The Same Tired old Song: Sarah Palin at the Tea Party

At the end of her speech to the National Tea Party Convention, Sarah Palin was greeted by the audience to uproarious strains of “Run Sarah Run!” in reference to a possible 2012 Presidential Bid.  Such a response led the moderator to remark that the two words that likely struck the greatest fear into the hearts of liberals were “President Palin.”  I’m frankly forced to agree, the very real possibility of a Palin Presidency in the near future leaves me with the feeling of all too familiar nauseating fear that I remember from the Bush years.

Her speech did little to ease those fears.  I could be snide and sarcastically attack the various talking points arranged so beautifully to be fed to the masses eager for red meat, and delivered with just the right seasoning of cynical self-righteousness, but why bother.  The most striking thing about ex-Governor Palin’s speech was not its originality, but rather its utter lack of an original argument.  I have followed politics relatively consistently since 1992, and frankly I heard nothing in Ms. Palin’s speech that I have not heard from George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich or any other mainstream Republican in the past 20 years.

In the end the whole talk was a rehash of the same old tired laundry list of smaller government, lower taxes, cutting the budget, and a belligerent foreign policy that we’ve heard from the Right for the past two decades.  All the normal targets were set up for potshots:  Big government, out-of-touch Washington fat cats, the idle, the godless, the media and the feckless, elitist Liberals who don’t care about America and are utterly incapable of either governing it from the inside, or defending it from without.  On the other hand are arrayed all the traditional heroes of the Conservative pantheon:  the “real” Americans of the small towns, Ronald Reagan and the “Troops.”  In frankness, Ms. Palin’s remarks could, and have, been delivered in one form or another in every keynote address in every Republican National Convention as far back as I remember.

Also notable in Ms. Palin’s remarks was an astonishing lack of specifics.  If indeed this was intended as a form of “Shadow State of the Union Address” by the populist right, very little was offered in terms of specific policy solutions. Sure, she strongly advocated cutting the budget and forcing the Government to live within its means, but considering she also advocated a return to a Bush-style foreign policy I doubt those cuts would touch the bulk of the spending for this year’s budget, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the annual appropriations for the Department of Defense, by far our biggest spender.  Beyond that, Ms. Palin’s suggestions for government policy revolved around vague references to the free-market more reminiscent of a high-schooler who has just finished Atlas Shrugged than national politician with possible eyes on a higher office.

And then there were the repeated references to the Constitution.  Now, I have no problem with the powerful populist urge to protect and defend the Constitution.  Indeed, I will be the first to argue that the Federal Government has expanded to both a size and level of intrusiveness that far exceeds the Founder’s wildest nightmares.  That said, I find Ms. Palin’s spirited invocation of “defense of the Constitution” a both ironic and a little disturbing when it was coupled with her comments on the treatment of the Christmas Day Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  Ms. Palin was highly critical of the Obama Administration’s handling of this case, particularly of the reading of Miranda rights to the Mr. Abdulmutallab as he was not a criminal, but an “enemy combatant” with whom we are at war.

Herein lies the problem:  the Constitution makes no allowances for “enemy combatants.”  If, as Ms. Palin asserts, we are at war, then according to the Constitution, Mr. Abdulmutallab is subject to the laws of the land governing Prisoners of War, or the Geneva Conventions, which have the force of law as they are a treaty duly ratified by the U. S. Senate.  If he is not a Prisoner of War, then he is a criminal (as was Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber) and as such must be placed within the realm of criminal law and is therefore subject to Miranda protections.  This whole “enemy combatant” designation was a convenient legal fiction cooked up by Bush Administration lawyers to allow for a class of detainee who had no protections under the law whatsoever and could thereby be subjected to the now infamous “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”  Ironically, Ms. Palin also has a problem with the fact that such techniques were not used on Mr. Abdulmutallab, and sees his being questioned for only 50 minutes as proof that the Administration is soft on terror.  And yet, had Ms. Palin paid any attention to reports in that “mainstream media” that she so openly disdains, she would realize that the Justice Department solicited and received the cooperation of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s family, who were brought over to the U.S. and put pressure on him, leading to his full cooperation with our authorities in the fight against Al Qaeda.  Same outcome and desirable results, but done fully within the bounds set by the Constitution, go figure.

