It’s been a challenge for me to address the changing political landscape since the Massachusetts special election on January 19. I was hoping that the political tsunami that swept Obama into office and gave the Democrats big majorities in both houses would be the start of a progressive wave that would carry us forward through the 2012 time.
But the replacement of Senator Kennedy with Scott Brown in Massachusetts clearly marks a new phase of political history for our country. Most political pundits are forecasting a big resurgence of political strength for Republicans in the Congress in 2010 in both the Senate and the House.
The Tea Party movement seems to be gaining momentum and now polls well in popularity compared to either of the major political parties.
Although President Obama still enjoys about fifty percent approval ratings, he is starting to look vulnerable in 2012. Congress is caught up in unprecedented grid lock and polarization. Republicans have used filibusters to block most legislative progress in the Senate.
Welcome to the political Chaostrophe of the 2012 time.
Yet things are not as bleak as they appear. My forecast is that the Democrats will lose a net of only two Senate seats in 2010 and no more than 25 House seats. To understand how this can be, we need to understand what is fueling the regressive political tides. In spite of how it looks in March, 2010, the political chaos of 2010 is a two-edged sword with negative consequences for both Republicans as well as Democrats.
It’s understandable that the sense of rapid change that we are all experiencing in this 2012 time is not welcome to many people. There is a big divide with the Republicans and tea baggers on one side resisting change and the Democrats on the other embracing it. Independents, nonpartisan voters that make up about fifty percent of the voting population, would then be somewhere in the middle.
This political scenario seems to be a world away from the 2008 elections. In that political time, the theme was change and it brought Obama a near landslide victory plus big Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. It was Obama’s hope and vision versus the Bush administration’s legacy that clouded McCain’s campaign.
Once Obama came into office though and the Democrats had nominal control of Congress, the bloom soon fell off the rose. There has not been an immediate transformation of our country in a positive direction.
Obama’s team was able to pull the US, and ultimately the world, away from the brink of economic disaster through a series of governmental interventions. Yet the so-called recovery leaves no one very happy. For what we really have is a chronic recession, the Great Recession. In my reading, we are in the second year of a three year economic storm.
The world is changing at a disconcerting rate in the 2012 time and there is nothing that can really slow down the rate of change. We are a civilization in crisis. And as in all crises involving human beings, the options are acting out against others or ourselves, trying to turn back the clock, or embracing transformation and making the most of the opportunities that this presents.
The Tea Party Movement seems to embody the acting out against others option. If you look at the demographics of the Tea Party Movement, it’s clear that they don’t represent a broad spectrum of Americans.
There are almost no people of color in their movement. They have a disproportionate number of males and they are pretty much all middle class and above in net worth. They could well call themselves the Privileged People’s Party as in “I’ve got mine and don’t you dare mess with me.”
Although I have no research on this point, it’s easy to imagine that 95% or better have health insurance. They are economic survivalists and would be economic vigilantes. They are like people who take up rifles in riots to protect their property in times of extreme social chaos. They model themselves after the economic vigilante behavior of the Revolutionary War era individuals who poured the English tea into the bay.
The Republicans embody the turn back the clock response to crisis. They could also be called the Privileged People’s Party except that they have a major contingent of people who aren’t that well off. And, of course, most of the “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” religious right folks are in their camp.
This is starting to look like some apocalyptic scenario of a zero sum game conflict over diminishing resources. These conflicts are really about economic resources in spite of the ideological rhetoric about liberty and freedom used to rationalize narrow interest and self-serving behavior.
I guess as long as you believe that economic apocalypse is already upon us, economic survivalist and economic vigilante behavior might seem a reasonable course. But this is not what’s so in our country or in the world. My reading is that it’s not our future either. We’re going through a tumultuous reorganization of our economic functions and institutions. Old systems are crumbling. Yet this is far cry from total chaos and anarchy.
If you live in a world of moral or economic absolutes, then it seems reasonable to take a conservative posture in the effort to maintain economic and social structures which in your view support eternal truths.
From the rhetoric perspective, the Tea Party philosophy seems reasonable enough. The economic absolutes they hold as their principles are free markets, limited government, and fiscal responsibility. By fiscal responsibility they mean fewer taxes and no deficit spending.
