"There might be a difference between Obama and Romney, but no matter who gets elected things are going to get worse." Not me, but a friend of my wife's (no not a cab driver). Just an average middle class middle aged woman. Although she may not actually be average since she can clearly see which way the wind blows.
So I re-posted this thing from Daniel Ellsberg on Facebook about how one, if one lives in a "swing state" needs to cast a vote for Obama.to make sure that Romney doesn't get in, not because you want Obama, but because Romney is too bad to contemplate. Chomsky made essentially the same point in 2008 about McCain. Although to be fair to Chomsky we had not seen specifically how Obama would govern right then, there were his promises, and I suspect that even Chomsky couldn't believe just how much Obama was lying at that time. We all expected him to be somewhat more conservative then he talked, but to have him nearly completely turn his back on everything he said was a little much (okay maybe only a 165 degree swing as opposed to a 180).
It is a hard choice, although to be fair to leftists like myself in all probability it doesn't matter. It would be the red necks and the low information voters and those who thought they were going to get help from a democratic administration who didn't who will decide the election if Romney does win. But it will be us loud mouthed leftists who will get the blame. I've said it before, but it is interesting that people who complain and who point out that the emperor has no clothes who will get the blame if Obama loses, not the naked emperor himself. Left wingers are constantly being blamed for Gore's loss, even though Gore ran to the right and backed everything that Clinton did including NAFTA and gutting welfare. But apparently, I wasn't supposed to believe him. Silly me. At any rate how one governs should really have no consequences as far a getting votes from the left if you are a democrat because if you are left you gotta vote for him (or her) no matter what because the republican will be so much worse.
There are a couple of areas on which Obama seems to be better then Romney: LGTB issues and the right of women to control their bodies. Neither of those issues will affect the money men. And the LGTB issues will only peripherally benefit those who are being helped. With women's issues, as Sanger said the ability to regulate pregnancies is absolutely necessary to ensure freedom for women.
Otherwise we march forward inexorably with our permanent war on just about anybody we feel like. And as for various economic issues, oh hell. ACA is better then what existed a couple of years ago, but the way we do it is to pour money into the pockets of the wealthiest insurance companies now, so it is another means of transfering money from the poor and middle class to the wealthy and as a side effect some people get medical care, who wouldn't have otherwise.
The Grand Bargain is still out there and watch, what happens after the election, no matter who wins. Bye bye social security as we know it.
I would guess that the worst will take a little longer under Obama then under Romney, there is a value of having bad things happen twn years from now as opposed to five years from now. We all rejoice that Tiny Tim survives even though we all know that he's long dead by now (and yes I do know that it is a novella).
1 comment:
Yes, it's amazing how we on the "left" of this country are to blame for all this. As I repeatedly told people when I voted for Nader, when we're presented with two choices that are unacceptable, there's no point in choosing between them. That's where we are at yet again.
Yes, we're told that all those bad things that Bush did are our fault. After all, Gore wouldn't have done any of them, right? Yeah, right. The problem Gore had was that he didn't want to stand for anything, at least not anything progressive. Why would I vote for that?
If you don't vote for what you want, you'll never get it. We progressives don't vote for what we want. We vote against what we don't, which ends up being what we get anyway. Maybe in another generation or two we'll figure that out.
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