Now, as I stated above, I’d love to write Sarah Palin off as both a twit and a fool who could just be ignored and she’d go away, but I’m not that naïve.  As has been noted before, she is very ambitious, and it would appear that she has quite a devoted following among the right-wing populist movement.  As underestimating this movement has led to some electoral upsets before, we ignore this woman at our peril.  She may indeed be a fool, but history has shown that such an impairment need be no bar to higher office.

Friday Humor 2/5/10 : Obamaphobia

What Happens in Vegas… (Is Apparently Beyond Criticism, Even When Presented Humorously)

So, while we’re on the topic of absurdity, it would be difficult to ignore the most recent “scandal” roiling the Obama Administration.  Apparently, the President has a bad habit about making jokes about Sin City, and the residents of that proudly amoral town are shockingly offended.

Speaking to voters in New Hampshire, the President made the following comment:  “When times are tough, you tighten your belts,…You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage,…You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices.”

Ok, we get it Mr. President, in tough times one is careful with one’s money, and therefore one avoids irresponsible expenditures, such as gambling.  That said, coming from a part of the country that is often offered as a parable for imprudent living (Southern California, fruits, nuts, flakes anyone?) I can sympathize a little with the good people of Las Vegas being mildly annoyed with the constant references to their hometown as a place to effectively “flush money down the toilet.”  After all, the local economy is basically based on tourism, so all the money being lost by the Joneses in their excursions to Sin City, help pay the salaries of much of the local population, either directly or indirectly, so I imagine that having your nose rubbed endlessly in the fact that you live off of the irresponsibility and misfortune of others would become tiresome rather quickly, particularly if you do not directly participate in one of Vegas’ more vice-friendly industries.

Nevertheless, I find the response of Las Vegas Mayor, Oscar Goodman to the President’s comments to be at best disingenuous, and at worst outright ridiculous in their hypocrisy.  Responding to the latest batch of controversy, Mayor Goodman responded,

“I guess you’ve all seen the president’s remarks or read about the president’s remarks, well I’ve got some remarks of my own… He has a real psychological hang up about the entertainment capital of the world. An apology won’t be acceptable this time, I don’t know where his vendetta comes from but we’re not going to let him make his bones by lambasting Las Vegas, that’s why (the press) is here today.  He didn’t learn his lesson the first time,… but now that it has I want to assure you, when he comes I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington and to visit his failures back there.  I gotta tell you this, everybody says I shouldn’t say it, but I gotta tell you the way it is. This president is a real slow learner.”

As I stated above, I can sympathize with Mayor Goodman being offended here, but only so far.  The man acts as if the “good name” of his town has been drug through the mud, to which I can only answer, what good name? Seriously Mayor Goodman, you come from a town that makes it’s money off of vice, where men hand out Pornography on the street, where just about any variation on the sex trade is legal, and profitable. Furthermore, the last time I passed through Vegas, (about a year and a half ago) I couldn’t help but notice a series of billboards (because they were less than a mile apart for much of Highway 15 in Clark County) encouraging those visitors to Mayor Goodman’s fair city who were a little light on cash to make a quick $500 by starring in an amateur porn flick.  So frankly Mr Goodman, being that you are effectively the Mayor of one of the world’s largest brothels, your claim of having your honor offended makes me wonder, when did you have any to begin with? I mean seriously, being offended at a moral criticism about the way Vegas makes it’s money is about as ludicrous as a Prostitute being enraged at her virtue being questioned.  You make your money off of sin, and proudly proclaim it from every corner, the fact that a public official calls that into question, however gently and indirectly ought to be a non-issue.

