This is pretty good, but I think it's misleading to take all the "Red Wave"
predictions from Fox. I don't watch Fox. I do listen to NPR every
morning, and they were just as sure as Fox News that the GOP would win
big last November; also as disappointed when it didn't pan out. And I
can't help wondering what Chris Hayes was saying before the fact. Don't
misunderstand me, I think the lefty-Democratic resurgence is great news
and I hope it continues. But corporate news coverage is mostly terrible, and Hayes himself as a booster of "meritocracy" is opposed to democracy.
This
morning, for example, NPR's Morning Edition aired a brief interview on the UAW strike with
Bernie Sanders, which they sought to balance with comments from a guy
from the Brookings Institution. Does NPR "balance" its interviews with
right-wing politicians and pundits by talking to people from the left?
They do not. If they can, they'll talk to commentators who are further to the right.
I'll try to finish this before the Super Tuesday polls close.
Incidentally, a young woman of about 30 who works in my apartment building's rental office asked me yesterday what "Super Tuesday" is. I explained it to her, and she really had no idea. Not only about Super Tuesday, but what primaries are for, and some other basic parts of the electoral process. I did my best.
Every day I feel inadequate to comment on this campaign season, compared to years past when I wrote quite a lot on the subject, because I don't think I know enough. I haven't been following the process as closely this time because I'm old and tired and depressed by the raving ignorance (see the comments under that one) and irrationality (ditto) of so many people of "progressive" and "left" politics. A lot of people are shooting off their mouths and keyboards about politics despite knowing not much more than the young woman I was talking to yesterday. Yet I realized, and not for the first time, that despite my ignorance I am much better informed than many of my fellow citizens, and indeed better than many professional commentators whose job it is to inform themselves. I'm not bragging here, understand, just pointing out how disturbingly low the bar is.
That realization is probably not going to open the floodgates of discourse around here. But I just started watching a clip on Youtube from The Hill's Sunrise morning program. I've been semi-following Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti for a couple of months now, and they are much better than most news commentators I've come across, despite some blind spots. (I thought I'd already written here about some of those, but it seems not.)
As I hope everyone knows (though after yesterday's conversation I realize I could be wrong), both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the Democratic competition yesterday and endorsed Joe Biden. As someone remarked of Buttigieg, this represented perhaps the first time a rat has been observed boarding a sinking ship. Today Beto O'Rourke chimed in for Biden too. Krystal Ball commented, with her trademark snark: "Pete and Amy ... may hate each other, but not as much, apparently, as they hate universal health care."
Even I thought at first that this was somewhat unfair - I mean, Pete and Amy and Joe and Elizabeth and Beto are all nice Democrats, surely they don't hate universal healthcare? That's so harsh. And I'm sure many moderate, reasonable centrists would agree with me. Pete and Amy and Joe and Elizabeth and Beto want us to have affordable, accessible universal healthcare that doesn't take away our freedom of choice to pay exorbitant premiums for policies with outrageous deductibles and still be turned down for treatment much of the time - that's America. They don't disagree with Sanders's policies, they only oppose his stridency and loudness and ideological rigidity, and of course all his many privileged white-guy supporters who are so mean and alienating. But then I remembered: if they really didn't object to universal healthcare, they wouldn't oppose it so firmly and dishonestly; they wouldn't have initially have made supportive noises and then backpedaled. If their differences with Sanders really lay in matters of style rather than policy, nothing is stopping them from adopting his policies so that voters could choose based on the important things (his New Yawk accent, etc.) and not his many good and very popular ideas.
But they don't. It's because they hate universal healthcare, an increased minimum wage, free public college, forgiveness of student loan debt, and all the other "divisive" (but very popular) policies that have one vital thing in common: they benefit most or all Americans, not just the rich. So Krystal Ball was right on target. Snarky, but right.
Whence (to unleash my Inner Grammar Nazi) did so many Americans get this idea? Like so many rhetorical questions, it's easy to answer: Along with belief in Santa Claus, we get it from the official propaganda we're
dunned with from childhood onward, down to the marketing campaigns of
the candidates themselves. Partisans only drag out this line when
they're dealing with voters who don't find their candidate inspiring,
or even worse, who've criticized their candidate substantively. Or, worst of all, that they will vote for their candidate as the lesser evil. I suppose it's preferable to the vicious abuse they indulge in when
this one doesn't work. It's what we saw in 2008 and 2012: "Barack is
dreamy! He's all about Hope and Change! He could have big positive repercussions for progressive politics! He'll make us feel good about
being Americans again! He can pronounce 'nuclear'! He'll end the wars!" Anyone who pointed out
that Obama was a center-right corporatist and war-lover was a Republican
troll or a cynical non-voter. Then, after he was in office and showed himself to
be a war-lover and a center-right corporatist, his fans asked who'd been
so foolish as to think he'd be any different from any other politician
-- what did you expect, Che Guevara? Weren't you paying attention? It's 3:26 p.m. on Tuesday in Seoul as I write this, which means it's just after midnight on Tuesday in Indiana. The polls will open in a few hours. In twenty-four hours this foully dispiriting election campaign will be over, and the next one will begin. If Clinton pulls off a decisive victory, Trump voters will throw tantrums; we can hope it won't get any worse than that. Clinton fans will be kvelling about her greatness, the world-historical moment of a female President (sure, other countries have elected female heads of state, but they aren't us) and the glorious peace and prosperity she'll give us. If the results are close, if Clinton wins in the Electoral College or something, everybody will be throwing tantrums. If Clinton loses, the recriminations will be "epic," as the Internet says: everybody but Clinton herself, or the Democratic Party Leadership, will be blamed. I'll be back in the US a week later, if I haven't applied for political asylum in the meantime. By then, I hope, the dust will have more or less settled.
