A Year Later

The first November election after Barack Obama won the presidency had several races that the politicians and media watched for real and mostly imagined significance. The early morning after stories trumpeted Democratic defeats for governor of New Jersey (the incumbent lost) and Virginia (the Democratic incumbent wasn't running.) By the time Morning Joe begins fulminating, the GOPers will be crowing all over the place.

However, their glee might be tempered by a couple of House races where they lost badly, particularly the one in New York, where a Democrat won a Republican seat, for the first time in more than a century. This was the race where Rabid Right leaders endorsed the Conservative Party candidate over the Republican, who dropped out--and endorsed the Dem. The Conservative was still expected to win, but he sure didn't.

Inevitably there's the question of what this says about Obama. Looking at the polls, Kos said "nothing." Obama's support in Virginia and New Jersey is about the same as when he won those states, and in exit polls most voters said they weren't saying anything about Obama either way with their vote.

Later in the evening, Kos played a slightly different tune, attributing the low turnout among young voters to disenchantment with the lack of bold action. Earlier in the day I caught Chris Matthews railing against Netroots kids expecting that political change is as easy as "asking your mother to make you pancakes." So that's another argument that's bound to gas up the airwaves Wednesday.

Whatever each of them does or doesn't portend, a few off-year elections aren't going to change the dynamic for Obama. But how the perception game among pols plays out might, specifically in terms of pending legislation on healthcare and the Climate Crisis. If GOPers can project more strength and cast Obama as politically weaker, it could be trouble. However, GOPers feeling their oats are fairly reliable in their tendency to overplay their hand.

But what is important about a year later? We've forgotten the Great Recession--and how close we came to Great Depression II--even before the economy is actually healthy. That's remarkable. What isn't remarkable is all the hoo-haw about what Obama is and isn't doing, and particularly the inspiring speeches he's not making. I was only 16 or 17, but I remember the same hoo-haw about President Kennedy. He's such a great communicator, why isn't he doing more FDR style fireside chats? Etc. JFK may have been too skeptical, but he did understand timing, and nobody has been better at timing in recent years than Barack Obama. He waited until the right moment to address Congress on health care, and evidence is mounting that it was that moment that turned things around.

Sure, it's not done yet, and there's plenty of danger ahead. But that isn't the worst of it. What I find most appalling and most dangerous is the attempt to discredit and destroy the President. I understand where some of this is coming from. It's a brand of justice called revenge.

I saw it on a bumper sticker in front of me at a red light--surrounded by other Rabid Right slogans, it said something to the effect of: I'll respect your President exactly as much as you respected mine.

This is partly payback for what was said about G.W. Bush. And there's something to this: there was disdain, disrespect, however justified or not.

But the Rabid Right is much better at hate. Their leaders--including elected bigwig DC leaders-- aren't even pretending to restrain the haters. GOPers in Congress and possible presidential candidates fan the flames, as do ambitious media stars eager to cash in. They have inflated the rhetoric beyond reason. No longer even bothering with "socialized medicine," they've gone right to the inflammatory "socialism."

Was Bush closer to being a fascist than Obama is a socialist? I'd say yes, but someone could probably make the case that these propositions are equally wrong. I can recite ways in which Bush earned disdain (his appointment by the Supreme Court, Iraq, Katrina, torture, etc.) And I can show how a lot of this extreme opposition is delusional. So the equivalence breaks down, though obviously not everyone thinks so.

Is the racial hatred of Obama more toxic than the disdain for Bush as a spoiled rich kid? I'd say yes, but somebody on the other side might make a case that they're the same in some way.

What I don't think is debatable is the greater potential for violence now--there is a difference between gun-toting and civil disobedience. And again, GOPer leaders are eagerly embracing and encouraging the vocabulary of the haters, as well as their campaign contributions. They are extreme enough that columnist Joe Klein, not exactly a roaring leftist, accuses some of them of sedition.

Here's what I worry about, beyond the very real worry over President Obama's safety, and what will happen to the country if there is even an assassination attempt. We have a huge and powerful military, a military-industrial complex, constrained only by one civilian authority, the President. Anything that undermines his legitimacy and authority, threatens his control over the military specifically, and the military-industrial complex.

The relative power of the military today is an open question. Maybe they aren't as powerful as they once were, in the fifties and sixties, when even the Secretary of Defense admitted they were itching to start a thermonuclear war. But Obama may need all his authority to keep the military in control, especially if he makes decisions counter to their wishes in Afghanistan.

There's a delicate line between criticizing, even castigating the man who is president, and damaging the presidency and the ability of the President to fulfill constitutional roles and duties. But I don't think the Rabid Right is aware of that, or particularly cares. That's scary in itself.

On the plus side, most of the American electorate is being decidedly turned off by this rabid rhetoric. Still, it's a volatile situation, in a country where civilization itself seems increasingly vulnerable.