Finally, before Mayor Goodman unloads on the President for being “a slow learner,” I might humbly remind him about his own rather public, and considerably embarrassing gaffes:  When asked by a fourth grader what he would take with him to a desert island, the Mayor responded “a showgirl and a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin.”  As if this gem wasn’t enough, the man has also publicly advocated the amputation of thumbs for vandals, and the reintroduction of whipping and caning for juvenile offenders.  So frankly Mayor Goodman, before you criticize others for their stupid comments, you might want to watch your own mouth.

I’m my own Pygmalion: The Strange Odyssey of Heidi Montag

“And now for something completely different”

Having been rather focused on politics for the last several weeks, I figured it was a time for a break, with a little foray into absurdity.  And where better, dear friends, to find absurdity than among the one group for which the recession seems to have had little effect, America’s bumper crop of Celebutants.  While there are so many different flavors of crazy and bizarre to choose from in this group, I fear that like many others I cannot bring myself to turn away from the sideshow Heidi Montag-Pratt’s most recent plastic surgeries.  For those of you unfamiliar with Mrs. Montag-Pratt, more blessed are ye, the next time she or her husband actually say or do anything of great import will be the first.  But like many other celebrities of her ilk (i.e. those who are famous for becoming famous) Mrs. Montag-Pratt’s behavior does provide a prism through which we can consider some of the more disturbing trends in our society.

The recent episode to which I refer is this young woman’s voluntarily undergoing of ten simultaneous plastic surgeries in order to radically alter her appearance.   This included breast enlargement to size DDD, and some other notable lifts and tucks.  Yet the most striking work appears to be that done to her face.  Behold for yourselves the comparison, courtesy of People Magazine:

Now frankly, I take an ambivalent view toward plastic surgery.  There are cases in which it is absolutely needed (burn victims, cleft palates, etc…) and there are cases in which it may be considered rather frivolous, as I believe is the case with pictured above.  The woman on the left, who had already had some work done on her, could by no means be considered physically ugly, indeed I would strongly question whether or not she is in any particular way aesthetically inferior to the woman on the right. On the other hand, I will not go to the opposite extreme embraced by a tabloid I saw last night at the supermarket, which dubbed her “Franken-Heidi” and called her a monster.  There is nothing hideous about what Mrs. Montag-Pratt has chosen to become, just radically different.  I would less see her as the project of some modern Frankenstein, than as a subject of a Pygmalionism gone awry, in which she has bizarrely played the parts of both Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, with the outcome of course, being a woman that hardly resembles the original material at all.

Clearly, this is Mrs. Montag-Pratt’s body to do with as she sees fit, she certainly has the right do reshape herself according to any aesthetic ideal that she chooses, as is the case with any of us. Some choose yoga, she chooses Botox and the scalpel.  The real issue here is the risk involved.  Despite all the hype, the publicity and the mainstreaming of these procedures, this is still surgery and, as the numerous articles describing the procedures that Mrs. Montag-Pratt underwent detail, she suffered some serious complications from the anesthesia, complications that can be lethal.

A question necessarily arises from all this, is it worth it?  Like it or not, we all have imperfections, and these quirks, be they a slightly hooked nose, smaller breasts, or a jutting chin, give us distinction, they set us apart from our fellows.  Consider the case of Jennifer Grey, an actress of some note in the 1980’s, (she co-starred with Patrick Swayze in “Dirty Dancing” if you can’t put a face to a name) who had a distinctive nose which made her face unique. (And not unattractive, I might add.)  Disliking this particular feature on her face, she got a nose job, which normalized the offending feature.  The result was not unpleasant, she remained an attractive woman, just an unremarkable one who ceased to be recognizable by the public, and her career has correspondingly suffered.  While Mrs. Montag-Pratt admittedly may feel that she now resembles a “Scandinavian Goddess” the deity she resembles is becoming more and more nondescript with every application of the scalpel.

