Bob Herbert in today's New York times says that Iraq is the flashpoint, but not the root cause, of voter dissatisfaction. If he's right, we may do well tomorrow. Or if we don't, it may make the dissatisfaction greater, and what follows may be truly historic.
His op-ed is behind the Times Select firewall unfortunately, so I've blockquoted his bottom-line paragraph (below the fold).
I don't think the politicians, even with all the recent coverage, realize the level of dissatisfaction and outright anger that has gripped much of the population. Iraq may be the flash point, but the dissatisfaction runs much deeper than that. People feel that the U.S. has sailed off in the wrong direction, and that -- as voters -- they haven't the clout to set things right.
I've no doubt the Republicans will do better than they have any right to, tomorrow, if only because of voter suppression and outright vote fraud. I'm with Cynthia McKinney and RFK in believing we have mostly turned a blind eye to the massive and ongoing extent of those crimes, and so we will continue to suffer from them tomorrow.
But perhaps, just perhaps, Herbert is right, and Americans are getting seriously worried about their country and their powerlessness at a level that's much deeper than any one issue. We could be at one of those 1929-like tipping points, where the whole of a society begins to inexorably change its mind. In 1928 the Democrats ran on a Republican-lite platform, and even FDR (who wasn't the presidential candidate) didn't act as populist as the man who was (Al Smith). Then came the crash of 1929, followed by three years of massive unemployment and shared pain that brought the country to the bring of revolution. Americans were utterly abject about what had happened in their country. As they watched Hoover (a much more competant man that Bush) do absolutely nothing effective about it, they resolved to change things. In 1932, FDR took office after running on a populist platform that might have been borrowed from Huey Long. It's been said that he saved the United States from a socialist revolution. Actually, the voters did.
My point here is that it's ordinary people, the rank and file Americans who don't read dailykos.com and aren't political junkies, who will eventually turn the tide -- not us. My sense is they're ready to do so now, but if they're robbed tomorrow, their anger will be surer in the end for having been forestalled. Two years will be more than enough time for them to make their dissatisfaction with the outcome of tomorrow's elections known. And the fact that W. and his henchmen will be screwing things up even more during those two years won't be lost on them either.
A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true spirit, restore their government to its true principles.
That quote from Jefferson is from 1798, before his presidency, during the Adams administration which had passed the Alien and Sedition Acts (the Patriot Acts of their day) and used them to imprison newspaper editors critical of his policies. Adams was defeated for reelection by Jefferson in 1800, and the acts were allowed to expire, as Jefferson predicted.