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[McDohl]

2010 is, from my vantage point, going to be pivotal in its election season.

Five years of my life were spent in the shadow of socialized health care (hello, Navy doctors!  I'm suffering from severe crippling pain!  "Walk it off, drink lots of water, and take this Motrin.").

Anyway, election season.  Part of the rub for voting this thing up or down is that our elected representatives aren't doing their jobs.  Representing the body of people they were elected by.  On such a high-profile thing, if everyone is all >:( RAEG HAET BAD BILL GO AWAY, then if they STILL vote to pass it, they've just signed their own political death warrant.

[Thad]

I think it's a foregone conclusion.  The Republicans will pick up seats, because the conservative base is fired up, the liberal base is disillusioned, and there won't be a surge of new voters turning out for Obama and marking a straight "D" ticket.

The Democratic leadership (which, if we are lucky, will no longer include Harry Reid) will take exactly the wrong message from this and think they lost because they were too liberal.  We won't be quite as badly off as we were in the '07-'08 season (because George Bush is not President), but we'll be worse off than we are now.

Ain't THAT a bitch.

[patito]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[Brentai]

I think this is almost a good thing.  The worst the GOP can do right now is stop the Dems from doing anything, and in light of recent events I think that's the lesser of two evils when compared to a well-intentioned but inept clusterfuck.  Until they prove otherwise I'm going to consider the current administration as the second coming of Carter.

Make no mistake, the current situation is 100% caused by evil, evil fucking Republicans (and one incredibly fucking evil independent) who orchestrated a disaster for their own political gain, and it's tough to watch it go exactly as they want it.  But if there's anything liberals need to learn, it's how to play the god damn game.  The right way, I mean.

[Thad]

The trouble is that the backlash against Carter gave rise to the modern Republican Party.

[Brentai]

That it did.

Better bet on the Mayan calender being right.

[Thad]

...of course, there's an alternative.  If the liberal base keeps its shit together it might be able to get some primary challengers in there.

Course, we saw what happened with Lieberman in '06, so I don't hold out a lot of hope.  But we've got some heavy hitters.  I'm not talking about the DailyKos crowd; every women's rights organization in the country is gunning for Stupak.

Course, if Stupak lived in a district where a pro-choice Democrat could get elected, one probably would have.

I think a wave of Congressional Democrats getting thrown out BY Democratic voters would send a message, but on the other hand, if the nominees lost, it would be another "That's what you get for being liberals, our only hope now is to be as right-wing as we possibly can if we're going to win elections" situation.

[Transportation]

Incumbent party losses are par for the course in any administration's midterm elections, so this isn't really unexpected.

I can't really speak for health care as the final bill hasn't passed yet*. But unless Obama magically changes his economic approach, we'll probably have a long stagnation period (Carter analogy) due to banks sitting on worthless assets that make them practically insolvent.

On the bright side, Obama is great at making Republicans look crazy. It's not like Reagan came out of nowhere either; he challenged Ford in his primary for President and Obama's been known since his 2004 speech.

So 2012 will rely on the GOP looking and doing stupid things. 2008 gives me confidence this will be the case, more so because the current crop of candidates is worse by some miracle.

Anywho, Afghanistan is a null gain if Iraq is anything to go by (Notice anyone talking about it being a great success or failure? No? There you go.) And unless the House does something crazy, most of the health care benefits only activate at some date past 2010.

This leaves the economy, which means the Democrats are pretty screwed unless some important Republican calls the President a nigger (has this happened yet?) or a successful terrorist attack or something drastic.

A stronger top-down structure (remove Reid please) would be more beneficial than any primary purging as those won't make a progressive majority anywhere in Congress. The 50 state strategy makes the Democratic Party more conservative by definition and this will continue if the Republicans keep getting crazier and corporations and conservative politicians jump ship to the winning team.

*I am relying on the assumption the House will make it less stupid since the Democrats need to pass something and they'll have bargaining power because of that. Ehhh.

