successful than him in getting that other term but the shine was immediately off his “political capital” right after he got reelected with the Social Security stock market scam and Katrina.
As was said in one of my favorite action movies The Replacement Killers, “don’t confuse luck with skill.” The Bush family just never had that much of the latter and it showed. And yes, Trump remains far worse than them.
Bush 41 set himself up for his fall back during the 88 campaign. Go back even further to 1980 when he was competing with Reagan for the nomination, and he (correctly I might add) labeled Reagan’s whole “supply side” (tax cuts for the rich will stimulate the economy so much they’ll pay for themselves) as voodoo economics. Reagan successfully sold rank & file voters on the notion that Milton Friedman (who conservatives so loved to cite for so long throwing the “he won a Nobel Prize!” in people’s faces) was wrong and that there could actually be a free lunch. Rich and powerful conservatives of course knew better and eagerly awaited their coming financial windfall which they of course got. Still, despite the bruises raised during the campaign Reagan made Bush his running mate and the latter dutifully served as VP for eight years, trusting that when the time came he’d get to move up to the Presidency himself.
Although it didn’t get much attention, there was friction between Bush’s people and Reagan’s at time (not unusually for a VP with aspirations to one day become President), especially when it came to the Communications teams. What was really irritating to Bush was that he was actually what Reagan only claimed to be – a man with strong devotion (too strong in the case of his eldest son as we all know) to his family, a guy who had actually served this country and in combat, (Reagan was stateside making training films during WWWII) Still, Reagan was willing to share some of his communications staff with the Bush campaign and one fateful decision would come to haunt Bush.
Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan helping craft Bush’s speeches and in particular his acceptance speech at the convention. Noonan is someone of whom I’ve never understood being taken so seriously. She reasonably bright and has a good education but she’s been afforded a level of policy expertise (and made quite the living from it after Reagan) that to me is way out of proportion with reality. In any case, Noonan is the one who wrote and then spent considerable effort getting Bush to go with the “Read my lips – no new taxes” line that got so much attention. It went against every instinct Bush had but he went along, probably figuring if Noonan could make Reagan look like the great communicator then she could do the same for him. Of course, even a B grade actor like Reagan was still a competent professional actor that knew how to hit marks and deliver lines, and Bush forgot he was not. Still, that section of the speech was THE part for Republicans that weren’t as enthusiastic about Bush, being in deep mourning over the prospect of what conservatives then believed was THE greatest President that ever lived or ever would live. It energized the hell out of the GOP.
Alas, as he had feared might happen Bush faced an economic problem that his practical side knew required breaking that pledge. Even kicking around the possibility behind closed doors brought howls of protests. But what happened was Pat Buchanon. His “American Jihad” speech at the 92 convention opened a crack in the GOP armor and the patrician Bush’s cluelessness about life for average Americans (the moment with marveling over scanner at supermarket check out) painted a picture of an out of touch guy. Bill Clinton drove a tractor trailer rig through the crack Buchanon opened. The split in the GOP would widen and has grown wider ever since. With a recession going on the last thing Bush (like any incumbent) needed was a challenger with a flair for getting attention stealing the spotlight and refusing to shut up and stop challenging once the nomination was settled, much less make a fuss at the convention itself. I’m sure Bush looked at what Ted Kennedy did to Carter and fumed, but there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have full control over the situation in his own Party and had an economy in trouble. And a challenger threw gobs of red meat at a ravenous pack of conservatives that hoisted Bush on his own petard at the very convention where the Party was supposed to coalesce around their nominee!
I maintain it all goes back to Bush 41 allowing himself to get talked (again, against his instincts and judgement) into that whole “No new taxes” line that was the signature of his 88 campaign. Bush set himself up for failure.
It’s funny, Denis…tracking that trajectory with what happened from W on down to the Former Guy, we’re seeing basically a reverse version of that timeline you laid out. When it comes to electoral politics, the Bush family has just always sucked at the national level. Look no further than Jeb “Please clap” Bush for how bad they are outside of a state they can control.
I know folks in the US don’t generally pay much attention to sub-national elections elsewhere, but if you want to consider what’s POSSIBLE have a look at the results of today’s Western Australian election. Holy cow!!
(If anything, I think a generally competent response to COVID-19 has combined with other factors to give McGowan and the Labor party TOO big a win. It’s not good for one party to have that level of dominance.)
If the alternative is to the bad guys or stupid guys too much leverage, stay with the party that has neither until further notice.
I wouldn’t be so quick to discount the chances of the party of conspiracy, ignorance and racism. Fox News will continue to stoke their anger, even if it’s just over Doctor Seuss, and they’ll get out and vote in massive droves. Assume nothing.
I hope so, but devil’s advocate: 74 million people voted for Muammar Covfefe, they really hate Dems and Libs, QAnon is ascendant (Sam Bee had a great piece last week on how average white moms have been co-opted, and there’s a lot of them), it’s hard to get the constituents of the party in power to come out and vote in mid-terms…So we need to do everything we can in the first two years and Biden, Harris, Chuck and Nancy seem to understand that as they are moving at warp speed, all puns intended, on a very strong liberal agenda that will be HUGELY BIGLY for the country. I hope the independents and everyone else get the message and vote blue in the midterms.
New day, Jeff, with new rules to go with it. 74 million is only a third of American citizens and we outnumber that crowd. Personally I don’t trust Sam Bee to tell me that the sun will rise tomorrow, as she tends to be more Daily Beast than Washington Post, if you get my drift. The lessons of the last decade, as you noted, have sunk in with Biden’s crew. Don’t be shocked if they have a very good midterm.
Wow. No real comment but the article and subsequent spirited discussion is something I like to see. Food for thought Politizoomers, thank you.