Choose Your Narrative

For six or more months now the political story line playing in the media has been the crumbling of the Democratic party and the newly resurgent and confident conservatives, embodied by the Tea Partiers. We've all accepted this story more or less and as a consequence in the run-up to the midterm elections the question being debated is only whether the Democrats will suffer a defeat like they did in 1994 or will it be worse?

There has been another version of events out there, needless to say, and only in the week or so has it started to appear in the mainstream. Rather than witnessing a conservative revival, we are actually watching the implosion of the Republican party as it eats its own young.

The recent Republican primaries in New York and Delaware were the events that put this narrative on the media radar screen, but the story has been out there ever since Rand Paul won his Republican primary in Kentucky, and Earl Grey Aficionado Angle won in Nevada. While all politics is indeed local, taken together this Republican primary season demonstrates that the party has been hijacked not simply by its very right wing - which is true - but by its genuinely lunatic fringe.

As a result, the Republican mayor of Reno, Nevada has announced that he will be supported Harry Reid; Charlie Crist is running as an Independent for Senate in Florida and has a good chance of winning; the right-wing vote for governor in Colorado is deeply divided now that former Congressman Tom Tancredo - a nut of the highest order - is running on the American Constitution Party ticket; and most recently Lisa Murkowski has announced her write-in campaign for Senate in Alaska, after she lost to a right-wing Tea Bagger in the primary.

All of which is good news for Democrats - or it ought to be. What confuses me is why Democrats seem so beaten and dispirited right now. And, more to the point, why the predictions are that they won't turn out to vote. President Obama has scored more major legislative victories in his first 18 months than all but a handful of presidents and we have our tails between our legs.

Republicans will always have the advantage of money, and of a party discipline that Leonid Brezhnev would have envied. But the opportunities right now not simply to retain control of the House and the Senate, and to strangle the Tea Party in its crib strike me as quite good.

So c'mon folks - the only way to ensure that my second narrative, the story of GOP self-destruction, prevails is we all energize and turn out the vote to repudiate the Tea Party.

Feeling Better Already

Joe Biden was right the other day. The Health Bill is a big f!@#$ deal.

It is far from perfect and the process of getting it passed confirmed all your worst instincts about the American political system. But it did pass, and as a consequence the lives of real people - lots of them - will be made better. It may be early to say such things, but nonetheless: thisbill may well rank along with Social Security and Medicare as the most significant piece of social legislation in the nation's history. We have become so accustomed to the over-use of the word "historic" by an adjectivally-challenged media that we not quite recognize real "historic" when we see it. But this is the genuine article.

It is a victory and should be celebrated as such. Go ahead: cheer, fist-bump, pop a cork. As they say in sports, a win is a win.

And as with all victories, there must be losers and so let me introduce you to Team GOP - nickname "The Bund" - who threw everything they had, no matter how vile, foul, or dishonest at this bill and came up short.

Team GOP refuses to accept that they have lost (in fact, many who live in their particular flat earth refuse to admit they lost the election of 2008) and so they have simply doubled-down on their opposition, vowing to repeal the bill, or vowing to stall it forever in the Senate, or vowing to block it in the courts etc etc.

This is a losing strategy for Team GOP, though probably not for the individual members who come from safe districts and retrograde states. But the spectacle of Tea Partiers defending their Constitutional freedom to spit on Congressmen while some of the Bundies cheered them on may prove one of those "have you no decency?" moments. The polls are already showing increased support for health care package now that its specifics are being rolled out for people. Come the fall elections, Team GOP will campaign on the opposition to kids with chronic diseases and tax credits for small businesses. Doesn't sound like a winner to me.

Unless, of course, they stake their next "Waterloo" moment on defeat the banking reforms. Then they can campaign on their defense of un-regulated plutocratic bankers. That should go over well.

So Obama just won the policy battle and the political battle. Feeling better?