[The Artist Formerly Known As Yoji]

No flying cars, no colonies around Jupiter, no sexbots... phooey. I already hate 2010.

[Brentai]

I dunno, I think the economy can be a strong point for the Dems if they just know how to spin it.  All you have to do is say "Okay, remember how panicked you were this same time last year, and compare it to how you feel about the economy today."

You just gotta carry that ball instead of letting the GOP do what they did last time and somehow manage to successfully blame it on Obama before he was even sworn in.

no sexbots...

Not over here anyway.

[Classic]

Thanks to "questionable content" (a webcomic you would do well to note that I am not linking) I remembered that I was a bit sad about a long term quasi-girlfriend leaving indefinitely. Though we parted on reasonably good terms, I no longer have someone I can call sweet-tits (or any adjective-tits combination) without suffering for it. 2010 is looking like a sad year.

EDIT:
It occurs to me that this should maybe be in the happy new year thread. Will move it on request.

[Thad]

So 2012 will rely on the GOP looking and doing stupid things. 2008 gives me confidence this will be the case, more so because the current crop of candidates is worse by some miracle.

I'm assuming an Obama win in '12 just by default.  The Republicans simply don't have anyone who can defeat him, even if the economy's still this bad by then.

A stronger top-down structure (remove Reid please) would be more beneficial than any primary purging as those won't make a progressive majority anywhere in Congress.

Reid's not going to get removed unless he loses reelection.  They wouldn't remove a Homeland Security Committee Chief who quit the party, actively campaigned against Obama, and, incidentally, fucking sucks at being a Homeland Security Committee Chief; they're not going to remove Reid.

The 50 state strategy makes the Democratic Party more conservative by definition

Well, I think that's exactly the sort of conventional-wisdom oversimplification that keeps getting them in trouble.  Yeah, campaigning in red states means backing some blue dogs, but it also means reaching out to people who don't usually vote -- as I noted earlier, the Dems benefited in '08 from the support Obama got from nontraditional demographics.

And I think there's a lot to be said about attitude and charisma.  I think Kerry could have won in '04, and Gore could have won in '00 by a wide enough margin not to have the election stolen, if only they hadn't been such boring, mealy-mouthed pussies.  Obama didn't win because of his healthcare policy or his Afghanistan policy, he won from a combination of his ability to inspire people and the fact that the Republicans had spent the past 8 years destroying the economy.

The Republicans are sure of themselves and the Democrats aren't.  The Republicans go for simple, emotional appeals, and the Democrats don't.

(Okay, so that's a series of oversimplifications too.  But they're at least as valid as yours.)

I am relying on the assumption the House will make it less stupid since the Democrats need to pass something and they'll have bargaining power because of that. Ehhh.

Oh yeah, the House.  The guys who put an abortion ban in their version.  Yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing what sane, rational compromise they give us next.

[Brentai]

They only banned covering abortions directly with public funds.  I don't know how many abortions are being covered by public funds right now anyway, so it might be disastrous, but on the surface it seems like they conceded the littlest, most symbolic inch to get the Republicans to just shut up, and the idiots walked away feeling satisfied.

The Senate on the other hand came up with the simply incredible State-opted separate-abortion coverage scheme, in which if I'm reading this right, lets States force private insurance companies to drop abortion coverage from their plans in that state, but they can offer a separate individual abortion coverage.  Because apparently women who go buying health insurance are going to stop and think "Oh, you know, I might need an abortion someday too."

So the left wing is fucking pissed off because abortion coverage is basically gone, the right wing is fucking pissed off because abortion coverage technically still exists, and this quote from our own Senator Boxer sums up the liberal political strategy nicely:

When you have both extremes saying they're unhappy, I think it's a fair compromise.

 

So yeah, all told, I really am counting on the House's relative sanity to counter the Senate's increasingly irrelevant house-of-lords bullshit.

[Disposable Ninja]

Well, 2010 started off promising when Rush Limbaugh was admitted to the hospital for chest pains. But like many promising things these days it seems, like dust in the wind, it turns out that he was fine.

Damn.

