P. Krugman: Disdain for workers and the 47% meme

I am a long-time fan of Paul Krugman for his wisdom and his technical mastery, and for being one of the few prominent liberals in America to call himself a liberal (as in his book-length argument, The Conscience of A Liberal, Norton & Co., 2007).  One of my pet projects in life is to proselytize on behalf of Krugman's better ideas...

It would be interesting, if one had the time and ready historical access, to see if there is a correlation over the years between the frequency of Paul Krugman's morality-themed columns (like his Thursday NY Times op-ed seen below) and the salience of politics in the national consciousness -- such as is highest in campaign seasons.  When I say morality-themed, I mean emphasis on moral judgment as distinct from his more typical emphasis on analytics or on analysis-based advocacy for specific economic policies and strategies.  As the prime example of the latter type, many Krugman columns have been variations on the theme of promoting Keynesian stimulus and admonishing against Tea-Party austerity as the antidote to recessionary economic trends.

Or it might not be so interesting, but my sense is that Paul's been coming with morality-themed columns more and more as the election approaches. And that's fine with me, because I agree with his implicit belief that this damn well should be a values-based decision, not a corporate hiring process to choose the best economic technician.

Now, I have learned that the most provocative and interesting Reader Comments under Dr. Krugman's op-eds seem to come in response to columns that emphasize values over technical analysis.  So I scrolled down to peek at them under this one and as usual I was gobsmacked to see the comments from the "intellectual leaders" of the Gilded Age Society who espouse the Gospel of St. Paul (Ryan, R WI, THE "intellectual leader of the GOP"). They are now using the newest talking-points language, laced with "Makers and Takers" and "redistribution".

These Romney/Ryan fans believe in this stuff. They see eye-to-eye with big-bellied cigar-puffing club members ensconced in their leather chairs with the stock listings and a brandy.
Workers don't matter when the business of business is repackaging paper and anything you want to actually make can be made in Asian sweatshops by indentured peons.

Look at the great period of American economic-industrial growth from 1945 to the 1970's. The prosperity of the middle class is what sent this country to the head of the world class. The rich did get richer, absolutely, but workers had access to the American Dream.  

Did the Makers get us to the moon?  It was a public-private partnership led by government and made successful by a huge team of educated middle class men and women.  You know, workers.  

As the status of the worker has eroded decade after decade for the last 30+ years, the U.S. rankings on all measures of thriving have plummeted along with the status of workers.  As inequality expands, the prosperity of workers shrinks and the country as a whole suffers.  Everyone knows the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, one of the worst rates of return in health outcomes for our health care dollar, and an education system that only works well for the kids whose families started them out with relative advantages.  When a presidential candidate says, as Mitt Romney said at a school in West Philly in the spring, that class size has no impact on learning, that bodes badly for the kids of today's workers.

Disdain for Workers

By PAUL KRUGMAN

By now everyone knows how Mitt Romney, speaking to donors in Boca Raton, washed his hands of almost half the country — the 47 percent who don’t pay income taxes — declaring, “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” By now, also, many people are aware that the great bulk of the 47 percent are hardly moochers; most are working families who pay payroll taxes, and elderly or disabled Americans make up a majority of the rest.

But here’s the question: Should we imagine that Mr. Romney and his party would think better of the 47 percent on learning that the great majority of them actually are or were hard workers, who very much have taken personal responsibility for their lives? And the answer is no.

For the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without saying, make up the vast majority of Americans.

Am I exaggerating? Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.

Lest you think that this was just a personal slip, consider Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. What did he have to say about American workers? Actually, nothing: the words “worker” or “workers” never passed his lips. This was in strong contrast to President Obama’s convention speech a week later, which put a lot of emphasis on workers — especially, of course, but not only, workers who benefited from the auto bailout.

And when Mr. Romney waxed rhapsodic about the opportunities America offered to immigrants, he declared that they came in pursuit of “freedom to build a business.” What about those who came here not to found businesses, but simply to make an honest living? Not worth mentioning.