In our endless, yet futile, quest to more closely resemble the photoshopped individuals we see on the covers of magazines, we would do well to remember that the price of eternally striving to achieve an unattainable ideal is ultimately disappointment.  Where that process involves serious physical alteration, we run the risk of changing ourselves so drastically that not only are we no longer recognizable to others, but that we no longer recognize ourselves.

Oh Justice Alito, Grow a Thicker Skin!

Perhaps the most entertaining, and controversial, moment in the entire State of the Union Address last week involved the President “calling out” the Supreme Court for their recent ruling on campaign finance regulations.  The President’s mild rebuke to the Justices amounted to their ruling having effectively disregarded nearly a century of precedent, thus making their ruling an “activist” one, if ever there was one.

Justice Samuel Alito, it seems, was deeply affronted by the mild criticism leveled in the Court’s (and his) direction, particularly as he was part of the 5-4 majority ruling on this case.  So deeply was the honorable Justice offended, that he broke protocol, and mouthed (for all the cameras to see) the words “not true” in response to the President’s remarks.

Now, in fairness to Justice Alito, his lack of manners was rather mild.  He did not shout “you lie!” like a certain other Congressman of recent memory, nor did he boo, make any number of possible rude gestures, or walk out in a huff in the middle of the speech.  (Thus proving Justice Alito’s sense of public decorum to be approaching that of a College Freshman, instead of a grade school boor.)

What this outburst (however silent it may have been) revealed about Justice Alito, and the particular activist wing of the court from which he hails, is their arrogant sense of entitlement.  Entitlement to not only radically alter judicial precedent, but to do so without criticism of any sort.  It is a sad symptom of a far greater problem that affects our nation as a whole.  We as a people now boldly claim the right of freedom of speech to express our opinion, but seek to deny that same freedom of others to criticize those opinions.  Freedom of speech, it seems, is no longer sufficient for us, we now demand the inalienable right to unquestioned infallibility in all our public pronouncements.

In most cases, such behavior is merely pathetic and annoying, in the case of an unelected Supreme Court Justice, who may serve in that position for the rest of his life if he so chooses, and may only be removed through an arduous impeachment process, it is frankly dangerous.  The Supreme Court was never meant to be an infallible, perfect tribunal to determine absolute truths, and a series of rulings ranging from Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson to Roe v. Wade (on the other side of the ideological divide) merely serve to illustrate that point.  When, however, the Justices themselves stubbornly refuse to accept that their rulings are liable to criticism, (yes, Justice Alito, that includes you, you too Justice Scalia) and are backed up in the public by a legion of apologists determined to “defend the sanctity of the High Court” or some such nonsense, we run the risk of falling prey to a tyranny of nine lifetime appointees legislating, when no one elected them to do anything of the sort.

Maybe I’m just naive, but back when I studied the Constitution, the Judiciary was only one of three co-equal branches of the Government, and as such is both answerable and open to criticism from the other two.  If the Executive, which is at least indirectly elected by the people, cannot claim precedence over it’s fellow governing branches, I see no reason why the one unelected branch of the government should be able to.

Obligatory State of the Union Postmortem : 2010

Editor’s Note:  I missed the State of the Union Address last night, the result of a combination of getting home from work late, and putting a toddler to bed.  So these impressions come of reading the full transcript this morning.  In many ways I prefer this method, I can “hear” the speech without the endless interruptions of applause and laughter (good-hearted and well-intentioned though it might be).

