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.
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