He actually does appear, unless he's playing an even longer con than Barack Obama did, to actually want to save the USA from its monstrous affliction by Republicans and Republicanism.Which is exactly why no one in either party establishment or the media take him seriously. Kucinich's message is outside the spectrum of thinkable thought in the current U.S. political system. Sometimes I'm amazed the Democrats still let him in the clubhouse, though sometimes they do demand their pound of flesh.
What's more, one hypothesis—one I'm tempted to share—for the Obama administration's willingness to compromise so extensively on the promises that candidate Obama made during the 2008 campaign would be that as president, he is playing for time. Obama is taking the best deal on the table today, but hopes and expects that once he is re-elected in 2012—a pretty strong bet, I'd say—he will build on the foundations laid during his first term to bring on the fundamental "change" that is not possible in today's environment.
Indeed, with regard to almost every single one of our problems, we need better, smarter organizing at every level and a willingness on the part of liberals and leftists to work with what remains of the center to begin the process of reforms that are a beginning, rather than an endpoint in the process of societal transformation.
America's system of political representation, now more than two centuries old, has grown ever more anachronistic. For instance, when the United States Senate was created, the most populous state had just twelve times more people than the one with the smallest population. Now it's seventy times; giving those in small and underpopulated states a massive political advantage over the rest of us. And it just so happens that the best-represented areas of America are also the most conservative. It is therefore no coincidence that the forty Republican senators with the ability to bottle up almost anything in the Senate represent barely a third of the US population.Seems clear to me from reading the article that the "it just so happens" bit doesn't seem like coincidence to the author - and I think he makes a strong case for why he feels that way.
This is just the beginning of the problems Americans face in terms of disproportionate representation. The average age of a US senator is 69, while the median age of Americans, according to the most recent census figures, is just over 35. Women are a majority of the US population but only 17 percent of the Senate. Only four senators are African-American, Hispanic or Native American, while these minorities represent a third of the population. Most senators are also millionaires; most Americans, needless to say, are not. Elderly white male millionaires therefore come to do quite well when it comes to legislation. Underrepresented groups, not so much…
But the fact remains; the 2008 election was not a "game change" after all. For genuine change of the kind Obama promised and so many progressives imagined, we need to elect politicians willing to challenge the outdated rules of the Senate; willing to fight for publicly financed elections and, in the absence of that, against the Supreme Court's insistence on giving corporations the same free speech rights as individuals. We must work to transform our culture so that once again the idea of the public good becomes ennobled and the belief that it makes no difference which side you're on—that of citizens or that of corporate profits—concerns the people who craft legislation. We need smarter organizations that pressure politicians as well as pundits and reporters, not necessarily to see things our way, but to hold true to the ideals they profess to represent in the first place.
Utopian idealists' unreasonable expectations unmet. Whining apathy ensues. Right wing takes over again.Yeah, because beliving that people shouldn't be held without trial or being charged with a crime, beliving that we should have universal healthcare, or be mandated to buy private insurance from for-profit companies, or preventing global warming, those things are utopian and we just need to "grow up" and agree with the center right on everything.
Film at 11.
Sigh. The left never grows up.
Yes. This is why I get annoyed with people complaining about Obama, because despite all his faults, he's the best that America will see for a while.The democrats crushed it in the '06 and '08 congressional elections, and Obama came into power with extremely high positive ratings. Democrats controlled all three houses of government. Yeah, bush left a mess, but that doesn't mean that the democrats aren't responsible for cleaning it up. That's how government works. They've pretty much failed and if the country falls back into the hands of the republicans, a lot of that will have been their fault.
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posted by parmanparman at 11:01 PM on July 12, 2010