I realize that by the time this post is published, the punditocracy of this nation (both professional and amateur) will have devoured, digested, and evacuated this speech, adding to it their own various impressions about it’s true effectiveness.  To those who consider the President to be far too milquetoast on issues pertaining to the progressive base, the speech will be judged as uninspiring, and unable to mobilize the base.  Such individuals will then go back to predicting electoral Armageddon in November, and console themselves with the dream of a Dean or Kucinich nomination in 2012.  Others, who have already written off the President as a Pie-in-the-sky idealist with a penchant for oratory, but little actual legislative accomplishment, will see his policies outlined last night as just another Christmas list, full of promises that are patently impossible to fulfill.  Then there are the guys who are absolutely certain that President Obama is a Communist/Fascist/Muslim/Antichrist, etc… who probably didn’t watch the speech for fear that they would be “indoctrinated.”

In frankness, I’ve grown tired to the point of intellectual exhaustion with attempting to respond to these various groups.  It would appear that, instead of electing one President in 2008, we elected an executive branch with one President and an entire advisory body of Pundits, who endlessly carp on the “inherent failure” of whatever the Administration does.  While a number of these criticisms are most certainly deserved, it is hard to give credence to this chorus of cynics, when they have been prophesying the imminent failure of the Obama Administration since before it took office.  To hear these people talk, the best thing the President could have done on election night was to announce his resignation.

But enough of my own carping, on to the analysis!  After listening to endless crystal ball predictions about what this speech would likely address, or would have to address in order to succeed, I found it to be rather surprisingly different from those expectations.  It was not overwhelmingly belligerent, did not apologize for the focus on Health Care Reform, and did not signal a serious capitulation to the Republican Party in the face of the recent loss of the Massachusetts Senate Seat.  In fact, what struck me the most about the President’s remarks was the sense of determination which ran throughout them.  He set distinct goals for the coming year (jobs, financial reform, health care reform) and remarked pointedly that should the proposed reforms sent to his desk be unsatisfactory, they will be vetoed.

He also took on some of the thornier and more pointed criticisms of his Administration during the past year, including the Bailout and the Deficit.  In the case of the Deficit, he deftly pointed out that the current state of our finances had a lot to do with previous management of the budget, without spending an inordinate amount of time blaming the Bush Administration for the current state of things.  In reference to the bailouts, a key source of populist fury, President Obama frankly admitted their unpopularity, and noted that he himself disliked continuing them.  However, the key argument he made was that he was not elected to merely do that which was popular, but that which was necessary as well, and in the minds of most leading economists, the bailouts were necessary.  While such arguments are unlikely to win over the harshest critics of the bailouts, they do reinforce the primary characteristic of the Obama Administration, pragmatics over ideology.

So what does this all mean, is it just empty air to soothe the proles?  Certainly some of the President’s outlined goals, such as doubling our exports during the next 5 years seem so ambitious as to be delusional, so does any of this really matter in the long run?  The answers to such questions are unclear.  A State of the Union address is less a crystal ball for viewing how things will turn out, than a statement of policy goals, that point out where the Executive branch will be focusing its efforts in the coming year.  It is meant to show the American People that their leaders are mindful of what has happened in the past year, and how they will reorient their policies to deal with such changes.  In this, President Obama has shown both an ability to refocus, and a consistency of purpose.  How successful he is in achieving these goals, will depend largely on the Legislature, which did not change appreciably in the space of one speech.  If Congress proves recalcitrant, then we will likely revisit much of what was said tonight next year, in worsened circumstances.

Lest We Forget — January 27, 1945 Auschwitz is Liberated

65 years ago today, soldiers of the 322nd Rifle Division of the Soviet Army entered the perimeter of KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau, liberating the camp.  The soldiers found 7,500 survivors who had not been sent on death marches into Germany.  1.1 Million people are estimated to have been slaughtered at Auschwitz.

May we never forget, and in remembering strive that such horrors may never again be repeated.

SC Lieut. Gov. to Poor : “Starve.”