Needless to say, the G.O.P.’s disdain for workers goes deeper than rhetoric. It’s deeply embedded in the party’s policy priorities. Mr. Romney’s remarks spoke to a widespread belief on the right that taxes on working Americans are, if anything, too low. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal famously described low-income workers whose wages fall below the income-tax threshold as “lucky duckies.”  

What really needs cutting, the right believes, are taxes on corporate profits, capital gains, dividends, and very high salaries — that is, taxes that fall on investors and executives, not ordinary workers. This despite the fact that people who derive their income from investments, not wages — people like, say, Willard Mitt Romney — already pay remarkably little in taxes.

Where does this disdain for workers come from? Some of it, obviously, reflects the influence of money in politics: big-money donors, like the ones Mr. Romney was speaking to when he went off on half the nation, don’t live paycheck to paycheck. But it also reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us are just along for the ride.

In the eyes of those who share this vision, the wealthy deserve special treatment, and not just in the form of low taxes. They must also receive respect, indeed deference, at all times. That’s why even the slightest hint from the president that the rich might not be all that — that, say, some bankers may have behaved badly, or that even “job creators” depend on government-built infrastructure — elicits frantic cries that Mr. Obama is a socialist.

Now, such sentiments aren’t new; “Atlas Shrugged” was, after all, published in 1957. In the past, however, even Republican politicians who privately shared the elite’s contempt for the masses knew enough to keep it to themselves and managed to fake some appreciation for ordinary workers. At this point, however, the party’s contempt for the working class is apparently too complete, too pervasive to hide.

The point is that what people are now calling the Boca Moment wasn’t some trivial gaffe. It was a window into the true attitudes of what has become a party of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy, a party that considers the rest of us unworthy of even a pretense of respect.

 

 

A Phan's Phond Pharewell to Phightin' Phils

In nomine patri...

Amen
 
Now that Last Rites have been administered, Long Live the 2012 Philadelphia Phillies. 

Three cheers for a team that came back from near-death to show what they were made of after Utley and Howard came back. But Halladay never did come back, went from Cy Young to fifth starter in the blink of an eye and a lot of mileage on his shoulder. We feel for him and how hard it is for him to be unable to compete as he has been used to. 

The hitters once again went on strike, which suggests they had indeed gotten into the playoff mindset!  Each game in the last few days was a must-win, so that's the perfect time to go back to the playoff game plan at the plate: take a first-pitch fastball down the middle and swing wildly at the second pitch as it breaks down and in off the plate. 

The bullpen has been at best inconsistent, and they’ve had no third baseman since Placido went down...

So it ends, with our bright red balloon in a shrivelled little puddle at the end of the string.  Which is where the Phightins are at the moment, string-wise.

So the drama ends today at the short end of a 2-1 loss, yet another crushing abuse of Mr. Lee by the Phillies noodly bats.

When we talk about the end of the Phillies’ string, we mean the straight-line, downward-sloping trajectory of the Phillies over five years.  They have gone from "the 2008 World Champions of Baseballlllllllllllllllllllll" (Harry Kalas) to 2009 World Series losers (to World Champ NYY) to 2010 LCS losers (to World Champ SFG) to 2011 Division series losers (to World Champ STL) to... five behind with nine to go and three teams in front of them; has any team ever overcome that deficit?  While averaging 1.5 runs a game?  Think not.  

So they were the champs in ‘08, and then for three years they lost a playoff series to the respective eventual champs.  Some consolation, maybe, in that.

They have hit bottom.

Which is great news, cuz there ain't nowhere to go, but UP!

Phils have Hamels and Lee, Kendrick and Worley, Cloyd and Halladay to start. Their young bullpen has benefited from invaluable experience in meaningful late-season games. They need a hitter in the outfield and an eighth-inning set-up man like Mr. Mad Dog Madson.

I said in July that the season would be a success if they signed Cole. The season has been a success! An incredibly disappointing success! 

They should start 2013 healthy, with high expectations.

