"This Beltway Narrative About The Republicans Being Way Ahead Is One Of The Dumbest And Most Fact-Free Things I've heard In A Long Time"

-- Jess McIntosh of Emily's List, just a minute ago on "All In With Chris Hayes."

So it's not just me.

Quoted from memory, my apologies to Jess if I quoted inexactly, but that is the gist of it.

So get out there and vote and let's make this a Democratic landslide.

US 3rd-Partiers: The Anti-Bismarcks

In the 1860's, Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia, who a few years later would become Chancellor of Germany when he finished taking over Germany on behalf of the Prussian monarchy, which amounted to taking over Germany for himself, because the Prussian King and soon to be German Emperor (Kaiser) either didn't notice or didn't care that it was Bismarck who was actually in charge -- Ah say Ah say in the 1860's, Bismarck said, "Politik ist die Kunst des Moeglichen." ("Politics is the art of the possible.") Or maybe he said, "La politique, c'est l'art du possible." Or he very well could've said it in English. He was talking to another German dude and he probably said it in German, but he and his pals were a little more cosmopolitan than Amurrkins sometimes realize.



Don't get me wrong: Bismarck was a reactionary and I disagree with most of what he did. On the other hand, however, in the 1880's he instituted universal health insurance and universal pensions for the elderly in Germany. He did this in order to undermine the Social Democrats, against whom he had a -- well, pathological aversion, spying on them, having them arrested and banning their publications and so forth. Really terrible draconian stuff. Bismarck introduced the insurance and pensions in order to combat the Social Democrats, to take the wind out of their sails. (Worked pretty well, too.) But in spite of Bismarck's motives, the universal health insurance and pensions for the elderly marked the beginning of a strong social safety net and were undeniably a boon for the very underprivileged Germans whom the Social Democrats wanted to help.

On the 17th of October, 2014, on Facebook, a Leftist Amurrkin supporter of 3rd parties proposed that anyone who'd ever associated him- or herself with either the Democrats or the GOP be completely barred from the political process. As opposed to voting Democratic because Republicans are worse.

At last check he still has not responded to queries about exactly how he hoped to accomplish this.

Good intentions are useless if they're completely divorced from reality, and conservatives sometimes co-operate with the Left when the Left is strong enough that they have no other good choice. In the midterms it's going to be the Democrats or the Republicans, and the Democrats really are to the left of the GOP, not as far left as I am, but far enough to the left of the GOP that the space between them is clear to see. Vote Democrat, for women's rights and more equitable tax codes and a stronger social safety net and non-creationist science education and the environment and sustainable energy and financial re-regulation and to keep psychos who think Obama's a secret Kenyan Muslim Communist from running this country.

There's No Difference Between Democrats and Republicans Except --

-- on women's health and freedom to choose, green energy, tax breaks for Big Oil, labor unions, whether one fears that the government has too much control over corporations or that corporations have too much control over the government, whether the best way to help all of us is to help the poorest and weakest or the richest and most powerful, whether or not everyone should have access to affordable health care, whether too many tax breaks are available to corporate CEO's making 8 figures a year or more or to teachers and firemen making $50,000 a year or less, whether GLBT's don't have enough rights or whether they have too many, whether or not it's time to revoke the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, whether or not drilling for oil and gas in national parks would be a good idea, whether it should be easier or more difficult for people in the US to obtain guns and ammo, whether or not Obama is a secret Kenyan Muslim Communist...

That's just off the top of my head. But yeah, if none of the above matters to you, you might as well vote Green. Or Libertarian. Or not at all, depending on what kind of stupid you are.

The Sky May Actually Not Be Falling

In a piece for the New York Times, Jonathan Weisman fears that the House may lurch even further to the Right in November:

"In districts where generally mild-mannered Republicans are exiting, their likely replacements may [bla bla bla doom, gloom, conventional 'wisdom,' bla bla bla]"

Weisman gives no consideration to the possibility that people who voted for those relatively centrist Republicans will vote against the extremist yahoos who beat the incumbents in the primaries, or simply not vote.

And it seems that just about every single "pundit" in Washington assumes that Democratic turnout will be low. "Well, Democratic turnout is ALWAYS low in the mid-terms." Well, before 2009 an African-American had never been President. Before 2011 no-one who occupied a seat in Congress ever said some of the stupid things Tea Partiers say. (Maybe if you go back to the 1830's or so.) Things CHANGE. A lot of the people who voted Democratic in 2012 were first-time voters. It makes no sense to simply assume that they will tend to sit out the mid-terms as Democratic voters have in the past.

Nor does it make sense to assume that a significant number of Democratic voters who've sat out previous mid-terms have not noticed the Republican extremists and become alarmed and politicized.

I'll tell you one thing which has happened over and over in previous elections and could happen again in November: a great many Washington political "wizards" could be proven completely wrong. Remember all the "geniuses" who were convinced that the race between Obama and Romney would be close, and that the Republicans would make huge gains in both houses of Congress in 2012? (Just in case you didn't notice: in 2012 the Democrats gained 2 seats in the Senate and 8 in the House. And the election between Obama and Romney wasn't close. Just the same way that the Earth wasn't destroyed the way that a lot of idiots said that a Mayan calendar said it would be.)

Get out and vote Democrat, and send all these scary rightwing yahoos home.