What is it with South Carolina?  Is it the water?  Excessive inbreeding?  Judging the state from its political class alone one begins to wonder whether or not the Palmetto State really is the nation’s largest asylum, masquerading as a sovereign political unit.  Between Senator Jim (Teabagger-obstructionist extraordinaire) DeMint, Governor Mark (I took the Appalachian Trail to visit my mistress in Argentina) Sanford and Congressman Joe (I scream like a 6th grader during a Joint Session of Congress) Wilson, one really begins to wonder how any South Carolinian politician could scrape a new low.

Enter Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer.  Mr. Bauer is campaigning to succeed Governor Sanford, and (arguably owing to his lack of mistresses currently residing in the Southern Hemisphere) had up until now been seen as a rather safe choice.  Until his exceptionally poor choice of words regarding welfare last week. Asked about the state’s program of providing free school lunches to poor children he responded: 

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals…You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t… think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

One might expect such sentiments from a Malthusian industrialist in Great Britain during the early years of the Industrial Revolution, but really, seriously Lieutenant Governor, what do you propose?  Are you seriously saying that the poor are like stray cats and that our best policy in dealing with them is to refrain from feeding them in the hopes that they starve?  Perhaps sir, we should go one step further, and actively round up the poor and sterilize them, euthanizing those who are considered hopeless or dangerous cases, after all that’s what we do with the very stray animals you see fit to like poor children to.  Do I offend your pro-life sensibilities?  Tell me, Lieutenant Governor, how is endorsing the neglect of these children through malnutrition pro-life?

In fairness to Mr. Bauer, it should be noted that he has apologized for his comments. Yet that said, one wonders at the sort of man who would openly air such sentiments, and at the sort of society which would maintain him in positions of power in spite of what must be considered either atrociously bad judgment, or a particularly disgusting strain of misanthropy.  In a further ironic twist to this whole disgusting episode, Mr. Bauer’s staff has released that, as a child, Mr. Bauer himself was a beneficiary of the state’s free school lunch program.  Perhaps sir, the statesmen of a generation past ought to have also taken your Grandmother’s advice, and sought to starve you out before you had the capability to breed?

The sad thing is, due to the strength of the GOP in South Carolina, this clown is a likely shoe-in for the governor’s office.  In the event of his election, the editorial staff of The Loadstone Rock would like to submit two new possibilities for the South Carolina State motto, courtesy of another man who thought along roughly the same lines:

“Es illic haud carcer , haud opus domus?” (Are there no prisons, no workhouses?)

“minutum cumulus populatio” (Decrease the Surplus Population)

The Decline of the American Working Class

Several weeks ago in Graduate Seminar, I had the opportunity to revisit E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class For those of you unfamiliar with this book, I would somewhat hesitate to recommend it to you, as it is 800+ pages long and even I find it rather exhausting.  His premise however is something that bears consideration.  Thompson’s focus is on the development of a “class consciousness” among the English workers, and he sees the inexorable decline in the standard of living of English artisans and craftsmen as being a primary factor in that development.  What is fascinating is that Thompson attributes this decline far less to the development of new technologies (the steam engine, the power loom, or the turbine) and far more to the weakening of the protective regulations which allowed the various associations of professional craftsmen to determine apprenticeships, and the standards of craftsmanship necessary to be considered a member of the trade.  With this weakening of regulations, a mass of unskilled laborers flooded the various artisanal trades, and these “sweated” laborers tended to overwhelm the trades, driving down wages as they were willing to work for considerably less than the skilled craftsmen.

As wages fell and the costs of living rose, the standards of living for these people fell precipitously.  Thompson’s recounting of the fate of the Lancashire Weavers is particularly devastating in this regard, as it records how weaving communities with 3-400 year histories were effectively starved into extinction, as the various weavers either starved literally, entered factories, or left to become laborers elsewhere.  Faced with ruin after having known a far better standard of living, the laborers of England agitated, protested, petitioned Parliament, and received repression, legal suppression and even armed suppression for their troubles.  Thompson cites this brutal combination of degradation and repression as key in forging a sense of common loss and common interests among the English workers, which led to their militant organization and eventual political power in the early 20^th century.  (The Labour Party, prior to the rise of New Labour was a legacy of this mobilization)

