The US election came and went. The President was reelected, the Democrats increased their representation in both the House and the Senate while increasing their majority in the latter. The pundits when not castigating Romney personally have begun to echo what I have been writing here for months now, this election could be seen the last hurrah of the straight (and unfortunately too often uneducated) white male that had dominated American electoral politics since Andrew Jackson.
We need to remember, the combination of women, latino, black, homosexual men and asian men currently makes up over 70% of the electorate. This election marks the first time they have been recognized as the nation's majority, courted as such and have become aware of it themselves.
What this means is that the major economic interests, specifically the extractive industries and the financial transactionalists that have effectively dictated the economic and fiscal agenda of the nation since 1980 will have to ally themselves with this new majority and abandon their old allies if they wish to preserve and expand their wealth. I suspect wedge issues such as illegal aliens, and contraception and the like will disappear as attempts are made by those who set the political agenda to connect things like a women's right to choose and reduction in regulation of financial transactions with the concept of reducing governmental intrusion into peoples lives.
It will take at least a generation however for that new rhetoric to coalesce into a new majority to benefit those who currently own our natural resources and control our access to money.
O'Reilly, that old reprobate from Faux News sums it up in a rant of racist fury:
"The white establishment is now the minority. And, the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them, and they want stuff. You're going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate between the two is going to give them things?"
Yes Bill, these people, this new majority, will clamor for just about the same things, entitlements as you phrase it, from their elected officials as the old majority did…that is whatever they thought they wanted or needed. It is nothing new. Live with it.
It also should be noted that Romney's electoral vote throughout the nation outside the South totaled about 1/4 of his entire vote. More than ever it appears the Republican Party is not a national party but regional one. Only in the South, does the Republican Party claim any credibility as a viable political party. The South and the so-called Southern strategy appears to be little more than a continuation of the South's belief that they are still fighting the Civil War. Perhaps this is finally the time we put that lost cause behind us?
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TODAY'S QUOTES:
"Humans are simply bipolar apes."
Trenz Pruca
"Historically, Populism like most mass movements scours up both the worst and the best in a society as it scrapes across its depths. It is prompted by a deep mistrust of a community's most powerful individuals and institutions who, its adherents believe have misused and mishandled the trust they had been granted; violated the social contract if you will. As the indefatigable realist Machiavelli pointed out, on the broad areas of public policy the general populace is almost always more reliable than the elite."
Trenz Pruca
"Why would anyone be morally bound or wish to be morally bound to a civil society that does not share the goal that it’s citizens deserve a fair distribution of wealth, income and power? If the civil society is not dedicated to that end what else could it possibly be dedicated to? What is freedom, to those without wealth, income or power?"
Trenz Pruca
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
Frederic Bastiat
"Never forget It was just 35 years more or less from Shakespeare to Louis XIV ; From the French and Indian War to the Louisiana Purchase ; From 'Et Tu., Brute' to the kid in the manger; From Fred Allen to Laugh-In."
Peter Grenell, 2012.
"I used to be Snow White. And then I drifted."
Mae West