I think I'm going to root for the Nationals, because I am rooting above all for the most prominent resident of Washington to win it all too. And even though their fans may not really deserve it for the level of support they've given them, the franchise has been at the bottom for so long that it makes for a good story.  If not the Nats, then the Dodgers to make my LA peeps happy.

Unless the Phils go all Lazarus, win out and get into the playoffs, of course!

Thank you if you cared enough to read all this silly ventilation. Most of the time the fate of a
fan is to be disappointed; to be a Philly fan even more so. There are so many worse fates around the world, I am grateful to have the luxury of giving a hoot about a baseball team.

The unReal Phillies, The Real Romney & "47%" with 47 days to go

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Howard

Politics and Phillies baseball are competing obsessions of mine.  In Philly, a solidly blue town, the big debate is whether to write off the Phils’ playoff chances or not.  I say NOT, but last night I was nevertheless raptly watching MSNBC’s ongoing “47% video” pundit fest, occasionally flipping to the Phils-Mets game for quickie peek-in updates.

So it looked mighty grim when a flipover landed me in the very last ditch between hope and the abyss of an early off-season: the Phils were down 2-1 with two outs in the ninth, facing a hard-throwing lefty reliever, long the Phils' late-innings nemesis, who was poised to register the last out and finish off the Phightin’ Phils.  For the game and the season.

But the batter at that moment happened to be the ultimate samurai-warrior Chase Utley, so for the first time all night I stayed with his at-bat all the way.  Every pitch to Utley was the potential last pitch of a taut game in which the Phillies had but two hits over 8 2/3 innings. Rookie Josh Edgin had struck out the first two batters to come up before Utley.  Chase fought through a ten-pitch battle with Edgin to draw the walk.  After ball four Utley stayed in the box as if it had been ball three, though it wasn't clear if the ump had lost count or Chase was trying to milk another bite at the apple.  He was sent to first base.

So Howie comes up (teammates call Ryan Howard Howie).  His results against lefty relievers had been a little less than encouraging: 0-for-2012.  But I had read an article in yesterday's Inquirer that made the counter-intuitive case that Ryan was still the key to the Phillies' offense. So, instead of visualizing the inevitable lunging whiff at a curve ball a foot off the plate -- 38 pitiful-looking strikeouts in 80 AB's against all lefties don't lie -- I went with yogic breathing and both eyes open to the possibility of magic.

First pitch: strike one.

Second pitch: letter-high fastball, inside half, hands move, bat flashes, contact, take-off

Ala-ka-BOOM!

I whooped and roared, as did most of the Delaware Valley.  It was just a regular season game, a game that is unlikely to change the Phils' 2012 fate, but it was a good dream come true.  Howie’s homer's not going to eclipse one-legged Kirk Gibson's 1988 fairy-tale pinch-hit World Series drive that vaulted the Dodgers to a championship, nor should it.  But it was the closest thing to it that Phils fans have seen since Matt Stairs played hero in the '08 LCS -- which by chance happened at the same venue as Gibson's blow against the A's impenetrable Eckersley.

When you consider the Phils are now 3-59 this year when they trailed going into the 9th, you can see why we might read something more meaningful into this than merely a one-day reprieve from pulling the plug.  Such a long-shot happy ending couldn’t be just a random blip with no implications, could it?  Surely fate, destiny, some cosmic will is tipping its hand in this improbable last-second escape from doom.

I mean, after all, they don't have to play the Astros again, so who's going to keep them from winning out?????

So then I went back to the 47% video festival to watch the continuing evisceration.  I learned from Lawrence O’Donnell that Mitt even misled the Boca Raton heavy donors about his having received nothing from his family on the way to financial mega-success.  Turned out that Ann had told the world about the stock stash George Romney had given his son and that had sustained them in college years; dad also bought them a house for $47,000 that they later sold for $90,000.  They not only lived rent-free, she said, they made a big profit to boot!      

One still-open question for serious independent American voters is whether the Boca Raton Rombot is The Real Romney, the one who'd occupy the Oval Office, or whether that video only captures Rombot wearing the Tea-Party mask he believed he needed to wear for the occasion, to please those $50K-a-plate donors.  

