Frogs for Snakes

From the New York Times:

In a private meeting with White House officials this weekend, Democratic governors voiced deep anxiety about the Obama administration’s suit against Arizona’s new law, worrying that it could cost a vulnerable Democratic Party in the fall elections.

Absent from the Governor’s complaints,I notice, are both concerns about federal inaction on immigration reform and concerns about a state’s usurping of the federal government’s constitutional prerogitives. But then, it is an election year, and you can’t run next time as an incumbant if you don’t win this one. And there’s no future in being out of office.

Early on, many people predicted that the Internet would revolutionize communication, empowering to the people and thereby threatening  totalitarian regimes with the power of democracy.

It turns out that may not be the case. On NextGov.com, Aliya Sternstein cites research by Foreign Policy blogger Evgeny Morozov, who reports that he has grown skeptical of the Internets ability to foster democracy, noting that totalitarian regimes have used social networking sites to increase censorship: “The Web has given dictators the ability to mine contents of social networking sites to identify dissidents and to pay bloggers for spreading propaganda.”

This morning I bumped into this article [will open a new tab/window] in the Washington Post reporting on political consultant Drew Westen’s attempts to help Democrats use language morely likely to appeal to voters’ emotions, and so more likely to persuade them to vote accordingly. Also this book review, from New Scientist, of Flipnosis: The art of split-second persuasion, revealingly titled “How to get others to do what we want”.

Yesterday I read “Crisis of Legitimacy” on Talking Points Memo, which ascribes citizen anger at the federal government to a sense, clearly exemplified by the Tea-Partiers but widespread, that we are wallets-and-votes only, existing only to enable the will of the pow that be, without a voice of our own–at least not one being listened to.

For several years I’ve been tracking and trying to articulate my feeling, arounsed as much in local politics as in national, that the common interest of the citizens is no longer a category of thought in politics, that politicians cannot conceive of a political arena not constituted by competing interests. So their “difficulties”, the scorn with which we view them, stem from their view of life as a content of competing purposes rather than a collaborative effort of common purpose, which is more like how the rest of us see the world.

As Ruskin said: “Beware the fury of a patient man.”

According to So Damn Much Money, a chronical of the rise of lobbying in D.C. and the parallel increase in the power of money, the politician’s motto is (or ought to be) “When it rains, dance.”  Meaning, whenever something good happens claim credit.

Our politicians are doing that now related to movement on the previously stalled bill to overhaul financial regulation.  Acording to a N.Y. Times article:

“Republicans said that they had forced Democrats back to the bargaining table to negotiate a bipartisan accord, while Democrats said that Republicans were hastily abandoning their opposition in fear of a public outcry.”

The parties’ posings are ex-post-facto rain dances, I suspect. What’s really happening is that lawmakers are feeling the public’s outrage at the looting of the economy by the investment houses and the cowardice keeping our government from doing anything about it. And about time.

From a Washington Post article on the financial regulation bill: “Democrats have been unwilling to alter the legislation without a guarantee that it would bring Republican votes.”

Republicans this session have engaged in “bipartisan” deliberations (which aren’t that at all but are rather negotiations over what interests will be privileged) thereby revising legislation which will pass with or without their support more to their liking, then they don’t vote for it.

There’s no such thing as one-way bipartisanship–it’s plain crazy to propose “You do what I want in the interests of bipartisanship”–so from a practical political standpoint Democrat lawmakers should just ignore their Republican counterparts as irrelevant and take the inevitable attacks on their lack of bipartisanship.

They’re going to get attacked for something no matter what they do, that’s the current M.O. of the Republican Party, and with congress’ approval ratings hovering a little south of 25% it’s hard to imagine how those attacks would do any additional damage.