Mandate, Slandate

- Money Talks, Ideology Walks -

The Democratic Strategist has a piece summarizing William Galston and Ruy Teixeira's recent post-election analyses.

Worth a read.

But the take-away: Election results came from "... the poor state of the economy [and] the abnormally conservative composition of the midterm electorate" seems obvious.

What can be inferred from the pieces is the fact that the voting electorate in 2012 will differ in composition from 2010.

And that from a political perspective the administration needs to change NOW its message on dealing with unemployment.

Voters don't want to hear about the determination of politicians to play nice. They want jobs, and all the advantages that come with near-full employment; and they really don't give a gosh darn if pay-checks and investment come as a result of government spending or the private sector.

Ask the employees the Oshkosh Corporation how bothered they are that tax-payers (and their children and grandchildren) are/will be paying $billions for the production of Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements (MTVR) in a stupid conflict in Afghanistan.

Bruce Springsteen - Something In The Night - Frankfurt 2009-07-03

Will GOP-Tea Party Target Veterans' Benefits ala Bush-Cheney?

- Costs of wars are huge and tragic. Will GOP and Tea Party refuse our veterans and families? -

By Jamie Reno

San Diego, CA (Home Post) - Paul Sullivan, founder of Veterans for Common Sense, shares with me the very latest numbers from the Veterans Administration on American veterans treated almost immediately after returning home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Sullivan, who obtained these statistics from the VA through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), will be presenting this information more formally at a speech at Boston University Law School today. "This is truly remarkable and new information about the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gulf Wars," says Sullivan, a Gulf War veteran who, before creating his veterans advocacy organization in 2002, worked at the VA. Here are some of the numbers:

As of June 30, 2010, VA treated 594,000 Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran patients - up 29,000 the past 3 months. Of those, 295,000 were diagnosed with at least one mental health condition by VA, up 18,000 in the past three months. Of those, 171,000 were diagnosed with post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) by VA, up 13,000 in the past three months.

GOP Stands to Be Exposed as Dems Regroup

- So, now that the Republicans have the House, what will they do? Beholden to the special corporate interests who poured millions into races across the country, they are pledging to shrink the size of government and cut spending. But more than that, their mandate is to stop Obama from doing anything. -

By Adele M. Stan at AlterNet

Now that Democrats have lost the House, pundits will likely declare a mandate for a right-wing agenda. Don't believe a word of it. What we witnessed tonight was a protest vote by an angry sector of the electorate, encouraged by hundreds of millions in spending by corporate-funded groups, that has attributed its falling fortunes to a cultural change in Washington. People who are not like them are running things in Washington, and everything really sucks.

The final results of the 2010 mid-term elections have yet to be tallied, but progressives have already begun their soul-searching.

Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Lynne Woolsey, congresswoman from California, told Pacifica News Radio that the Democrats lost the House because "we weren't bold enough." If they had started off with a jobs bill, Woolsey said, their position would be different tonight. And, Woolsey said, "We could have done a much better job of letting people know what we had accomplished."

At an election-night event broadcast by Free Speech TV at a progressive gathering-place in Washington, D.C., longtime labor activist Bill Fletcher complained that progressives left the right a wide opening when, after the election, the leaders who had put together the coalition that elected President Barack Obama sent those activists "back to the barracks."

So, now that the Republicans have the House, what will they do? Beholden to the special corporate interests who poured millions into races across the country, they are pledging to shrink the size of government and cut spending. But more than that, their mandate is to stop Obama from doing anything.

At a Washington, D.C., conference sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in August, foundation President Tim Phillips told a room full of activists that job one was the repeal of "Obamacare". It's not a goal they are likely to achieve in the next congressional session, Phillips said, but they can pass it in the House, attach repeal amendments to Senate bills, and force Obama to veto the repeal of health-care reform "two or three times" before the session concludes. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation was founded and is chaired by David Koch, heir to the fortunes of Koch Industries.

If enough Tea Party-branded candidates are seated in the Senate -- especially those indebted to the Senate Conservatives Fund PAC led by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina -- the Senate will likely devolve to a state of complete gridlock, making it impossible to get anything done. Heck, given the message sent to the leadership of the G.O.P. establishment with the spate of primary challenges its candidates faces at the hands of DeMint and his allies, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell might just opt for DeMint's gridlock agenda whether or not the South Carolinian gets to seat the majority of his Tea Party team. After all, two new senators have won tonight whose candidacies were launched in direct challenge to McConnell's leadership.

Marco Rubio's race in Florida, and Rand Paul's in McConnell's home state of Kentucky stand as repudiations of McConnell's control of the Senate agenda. In both states, he had endorsed other candidates -- and Rubio's challenge forced Gov. Charlie Crist, McConnell's pick, right out of the Republican Party. In Wisconsin, DeMint's candidate, millionaire Rob Johnson, vanquished three-term Sen. Russell Feingold, with the help of ferocious organizing by Americans For Prosperity, which also sponsored a mailing to Wisconsin voters in Democratic districts that was part of a voter-suppression scheme.

But not all of DeMint's team won. He threw in with Sharron Angle in Nevada -- but not until she won her primary against a G.O.P. establishment candidate -- for the potential prize of defeating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who ultimately prevailed in a hotly contested race that was flooded with money from outside groups. And Christine O'Donnell, the colorful Tea Party candidate in Delaware, went down to defeat, as expected.

Some are saying that after a couple of years of gridlock, the American people will tire of the G.O.P., just as they did when Newt Gingrich shut down the government after his party's 1994 rout of congressional Democrats in those mid-term races.

But things are different now, thanks to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that allows outside groups to spend unlimited amounts of cash to influence the outcomes of elections. That's a wall of fire for community organizers to walk through.

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.

GOP Sweep

Election Report From Fitchburg (Dane County) Ward Spells Trouble for GOP

Update: See Dane County couldn’t save Feingold this time

Here's a report from what is typically a relatively low-turnout district in Fitchburg, a city adjacent to Madison in Dane County.

Same-day registrants, with a high teen-20s presence, kept three election registers busy the moment the doors opened up through mid-afternoon, with a crush expected after 5:00.

If this district is at all representative of the turn-out in Madison-centered Dane County, the Republicans are in some serious trouble.

The youth vote is alive and well.

Word is Madison and Fitchburg are expected to exceed 80-plus turn-out.

With long voting lines reported in Milwaukee, when you're watching the results pour in tonight at WTMJ, be advised that Madison wards report in last and late in Dane County.

Change Back Election

Among those sufficiently brazen to speak the truth about American politics, like say Noam Chomsky, it's long been apparent that the great majority of Americans see the country as dominated by a few, big-moneyed interests looking out for themselves.

Presidential elections as seemingly diverse as 1984 and 2008 saw the percentage of the American electorate voting in presidential elections swing from Republican to Democratic by single digits, as measured by the percentage of those eligible to vote.

As media pundits ignore the few, big-moneyed interests looking out for themselves, and instead debate the likelihood of a wave-hurricane-storm-surge [pick your metaphor], it is perhaps useful to note that this big-money truism remains, irrespective of the electoral results.

So, whether Democrats can use their get-out-the-vote, voter-contact apparatus to bring out more Americans of a different hue; or the GOP can work their divisive magic and convince a few-million Americans that gays-working poor-Muslims-blacks-Latinos-others are to blame for whatever moral, economic problems Americans face, the big-money interests will have the last laugh until the American people wake up and vote on what poll after poll over decades say they believe: America is effectively an oligarchy.

Relatively small citizen movements can effect massive social change in America. But this democratic dynamic needs to be employed constantly, and not just during corporate campaign season.