Midterm Points of Interest

By Steve Hynd

Just some join-the-dots link dumping, for now.

-- Arianna Huffington says the Dems lost because they didn't fix the economy. She writes that "voters no longer trust Democrats to fix things". I think the problem is wider: voters don't trust Democrats to have the spines to even try to fix things.

--The new spineless idea is for the Federal Reserve to buy up to $1 trillion in government debt. The whole plan relies on the idea that the rich fucks will take the money they get from lower interest rates and reinvest it in getting ordinary Americans working again rather than salting it away offshore in tax havens. They already tried it once in 2008 and that didn't happen. Meanwhile, the bankers who handle all the bond selling and money-hiding will make big bonuses. America's infrastructure is held together with boggies and string and the rich fucks are playing pass the parcel. Jeebus.

-- John Judis worries that "when America finally recovers, it is likely to re-create the older economic structure that got the country in trouble in the first place" instead of pushing hi-tech industry through  government coordination and subsidies like the Chinese, Japanese and Europeans do.

-- Doug Mataconis notes that young voters stayed away in droves - only 9% of voters were in the 18-29 range, instead of 18% during the 2008 elections. Professional politicos say this is because youth won't turn out unless there's a star on the ballot (e.g. Obama). I think it's far more likely that a real unemployment rate of 30% upwards for this demographic has them all well and truly bi-partisanly disillusioned.

-- Over at Natonal Review, crazy wingnut is lamenting the fact that Third Party candidates seem to have stopped Republicans winning even more seats. Hmmm. Remembering how difficult it is to have any third party make an impact, after decades of the Big Two legislatively blocking smaller parties access to ballots, and someone might just conclude that two party dominance is getting ever more unpopular.

-- Big Tent Democrat points out that the mood of the election was "You throw out the bums you have, even if it means bringing back the old bums." I don't think he gets the whole sordid story of this, though. The largest non-voting portion of the electorate by far is always those earning less than median wage. 25% of those eligible to vote, just waiting right there for someone who isn't a bum, according to 2006 figures. Thing is - nowadays, if you're not part of the rich-fuck set then times are damn hard no matter whether you're officially "poor" or not, so that "neither set of bums" group is growing. The poor-and-getting-poorer demographic is potentially an election winning one, but not for either of the current Big Two.

-- Paul Krugman, in full:

So, we�re already getting the expected punditry: Obama needs to end his leftist policies, which consist of � well, there weren�t any, but he should stop them anyway.

What actually happened, of course, was that Obama failed to do enough to boost the economy, plus totally failing to tap into populist outrage at Wall Street. And now we�re in the trap I worried about from the beginning: by failing to do enough when he had political capital, he lost that capital, and now we�re stuck.

But he did have help in getting it wrong: at every stage there was a faction of Democrats standing in the way of strong action, demanding that Obama do less, avoid spending money, and so on. In so doing, they shot themselves in the face: half of the Blue Dogs lost their seats.

And what are those who are left demanding? Why, that Obama move to the center.

When people like Krugman realise that voting for Whigs is never going to solve anything, we'll be getting somewhere.

Meanwhile, most voters expect to be disappointed by the House GOP by 2012. They will be.

What Ian Welsh said.