All of this makes great sense if you’re a member of the Privileged People’s Party because it serves to conserve the wealth you already have. But from a national and global perspective, it’s an amazingly short sighted perspective. As the world changes, we need to adapt our economic strategies. For example, lack of sufficient regulation in financial industries almost catapulted us into another world-wide depression.
There is a genuine political Catastrophe aspect to what is happening this year and which will continue throughout the 2012 time. People are defending incompatible pictures of what’s real, true, and important. We see this in the obstructionism from the Republican Party who routinely votes as a block against any progression measure that Obama puts forward.
The assumption of the regressive political elements is that the human species won’t be able to adapt to the changes of the 2012 time. We’ll be swept into a whirlpool of chaos, anarchy, and ultimately destructive economic forces. This is what will happen unless we stop any and all attempts to tinker with our economic and social order.
There is considerable hypocrisy in the regressive movements. Tea Party activists run down to sign up for what they would otherwise condemn as socialist programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. You don’t see any of them staging a protest by refusing individual government help.
In several states, Republican politicians accepted government help from the economic stimulus while claiming it was a disastrous policy.
As long as we’re under the spell of the Great Recession, the Democrats are vulnerable. The anxieties and fears of change of the 2012 time are given a foundation in reality when the economy is struggling. Apprehension about the future is easily co-opted by those who seek to manipulate the voting public through appeals to fear.
But what we will see in the rest of 2010 is creeping prosperity. The economy is slowly getting better and even the unemployment issue is turning around. Obama’s popularity is on the rise. We could expect this to happen as the unreasonable expectations of Obama, the instant miracle worker, wear off with time.
The Republicans are not as strong as they may appear to be. They have put forward no positive agenda for the country. Moreover their embrace of the Tea Party Movement will not help them the way they think.
The Republican Party is locked in a battle between the purists and the pragmatists. To the extent that they echo the Tea Party line, they add fuel to the primary campaigns of very right wing candidates like senate candidate Marco Rubio in Florida. This opens the door for Democratic victories in unexpected places.
This has already happened in a special election in New York District 23 where the Tea Party faction sabotaged the Republican candidate forcing her to withdraw. She eventually endorsed the Democratic candidate. A seat which has been in Republican hands since 1870 went into the Democratic column.
A majority of the people in the United States think the country is going in the wrong direction. This reflects economic anxiety plus apprehension about where change is taking us as we move through the 2012 time. People want Congress and the President to do something, to take action.
The best Republicans can offer is some promise about slowing down change and trying to keep things the way they have been in the past. My reading is that people won’t buy into this completely. Change is happening whether we want it to or not. What I see happening is a significant number of people coming to understand that turning into the wave is much better than turning our backs to it.
After the November, 2010 election, there will be two fewer Democrats in the Senate and some 25 less in the House. However, I don’t see this changing the dynamics of Congress much. Many of the Democrats voted out in the House are going to be from conservative districts and their support for progressive legislation was already pretty minimal.
The Democrats are actually almost as well off having 57 Senators if they can’t get to at least 62. With 60 Senators in their caucus, every member of the caucus has virtual veto power over important legislation.
The polarization between the conservative and progressive political factions is going to continue to grow as we go further in the 2012. As it intensifies, this will give people a clear choice between starkly contrasting political philosophies.
But the spiritual intelligence of our population is also on the increase. This is justification for cautious optimism that the progressive elements will be able to prevail in spite of desperate opposition from regressive forces.
The Democratic Party is going to have to push ahead with little or no support from any Republicans on most of the big issues. The Democrats are not a unified ideological block like the Republicans. But they are capable of reaching agreements and compromises within their caucus. This is the politics of inclusion of differing viewpoints that Obama want to champion. It’s just can’t happen across the Republican, Democratic divide.
The front line in the current political turmoil is health care reform. My reading is that the Democrats are going to get it done in spite of the parliamentary obstacles and knarly process of House vote plus reconciliation. This will prove to be a tipping point away from Republican and Tea Party ascendancy towards something that looks like a quest for positive solutions.
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