Simpering Answers to Stupid Questions
This correntewire post by lambert starts off adequately enough, but then goes completely off the rails. The post allegedly answers Matt Stoller’s question, “What’s with the affinity between Gen X and the millenials, and the older gap millenials and the boomers?” But the lambert is really just venting vitriol. The post begins:
The voter of 30 was 23 when Bush stole Florida 2000, and 21 when the Republicans impeached Clinton. …
The voter of 23 was 16 for Florida 2000, and 14 for the Clinton impeachment. …
Okay, I’m with you so far. Younger people have a skewed sense of politics in this country, because mostly they’ve seen 8-9 years of Republican chicanery ususally unethical and often illegal, while at the same time watching a castrato class of Democrats make mealy-mouthed protestations while their opponents run roughshod over them and the law.
Both cohorts take our current political economy, including right wing talking points and frames, for granted, because they haven’t been around long enough to have any other point of reference. Hence the focus on the symptom, partisan bickering, and a panacea — the Unity Pony — rather than a cure, which must begin with the destruction of the Conservative movement. And that would begin by holding Conservatives accountable for the results of their policies.
So some hero candidate is going to ride in and “destroy the Conservative movement” by “holding Conservatives accountable”? Since lambert is evidently a Ron Paul supporter, this utopian vengeance melodrama must make perfect sense. But it’s silly on two counts.
First, the Conservative movement isn’t going to be destroyed; it’s influence will wane. For most thinking people, the Conservative movement, inasmuch as it is linked to Dubya’s policies specifically and the Bushies and Neocons in general, has been fairly discredited. It’s not going away, but how long it loses influence is determined partly by how the next president leads. If the next president is a McCain or a Romney (gods help us), we’ll get Dubya- and Bushie-light.
Second, he seems to imply that Hillary is more likely than Obama to “hold Conservatives accountable” if she takes office. I agree with the idea that Obama wouldn’t doggedly attack anybody: I think he’d overturn a lot of the unamerican policies and clean out the executive branch. But a President Hillary would run the Conservatives out of town about as quickly as she’d run out the big business lobbyists. She’d bring in a massive political Corps of Engineers and build a sprawling trench system in DC for the bayonet-to-machinegun partisan combats that would occur during her administration. The goal wouldn’t be to hold anyone to account; rather, it would be to dig in against the inevitable attacks, and fire back when possible.
I think it’s more likely that the youngsters who support Obama don’t see any inherent value to tit-for-tat political fighting, whereas many of the hard-core Clinton supports see that as part of their raison d’etre. Which isn’t really useful for citizens who want change.
