The Grand Delusion

[zsdersw]

It happened in 2008, it appears to be happening now in 2010, and it will probably happen in 2012.

The Grand Delusion: massive (and much needed!) change is coming on election day!

Everyone will shoot their wads for sure when their favorite candidate(s) get elected next month, just like they did in 2008, but on what are we to base their profound hope that real and significant change is actually coming and will actually happen?

 

[chucky2]

It'll actually happen in the quantities needed when 'Rome falls', and the people finally go nuts and just start executing the Leadership at the Government and Executive levels at large Corps.

Everything being done so far is to placate "the masses" so as to stall this process from taking place. When a sufficient number of people at the Leadership level have their brains blown out, and/or hung, and/or maimed, then the message to the remaining Leadership will have been sufficiently learnt.

Since none of that has happened yet, we're just keepin' on keepin' on.....

Chuck

 

[zsdersw]

I laughed in 2008 when many thought Obama was going to fundamentally change things, and I'm laughing now at those who think Tea Party candidates specifically and Republicans in general are going to fix everything that's broken.

 

[nonlnear]

Prop 19 will bring about real change if it passes. Depending how it shakes out it could tear the (federal) Democrats apart in sync with the Republicans. That would be some real change - and for the better too!

 

[chucky2]

Yep, x2. Those in 2008 who thought Obama was speaking truth instead of speaking to get their vote were/are totally and completely delusional. The obviousness of what he was doing was total and complete.

As is the Republicans.

As for the Tea Party, my view of them is they're mad....mad at specific things even....if those things are the things that truly matter, and the manner to even go about fixing them if they are, that's where it's not really clear if the Tea Partiers who are rabid nuts have any idea of how to go forward.

They're like the rabid Obama supports, just a different flavor...

Chuck

 

[yllus]

National Post - Dan Gardner: Stop talking about a revolution. America hasn’t changed in 25 years

Anyone following the American media knows that Americans are in an uproar. Disgust with the federal government is worse than ever. Extremist political views are spreading rapidly. The Tea Party movement has become a massive populist revolt. President Barack Obama’s approval rating has collapsed. Incumbents are terrified they will be swept away in the November mid-term elections. Washington insiders tremble.

It’s nothing less than a revolution.

But what you probably don’t know is that 418 sitting members of Congress sought their party’s nomination to run in the November election. (In the U.S. system, these primary races are often the toughest fights.) Of those 418 incumbents, a grand total of seven lost. That’s less than 2%.

So almost every incumbent who sought a nomination got it — and even that extraordinary fact doesn’t tell the full story. “If one looks at the seven cases where an incumbent was defeated,” says Michael J. Robinson, a political scientist retired from George Washington University, “it had nothing to do with the Tea Party movement, nothing to do with ideological shifts. It had to do with scandal, or people switching parties in the middle of their term in office.”

 

[Scotteq]

Meh - People don't really vote for who they like. They vote against who they don't like.

So a given candidate doesn't really have to be "Correct". Doesn't have to be "Proper". Or doesn't even have to be "Good".


They just have to be less vile than the other guy. That, and juggle the ball long enough to hand it off to the next jack@ss.

 

[chucky2]

Now put Unemployment back to a sane number of weeks (say 36 weeks instead of the 99 and then 125 it's at not), raise taxes across the board to start making a dent in the budget shortfalls and debt, reform (which means cut) the entitlement programs as needed, the banks to start foreclosing on all the shadow inventory they have (treating non-payment and foreclosures as they always have done, instead of how they've been handling them) to get the housing situation straightened out, F'ing do what it takes to win in Afghanistan so as to be able to leave there better than we'd found it, the cost to end the illegal immigration problem from Mexico and Cuba, and the list goes on and on.

But the reason none of that is being done is because Americans would go batf*ck crazy from the effects it'd have on their lifestyles....and so they just vote in whoever, those that actually go vote that is....

Chuck

 

[werepossum]

Meh - People don't really vote for who they like. They vote against who they don't like.