Let's USE This Vast Political Capital The Republicans Have Just Handed Us

Let's go after every single Republican office-holder -- unless you can think of a Republican currently holding public office who's stood up to the Tea Party since 2009. Yeah, I can't think of one either. Yes, some of them are critical of the Tea Party now, but look at the size of the clusterfuck it took for them to speak up. Look at what was acceptable to all of them until the writing was on the wall about the 2012 elections, and then to all but a tiny handful of them. The Tea Party belongs to the Republican Party. Let's make them own it. All of them. Let's not let this very recent turn toward bipartisanship make us forget the 5 years before the last 3 weeks.

And please, my fellow Democrats, let's stop this awful pathetic whining about how this or that Republican Senator or Representative or Governor or Councilman or judge or dog-catcher is untouchable. None of them are untouchable after this shutdown debacle. Let's not just win some seats in 2014 and 2016, let's crush the GOP as it now once and for all, so that what emerges is either a GOP as unrecognizably liberal by today's standards as today's is unrecognizably reactionary by the standards of several decades ago, or something like a political landscape where the Republican and Green Parties have swapped places in terms of relevance and clout, a US where it's Democrat against Green instead of Democrat against Republican. (Or better yet, of course, a change in the Constitution to base our government on proportional representation, but at this point the eradication of far-right political power looks like a nearer, more attainable goal.)

They're not untouchable. Let's find a brilliant, charismatic rainmaker in his or her early 20's and run him or her against John Boehner. That's a no-lose proposition for the Democrats because the whiz kid will either actually win, or win enough votes against the sitting Speaker of the House to brighten up any 25-year-old's resume.

Let's go after em all. You may say I'm a crazy wild-eyed dreamer. I say that the Republicans are in such a mess that it'd be crazy to consider any one of them to be invulnerable.

'IT'S TIME FOR SOMEONE TO ACT LIKE A GROWN-UP'

That's a huge banner headline, in bold print with letters an inch high, over a story about more traditional Republicans lambasting the batshit-crazy Tea Party and its minions such as John Boehner for not facing reality and ending the government shutdown. It's a quote from John Sununu.

Next to the Tea Party, John Sununu is a moderate, centrist voice of reason and conciliation.

Under that banner headline is a big picture of Ted Cruz and John Boehner. Such a picture is not a reassuring sight under such a headline. Well, really, it's just about Boehner. Cruz can continue to act crazy, or to be crazy, if it's the case that it's not an act. It doesn't really matter much what Cruz does. As I've pointed out before on this blog, Boehner can end this shutdown any time he likes. Republican approval ratings plummet rapidly as he refuses to end the shutdown and the days go by. More and more pollsters are saying that, because of other things too but mostly because of this shutdown, the Republicans are in danger of losing their majority in the House in the 2014 midterms, which would mean that the Speakership, which according to insiders is why Boehner follows the Tea Party's lead, would go back to a Democrat anyway. The party that the President doesn't belong to almost always gains seats in congress in midterm elections; the last time this was not the case was in 1998, when the voters punished Congressional Republicans for wasting everybody's time with a silly spectacle, the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Well, this shutdown is much worse than that impeachment, not just in my opinion but also according to all the public opinion polls. The Republicans hurt themselves by coming close to a shutdown in 2011, and they're hurting themselves much worse now. That's the one piece of very good news in all of this stupidity and insanity: it will all be over, in a very big way, at the very latest, when the next Congress is sworn in after the 2014 midterms, and in a bigger way the longer the shutdown lasts and the more default becomes a reality. I'm a Democrat, a partisan in a very big way, as regular readers of my blog have no doubt long since noticed. Still, in this case, concern for humanity in general far outweighs even my party loyalty, and so I hope that the people in the Republican party who, by virtue of contrast with the Tea Party, look like voices of reason, can soon somehow manage to point out the writing on the wall to John Boehner. The sooner the better. Put a clean bill up for a vote, Mr Speaker. Today. The way you should've done before the shutdown, thus preventing the shutdown. Things will only get worse for many people, most assuredly including you, until you do.

The 2014 Midterms

What's that you say? It's a tad early to be thinking about the midterms? No, it's not early at all. "Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel." Also, for a while the Republicans have been outdoing us in contributions, advertising and turnout in the midterms. Why not try to turn that around? A Republican would be less likely to say it's early yet. "Traditionally," anyway, as the "pundits" tend to say, who are better at reading returns from past elections than at gauging what's going on around them now, because the latter is hard, let's face it. The Dems have defied a few pieces of "conventional wisdom" lately -- ah, imagine if wisdom actually were conventional, wouldn't that be sweet -- and if we can manage a huge turnout in 2014, that could make for a truly tremendous change in the US. Imagine if Obama could spend his last 2 years in office with a Congress which co-operated with him, except for the occasions when it pulled him to the Left.

Contact your local Democratic Party. If you don't know where the local HQ is, look here. Volunteer. Educate yourself on health care, the environment, voting rights, civil rights, education itself and other issues. TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT POLITICS. (Although in the case of people who have voted Green in the past and intend to continue doing so, you may want to consider how much time you want to spend talking to them. It would be a waste of your time to spend too much time talking to people who are too stupid to grasp the difference between the US political system and systems employing proportional representation, in which voting Green is not worse than a complete waste, where Greens are actually elected to public office. Try to spend your time and energy to maximum effect.) Register new voters.

And since we all know that most of you will actually do none of that, at least GET UP OFF OF YOUR BUTTS ON NOVEMBER 4, 2014, AND VOTE. Thanks.

We mustn't be overconfident. Overconfidence will ruin your game every time, in chess and in politics. Democrats were overconfident after the 2008 elections, and in 2010 the Tea Party happened. The Tea Party was overconfident after 2010, and in 2012 we handed their asses to them. It's time to stop the 2012 Snoopy happy dance NOW and put on our game faces.