headbonk.com

I haven’t posted in a while, largely due to paroxisms of fear and worry over the outcome of the election next Tuesday.

Despite the fact that he risks jinxing the election by coming right out and talking about an Obama landslide, David Kurtz over at TPM has an interesting post questioning the meaning of a “mandate” in this era of tv media focused campaigning. Since elections have become more about the candidate’s brand than about a real discussion of the issues or their platforms, what is it that is really decided when a particular candidate wins?

Did we just vote for universal health care, or against that cranky old man and his dimwitted running mate?

Moreover, if the Democrats really do win this in a big way on Tuesday, what do we really expect them to pull off?

I just heard a good one from Frank Schaffer of the Baltimore Sun on the Rachael Maddow show:

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

The scary mobs… I’m actually suprised that John McCain would stoop so low. It’s really gross.

More from the opinion piece:

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

And finally…

You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.

I really dig this first part from Thomas Frank’s recent piece in the WSJ:

OK, let me get this straight: The central axiom of conservative Republicanism is that government is inherently corrupt and can’t do anything right.

Over many years of ascendancy, conservative Republicans have filled government agencies with conservative Republicans and proceeded to enact the conservative Republican policy wish list — tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing federal work, and so on.

And as a consequence of these policies our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it. The rescue and recovery of the Gulf Coast was a disaster. The reconstruction of Iraq was a disaster. The regulatory agencies became so dumb they didn’t even see the disasters they were set up to prevent. And each disaster was attributable to the conservative philosophy of government.

Yet now we are supposed to vote for more conservative Republicans because we learned from the last bunch of conservative Republicans that government just doesn’t work.

Just like Republicans in the Senate since 2006 have filibustered every major piece of legislation and then blamed the Democrats for being a do nothing congress.