Undecided voters know he's a flip-flopper, so they figure he might not be as bad a POTUS as his words imply.  Progressives, we already decided ones, know beyond any margin of uncertainty that a Romney/Ryan administration would double down on the direction that Bush/Cheney took the country on all fronts: tax cuts for wealthy folks, Wall St. deregulation, environmental laws gutted like a Wasilla trophy moose, and ruthless rollbacks of rights for workers, women, gays, immigrants.

But many of those who are still undecided have to some degree bought into the notion that Obama (as distinct from, say, the obstructionist Congressional GOP with its personhood bills, its 32 ACA repeal bills, and its record-setting number of Senate GOP filibusters) is at fault for the slowness of the economic recovery.  They think maybe Romney is the business powerhouse who will take the reins and get the thing galloping.  Of course other undecided voters include disappointed liberals, but that's a subject for another post.

But then again, now they could be turned off by Romney's contempt for 47% of their fellow Americans (many of them are among the 47%!).

So David Brooks' best defense of Romney (the instantly famous Thurston Howell Romney NYT op-ed) is that it's not The Real Romney in Boca; Mitt's just pandering.  We could spend two posts dissecting Brooks's right-wing spin on "entitlements" and how dearly the country needs Romney/Ryan's "reform ideas", but to keep focus on the subject at hand, Brooks says he believes The Real Romney is "a kind, decent man".  Presumably this impression relies on Mitt's obviously warm family ties and his love of shaggy dogs.  Unfortunately, that impression does not comport with any of Romney's policy or even philosophical statements, and, according to a letter from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, when he picked Paul Ryan he embraced in Ryan's budget a blueprint for destroying the "'circle of protection' ... around essential programs that serve poor and vulnerable people."  The bishops' letter says Ryan's plan does not meet their "moral criteria".  I guess "kind" and "decent" can be in the eye of the beholder -- or in the empty belly of the child in poverty with nothing on his plate at dinner time because SNAP lost out to new fighter jets in the very thoughtful Ryan budget. 

Another view on The Real Romney question came from John McCormick, a Bloomberg political writer.  He tweeted (as reported on Chuck Todd's MSNBC hour) yesterday that the Boca Raton version of Romney is what Mitt looks like when he inhabits his "severely conservative" persona.  Romney has no gut feel for that far-right world view and no intellectual grounding in it, says McCormick, so what comes across is a made-up "caricature" of a severe conservative.

Both men say it's not The Real Romney in the 47% candid video.  McCormick's take resonates for me as a valid assessment of that clownish performance, at least in the sense that it does feel like a caricature drawn from the vaporous “We are the 53%!” narratives of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.  

However, the takeaway for independent/undecided voters should not be that The Real Romney is, underneath the mask, a substantially different or kinder or better man than that Boca Raton Rush Limbaugh caricature.

The takeaway should be drawn from the full record of the man: he is a man of no principle but ambition, no conviction but those adopted for the audience, and he does not relate to or care about the impact of his actions on the "little people", such as the thousands who lost their jobs when Bain-bought companies were looted and tossed into the trash heap.

The real Mitt Romney is a man who can rationalize collateral damage with a poise and self-satisfaction that Dick Cheney must envy. Can anyone doubt that his stomach for massive casualties would make George W. Bush look like a squeamish Sally? Bread lines? Tent cities?  Not his job to worry about them -- losers and moochers can't expect to be rewarded for their failure, for Pete’s sake!  Anyway, let’s not forget that their pain is someone else's gain, and we have programs in place for them. 

It would be way too delicious if the next revelation was that Romney himself did not pay federal income taxes in past years, but we can not count on that. That question has to be kept in the foreground of the campaign, especially in light of the derision Romney directed at half the population that may or may not be the half that includes him.  

Absent that ultimate self-inflicted KO punch, there is one other point on which I concur with the "GOP political strategist" types who have been appearing on my TV the last few days: the race is NOT OVER.  The Obama edge has narrowed from the post-convention bump max-out.  The debates are coming.  Voter suppression efforts of all kinds will challenge us to get Democratic votes cast.  A billion dollars is likely to be thrown at Democratic candidates.  

