Looking Back, Looking Forward.

Perspective on a year without Republican Rule, and the 2010 Elections.

(This is a long one. It's the first day on the path to the next 'first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.')

One year ago, Obama became president-elect. Republicans for months have been pointing to the 2010 mid-terms and licking their chops, swearing a replay of 1994's Republican sweep of Congress. Yesterday, two states that went for Obama last year elected Republican governors to replace democratic ones. But a congressional district in upstate NY went Democratic for the first time since the Civil War.
What the hell's going on? Should Dems be worried?

Looking Back

1964 will always be remembered as the second-lowest point for Republicans in the 20th century. (The lowest, of course, was Hoover, the Great Depression, and the resulting 4 terms of FDR.) Goldwater, 'AuH2O', had built on the anger and paranoia of the McCarthyites and the John Birchers, and led them off an electoral cliff.

But by 1968, the Republicans had retaken the White hHouse. The death of the Republican Party was announced too soon. But this was the beginning of the end of the GOP as America had known it for a century. In Johnson's first term, from '64 to '68, Civil Rights, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security expansion, Voting Rights, all brought about an uprising among the racists of the south, who'd always voted Democratic. George Wallace became the candidate of the Dixiecrats until he was shot. The GOP saw the opportunity to throw in with the racists to expand their electoral base, and the 'Southern strategy' gave Nixon the bare electoral edge he needed to take the White House. But through it all, Democrats held both houses of Congress. Coalitions often were created across the aisle to work together on particular bills or initiatives. But Dems could take credit for the agenda, and its successful enactment.

From '69 to '74, Clean Air, Clean Water, the EPA, the banning of DDT, all came from the citizens, through this Democratic Congress. Democrats still held both houses of Congress.

By '74, by acting out the new populist GOP foundation of paranoia and hatred of others, Nixon's crew had committed crimes for which they had been indicted and disgraced. Nixon himself ran from the White House rather than face the impeachment charges that even old-school Republicans were supporting in the House and Senate. His apponted beard, Ford, served two years then was rolled out, replaced by Carter. Still the Dems held both Houses of Congress. Still they set the agenda.

1980 Reagan, 1988 Bush I, 1992 Clinton. With one two-year exception, in the Senate at the beginning of Reagan's first term, Democrats still held both houses of Congress. Iran-Contra, Bork, BCCI, Thomas, all these hearing were in front of Democratic Congressional chairmen.

By the time of the the 1994 sweep of both ends of the Capitol by Newt Gingrich's New Republicans, America had seen 40 years of almost solid Democratic Congressional policies and agendas. Blacks could vote. Women couldn't be kept in the kitchen. Air was becoming more breathable, the water drinkable again. America took these things for granted again, and gave no credit to anyone, instead assuming these were manna that fell from heaven. America had also by then heard over ten years of powerless Republicans telling it how much better it would be when the Republicans took over.
America took the chance. It voted for something new, something shiny, something Republican.

In 12 years, America saw exactly what a Republican Revolution would do in Congress. In the last six of those twelve, it how disastrous a lock-step, doctrinaire Republican monolith, owning all three branches of America's government, could be. When they finally had to walk the talk, Republicans were shown to America for hat they were: bait-and-switch hucksters out for nobody but themselves and their owners. Certainly not out for America. So in 2006, America turned them out of the capitol, and two years later, turned them out of the White House.

That's the look back.
Here's the Look Forward

The 2010 midterms aren't anything like the 1994 midterms. The Dems will have had the White House less than two years, Congress less than four. the Republicans will have been successfully crying 'wolf', sure, but also evidently playing sour grapes and stopping all legislative movement, with no agenda but "NO!"

Then the math of the midterms works against the Republicans too. Most of the Senate seats up for election are Republican, which means a lot of party money will be spent defending existing seats, not as much grabbing for new ones (more at a later date,) and 37 governorships up for election, more than in '94.

And with the demented DeMint Teabaggers working the primaries in 2010, expect a lot of hardline Republicans to find themselves suddenly painted as liberals and wimps as the only active part of the GOP pushes the rest of its body politic over the same cliff Goldwater ran his lemmings off 46 years earlier.

But the 2010 elections are doubly important, especially at the state level. because the governors elected in 2010 will be signing off on the redistricting maps that their states legislatures drwa based on the 2010 census. Those governors, as well as their state legislatures, will need to be Democrats to kept the Republicans at bay for enough time for America to heal from the hurt that 30 years of Republicans put on it.