So a given candidate doesn't really have to be "Correct". Doesn't have to be "Proper". Or doesn't even have to be "Good".


They just have to be less vile than the other guy. That, and juggle the ball long enough to hand it off to the next jack@ss.

Agreed. I almost always find myself voting for the lesser evil.

This election will merely apply the brakes. We'll still be traveling in the same direction, still be digging the same hole, but our pace will slow a bit.

 

[Carmen813]

Now put Unemployment back to a sane number of weeks (say 36 weeks instead of the 99 and then 125 it's at not), raise taxes across the board to start making a dent in the budget shortfalls and debt, reform (which means cut) the entitlement programs as needed, the banks to start foreclosing on all the shadow inventory they have (treating non-payment and foreclosures as they always have done, instead of how they've been handling them) to get the housing situation straightened out, F'ing do what it takes to win in Afghanistan so as to be able to leave there better than we'd found it, the cost to end the illegal immigration problem from Mexico and Cuba, and the list goes on and on.

But the reason none of that is being done is because Americans would go batf*ck crazy from the effects it'd have on their lifestyles....and so they just vote in whoever, those that actually go vote that is....

Chuck

A lot of what you just said contradicts itself.

Werepossum,
I don't think we'll apply the brakes at all. All we will be doing is making a slight change in direction at the same speed. All it takes is spending five minutes examining Republican policy positions to learn that they are going are no better about deficits than Democrats, and in some ways, a whole shitload worse....which I didn't think was actually possible.

 

[spacejamz]

this thread title makes me want to hear some Styx now...

 

[Exterous]

Meh - People don't really vote

Fixed for you

Everyone wants change - so few people vote especially in the primaries

 

[Exterous]

IMO -There were a few good candidates in the primaries but they did not receive enough votes to go on. The people who tout party lines are the ones that get voted in because it seems most voters are staunch party affiliates.

What needs to happen for change to occur is for lazy Americans to get off their damn asses - educated themselves on important matters - actually research the candidates and VOTE.

Sadly this requires work so we are screwed

Personally I think electing a SMART republican or democrat would be benefitial but all they see are the sheeple voting for the same old same old so why bother? You want the job - give the voters what they want. Time and time again the American people have voted the same types of people into office.

At some point we have to take the responsibility off the elected officials and put it on ourselves - the voters of this country. People who can affect change are out there - it's just no one votes for them

 

[Infohawk]

Things probably won't change, but to be fair it seems like most people really want to undo Obama's change and stop his his traditional liberal agenda. It's Democrats who tend to believe change in government will change things.

 

[piasabird]

The problem is not that we might vote encumbants out of office, it is that we cant vote them all out at once!

We need a no confidence vote for members of congress and presidential candidates. It is not that our votes count, it is that there is no one worth voting for. Some term limits might be nice too. I would prefer to have everyone come up for reelection all at once and to change all terms to 4 years. That way it would also thin out the money that one candidate can get with all the elections coming at the same time.

 

[boomerang]

Nothing short of massive changes can alter our course at this point. I firmly believe this. Politics is at the root of the problem and only politics can save us. In other words, the same people that got us into trouble are the ones that must get us out of trouble. Ain't gonna happen.

Don't think in the short term. Don't think I mean our current "leaders". These problems have been a long time coming. Each successive Congress postpones the day of reckoning by continuing business as usual. It's always easier to let the other guy deal with it. It always catches up with you eventually.

We need cutbacks, massive tapering off of entitlement programs, the end of being the world's policeman and a massive restructuring on the level of cataclysmic. We need to learn to live within our means. We need to bite the bullet so hard that we're on the brink of civil unrest. We need to be at that point and to hold there for a decade and I believe it will take that long if not longer. We need to be on a long term, never ending austerity program. No politician has the cajones to want to do it or to pull it off. Politicians get elected by making promises and some of those must be kept for them to keep their jobs. That is counter to the needs of the nation right now.

So it's going to play out over time and the results will be far, far worse.