While it is never easy to read about the fate of the English workers at the dawning of the Industrial Revolution, it is considerably harder during the present circumstances.  As I read the descriptions of the slow ruin of English Craftsmen and Workers in the beginning of the 19^th century, I cannot avoid the striking comparison of their fate with that of American jobs in the manufacturing sector at the beginning of the 21^st.  The laments about sweated labor or “dishonorable tradesmen” driving down the wages sounds hauntingly familiar to the present protests against outsourcing and the use of undocumented workers.  And the ruin of the weaving communities sounds hauntingly similar to the hollowing out of so many rust-belt manufacturing communities who have lost the industries that provided work for generations of their citizens.  While I do not subscribe to the idea that history repeats itself in its entirety, I cannot help but note that, much like my English contemporaries in the early 1800’s, I am witnessing a fundamental restructuring of industry and commerce here in America, and just like the English workers of yore, the brunt of this change is being borne by those on the bottom of the social pyramid.

Americans have generally been uncomfortable to carry the label “working class” associating it with an admission of poverty.  Yet that is precisely who were the first, and worst hit by the slow restructuring of our economy. The skilled workers of factories and mills, who had once been able to earn a living that placed them firmly in the lower brackets of the middle class, now find themselves scrambling for work in the service sector, their standards of living considerably lower, and the prospects for their children even less so.  Nor has the institutional rot ended there.  White collar workers, (as a clerk I would imagine I can place myself on the lower rungs of this group) have also seen their position slide as outsourcing has taken their security and future  and shipped it to India, much like the past generation’s manufacturing jobs were shipped to Mexico and China.  For my generation this transition will likely be particularly bitter. We were taught from early on that our futures rested on mastering new technology, so that we could compete in the new “information-based economy.”  The sorry reality is that we can have all the skills, but will be unable to live on the wages that they can get from someone working in Delhi or Mumbai, and as all the work is digital and can be transmitted instantaneously across the Web, much of our training and preparation has been wasted.

In the end, most of us will end up in the Service sector, where wages tend to be low, and personnel are easily replaceable.  The major labor unions, still heavily focused on retaining what can be retained for major manufacturing workers, and stymied by a government that has been at best ambivalent, if not wholly hostile toward the idea of Organized Labor, have as of yet failed to strongly organize the service sector.  They have certainly not been helped by the fact that the last two generations have heavily imbibed the anti-union pap of Libertarians and Corporatists and in doing so fail to realize that the goals and desires of management and the financial sector, are not always in their own best interests.  Until this situation changes, and the American working class can speak with a somewhat united voice on the economic issues that most deeply affect them, they can expect their condition to continue to be unstable, weak, and worsening.

Lessons to be Learned from a Lost Supermajority

Last night Republican State Senator Scott Brown defeated Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley in a special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat left vacant by the passing of the late Ted Kennedy.  The loss of this seat, (and with it the Democratic 60-vote supermajority in the Senate) bodes ill for the future of Health Care reform, which will almost certainly face a filibuster following the conference committee’s attempt’s to reconcile the bills passed by the House and Senate late last year.  Were I a good left-wing blogger, now would be the time to either a) collapse into a paroxysm of grief and declare that “all is lost,” b) begin recriminations about the nomination of a milquetoast centrist democrat who failed to rally the liberal base of the party, c) blame the Obama administration for failing to pass a more progressive agenda during the last year, thus demoralizing the progressive/liberal base of the party and leading us inexorably toward electoral Armageddon in 2010, d) or lapse into conspiracy theories about how such a defeat was clearly impossible in “Blue Massachusetts,” and mutter darkly about Diebold voting machines, etc…

