The 2014 American Mid-Term Election Result Probably Justified Oligarchs’ Feelings of Superiority

© 2014 Peter Free

 

05 November 2014

 

 

A meaningless election outcome, but . . .

 

Admittedly, looking for reasons that explain election results on a national basis is usually wasted endeavor. Given how corrupt the American political system is, even detecting whether the public could conceivably affect its functioning is questionable.

 

However, some electoral outcomes are so rationally absurd that one can intuit that a major portion of the electorate is impulsive, lazy and stupid.

 

Libertarian, J. D. Tuccille, editor of Reason magazine, put yesterday’s 2014 results this way:

 

 

I know Americans keep telling pollsters that they can't stand "partisan bickering" and really hate Congress for its inability to get things done.

 

[T]hose same Americans just handed control of the Senate and an expanded House majority to the political party that has stalled the president's appointees, challenged his policies, and attacked him at every turn.

 

Could it be that . . . the electorate likes to see government frozen in its tracks?

 

© 2014 J. D. Tuccille, With a Big GOP Wave, Americans Voted for More Gridlock—And They Knew What They Wanted, Reason (05 November 2014) (extracts)

 

 

I doubt that Mr. Tuccille is correct . . .

 

. . . in implying that the majority of Americans have decided that Big Government in all its manifestations is evil. Or that their 2014 vote was intended to gridlock government by reelecting the Party of Fools who created the triple disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan and the 2008 recession.

 

On the other hand, he is right that differences between what people say and do are significant enough to stall easy explanations.

 

 

Which brings up this point — Senator Mitch McConnell’s “evil” genius

 

Voters are too impulsively forgetful and too angrily thoughtless to hold anyone fairly to account for anything. Republicans effectively take advantage of this trait by messaging the dross in human character.

 

Senator McConnell rightly predicted that he could get a plurality among the public to blame President Obama for our ills, simply by obstructing whatever the President wanted to do. He also shrewdly anticipated that the majority of the electorate would not credit the President for those things, which he did do to their benefit, like pursuing policies that aided economic recovery.

 

In contrast, nationally prominent Democrats — Senator Elizabeth Warren excepted — characteristically do not do anything well enough to offset their opponents’ marked superiority in button-pushing.

 

The irony is that none of these differences matter.

 

President Obama has demonstrated, as Bill Clinton did before him, that Democratic and Republican administrations work almost identically against most of the public’s basic economic and geopolitical interests.

 

 

The moral? — It is all messaging gas, and it may explode if somebody eventually lights it

 

Wafted butt effluent appears to comprise the totality of American politics. Republicans and Democrats are partners in the Flatulence Waltz. Oligarchs like this charming substitution of illusion for substance, and they give freely to both political sides to keep them properly in step.

 

Disrupting the ignominious charade is going to take a more insightfully energetic public and a metaphorically lighted match.