I haven’t reported to this site in awhile because this is a news site where I get to use naughty words. And, quite frankly, there has not been much to report on. Just a massive recession (i.e. depression) mountainous debt and unfathomable unemployment. There has also been a couple of wars and such.
You know, nothing special.
But now, we are at the start of the next election. Something I can really sink my teeth into.
Honestly, there is no greater spectator sport than Politics. It is the ultimate chess match with all the grit iron grit of the super bowl. This election cycle will be no exception. Already the horses of have started climbing into the gates, waiting for the ringing of the starting bell.
So I have decided to start writing this again in a futile attempt to cover this and other happenings in the news that will just make you want to vomit.
I will save covering each of the thoroughbreds (and I use that term loosely) for later. For the hot topic for now is the debt ceiling.
First and foremost, the debt ceiling is going to be raised so we can all relax (somewhat). The talks on the table is not whether or not we are going to do it. There is no choice what-so-ever. What the reality is (and what has been covered in the press recently) is who is going to take the blame for it.
While the President is working on trying to address the economy and what we need to do to fix it so we only have to do this once, the republicans are playing politics to A) take a high ground position so that they don’t have to bear the responsibility for raising it which would come with a mountain of bad press B) use this to leverage their agenda through Capital Hill and C) us the president as the scape goat for all that is wrong with the economy. Which, if you were paying attention in the last election, was why he was elected in the first place.
Now many would be upset with that last statement but it is a very important point for this next election. If we strip away party loyalty and political rhetoric you see that you had an unpopular aging senator with a barely coherent running mate running against a single term young minority senator with a barely coherent running mate. It was almost like a dare to see who would get elected. Both parties took their best candidates and sat them down in the bullpen. There is a very good chance that if Rudolph Giuliani ran for president, there would be a good chance he would have won. If that happened, the Republican party would have had to bear the responsibility of the recession and the possible coming depression for the next decade if not longer.
Surprisingly (and probably argumentatively) the two best options may have been Al Gore or John Kerry. Keep in mind, the only reason that I say that President Barak Obama was not a strong candidate was his time in service. A couple more terms in the Senate would have made him the solid choice. But the last race was a competition to see who could lose. It takes looking at this from the standpoint of who would walk into this situation willingly. Most would say this is a chance to walk in and be the hero. A smart person who has followed history and knows how long it takes for anything be accomplished in government knows this is only a presidency of political suicide. Excuse the analogy but it is a matter of who would be willing to fall on the grenade. A grenade of housing meltdown, stock market utter corruption, large industry (i.e. Automotive Industry) failure and insurmountable government debt from a previous administration literally seeing how much they could suck off the American tax payers teet. Don’t believe me? I don’t blame you. It’s hard to believe someone would say that about a period in our history where we saw gas prices reach 5 dollars a gallon, the National Debt doubling to the highest its ever been in the shortest amount of time. Where the tax on the rich has reduced to a level not seen since 1956 (yeah, convince me this was a liberal democratic government that made that happen) where conservative spending and actual saving was repealed and used to spend on non-essential wars because of (admit it, fucking awesome propaganda!)
At that time the next President would have to fix Wall Street, Jobs, The Health Care system, The Housing Market, The Automotive Industry, The Banking Industry, Social Security and the National Debt. And you only have three years to do or otherwise the other party takes over. Not only do they take over, but they have twice as much power as the last time because they will be able to say it was all your fault that this took place. (They bank on people’s short term memories. They really do. Watch, it will be awesome. Every single thing that the Bush Administration did would now suddenly be the result of the Obama administration. It will be the most awesome dis-association propaganda campaign the world will ever see. You may actually see other countries as excited about the election of a Republican as they were when President Obama was declared the winner.)
Is there any hope?
Actually yes. Because the original question remains…Do we really want to win the next election?
Currently, no. If the election was tomorrow, there would be no viable reason for either side to take office. Sounds confusing doesn’t it?
Remember a year or two ago when it seemed like democrats were losing seats in the house due to elections? It was almost like the democratic party was giving them away? Well, that was because they were. They lost the election by winning due to the Republicans bringing in the ace in the hole. Sarah Palin hands down was the worst (actually the best) choice for a vice president. Barely the Governor of Alaska, barely known and barely coherent, literally scared the shit out of people willing to vote for the guy with the incoherent alcoholic running mate. I think it could have been the first election where we could have got a dog elected.