I’m not going to do any of the above.  Certainly all of these may have been contributing factors in yesterday’s defeat, as well as the added outlying factors of residual misogyny against Coakley as a woman, or the wild-card factor of populist/tea party unrest that drove Mr. Brown to victory.  However, I believe that the primary cause of my party’s defeat in yesterday’s election was complacency born of hubris.  After all, this was “Ted Kennedy’s seat,” in the “bluest of all blue states” even if the Republicans did run a general election challenger, it would be effectively the same as if they refrained from running one altogether, he’d be just a placeholder, an empty suit, right?  Wrong.  The Coakley campaign and the national leadership misread the tea leaves (if you will excuse the pun) and wrote off the wave of populist discontent that was buoying up Brown until it was too late.  In light of this fatal mistake, allow me to offer a few lessons to be learned from this embarrassing debacle.

1.  Ted Kennedy is Dead, the Senate seat belongs to the people of Massachusetts. I mean no disrespect to the late Senator Kennedy (of honored memory) or his family, but despite what the media endlessly repeated in the past few months, this electoral contest was not over “Ted Kennedy’s seat,”  it was over the seat that he had occupied during his long tenure as the Senior Senator from Massachusetts.  “Semantics,” you say?  Perhaps, but an important distinction nonetheless.  The seat was not Senator Kennedy’s personal property, any more than it is now Senator Brown’s.  At any given election the voters of Massachusetts could have ejected Senator Kennedy from said seat, in the same way that they can (and occasionally do) eject any number of his 99 former colleagues from their own seats.  By deluding ourselves into believing this comforting fiction, we deluded ourselves into believing that whomever would succeed Senator Kennedy in that position would necessarily be someone whom he would approve of.  Yet despite its Patrician pretensions, the U. S. Senate is not an Aristocratic body like the old British House of Lords, and (since 1912 at least) it is the state electorate who determines who is to be the representative, and it is their will, not the will of dead statesmen (no matter how honored) that must be respected and courted.  We forgot that this time around, and now we’re going to pay for it.

2.  There is no such thing as “Blue” Massachusetts. This comment may initially seem ridiculous, after all, few states are as reliably “blue” in presidential elections than Massachusetts, a Democratic stronghold.  Yet such is the case on the national level, for a national election.  One forgets that the predecessor to Massachusetts’ current Democratic Governor, Deval Patrick, was 2008 Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, no bleeding heart liberal per say.  Nor is this necessarily an oddity, after all, the governor of my own reliably “blue” state is Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, and New York recently had both a Republican Governor, George Pataki, as well as a Republican Senator, Alphonse D’Amato.  Statewide elections inevitably focus on local issues and local problems, particularly when there is no national election going on at the same time.  Believe it or not, (and I’m certain the RNC is as shocked as you are) there is a Republican electorate in Massachusetts, and they were galvanized, excited and showed up on Election Day.  We weren’t, we didn’t and we lost.

3.  You the discount strength of populist discontent at your own peril. Admittedly I am no fan of the Tea Party movement.  I find them to be vicious, myopic and frankly rather paranoid.  That said, I have no doubt about their passion, or their determination.  These people are seriously enraged at the status quo and firmly determined to upset the political apple cart, and unless we go into the field with the same degree of determination and passion (notably lacking until the final phases of the Coakley campaign) we can lose it.  Victory fueled by populist discontent alone is not certain (the recent defeat of the Tea Party candidate in NY Congressional District 23 in a recent special election demonstrates this) yet the threat is sufficient that it ought to be taken more seriously than it currently is.  Yes these are folks who believe that every thing Glenn Beck says is the Gospel Truth (even the crazy stuff about Communist propaganda at Rockefeller Center) but they also vote and one forgets that at one’s peril.

So in closing, the editorial staff of The Loadstone Rock offers our condolences to Attorney General Coakley, and our congratulations to Senator-elect Brown.  You have done what many foolishly thought was impossible sir, and we salute you.  You have won yourself a seat, let us see how long you can keep it.