Nothing.
A year ago I asked, “So will they engage now?” And what they did was…
Nothing.
Meanwhile Republicans were positioning, framing, engaging…
On the other side of the aisle, 6 months out…
Nothing.
Like a loud freight train, closer and closer election day came and still Dem leadership mostly kept us tied to the tracks by doing, saying, nothing. About a month ago timid engagement did start: like a few meek raindrops in the middle of both a tornado and a hurricane. A week out Dem-leadership was finally in campaign mode, if one dare call their pathetic overall response “campaign mode,” and the quaff presented by Dem leadership was like coffee brewed by running tainted water, once again, though over used coffee grounds.
Election day? They lose.
Surprised?
Really?
Really?
This pattern has repeated itself too many damn times to be unintentional. You might think they’re waiting for Republicans to over play their hand, which they always do, but that would require folks pointing that out in loud voices. Of course the leadership rarely does. Even at the peak of “over play” those voices, collectively, always have a horrid case of laryngitis.
Reminds me a tad of the abused spouse who submits to a beating hoping that will mean the next one won’t be worse. Of course: it always is.
But one might also imagine that the leadership is in cahoots with the Republicans and they want to lose: the concept being to keep moving the ball down the field to the field goal on the far right… while running away from your own goal, running from any successes a president from your party may have had.
Yup, that “always” works as a tactic… not.
Or has the actual collective intent here over the years just been to move the ball to the extreme right more reluctantly, make it look like you’re resisting, or even might have different ideas.
Yes: a conspiracy theory: one about as likely as what led up to 9/11.
Of course now Repubs will be crowing about how much the nation is on their side now, how much everyone hates Obama, but it’s all outhouse drippings. Just like the same meme on was offered by the left when the right lost. In the 60s, as a Conservative, I remember my more leftward friends telling me I’d “better get a clue” because conservatism was dead. I heard the same when Reagan won, Bush II won regarding liberalism. Actually it’s all more like a football game played by two very bad teams, just bad in different ways.
In truth both parties suck, and we need run off voting. Give both of them serious competition. Give the Libertarians, the Socialists, the Greens, the Conservatives more of a chance, or at least more influence.
So now we’re going to hear how the new batch of political gremlins will stop grid lock. Fat chance, and if they succeed more than likely it will be in ways no one really wants.
Frankly I didn’t bother listening this morning. Why bother? I could have predicted this two years ago, and the Dem leadership should have. My curious question is: why did they wait so long? Just to assure it would happen as it was pre-scripted? Bringing up the question: do we actually have a two party system, or just the party who is really in power and the party that too damn many times enables the one actually in power by their silence, their timidity and too damn often their refusal to engage?
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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