Call it a victory, but don't call it a sweep, a mandate (that's what Consider Arms and myself are on when we go grab lunch together) and certainly don't call it a revolution (Matt Drudge can always be depended upon for hyperbole). 274 to 252 electoral college votes isn't a landslide, and in a country of almost 300 million, Bush's margin of victory represents about 1% of the population.
Since Leftist politics has become a massive funeral/fantasy football league over the past day and a half, allow me to put in my two cents on how we can revamp the team and win the next division title.
Populism Is The New Progressivism In the mid-ninties Clinton took a hard economic turn to the Right and after passing NAFTA and GATT effectively eliminated any economic middle ground between the Donkey and the Elephant. Despite his incomprehensible doucheocity, Ralph Nader made the most valid points this election cycle. No one in the two parties talked about a real health care plan for all Americans, a living wage for the working poor or forcing corporations to keep decent jobs in the country. What's left? Cultural straw men that mean nothing, but are the only thing offered to the red states. And the Republican have those issues locked down with a vast majority of Americans. I'll be honest, while I may lean to the Left I think they only have the most trivial of concerns. I just happened to tolerate irrelevance more than ignorance. While the government may sway some cultural issues, it's main job is what it's always been: collect money from taxes, redistribute that money and have an army. The Left needs to go back to the basics on the same level: economics, class, jobs and social services. While tens of millions of men in the Midwest have an incredibly hard time supporting their families, the Democrats spend their energy on the thousands of gay couples who want a wedding in Boston and San Francisco. The Democrats dig a cultural moat around themselves to keep abortion legal, but have barely breathed in the direction of providing health care for all citizens. The fast food industry runs wild and pharmaceutical companies dwarf the Russian mafia, but the Left preoccupies itself with the bullshit science fiction fantasies of stem cell research (are people still dying of cancer and heart disease anymore?). Why didn't America between the coasts give a fuck about the Democratic Party? Because the Democratic Party hasn't given a fuck about them in a long time.
your homework:
-The Sikh Geek, returning to the undisclosed location. Promise.
