OneMind

The decision by the United States Supreme Corporatists today that allows corporations unbridled rights to interfere financially in political campaigns signals the death knell of democracy as we know it. And that may be an understatement.

Unless Congress finds a way legislatively to fix this problem — and to do so before the mid-term elections which Corporate America will buy lock stock and barrel — it is time to consider moving to another country. Seriously. I have so advised my family.

Conservatives are fond of prattling on about “activist judges” who change things in ways they don’t like but these idiots have just overturned two previous court decisions and 30 years of settled law without a single legal justification. They could and should have ruled in a much narrower sense as is the Court’s usual wont. If they had confined themselves to the free speech issues raised in the case before them, they would have been able to set up a proper discussion in the Congress of the roles of corporations in the political process. Instead, they have all but guaranteed that fascism — corporate ownership of governance — will be the new reality of America this year.

As Keith Olbermann said on msnbc’s “Countdown” tonight, “Democracy was great while it lasted.”

As difficult as it is to swallow, the Republicans have succeeded in winning a Senate seat in all-blue Massachusetts that the Democrats held for 47 years in the person of the late great Ted Kennedy. There is, of course, plenty of blame to go around within the Democratic Party. There are also legitimate complaints about the usual assortment of dirty campaign tricks by the GOP, and dozens of analysts’ have provided more “insights” into the meaning of the outcome than would fit into any respectable conversation about the subject.

One idea I’ve seen that particularly concerns me is the feeling that some of my Leftist colleagues have suggested: that the Senate move to get real health insurance reform immediately through use of the reconciliation process. Bad idea. There are a number of good reasons for that judgment, but the one that is most relevant here is that there seems to be somewhat broad agreement that the GOP win in the Bay State was triggered at least in some considerable part by the voters of that state hypocritically voting to reject for the nation what they have for their own citizens. The state’s health care system is reputedly one of the best and most sweeping (and among the most expensive) in the country.

Newly elected Sen. Scott Brown ran unabashedly on a platform of defeating the Senate health insurance reform bill, proving that it is not necessary for any politician to have read and seriously considered a piece of legislation when the political value of voting along party lines is starkly apparent.

He bases his objection to the Senate bill — ostensibly at least — on its impact on the deficit. This despite the fact that the independent Congressional Budget Office, which for eight years provided rationales for Bush and his overseas adventures on behalf of Big Oil, says the Senate bill would greatly reduce the deficit over 10 years.

The Democrats’ best hope in my view is the alternative idea being presented by most other observers I’ve read: just get the House to agree to the watered-down Senate bill as a good starting point, avoiding conference and getting the bill signed into law fairly immediately. Then the Democrats can campaign on that success rather than on yet another failure to lead where the American people have clearly signaled they want to be led.

If only even a handful of Republican Senators and Congresspeople were more interested in the wants and needs of their constituents and of the American people than in their partisan political solidarity, this whole charade would never have been necessary. An effective and efficient bill could have been worked out in the bipartisan way President Obama tried in vain to get done. As long as the GOP is big on party discipline and small on caring about public policy and the public good, Democrats can only win the day for their constituents by brute force tactics.

Before they proceed, however, Democrats had better be sure they understand the possible political consequences of ramming this health insurance reform through to Obama’s desk. The fickle American voter may splinter in opposition to it because it’s not enough for the Left, it’s too much for the Right, and the Center will not hold.

Ever since Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced yesterday that she is stepping down as governor 18 months before her term ends, I’ve had a stream of messages from friends and colleagues salivating over the idea of her being able to secure the top spot on the GOP’s 2012 ticket. Through all the speculation over how her strange-seeming decision (I suspect there is scandal lurking here) will affect her thinly disguised desire to run for President, my fellow liberals have been projecting one step beyond that. If, they argue, she starts now and refurbishes her image (a la Nixon in the 1960s), she may well be able to win her party’s nomination if for no other reason than the fact that a popular President Obama would be virtually unbeatable. In situations like that, the out-of-power party often turns to a narrow niche candidate for a sacrificial lamb that simultaneously acts as a sop to the party’s fringe.

I’m not nearly as delirious about this prospect as my fellow travelers. Perhaps it’s because I am not sufficiently sanguine about the voters’ perceptiveness and ability to resist well-done propaganda. Perhaps it’s because I have a sense that Obama may lose a ton of support from the left wing of his own party in 2012 thanks to his discouragingly repeated mimicking of the Bush Regime in a number of major policy areas. Or perhaps it’s because the whole series of 2012 events is just too far off to have any degree of confidence in any aspect of them from this vantage point. But I keep thinking, “Great. But what if she were to get the nomination and then win?”

What an unmitigated disaster that would be for America. She has less than one term of a marginally incompetent governorship of one of the smallest states in the country on her resume. She is poorly read, poorly educated, almost as inarticulate as was George W. Bush (perhaps even moreso, if that could be believed). She is a walking sound bite whose thinking on all the issues on which we’ve heard her speak is shallower than the Great Salt Lake at the same time that thinking is just wrong. While it is true that this country has survived some unbelievably awful chief executives, I am unconvinced it could survive even one term under President Sarah Palin.

We have to keep an eye on her. In unsettled times such as these, fringe politicians can all too easily ride a wave of popularity in their niches and a river of cash contributions from the well-heeled fanatics who comprise the invisible leadership of those niches to undeserved and disastrous victory.

Update Saturday 4 p.m.. Palin may have said she was bailing out of politics. But her Facebook post (as reported by HuffPost) certainly doesn’t sound that way to me. Here’s the concluding paragraph: “I shared with you yesterday my heartfelt and candid reasons for this change; I’ve never thought I needed a title before one’s name to forge progress in America. I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint. I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!” She may or may not yet know what vehicle she’ll use to continue her pursuit of these objectives but she’s clearly not really going away, either. More’s the pity.

I don’t know if anyone else has said this yet, but I’m predicting that the Republican Party as we know it will run its last national elections in 2010. Starting in 2012, it will split into two factions, one of which will eventually become sufficiently mainstream again to challenge the Democratic Party but probably not for 4-8 more years.

I base this prediction on the following factors:

1. By the time of the 2012 election, Obama will be unbeatable. His public support keeps rising almost no matter what he does. He’s a consummate leader and communicator. Barring a major catastrophe, he’s all but a cinch for re-election.
2. Therefore, no real star of the GOP is going to want to step up and play sacrificial lamb for the party.
3. Therefore, factionalizing — at which the Republicans continue to prove themselves absolute masters these days — will find a ready home in the primary season.
4. In a year like 2012 shapes up to be, the radical wings of popular parties hold sway. It happened to the Democrats the year we ran the only true Liberal we’ve been able to get to the top of the party in a long time, George McGovern. It will happen to the GOP. As a result, one of the two new parties will run an absolute right-wing nut for the White House. That will force other members of an already-diminished party to back a more moderate candidate.

Even if Obama isn’t a clear shoo-in, items 3 & 4 will still have the predicted outcome, just not perhaps as convincingly.

Go ahead, tell me where my logic is failing.