We know the Democrats got some of their groove back in the midterm elections. How’d that happen?
Here’s some of my thinking.
On the grassroots level, people are upset with the war in Iraq and afraid of George Bush and his guys strutting around and doing whatever they feel like doing, especially the part about denying basic human rights and torturing random people.
The Free State (New Hampshire) had two representatives in Congress Jeb Bradley and Charles Bass, both good solid Bush Republicans. I said “had.” They were supposed to have won easily, but the Dems took both NH seats.
An impromptu peace caucus of the Free State Project initiated a plan to reveal to the public that both Jeb and Charlie were staunch supporters of the president’s policy of torture. They made up some signs saying “He voted for torture” and pointed them to the Congressmen’s signs, e.g. below:
Apparently, this was effective. Not the least for being true.
It’s a good example of how a small band of determined freedom fighters can defeat evil Republicans. But then we came to realize the main problem with the Dems winning is they’re Dems.
Sure enough, Nancy Pelosi no sooner eyes the gavel she starts talking about Social Security, national healthcare, and minimum wages. How’s that for missing the point!
Another observation: it seems to me the mainstream of the power elite (PE)—you know, what people like Colin Powell and Bill Clinton are connected to—decided to kneecap this renegade Neocon operation headed by Dick Cheney.
The style of the mainstream PE is much less flamboyant. Look at the timing of all the negative press for Team Presidente on the eve of the midterms, including:
• David Kuo’s book, Tempting Faith, is published
• Bob Woodward’s book, State of Denial, is published
• Rep Dennis Foley behaves inappropriately toward pages
• Leading Evangelista Ted Haggard pays for gay sex
My point: it seems coincidental that so many contrary events for the Bushoviks transpire right on the threshold of the election.
From my personal point of view, liberty people like me (and probably you) have bought themselves two years’ protection—a firewall if you will—against full-blown native-American imperial fascism.
So we have to use this breather wisely and proceed diligently to morally undermine the whole PE plutocracy.
A not-explicitly libertarian friend of mine commented that this election left him disillusioned and downhearted because nothing substantial changed.
He thinks that the liberty people, the Greens, the peace people, the secular humanists, and the Constitutionalists, etc. should form a generic “Real People” political party to take back the power from the corporate PE machine that so cynically and destructively runs (and ruins) the planet.