[Büge]

The year is young.

Considering all the celebrity deaths we had last year....

[Mongrel]

Well, 2010 started off promising when Rush Limbaugh was admitted to the hospital for chest pains. But like many promising things these days it seems, like dust in the wind, it turns out that he was fine.

Damn.

I was thinking the same thing.

Schadenfreude? Yes please!

[Thad]

They only banned covering abortions directly with public funds.

No they didn't.  They banned that in the 1970's.

The Stupak Amendment bans ANY FEDERALLY-FUNDED PLAN from covering abortions.  That's just a couple of words off from what you said, but they're nontrivial ones.

That means if a woman currently has a private insurance plan, through her employer, that covers abortion, and her employer starts receiving government subsidies, suddenly her insurance plan doesn't cover abortion anymore.

To wit: our tax dollars are being used to bribe private insurers to cancel their abortion coverage.  (By, of course, the same people who like to beat their chests about the importance of the free market.)

The Senate on the other hand came up with the simply incredible State-opted separate-abortion coverage scheme, in which if I'm reading this right, lets States force private insurance companies to drop abortion coverage from their plans in that state, but they can offer a separate individual abortion coverage.  Because apparently women who go buying health insurance are going to stop and think "Oh, you know, I might need an abortion someday too."

The House plan does this too.

So the left wing is fucking pissed off because abortion coverage is basically gone, the right wing is fucking pissed off because abortion coverage technically still exists, and this quote from our own Senator Boxer sums up the liberal political strategy nicely:

When you have both extremes saying they're unhappy, I think it's a fair compromise.

 

Well at least she's consist--

Boxer charged that male senators who support the amendment are trying to restrict women's freedoms. She hypothetically compared it to an amendment that would force men to purchase an extra rider if they wanted to take Viagra, a provision she said she would not support.

"What have women ever done to deserve this punishment and lack of respect?" Boxer asked.

[Thad]

So, okay.  Here's how fucked Arizona is right now.

John McCain's up for reelection.  And realistically, he's the best choice we've got.

He's being challenged in the primaries by one JD Hayworth.

Now, if you'll recall, back in '08, Guild made some considerable sport of talking to me like I didn't have a working knowledge of John McCain's background, knowing fully well that he'd been my senator since I was 4 years old.

Well, Hayworth became my congressman when I was 12.  That'd be the '94 election -- he's one of Gingrich's boys.

And let's make no mistake here -- he's challenging McCain from the hard right.  Everything I said about McCain in '08 is still true -- he's a bad, bad guy -- but Hayworth is worse.  His voting record reads like a cartoon caricature of a right-wing Republican.  We tossed him out in '06, following a vicious campaign where he aired an attack ad suggesting his opponent (a former high school teacher) wanted to let child molesters out of prison.  Since then, he's run a right-wing talk radio show.

He's essentially running entirely on an anti-immigrant agenda, and has Sheriff Joe backing him.

Which is why this time, Palin's actually going to be an asset for McCain, not a liability.  As popular as Sheriff Joe is among the right-wing base, Palin is their goddamn messiah; the people who are likely to pick Hayworth because McCain isn't conservative enough are just as likely to do whatever Palin tells them to.

Which may be part of why the most recent Rasmussen poll has widened the gap between the two from "none" to "McCain, by 20 points".  Which I must acknowledge is a real relief.

(Also: the guy who is polling in third place is the co-founder of the Minutemen.  I need to get the fuck out of this state.)

[Mongrel]

[Bongo Bill]

If one side hates the other side, that side will field their worst people because they know they can get away with it, leading to a spiral of awful, awful people conning angry voters.

Disillusionment and polarization are symptoms. Nobody's at fault; there's no disease in particular, just old age. America, nation, government, and culture, is in its twilight; its power will wane domestically and abroad, its influence persist on sheer inertia, its prosperity be outstripped, and its institutions' denial will deepen until pity alone sustains them. In light of this, it seems fruitless to consider which will be the straw that bankrupts the camel's treasury. What comes after?