 

[zsdersw]

most people really want to undo Obama's change

.. something that won't really happen no matter who gets voted in or out.

and stop his his traditional liberal agenda.

.. something that Republicans haven't done at all in decades.

 

[werepossum]

A lot of what you just said contradicts itself.

Werepossum,
I don't think we'll apply the brakes at all. All we will be doing is making a slight change in direction at the same speed. All it takes is spending five minutes examining Republican policy positions to learn that they are going are no better about deficits than Democrats, and in some ways, a whole shitload worse....which I didn't think was actually possible.

Possibly. When the Pubbies won Congress in '94 we got six great years out of them; then they became essentially Democrats. Then the Dems won power and raised the bar to be considered Democrats. So recent history suggests that by placing Republicans in power we should get either six good years of only moderate madness, or else two or six years (depending on Obama's election or lack thereof) depending on whether you think Republicans' turning into Democrats was due to lack of a friendly president, or merely that given time D.C. inevitably turns lawmakers into big government types.

Remember that Congress is that portion of government that spends money. Remember also that Clinton never vetoed spending bills to demand less spending and more reform, but only to demand more spending and less reform. If we could get that kind of fiscal responsibility out of another batch of Republicans for six years, then we could stop a great deal of the damage both parties have done since 2001. And at the very least we'll have blessed gridlock, since the Dems will retain the White House and the Pubbies will never have the kind of majorities that Democrats used over the past few years.

 

[ayabe]

The number one budget holes are military spending and medicare/social security, mostly medicare on the second one.

I've yet to hear a single candidate for any party talk about real deficit reduction with regards to cutting these programs. This is where ALL of the money is, not 2 billion here and there for pork projects or teacher pay.

Any talk of cuts to defense is strictly off the table, thus nothing will change. Most of the rest is just tired platitudes about strengthening small business and getting the government out of the way - meaningless shit that warms the hearts of rubes.

 

[Exterous]

I've yet to hear a single candidate for any party talk about real deficit reduction with regards to cutting these programs. This is where ALL of the money is, not 2 billion here and there for pork projects or teacher pay.

Thats because it's politically dangerous to talk about them.
Touch defense spending and you want the terrorists to win and hate 'merica
Try to reform SS/medicaide/medicare and you want to steal money from seniors and kill poor people

There is no middle in these situations because both sides want the issue polarized - it makes it easier to scare people in to voting for them

 

[woolfe9999]

I don't think that things will change much after November. But then, I seem to be in a tiny minority who doesn't believe we are headed for economic apocalypse. One way or the other, I think we'll fix the deficit problem, for one simple reason: we have no choice.

- wolf

 

[PokerGuy]

Things won't change all that much, but this election is simply an effective tool to put the brakes on the runaway liberal Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[zsdersw]

but this election is simply an effective tool to put the brakes on the runaway liberal Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda.

I have no faith that it will be at all effective. Those who do are victims of The Grand Delusion.

 

[PokerGuy]

I have no faith that it will be at all effective. Those who do are victims of The Grand Delusion.

Sure it will be effective. If we had the post Nov 2 makeup of the house and senate, things like the health care bill would not have passed. This is not the goal state, this is just going to be step one in fixing the country.

 

[DominionSeraph]

most people really want to undo Obama's change

.. something that won't really happen no matter who gets voted in or out.

Exactly, because that's not what people really want.

Conservative Talk is good at focusing people's general angst so they can position themselves as the solution to their manufactured "One True Problem." But take away the focusing and people really don't care. This allows Republicans to go right back to doing nothing -- a rather effective strategy they employ so that they can't be blamed for anything.

Medicare. Medicaid. Social Security. They're here to stay. Conservative Talk can scare the uneducated masses with the trivial healthcare reforms the democrats managed to pass because they're new. Once it's no longer shiny and new and scary, and conservatives see that the universe did not implode just because certain edge insurance practices were regulated away, it will be a non-issue.

Really, I can't think of a damned thing the Democrats have actually done in the last two years. They've been too busy dealing with the problems they inherited.