On this point, Bob Reich has an op-ed in Reader Supported News today that cautions us to take seriously that Romney could win.  He cites four factors that belie the currently Obama-leaning poll numbers: the two upcoming monthly jobs reports, the three debates, the quasi-infinite PAC dollars and the filthy-dirty wave of voter suppression efforts  

The outcome of the jobs reports and the debates is outside of our sphere of influence, but progressive voters can and must make a difference in GOTV, Voter ID efforts, and campaign finances.  The other side will be throwing everything into the fight, and we had better be prepared to do no less. 

So as the night comes to a close, the Phils still have a slim and unlikely chance. Even that depends on outside help, no matter how many they can win.  The prospects for Obama and the Democrats are far better, and the outcome matters a whole hell of a lot more. 

I end with the point that an Obama win means much more with down-ballot Democratic wins in Congressional races.  However, even with a Repubbleton House, an Obama win should force the GOP to reassess the political strategy of obstructionism.  If voters stick the tail for the GOP’s failure to work for the good of the country not on the “donkey” but rather where it belongs -- on the GOP’s asses – the moderates may regain leverage in that party.  I hope.

Romnophobia

Mitt Romney may be more of a job destroyer than a job creator, but he has an indisputable knack for stimulating op-ed column writers.

Gail Collins' turn in the Times rotation came yesterday, and she did the best she could. The essence she distills from l'affaire premature ejaculation (Merriam-Webster's Coll. Dict., 10th Ed.: "a sudden, vehement emotional utterance") is that the quality of stability that Romney seems to want to project in his demeanor (presumably he's not actually going for boring, sterile, rod-stiff rigidity) belies his core of hair-trigger flightiness. 

On the outside he is the stoic, square-jawed Prince Valiant.  Immediately beneath the facade resides the second coming of George Costanza, the guy who panics under fire and elbows old women and children out of the way in a rush to the exit. 

So much is being reported on television and written online (e.g., Frank Rich) on this ignoble incident in the major media.  Initially there was a broad media backlash against the Romney remarks.  Even neutrals such as Chuck Todd expressed shock and disgust at Romney's attack on the President while terrorists' RPG's were still cutting through the air in Benghazi.  Most politicians and media people on the right also reacted negatively on day one.  

Then on day two the right-wing pols and talkers returned to their hyper-partisan senses to line up dutifully behind Willard.  The frantic Fox-driven right decided to risk being tarred by the public's repugnance at Romney rather than lose an opportunity to barbeque the prez and fire up the base.  

And now from the commentariat, from Collins and Rich and others, we're getting the second wave of more considered reflections on Romney's revealed recklessness.  

The only thing I have not seen in the conversation is to take the reflections back to the Repubblefun primary circus.   Recall how clownish they all looked in their rush to cram themselves into the micro-sized Tea-Pee tent on every issue. Huntsman notwithstanding -- he refused to bend over for the banjo-pickin' rednecks -- Mitt was dubbed by the media to be the least ridiculous of the clowns. He parlayed that image of putative sense-making with overwhelming tens of millions of plutocrat dollars to leave the pack behind.

That he had to struggle to separate himself from anti-contraception crusader Rick Santorum and moon-loony Newt Gingrich might have raised a caution.  Actually, it did raise plenty of doubt, but Chris Christie and Jeb Bush had decided not to risk it against a well-liked incumbent, so Ann Coulter et al decided they had to swallow hard and rally for Romney. 

But the point of this reminiscence to the primaries is to recall that Mitt was -- and still is -- an unserious man.  A serious man, to borrow Lillian Hellman's great metaphor, cannot and will not cut his conscience to fit this year's fashion -- or kowtow to the current Tea Party madness. 

As Romney stood at the podium rebuking Obama for apologizing to terrorists, I envisioned how natural he would look with a big red Patch Adams rubber nose.  He truly is a clown, a guy who will say and do anything for a vote.  And for the first time, I understand why some people are afraid of clowns. 

