It seems that Mitt Romney has a very strong probability of becoming the Republican nominee. Given the choice between Romney and President Obama, I don't think that there is going to be much of a shift of voters between the Democratic Party base and the Republican Party base. The Republicans have, for example, the thirty-percenters. These were the 30% or so of voters who astounded us -- as the Bush presidency limped to its catastrophic end, with a crashed economy, two lost wars, a broken military, a drowned major port city, and the "reformed alcoholic" president apparently falling down drunk at the Olympics in China, unable to open stage doors in China, giving the German Chancellor unwelcomed back massages -- by still giving Bush about a 30% approval rating. These people are unreachable. With the election of President Obama, you can add the Teabaggers, racists and whackjobs who always vote Republican or to the right of it.
On our side, we have union members, young people, minorities, women who care about reproductive rights and various other liberals and progressives, among whom, the president remains popular. Some may be disappointed and not vote, but I doubt any would vote for Romney. The truly disappointed, "true progressives" may stay home, but they aren't going to vote for Romney.
In America, elections are won by winning over so called independents.
What worries me in terms of the Democrats' chances of retaining the White House is the demographic I'll call left leaning independent hostage taker surrender monkeys. Let me explain in this short diary.
From time to time on centrist to liberal talk radio, I've been hearing a similar but disturbing sort of analysis from the "man on the street." He's fair minded, centrist or maybe even a tiny bit to the left, but he or she doesn't have a strong party identity with Democrats.
There's one thing that's kind of encouraging about him/her. S/he completely sees through the Republicans' tactic of doing everything possible to make the Obama administration fail and the Democrats look bad. S/he is disgusted with the Republicans because s/he realizes that the Republicans would prefer to prolong the economic misery of the Great Recession in order to improve their election prospects in November 2012. S/he realizes that the Republicans are essentially treasonous. They would prolong the unemployment crisis or even plunge the world into economic catastrophe by defaulting on the debt. Anything to make things worse, if it might make independent people like him/her blame the Democrats in November 2012. In other words, what's weird is s/he knows that Republicans are trying to manipulate him/her by prolonging the economic crisis.
But the truly disturbing aspect of their analysis goes something like this:
Romney is the least crazy of the Republicans and despite what he says, his policies might actually be somewhat like President Obama's. He might, being well educated in economics, pursue a Keynesian stimulus package. He might continue the Obama administration's efforts to expand health care coverage -- after all, he did that in Massachussets. He might appoint non-insane Supreme Court justices. Despite what he says, he probably won't start a war with Iran. The insane asylum inmates in the Congress won't like what Romney is going to do. They already don't like him. But because of Republican Party discipline (and hypocrisy) they will enact his programs. Even if they are basically Democratic (or actually reality based) programs. If Obama proposes those same programs, the Republican crazies won't enact them. If Romney, a RINO, proposes them, they get passed. So, as a mildly left, reality based Keynesian Independent, if I want a moderate, progressive program to be passed, the only possibility is if Romney, not Obama, proposes it.
Now some of you, especially the "true progressives" might actually think that there is some truth to this analysis -- the kind of people who say that Obama is a "good Republican." Frankly that's wrong. But what's even more wrong is the idea that Romney is a mildly centrist Republican.
He isn't.
He's a free market fundamentalist Wall Street one percenter. Even worse, he's an Austrian -- not by nationality but by economic theory. Forget his crappy attempt at speech making when he said, "corporations are people." What worried me most about Romney is his remarks in Nevada. Rather than approve the government intervening in the real estate market to help people stay in their homes, Romney said that the real estate market should be allowed to "bottom out." In other words, he doesn't believe that untold, unnecessary personal suffering should be prevented so that they free market system can work its wonders.
Romney's own so called "business career" is exactly aligned with this attitude. It's an attitude of ignoring individual suffering and letting the "free market" work it's wonders, which actually involves people with money and power liquidating workers and middle class employees in order to cut costs, pay massive fees to bankers and "consultants" in the hopes that a business might turn around. In fact, Romney was a job destroyer, not a job creator, a massively incompetent "turn around" specialist whose victim companies tended to go bankrupt.
Far from being a moderate or liberal Republican in the mold of Republicans when his father was a major political figure, Romney recalls the Republicans of the Great Depression era, especially Andrew Mellon who famously said:
liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.
Anyone, whether slightly left of center independent, or "true progressive" who thinks that Romney's policies would be anything like President Obama's policies, is simply objectively wrong.
If Romney becomes president, the economic policy will be to let America "bottom out" in the international labor market until our working and middle class can compete with Chinese prison labor.
But what worries me even more than a Romney presidency and its economic policy is the reasoning of some of these independents -- the belief that it is appropriate to give in to what Paul Krugman has called Republican "hostage taking" in the hope that if Romney proposes the same thing, hostages will not be taken, and the policies will be passed. For one thing, the polices Romney will propose will not be the policies the Democrats will propose (although many independents think so). But even worse, it further puts our political system on a path toward mid 1970s Latin American oligarchy and gun to the head hostage taking.