WAVES OF ANTI-INCUMBENCY

There were some upsets in last night's 2010 primary elections, to be sure. Voters on the left and right, and everywhere in-between, seem disgusted with the behavior and non-performance exhibited by their representatives and senators in Washington, D.C. Ultra-conservative Tea Party activists and candidates spout poorly-defined slogans about "taking our country back" (back to the 18th century?) and Republicans are foaming at the mouth as they hungrily contemplate retaking the House this fall (dream on, idiots). But voter anger cannot be dismissed, as it is a very real force, and last night, that anger manifested itself in a number of curious ways.

What CAN be dismissed are media and conservative Republican pundits' assertions that the Democrats are in big trouble and will be surrendering the House and/or Senate to the Republicans this fall.

In what was supposed to be a perfect Republican coup, Democrat Mark Critz soundly defeated his Republican opponent in a special election held in Pennsylvania's 12 th District (the deceased Jack Murtha's old seat). Republicans were licking their chops thinking they would pick up this swing-district seat, thereby "proving" that the nation is firmly opposed to President Obama's and the Democrats' spending policies and would send Obama and his party a big, loud message. Well, Republicans, that's what you get for thinkin', and for assuming the rest of the country thinks as narrowly as you do!


Progressive Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak scored an important primary victory over his Republican-conveniently-turned-Democrat incumbent opponent in the Senate race for that state. More evidence that voters haven't abandoned Democratic or progressive causes.

Arlen Specter went down to defeat as voters expressed their distrust in him and their displeasure with his self-serving political maneuvering. How foolhardy can Specter be? Did he really think a guy who had strongly supported much of George W. Bush's agenda, and who had voted to confirm both Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court would be overwhelming accepted and embraced by Pennsylvia's Democratic Party? Obviously, he thought his new party was as slack on principles as was he!

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was thoroughly rebuked by his Kentucky Republican constituency last night. While trying to play kingpin in the state GOP, his efforts blew up in his face when his hand-picked candidate for Senate, Trey Grayson, was trounced by Tea Party independent Rand Paul. McConnell shouldn't be surprised, though. Voters are fed-up with obstruction and petty partisan politics, activities McConnell has heavily engaged in for many years. This also brings into question McConnell's legitimacy as the leader of his party in the Senate. We can only hope that we are seeing the beginning of the end of Mitch McConnell!


Arkansas conservative Democrat Blanche Lincoln, the "Senator from Wal Mart" and corporate shill for the health insurance insurance industry, was forced into a runoff election because she failed to attain at least 50% of the vote against her strong primary challenger Bill Halter. Sizable numbers of Arkansas voters have become fed up with her sellout to corporate America, especially in the area of health care reform. She may well retain her seat in the end, but growing numbers of people are beginning to agree with the more progressive Halter's line of thinking.


So much for John Boehner's hopes of becoming Sppeaker of the House next fall. There is absolutely no way voters will endorse his and his party's attempts at obstruction and non-governance, nor will voters easily forget that it was conservative Republicans who so badly mismanaged our economy so as to nearly bring about a new Great Depression two years ago!

Voters nationwide are justifiably angry with their Congress. It is full of corporate shills and self-serving egomaniacs whose main interest is in power and petty partisan politics rather than sound public policy. But we as a people must honestly recognize that we, as well as the unresponsive and irresponsible politicians we see in Washington, are to blame for the unrepresentative type of governance we are experiencing. We keep electing and then re-electing bozos like Boehner, McConnell, Specter, Lincoln, and Michele Bachmann. These people are not salt of the earth types, or average workers. By and large, as I proved in my piece on the makeup of Congress early last year, they come by and large from elite or monied backgrounds and are beholden to big monied interests. Not only that, but once they get into office, few outside of the media or the blogging community ever bother to keep tabs on them or monitor their performance. Almost nobody emails them, calls their office, writes them letters, or goes to meet with them face to face at public gatherings. So think about this, America: next time you are caught up in a huge wave of anti-incumbency, remember who it was who put these people in power and has allowed them to stay there and performed unchecked and unchallenged: it was YOU!