The people who write the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual may have to coin a new diagnostic category in the next edition: Romnophobia.  I hope that on November 7th we will all be able to look back in relief on these days of shuddering at the prospect of President Romney. 
 

Multi-tiered swirl of psycho-sickness from LA to Cairo

The events in Bengazi and Cairo have the potential to trigger diplomatic, political and even military chaos.  This multi-tiered swirl of global hate-laced psycho-sickness boggles the mind.  

Promoters of hatred like Islam-hating "film producer" Sam Bacile and Pastor Terry Jones are pre-human scum.  Their cultural assault on Islam deserves condemnation from all responsible governments. 

That is not to say they are not free to create a film whose content is not in violation of our laws.  However, while they are within the law, their activities have nothing to do with art; the clear intent of the film was to offend and inflame, not to serve any artistic end.

The only thing that could trump the level of contempt and condemnation Bacile and Jones are owed is to act out reflexive hate with mob violence, heavy weaponry and murder. As Hillary Clinton pointed out this morning, the Libyan maniacs have murdered the very people who were responsible for preventing the wholesale destruction of Bengazi, the city where the attack occurred. There is no justification for what the Libyan and Egyptian mobs have done.

And Willard Mitt Romney swoops down like a blind fly on a fresh turd to condemn the Cairo embassy's condemnation in order to score political points in the midst -- not in the aftermath, in the midst -- of the mayhem.

He says Obama "apologized for American values" via the Cairo embassy statement.

Let's leave aside the quibble that the embassy had not cleared the statement with State or the White House, the embassy statement in no way apologized for American values. If he means "free speech" is an American value, he is totally twisting the content and import of the embassy statement. Free speech does not equate to unaccountable speech or the right to speak without public or governmental criticism or condemnation when the speech itself is antithetical to American values and policy.

I do think Romney's creepy behavior will only dig his hole deeper. Extreme righties will roar in approval at Romney's tone-deaf rant, but I do think most Americans on the sane side of the line that divides the far Limbaugh-O'Reilly-Hannity right from the rest of us will rightly be nauseated by the Romney campaign's impulsive and irresponsible attack on the president while American diplomats are still in danger. 

Romney has once again let his campaign react like a trained seal to the importunings of the Tea-Pee types telling him he needs to "go ideological" and attack more viciously. Moreover, his ongoing political ineptitude shows in clumsily misperceiving this as the perfect moment for an RNC do-over -- i.e., to undo the critique of the GOP at their convention for ignoring the troops in Afghanistan.

Romney's response is George Costanza's "jerk store called" episode revisited. Obsessing over their embarrassment at exposing their indifference to the horrific stresses on our armed forces and then having it rammed down their throats by the DNC's spotlight on troops and vets, they leapt at the first opening without thinking through the consequences.

Romney should reap the same kind of shame that George did in the culminating scene when he finally got to deliver his long-simmering comeback wittily invoking his antagonist's wife -- only to be informed that the man's wife was in a coma in the ICU. Oh, well.

I'm ambivalent about focusing on Romney when the important part of what's happening is the death and destruction and the smoking diplomatic volatility that has the potential to escalate in all kinds of directions. I pray that Morsi in Egypt has the courage to come down on the behavior of mobs and to impose the rule of law, including pursuit and prosecution of the perps. It will require courage because the so-called Muslim Brotherhood is calling for more mobs! The Libya situation looks to be stickier yet and may require direct, forceful intervention.
 
Whatever response Obama takes, at some point he needs to give the back of his hand -- as one would to a buzzing fly with a mouthful of excrement -- to the insufferable lying jerk-off who has decided that his campaign was more important than American diplomats under attack and more important than an unfolding international crisis, one that must be addressed by the real POTUS.

Obama in Seminole as the pendulum swings back

President Obama spoke to a fired-up crowd in Seminole FL on Friday, the day after the Democratic National Convention wrapped.  The Democrats were still having a good time as the party had come to an end, which usually bodes well for whatever is being celebrated, whether a wedding or a candidacy.  And it continued on that way in Seminole. 

