One [Wo]man, One Vote

by Judith Gayle | Political Waves

With mere days left before the midterms, corporate funding for political ads has done more than smear and distort: it’s bedazzled. In Nevada, where Majority Leader Harry Reid is fighting for his political life against Bagger Sharron Angle, televised electorate pounding broke records. In Las Vegas, 1,200 ads played out across local television screens in a single day: some 10 hours of political advertisement. It’s been estimated that by the time this election is done, $3 billion will have been spent to secure our individual votes.

Those of you who thought your vote didn’t mean anything might want to reconsider. Every once in awhile, I read about how my vote has been so mugged by gerrymander and districting that it’s not worth owning, but this week it’s worth 3 billion dollars. Maybe democracy is in better shape than we think. Or not.

Consider the race in Nevada. You may remember Reid’s opponent as the ‘chicken lady’ who, hyperventilating over the inevitability of ‘Obamacare,’ suggested that people might barter with their doctor for services as was done in the Good Old Days. This was the quintessential moment when the public turned to examine Tea Bagger candidates more closely, sniffing to see if they all had a case of The Crazy™ — a condition that had seemed contained in places like West Virginia and Alaska prior to this election, mostly confined to FOX News true believers — and wondering just how absurd the dialog might get.

A lot worse, it turns out. Sharron Angle has spoken of her hopes to ax the EPA, the Department of Education and the VA, declaring them unnecessary expenditures of big government. If she loses this race, it won’t be because she wasn’t mega-financed or, nose held, embraced by Republican leadership. It will be because her suggestion that Second Amendment rights might be necessary to “take Harry Reid out” is beyond the pale. If she ultimately loses, it will be because the radicalism of her proposals is intolerable to most Americans. And if she loses by more than just a point or two, thank your favorite god and lucky stars, because it will mean that the American electorate is not as childish and one-dimensional as this season has suggested.

Here in Missouri, Robin Carnahan is battling GOP House fixture and Bush loyalist, Roy Blunt, for a senate seat. Cronyism has the Blunt copyright in this state, recently extending to a term for his son, Matt, as governor. Carnahan also comes from a political tradition. Her father was the popular governor who posthumously beat out incumbent John Ashcroft for a senate term after his death in a tragic plane crash in 2000. Her mother, Jean, took his place by appointment. Robin is Missouri’s current Secretary of State. Attack ads on Carnahan are continual and infuriating, the legacy of more than $300,000 in outside money contributed these last weeks by, whispers say, Rove’s group, American Crossroads, beefing up Blunt’s chances, which, sadly, look pretty good. Blunt accuses Obama of being a job-killer and spendthrift, and he promises job creation.

I suspect this is essentially the same ad campaign the GOP is pitching in every state. The economy is driving this election season, a referendum on Obama’s inability to do more than stave off complete disaster. Realistically, no matter what the politicians say, they have very little latitude in influencing economics, and even less than usual these days, while we pay the ultimate price for Reagan’s deregulation policies gone viral. From state to state, Republican candidates use the same words and phrases, lifted from the thin GOP playbook and listed as their Political Rule #1: say it often enough, the rubes will believe it.

Just for the record, let’s look at a few facts on the ground. Every Democratic administration is saddled by the debts and disasters created by its Republican predecessors. It’s history, look it up. The big spenders and job killers are invariably the ones who protest that they aren’t. When George W. Bush finally admitted that the economy was in a nose dive, the Troubled Asset Relief Program was signed into law in October of 2008, embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike. That was called ‘necessary spending,’ but anything spent after the turn of that year was quickly deemed wasteful excess and entitlement giveaway.

Amazing how quickly and predictably the worm turns, ain’t it? Essentially, the Republicans want to eliminate public spending but continue to pour huge sums into the military while cutting taxes for the richest and providing welfare for the corporations. Wall Street bailout? No problem, they won’t even debate it amongst themselves. The right doesn’t balance the books, it cooks them, Enron-style.

Next, the whole idea that Republicans will provide jobs is laughable. That has never been their claim to fame. Perhaps they will spur business to provide some overseas jobs, hire some faceless, foreign employees willing to contract the work for pennies on the dollar. The Chamber of Commerce will even bring in their Chinese counterparts to teach us how to outsource. But it should be no surprise that jobs will not magically trickle down, now that manufacturing represents only about 10 percent of our GDP. We don’t make useful things anymore, we just shuffle things around.

The word to remember is FIRE: finance, insurance, real estate. Finance now makes up about 42 percent of our GDP. In saner times, finance represented 9 or 10 percent. If you add the other FIRE components, there isn’t much left to manipulate in order to create new jobs, and we’re running out of people flush enough to victimize. Capitalism is swallowing its own tail, eating its own seed, consuming itself. So much for Roy Blunt or any other Republican candidate creating jobs.

And yet, despite it all, I have a dream: that on balance, we aren’t the pea-brains the moneyed class thinks we are. Surely we can see that the conservatives running this show are not mainstream but radical. Surely we can acknowledge that the money coming out of the woodwork — 9 times as much for Republican candidates, now, than for Democratic — is calculated to buy an election. And while I know that trusting estimates based on polling is as dicey as reading chicken entrails, an encouraging uptick in Democratic polling this week may indicate that reports of the ‘enthusiasm gap’ were exaggerated. In these last days, there are indicators that the youth, Hispanic and black votes are on line for November. And I consider this advertising deluge a mistake on the plutocracy’s part. A nation counting its pennies will always notice an excess of anything being frittered away, and in so polarized a political atmosphere, this level of spending has been noticed.

51 percent of the public thinks that Obama’s approach to the economy will eventually work. But after the topsy-turvy mid-term projections, will he have the congressional cooperation to accomplish it? The difference in the direction of the two parties is evident, but here’s a reminder on the big spending, job-killing issues: in TARP I, George Bush bailed out bankers and high-rollers; in TARP II, Obama bailed out teachers, firefighters and the unemployed. And even though the unemployment numbers remain high, Obama added more private sector jobs in 2010 than George Bush created in the entirety of his eight-year presidency. To repeat, the entire eight years of his tenure. Forget Bush’s record at your own peril.

Times are tough, and the choices ahead of us are difficult. But don’t allow your attention to be bought by distorted narratives and election spin. Those ads assume you can be fleeced by the loudest voice, the most provocative insinuations and the highest bidder. Prove the plutocrats wrong this season, citizen. You’ve got a 3 billion dollar vote. Spend it wisely.