For thirty years, the Republicans had the White House since 1981 (except for Clinton) or had Republicans running the Congress (since 1994, with criminal charges brought up on any Republican who consorted with Dems), with only one brief period, from 1993 to the end of 1995, when Democrats ran both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. And of course, Clinton crashed and burned on Health Care, while the Congressional Dems thought their 40-year reign would last for ever, so they didn't stand up for him.

So now the next elections start. We have to hold the seats we have. We ought to be able to take some more in the Senate, while holding a wide margin in the House. And we have to get Dems elected to state houses across the land, a prospect made more likely in the face of last night's several rejections of spending limits and tax repeals.

If Republican rule did anything for America, it's this: it reminded America that the way of the Republican is the path to disaster, and that when all the companies fail, America is all that's left. It's We The People, using our government to create the bootstraps we pull ourselves up with. Up from the hole the Republicans dug, and which, after we get ourselves out, we should bury the Republican in.
And with any luck, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the DeMint Teabaggers will help us do it.

Lesson 1: How NOT To Steal An Election

Amateurs!
If the Supreme Leader had waited two days after the election, and then announced that the returns gave Ahmadinijad 52%, Mousavi 43% and the rest of the contenders 5%, the losers would have grumbled and complained, but that would have been it. A plausible finish after a plausible period for the count.

The Grand Council and the Supreme leader could still have just pulled the results out of their rectitudes, but they'd have been accepted.

Instead, they got over-eager, and announced a ridiculously wide margin of victory before even Allah could have counted all the ballots.

Any good American politician could have warned them off. And there are plenty of unemployed but successful campaign consultants who'd have been happy to help in the theft of a national election, to the detriment of the nation and the world.

Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell come to mind...

The Return of the Peacock Throne

The reign of the CIA-installed Shah Reza Palahvi was one of violence-enforced adherence to the Shah's edicts, enforced by the Savak.

The Shah was overthrown by the youth of Iran rioting in the streets, overwhelming even the Iranian Army. Those students created a new, religious democracy, in their idealistic dream that religion would moderate the tendency towards dictatorship.

The Supreme Leader's actions f the past week have put the lie to those dreams, and while almost all the students in the streets this time are still Muslims, they have been taught, by the example of the dictatorship those earlier students now endorse, that this form of government doesn't work either.

Other than claiming his source of power from Allah instead of the CIA, there's little difference in the actions of the Supreme Leader, in his attempt to hold power.

The Shah's Peacock Throne, upon which the Supreme Leader now sits, may be replaced by the Green Revolt, or the Lipstick Revolution, but it will be replaced. More violence against the students will simply give more fodder to their cause, and less will be acquiescence to the revolution.

Either way, the legitimacy of the 30-year reign of rigid religious conservatism has run its course, and its lie is now seen not just outside the nation but within it as well.

Gosh. Sound like any other nation we know?

How and Why Regulations Are Born: An Evolution Lesson

Republicans always whine about all these laws and regulations that keep them from being able to ignore everyone but themselves. The correct response is,"Because we tried it without those regulations, and you and your friends almost killed or bankrupted us, that's why." And because they didn't live through the world as it was before those regs, and because they have the imagination God gave a salt shaker, they don't get it.

So let's watch it happen all over again, in a whole new arena, for the same damned reasons it ever happens: greed, collusion and theft. I'm talking about the widening Student Loan Financing disaster. We relied on the ethics of the financial officers and boards of the universities. We relied on the integrity of the bankers. We were fools, again. They took our trust and literally laughed all the way to the bank, leaving teenagers, teenagers!! holding the bag. One is my youngest niece, who starts college this fall.

As always, add a pinch of Bush-Crony Incompetence. Jon Oberg, a high-ranking staff researcher at the Dept of Education reported on federal subsidies supporting loan-pushing collusion back in 2003 and recommended action to stop it. Two different Secs of Education, both Bush loyalists from Texas, told him, 'Go work on getting us some grant money. We have no power to change the situation.' Then add a dash of Congressional Oversight, when, in January, faced with a suddenly-Democratic Congress, the Dept of Education ended these subsidies...with a single letter to the lenders. And began an investigation.

This is the cycle that creates regulation: a small problem becomes larger, comes to the attention of experts, who warn the players, who ignore the warnings because 'it's not illegal, so the morality is irrelevant'. When it finally comes to the attention of the general public, first they rear back in horror, then they rise up in anger, and demand that the law match their sense of fairness.

This is one way Democrats are created.