UNCHANGED SINCE COLONIAL DAYS

MANY thanks to Howie Klein for this brilliant piece which appeared Saturday in his outstanding blog Down With Tyranny! (http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/)

Saturday, May 15, 2010
You Say You Want A Revolution? Conservatives Haven't Changed Since Colonial Days
Blanche Lincoln & Samuel Seabury, conservatives with ideas antithetical to American values

When reviewing-- at great length and over the course of several months-- Mike Lux's spectacular book, The Progressive Revolution: How The Best In America Came To Be, we often pointed out how conservatives were inevitably on the wrong side of history, starting with their opposition to the Declaration of Independence, to the American Revolution itself-- and did they ever hate the tea partiers-- and, of course, to the Constitution which granted suffrage to non-landowners and to "common" people. At the time of the American Revolution, almost half a million conservatives remained loyal to the British crown and many fought on the side of the Brits against the founding of a new independent republic. That was about 20% of the population at the time. After the war, over 60,000 white conservatives-- including many of the wealthiest landowners like the DeLancy, DePester Walton and Cruger families of the Hudson Valley and the Penn, Allen, Chew, and Shippen families of Pennsylvania-- left America for Britain or other British territories, like Canada and the Bahamas. Many of the richest southern conservatives took their slaves and fled to the West Indies. In his spectacular book, Conservatism in Early American History, Leonard Woods Larabee identified the traits that predicted anti-American attitudes among conservatives. It's still worth looking at those traits today when examining anti-American attitudes among today's conservatives. Needless to say, the top traits were greed and selfishness, the root motivators among most conservatives down through the ages.

In his book Threshold Thom Hartmann emphasizes that "[d]uring the Revolutionary War, virtually every person of great wealth left the United States... As the Constitution was being framed, one of the biggest issues was the debate over the best ways to keep in check the power of wealth." Unfortunately, corporate shills like Alexander Hamilton (think of him as the representative of Wall Street, a kind of combination of John McCain, Chuck Schumer and Joe Lieberman), Tench Coxe and Samuel Seabury and reactionary southerners-- yep; back then too-- worked hard, and effectively, to thwart that strain of revolutionary thought. Which is why, for example, we wound up with a Senate (modeled on the House of Lords), with slavery, with no voting rights for women and no guarantees of the individual liberties that were later addressed-- also to the hysterical opposition of conservatives-- by the Bill of Rights.

Today this same strain of conservatism completely dominates one political party, the Republicans, and had immense power inside the Democratic party (though the corporately-financed DLC and Blue Dog Caucus). Yesterday Bill Halter debated one of the most conservative-- and, as though it were a corollary, corrupt-- members of the Senate, Blanche Lincoln. He argued for giving the middle class a hand. She advocated for low estate tax rates for the few dozen families in Arkansas-- all her political contributors-- with estates worth over $10,000,000.

Tuesday Arkansas voters will decide between the middle class-oriented Halter and the sleazy corporate shill Lincoln. It should surprise no one that the Democratic Party Establishment, stinking in nearly as much corruption as the Republiucan Party Establishment, backs Lincoln. Wherever there's a contested primary Tuesday, the DCCC, the DSCC and the Democratic insider establishment is backing the more conservative candidate and the one most likely to suck up to Big Money corporate interests. In the U.K. last week, voters gave no party a mandate. The "winners," The Conservatives, walked off with an unimpressive 36% of the vote. 64% of the electorate rejected them. But the Labour Party, like the U.S. Democratic Party, has, in many cases, become too putrid and too beholden to corporate interests to bother with.

Aside from Arkansas, there are a number of crucial races pitting conservatives against non-conservatives. Pennsylvania Democrats will decide between a Republican calling himself a Democrat for convenience sake, Arlen Specter, and an actual Democrat, Joe Sestak. And in Kentucky, Democrats get to choose between Dan Mongiardo, an anti-Choice, anti-gay, anti-healthcare conservative tool, and Attorney General Jack Conway, who, like Halter, stands for solidly middle class values and aspirations. All three races are too close to call, although momentum is clearly against the three conservatives. You know which ones Blue America are backing, right?