Paul BoudreauAnd I Sense a Little Fresh Air on the Horizon
March 20th 2011 22:25
:
Spring Has Sprung...
Hullo,
Well, after a prolonged absence, I'm back posting here at A Political Mind. It's been a while. My last post went up on January 24th.
So what's new? (Here's the part where I try to cover an astonishing amount of ground in as few words as possible. Watch while I blow your minds with my brevity.)
In the intervening two months the world has done some interesting things. The day after I posted my last missive, Egyptians decided that freedom was more palatable than dictatorial stagnation and began protests that eventually deposed Hosni Mubarak after 30 odd years of doing nothing. Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish. Tunisians had already done the same with their dictator, and the Jordanian, Yemeni, Bahraini, Omani, Saudi, Libyan, Iraqi and Iranian peoples have all, to varying degrees of success, attempted to do the same. The "Arab Street" seems, after generations of repression and control by various elites (mostly installed by Western powers in various power plays over the years), to have found a voice for themselves and not just for shouting about Israel. Speaking of Israel, they, in the last few months, have continued their illegal settlements while facing the threat of a potential Palestinian motion before the Security Council to condemn these actions. Not that the U.S. will allow such a motion to go forward, but that is no surprise whatsoever.
Charlie Sheen has gone completely insane... also falling under the category of no surprise whatsoever.
The NY Times has begun to institute a paywall... meaning that there will be fewer Times articles linked to from this site as I have no intention of paying them for my limited readership. Their loss.
The Huffington Post was sold to AOL. What this means to an news gathering organization that actually WAS liberal/progressive (my emphasis here is due to the claims by the Right that all news other than Fox is leftist... I tend to disagree) remains to be seen.
In sports (meaning the teams that I personally support, who cares about the rest!) there was some kind of Superbowl, that a team won. I honestly don't remember who... oh right, it was the Greenbay Packers. Their victory was overshadowed by the godawful performance at halftime by the Blackeyed Peas. Somehow that crime against music stands out in my mind more than the game itself. Enough about that. My beloved Maple Leafs have come back from the dead (read 14 points out of the playoffs at the All-Star Break) to make a late push for the post-season (as I write this they're 4 points out with 9 games left.) which will likely fall short. But at least they made it interesting, and are showing signs that hope and not stagnation is the future at the ACC. The mighty Reds of Liverpool, under new/old Boss (King) Kenny Dalglish have appeared rejuvenated and hopeful for the future with the loss of He Who Shall Not Be Named From Spain to Chelsea and the acquisitions of Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll to replace said money-grubbing flop... not that I'm bitter. Hope abound for the future at Anfield. And finally (on the hope front) baseball season is just around the corner. I had the chance to listen to my first Blue Jays spring training game of the year today and, with the calendar officially killing off winter at 7:21 EST today here in Ottawa, I felt the first real twitch of said spring awaking in my bones. A beautiful thing. Looks like my Jays are going to be fun to watch this year, with lots of youth coming up (as far as breaking camp with the big club goes: Kyle Drabek=Yes, Brett Lawrie=No... just my humble opinion) and some real hope for the future.
Now that we've gotten a little retrospective out of the way (and missed a few things of course but hey, this is a blog not an encyclopedia and I assume you're getting tired of sports... this is a politics blog after all.) lets get to business. As you may have noticed throughout the upper sections of the post here, I used the phrase hope a few times. Maybe it's just the spring air, or maybe it's watching the nascent democracies around the world finding their voices (as in today in Egypt), but I'm beginning to feel a little less pessimistic about the state of American politics. This is odd, I know, but allow me to elaborate.
Over the last couple of months there have been a few developments that appear to have changed, in my mind, the landscape in Washington and around the country. Following the midterm elections, when I started this blog, as a pragmatic progressive I was a in a funk. I can admit this. The resounding Republican sweeps in Congress, statehouses and governor's mansion's across the nation would have been bad enough on their own, but the manner in which the accomplished this feat was what really scared me. It wasn't that they managed to create a coalition reasonable and reform minded groups under a big-tent. It was the TEA Party. The same crazy, gun toting, reactionary, exclusionary, birther-believing, Federal fearing fringe groups that so many commentators had sneered at as they waved their Sarah Palin signs (and, for the record, through my absence from blogging I managed to attain a Dana Milbankesque Palin Free February... but not by design.) at those John McCain Rally's late in the '08 cycle had become a major political force in the country. They had unseated Republicans of a moderate nature and, much to the chagrin of pundits and progressives alike, had beaten Democratic candidates soundly across all levels of government. Worse, there seemed to be evidence that the country was giving them just the kind of slash and burn mandate that political barbarians of their ilk need to effect the change they desire (read anti-government anarchy).
