* the official media have always treated US electoral politics as a horse race, but now things are different. It's not just poll numbers but something that matters much more in the US system: how much money did Romney rake in relative to Obama? if we're lucky, people will get so sick of the ads that they'll have no effect. We should say a prayer of thanks to TiVO. I'm happy that I don't live in a "swing state," so that I won't be bombarded by these electoral ads...
* the default setting for the Democratic Party seems to be the one that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s: this was Cold War liberalism, combining a "muscular" foreign policy with a mildly center-left domestic party. (At the time, the GOP had a hard time out-militarizing the DP, but they were center-right on domestic policy, especially after the Truman-McCarthy era.) The old Cold War liberalism was split by the Vietnam war (Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, & George McGovern vs. Lyndon Johnson & Hubert Humphrey). But since 1972 or so, the split faded and largely went away -- and DP domestic policy went progressively to the right (as the GOP led the way and as the labor movement and popular movements faded, partly as a result of DP policies). So the DP returned to its default setting. Bush #1 and Clinton instituted a new version of Cold War liberalism for the post-Cold War era, also seen in the policies of the fictional president, Jed Bartlet (who I'd bet was extremely popular among followers of Obama in 2008). Obama's solidified this perspective, with what might be called "cruise missile" or "drone" liberalism since (1) the military has mechanized in the era after the draft was abolished and (2) the targets of the US elite's ire are much less likely to counterattack than was the old USSR. The GOP currently is like that of the 1950s and 1960s, having a hard time being more militaristic than the DP and pushing the DP to the right on domestic policy. A key difference is that the GOP has a active, determined, and well-endowed grass-roots movement among the petty bourgeois, i.e., the Tea Party. -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, you should at least know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