The sign that they were giving them away was in the Democratic party backing the most cold hearted un-personable, unrealistic candidate to take over Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat after his death. A historically “blue” seat with a legacy and a strong democratic proud standing. And they back a woman that wouldn’t touch people and was an ice queen. There wasn’t a person anywhere that wasn’t thinking that this was completely ridiculous. I kept waiting for a punch line.
So now the scape goats for each party are set. The President will take all the heat for the Democrats and the Senate and house will take all the heat for the Republicans.
(FYI, that’s what all that “Calling my bluff” and “ensuring a one-term president” bull shit is all about. They are all very aware of what is going on.)
This next election will be very interesting. If re-elected, President Obama will be in one of the most powerful political positions in American Politics, the second term. It’s the no holds barred aspect of the presidency because he doesn’t have to run again. Second term presidents (i.e. Bill Clinton, George W Bush) can get away with damn near bloody murder. The question on the table currently is whether or not the country will still be in turmoil for the next 4 years. Which is still very questionable at this point. Also, contrary to popular opinion, power is actually in Congress. (Which was the design all along). The President and talk all he wants and can create bills for Congress. But Congress actually writes and makes laws. The President really only has veto power. Even the President’s budget has to be approved by Congress.
The President’s real power is in ownership of the voice of the people. So even though Congress has the power, they will follow what the President says if the approval rating is in his favor.
As stated, politics is the ultimate chess match. In chess, it is said that the first key is being able to read the board.
Currently we have the Obama Administration acting as one side of the chess board. They have key chess pieces such as Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic party and the Green / Independent party. On the republican side, we have the current list of canidates, the Republican party and the new saving grace of the Democratic party, the Tea Party.
The fourth party – The Tea Party.
It would not surprise me at all if a significant amount of the funding of the Tea Party comes from third or fourth party contributions from the Democratic Party itself. Finally, the democratic party has a party that will split the Republican vote as much as the Green / Independent party does for Democrats.
The moves –
The second key to chess is playing three or more moves ahead of your opponent. To do this, it requires being able to interpret the moves and signs of the other player and capitalize on their mistakes. Basically, waiting for them to show their hand and their strategy and exploiting it. This is where it gets exciting because it takes watching very closely and looking for the signs.
The good news is that we will know when the economy is set to recover because the fight for the White House will actually get real. First off, the candidates we currently see for the Republican Primary are not the strong horses. These are all contingencies. Mitt Romney looks the part but is from Massachusetts. Which he carries the Universal Health Care Scarlet letter upon his chest. Michele Bachman who has been coming on strong is a Tea Party candidate thrown in to keep the Republican vote split if they need to bail. The rest are basically distractors to keep things on the up and up. (Possibly more on them later). Most likely we have no idea and we are not going to have a good idea until it is unveiled who the strong candidate is until we them. But know that if a strong Candidate comes forth from the Republican party, it means that A) The Republicans feel that the economy will recover in the next 3 to 4 years and B) They know what they are going to do to win not only this election, but the next one as well.
The battle ground for the Democratic party will come down to Congress. It is very difficult to take down a sitting President. Particularly if things start looking up and even more so if things looking even better in the future. But if they don’t feel that the economy will recover in the next 4 years, they will not pull out the big dogs either. They know that at that point they should be able to hold the presidency because the Republicans are not going to push for the seat. They are not going to try to take over Congress and screw their chances for the next election. They will, though, make sure they stay within striking distance in the mid-term elections so that if things change, they can re-claim Congress and pull the 2016 presidency.
So what can we do?
Surprisingly, the opposite of what one would think. Besides trying to keep your head above water financially, the best thing to do is to stand by and watch. If you have party loyalty, bolster support through people you know on the other side (You know who they are) for the opposing parties radical sub-group. In other words, if you are of the Republican philosophy, you will want to encourage those of complimentary opinion to bolster support for the Independent party. If you are of the Democratic Party, you would want to encourage more Tea Party’ers. Modern politics currently use the alternate party strategy. Some believe this is what lead to the first election of the Second President Bush. Bolstering support for the Independent party took away votes from the Democratic party in a political match off that was in a deadlock. This was expanded on later and now has become one of the newest tools in the political strategists tool bag.
Now all of this sounds really cold hearted and inconceivable by any rational human. For what we are dealing with is people’s lives and livelihood. But as the magnitude of a situation grows, the more aesthetic view that is taken to deal with the severity of the situation. Plus, it is my hope, that in learning and understanding the game, the game will no longer be able to be played.
At least that is the hope anyway.