Obama was funny in Florida.  Warning people to beware of GOP economic snake oil, he said Repubblebuns* have the same prescription for every situation: they prescribe tax cuts for a bad economy, and they prescribe the same for a good economy; by the GOP, he said, tax cuts are the perfect thing if you want to lose a few pounds, and the same also "if you want to improve your love life".

I had an intuition as I listened. Now, in fairness, while my intuition is usually on target, the darn problem is that it's only after the fact that I can figure out whether my intuition was actually a case of intuition or a case of wishful thinking.  If it had turned out to be accurate, it was intuition!  Of course.

That said, it occurred to my intuitive inner ear while listening to Obama's interaction with the folks that it may be time for the pendulum finally to swing back in our direction. It's as if the last four years were the transitional moment, the zeitgeist poised in limbo stillness, furiously conflicting energies not so much in equilibrium as in gridlock stasis like two rams in rut.

And now I sense we are on the verge of new movement. My intuitive sense is that we may at last be seeing the emergence of a majority wave in the country that responds to the notion that we're all in this together, that the once-appealing trickle-down voodoo is not magic but self-serving plutocratic snake oil, and that ending tax cuts for millionaires is not class warfare and makes far more sense than doubling down on tax cuts for the one percent.

We have seen 32 years in which the right had the edge in framing the national conversation. Democrats were on the defensive -- under literal impeachment, even, despite the current clownish GOP meme that they themselves were the wind beneath the expansive wings of their much-adored hero, Bill Clinton.

Do they ever stop to listen to themselves at times like this?

Now we've seen a DNC in which Democrats did not cringe at all.  They pushed all their edges -- incumbency, Bin Laden, Obamacare (!), GM & Chrysler, reversal from job losses to job gains, out of Iraq... 

Democrats rallied loudly and fearlessly for the values that brought them together, including women's rights, gay rights, workers' rights and everyone's right to health care.   

Plus they had plenty of ammo to fire at the other guys, and it registered hits. For example, after two years of GOP legislators around the country and in Congress passing bills to roll back women's self-determination, abortion rights and health care access, the clowns at Fox News railed against the Democrats at the DNC for "distracting" Americans by talking about "social issues" instead of the economy! 

What, now the GOP doesn't want credit -- or accountability -- for all their good work on vaginal ultrasounds and forced "counseling"?  You know you're hitting home when they are saying you are hitting below the belt -- that's their exclusive turf, apparently. 

Dizzying arrogance and hypocrisy, as always, but the difference now is that these Fox News/Tea-Pee propaganda frames are not bleeding over into the legitimate media as they had been regularly since the Reagan years. They must wonder what world they are living in now.

It is a new world, in fact. It is the world of the Internet, social media, Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, blogs, and an uncontainable expansion of consciousness of what it means to be "an American".

I have an inkling that the people are listening to the fact checkers more, that they are getting put off by the GOP's contempt for their mental capacities, and that even the corporate media in very small increments has been more willing to compare GOP claims with facts and not always to report conflicting claims from the two sides as equally valid.

Nate Silver at his NYT 538 blog has Obama's percentage "Chance of winning" the electoral vote at 79.8% on September 11.  I do not trust that that number has two months worth of legs; debates are coming and God knows what else. Hundreds of millions of KochAdelsonExxonWallStreet dirty dollars are coming.

But all the dollars they have could not make their convention the kind of roaring success that the Democrats had.  And with more sweat equity, we can overcome their money and their voter ID laws and their rolls-purging and their other dark deeds. 

Onwards and upwards!


* I mean no disrespect by using Repubblebuns and other manglings of the proper terms for the GOP and its members.  When Republians stop disrespecting the Democratic Party by referring to the "Democrat Party", then I will refer to the Republican Party and Republicans.  Democrat is a noun, and Democratic is an adjective.  They are not interchangeable -- and Repubbleyuns know that.