So what's changed in the last couple of months?
Well not the TEA Party. They're still being irresponsible on spending, attacking their president's citizenship and supporting Sarah, Glenn and Newt. But the wave of reaction seems to have receded. Recent polling has shown President Obama's approval ratings hovering back up around the 50% range (a historically positive sign for re-election, even if that election is a ways off) and congressional approval ratings way down in the 20s, showing that the partisan character of the GOP House majority has not endeared itself to the electorate.
Also, where the midterm elections saw a general malaise (my apologies to Jimmy Carter) amongst the Democratic base, Republican attacks against social welfare, regulatory and culture programs (NPR, the EPA, and Health Care Reform for example) and, most recently (and vocally opposed) organized labour have reinvigorated labour leaders, grassroots activists and other traditional Democratic constituencies while turning off moderates. There has also been a lack of nuance and subtlety (to say nothing of coherence) in the GOP's approach to the budget debate. It has been increasingly hard to take serious their desire for fiscal austerity while insisting on an approach that targets only non-military discretionary spending (roughly 15% of the total budget). This has led to their losing whatever advantage they may have held over the Democrats in this debate, as they appear increasingly unwilling to compromise (even with eachother) or negotiate in a serious fashion over the issue that voters overwhelmingly rate as the most important in the country, namely how the government should deal with the economy.
All of these factors (among others, which I hope to address over the coming weeks and months) lead me to think that, as so often in legend, with spring comes hope. The intransigence of the GOP, as well as President Obama's growing willingness to listen, wait, and lead from the rear on important issues, lead me to believe that there is hope that in the coming election cycle there will be an impetus for a correction to the elections of 2010 which sees, if not a Democratic landslide of the 2006 and 2008 variety (or mirroring the GOP's 2010 sweep), at least a change to a more moderate GOP who is willing to work with the President (who I believe is in the driver's seat for reelection) to address seriously the business of the nation in a constructive fashion instead of the partisan stonewalling that has prevailed for the last few months.
Hope, my friends, hope.
Cheers (and happy spring),
PSRB
Well, after a prolonged absence, I'm back posting here at A Political Mind. It's been a while. My last post went up on January 24th.
So what's new? (Here's the part where I try to cover an astonishing amount of ground in as few words as possible. Watch while I blow your minds with my brevity.)
In the intervening two months the world has done some interesting things. The day after I posted my last missive, Egyptians decided that freedom was more palatable than dictatorial stagnation and began protests that eventually deposed Hosni Mubarak after 30 odd years of doing nothing. Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish. Tunisians had already done the same with their dictator, and the Jordanian, Yemeni, Bahraini, Omani, Saudi, Libyan, Iraqi and Iranian peoples have all, to varying degrees of success, attempted to do the same. The "Arab Street" seems, after generations of repression and control by various elites (mostly installed by Western powers in various power plays over the years), to have found a voice for themselves and not just for shouting about Israel. Speaking of Israel, they, in the last few months, have continued their illegal settlements while facing the threat of a potential Palestinian motion before the Security Council to condemn these actions. Not that the U.S. will allow such a motion to go forward, but that is no surprise whatsoever.
Charlie Sheen has gone completely insane... also falling under the category of no surprise whatsoever.
The NY Times has begun to institute a paywall... meaning that there will be fewer Times articles linked to from this site as I have no intention of paying them for my limited readership. Their loss.
The Huffington Post was sold to AOL. What this means to an news gathering organization that actually WAS liberal/progressive (my emphasis here is due to the claims by the Right that all news other than Fox is leftist... I tend to disagree) remains to be seen.
