It's interesting how the two most prominent political outcomes this year so far have been so willfully misconstrued by the media dupes.
First you had Eric Cantor, whose district had been redrawn more rural and red than it had been. This turned out to be a disaster for Cantor, whose applecart got overturned by some Randian yabbo from a small private college. Could this be the resurgence of the teabaggers, or simply a case of a low-foreheadvote turnout, a challenger who had a decent ground game, and an incumbent who so took his victory for granted, he spent over $160k schmoozing in steakhouses instead of glad-handing the rubes in his district? Much discussion was had over the various possible causes, thus ensuring that many boner pills and insurance policies got sold.
More recently you had the primary runoff in America's most useless state, Mississippi, between ancient pork-chaser Thad Cochran and another in the endless procession of teahadis, Chris McDaniel. It's actually a damned shame McDaniel didn't win, because it would have been hilarious to watch him try to turn the pork off. No fuckin' way, champ, yours is a state that produces only two things: jack and shit. If it weren't for the rest of the country supporting your welfare state, Mississippi would be nothing but a couple of football colleges and a Faulkner museum, surrounded by subsistence farmers.
So both these electoral outcomes were framed, as these things tend to be nowadays, as responses specifically to the teabaggers. (And yes, I refuse to call them by their preferred name, because it's stupid, because it doesn't mean what they think it means, and mostly because they won't stop acting like petulant assholes.) Cantor's defeat was a jumbled mess of analysis, but the upshot was that the insurgent won, which could only mean a repudiation of "establishment" mores. Cochran's squeaker victory, on the other hand, proved how establishment Republicans -- with a little help from Democratic "friends" -- could beat back this insurgent tide.
As you might imagine, I have a different interpretation than the people whose paychecks depend on peddling the conventional interpretation of things. Politics is an industry, pure and simple, from the pols themselves to the donors, the lobbyists, the cable news networks, the dipshit analysts who never get anything right but still keep their jobs, the massive amounts of commercial time sold, etc., etc. There's a lot of money involved here; there's a tremendous amount of energy and effort and pelf that goes into manufacturing all that consent.
This is really about incumbency. Industries rely on stability and predictability, being able to make solid projections and plan strategy accordingly, so as to optimize profit. So when politicians with incumbency ratings normally associated with third-world despots suddenly find themselves challenged or even defeated, the point-one-percenters who put them there get fidgety.
They don't care about chumps like David Brat or Chris McDaniel particularly -- they can either pay those guys to go along with the program, or make sure they get nothing done and then bankroll the next primary challenger. Everyone's a revolutionary until they start getting paid.
What the owners care about is the idea that the peons might start thinking that they actually have a choice in these things. Everything about the system is designed specifically to keep the peons out of the process, the obvious barriers to entry being cash in hand and net worth. So when some rabble-rouser comes along and disrupts the industry's stability and predictability, they don't like it. It makes them nervous.
And I'm really not sure why it does, or should, make anyone nervous. The incumbents aren't going anywhere, the percentage will still remain comically high. Business will proceed as usual. Rick Perry will have a few more unforced errors, which will embolden the faithful and enrage the unbelievers, but will only sway the backers insofar as it affects Perry's actual poll ratings, his ability to get elected and carry out their agenda.
Some other clown-shoes psychopath will step of the primordial ooze of the primary system and get the support of Perry and the rest of the moron claque, and the operational plan will continue apace. The Republican voters will continue to fabricate and exaggerate, and the Democratic voters will nag their doubters with threats of another 15 years of Nader-baiting, since we can all see what a slam-bang job they've done keeping abortion legal and the median wage stagnant for forty years now.
First you had Eric Cantor, whose district had been redrawn more rural and red than it had been. This turned out to be a disaster for Cantor, whose applecart got overturned by some Randian yabbo from a small private college. Could this be the resurgence of the teabaggers, or simply a case of a low-
More recently you had the primary runoff in America's most useless state, Mississippi, between ancient pork-chaser Thad Cochran and another in the endless procession of teahadis, Chris McDaniel. It's actually a damned shame McDaniel didn't win, because it would have been hilarious to watch him try to turn the pork off. No fuckin' way, champ, yours is a state that produces only two things: jack and shit. If it weren't for the rest of the country supporting your welfare state, Mississippi would be nothing but a couple of football colleges and a Faulkner museum, surrounded by subsistence farmers.
So both these electoral outcomes were framed, as these things tend to be nowadays, as responses specifically to the teabaggers. (And yes, I refuse to call them by their preferred name, because it's stupid, because it doesn't mean what they think it means, and mostly because they won't stop acting like petulant assholes.) Cantor's defeat was a jumbled mess of analysis, but the upshot was that the insurgent won, which could only mean a repudiation of "establishment" mores. Cochran's squeaker victory, on the other hand, proved how establishment Republicans -- with a little help from Democratic "friends" -- could beat back this insurgent tide.
As you might imagine, I have a different interpretation than the people whose paychecks depend on peddling the conventional interpretation of things. Politics is an industry, pure and simple, from the pols themselves to the donors, the lobbyists, the cable news networks, the dipshit analysts who never get anything right but still keep their jobs, the massive amounts of commercial time sold, etc., etc. There's a lot of money involved here; there's a tremendous amount of energy and effort and pelf that goes into manufacturing all that consent.
This is really about incumbency. Industries rely on stability and predictability, being able to make solid projections and plan strategy accordingly, so as to optimize profit. So when politicians with incumbency ratings normally associated with third-world despots suddenly find themselves challenged or even defeated, the point-one-percenters who put them there get fidgety.
They don't care about chumps like David Brat or Chris McDaniel particularly -- they can either pay those guys to go along with the program, or make sure they get nothing done and then bankroll the next primary challenger. Everyone's a revolutionary until they start getting paid.
What the owners care about is the idea that the peons might start thinking that they actually have a choice in these things. Everything about the system is designed specifically to keep the peons out of the process, the obvious barriers to entry being cash in hand and net worth. So when some rabble-rouser comes along and disrupts the industry's stability and predictability, they don't like it. It makes them nervous.
And I'm really not sure why it does, or should, make anyone nervous. The incumbents aren't going anywhere, the percentage will still remain comically high. Business will proceed as usual. Rick Perry will have a few more unforced errors, which will embolden the faithful and enrage the unbelievers, but will only sway the backers insofar as it affects Perry's actual poll ratings, his ability to get elected and carry out their agenda.
Some other clown-shoes psychopath will step of the primordial ooze of the primary system and get the support of Perry and the rest of the moron claque, and the operational plan will continue apace. The Republican voters will continue to fabricate and exaggerate, and the Democratic voters will nag their doubters with threats of another 15 years of Nader-baiting, since we can all see what a slam-bang job they've done keeping abortion legal and the median wage stagnant for forty years now.
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