In sports (meaning the teams that I personally support, who cares about the rest!) there was some kind of Superbowl, that a team won. I honestly don't remember who... oh right, it was the Greenbay Packers. Their victory was overshadowed by the godawful performance at halftime by the Blackeyed Peas. Somehow that crime against music stands out in my mind more than the game itself. Enough about that. My beloved Maple Leafs have come back from the dead (read 14 points out of the playoffs at the All-Star Break) to make a late push for the post-season (as I write this they're 4 points out with 9 games left.) which will likely fall short. But at least they made it interesting, and are showing signs that hope and not stagnation is the future at the ACC. The mighty Reds of Liverpool, under new/old Boss (King) Kenny Dalglish have appeared rejuvenated and hopeful for the future with the loss of He Who Shall Not Be Named From Spain to Chelsea and the acquisitions of Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll to replace said money-grubbing flop... not that I'm bitter. Hope abound for the future at Anfield. And finally (on the hope front) baseball season is just around the corner. I had the chance to listen to my first Blue Jays spring training game of the year today and, with the calendar officially killing off winter at 7:21 EST today here in Ottawa, I felt the first real twitch of said spring awaking in my bones. A beautiful thing. Looks like my Jays are going to be fun to watch this year, with lots of youth coming up (as far as breaking camp with the big club goes: Kyle Drabek=Yes, Brett Lawrie=No... just my humble opinion) and some real hope for the future.
Now that we've gotten a little retrospective out of the way (and missed a few things of course but hey, this is a blog not an encyclopedia and I assume you're getting tired of sports... this is a politics blog after all.) lets get to business. As you may have noticed throughout the upper sections of the post here, I used the phrase hope a few times. Maybe it's just the spring air, or maybe it's watching the nascent democracies around the world finding their voices (as in today in Egypt), but I'm beginning to feel a little less pessimistic about the state of American politics. This is odd, I know, but allow me to elaborate.
Over the last couple of months there have been a few developments that appear to have changed, in my mind, the landscape in Washington and around the country. Following the midterm elections, when I started this blog, as a pragmatic progressive I was a in a funk. I can admit this. The resounding Republican sweeps in Congress, statehouses and governor's mansion's across the nation would have been bad enough on their own, but the manner in which the accomplished this feat was what really scared me. It wasn't that they managed to create a coalition reasonable and reform minded groups under a big-tent. It was the TEA Party. The same crazy, gun toting, reactionary, exclusionary, birther-believing, Federal fearing fringe groups that so many commentators had sneered at as they waved their Sarah Palin signs (and, for the record, through my absence from blogging I managed to attain a Dana Milbankesque Palin Free February... but not by design.) at those John McCain Rally's late in the '08 cycle had become a major political force in the country. They had unseated Republicans of a moderate nature and, much to the chagrin of pundits and progressives alike, had beaten Democratic candidates soundly across all levels of government. Worse, there seemed to be evidence that the country was giving them just the kind of slash and burn mandate that political barbarians of their ilk need to effect the change they desire (read anti-government anarchy).
So what's changed in the last couple of months?
Well not the TEA Party. They're still being irresponsible on spending, attacking their president's citizenship and supporting Sarah, Glenn and Newt. But the wave of reaction seems to have receded. Recent polling has shown President Obama's approval ratings hovering back up around the 50% range (a historically positive sign for re-election, even if that election is a ways off) and congressional approval ratings way down in the 20s, showing that the partisan character of the GOP House majority has not endeared itself to the electorate.
Also, where the midterm elections saw a general malaise (my apologies to Jimmy Carter) amongst the Democratic base, Republican attacks against social welfare, regulatory and culture programs (NPR, the EPA, and Health Care Reform for example) and, most recently (and vocally opposed) organized labour have reinvigorated labour leaders, grassroots activists and other traditional Democratic constituencies while turning off moderates. There has also been a lack of nuance and subtlety (to say nothing of coherence) in the GOP's approach to the budget debate. It has been increasingly hard to take serious their desire for fiscal austerity while insisting on an approach that targets only non-military discretionary spending (roughly 15% of the total budget). This has led to their losing whatever advantage they may have held over the Democrats in this debate, as they appear increasingly unwilling to compromise (even with eachother) or negotiate in a serious fashion over the issue that voters overwhelmingly rate as the most important in the country, namely how the government should deal with the economy.
All of these factors (among others, which I hope to address over the coming weeks and months) lead me to think that, as so often in legend, with spring comes hope. The intransigence of the GOP, as well as President Obama's growing willingness to listen, wait, and lead from the rear on important issues, lead me to believe that there is hope that in the coming election cycle there will be an impetus for a correction to the elections of 2010 which sees, if not a Democratic landslide of the 2006 and 2008 variety (or mirroring the GOP's 2010 sweep), at least a change to a more moderate GOP who is willing to work with the President (who I believe is in the driver's seat for reelection) to address seriously the business of the nation in a constructive fashion instead of the partisan stonewalling that has prevailed for the last few months.
Hope, my friends, hope.
Cheers (and happy spring),
PSRB
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