The pundits repeat continually that 2012 will be the ugliest presidential campaign in history. The Republicans have no conscience about vilifying opponents, as the record of swift boating, Willie Horton and the smearing of war veteran Max Cleland in Georgia show. With a thousand right-wing radio shows on their side, not to mention Fox News and like-minded super PACs, the right is poised to take advantage of Tea Party anger and resentment -- all of which pushes sane solutions for our country's problems further away.
As Bill Clinton pointed out, reforms should have happened yesterday. They didn't, and the most irrational excesses of gridlock, like last year's war over the debt ceiling, are probably not behind us.
The net result is that we must all consider the prospect of Mitt Romney becoming president, not by winning it but by standing by while reactionary forces throw their weight around. In a saner climate, Obama would walk away with the election. Is Romney as right-wing as his rhetoric? The Tea Party hopes he is; progressives can only hope that he isn't. The primary campaign pushed him much further to the right than anything he espoused as governor of Massachusetts. Recent polls show that the country is less divided -- i.e., more purple -- than the extreme partisanship of both parties might indicate.
Even after thirty years of reactionary rhetoric, the U.S. remains a sensible nation -- or is that true anymore? Before he died in his nineties, the once-famous Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith said that sanity was waiting in the wings, waiting to repair the damage of the Bush era. He was right in the short run, and the arrival of Obama made some progress in that direction.
But if you leave mudslinging aside, the economic recovery didn't proceed as the Democrats hoped, and Romney is benefiting from that, which is doubly ironic since he governed progressively (for a Republican) in Massachusetts and has now swiveled to embrace totally wrong-headed policies. A favorite joke circulating a few months back went like this: A liberal, a moderate, and a conservative walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Hi, Mitt."
Bill Clinton cut through the mud, as slung by Democrats, when he said that Romney's business experience made him competent to be president. This ran counter to the strategy of Obama's team, which was to discredit Romney as a jobs killer and out-of-touch plutocrat. This misses the major reason to keep Romney out, his flip-flopping, We are throwing the dice to see if he will repeat the successful tactics of George W. Bush and Chief Justice John Roberts, both of whom put on a public face of affable reason while harboring a deeply reactionary agenda.
We can't afford to let Romney govern according to the positions he is running on. Leave aside his absurdly draconian immigration policy, his tolerance for Donald Trump's birther craziness and his rhetoric about going to war with Iran. Romney's intention to follow in the wake of Merkel, Cameron and Sarkozy is enough to disqualify him. Europe has shown the folly of austerity and budget cutting as a means to stimulate the economy. America has enough economic mistakes to counter. The Bush tax cuts have been a fiscal disaster. The Ryan plan for drastically cutting federal spending and attacking entitlement programs is a sham; if it were enacted, only sheer luck would save America from plunging into the same recession that Europe is already struggling with.
Under a pall of gloom, it doesn't matter that Obama's progressive agenda was the right thing to do, and still is. Forces beyond his control are in the saddle, and a large majority of the country feels that we are headed in the wrong direction. In this case, mass opinion is wrong, as fear usually is. The wrong direction has been clearly mapped out by austerity, massive budget cuts, neglect of infrastructure, drastic cuts in state and federal government, and almost everything else the right proposes. Distressingly, Mitt Romney is poised to repeat Herbert Hoover's mistakes, and it's all the worse because we should have learned from them.
I am not giving up hope for Obama's reelection. It would force the Republicans in Congress to work with him or risk economic stagnation far beyond what we have experienced so far. If Romney wins, in all good conscience the Senate Democrats would have to filibuster against a rampant right-wing House, and gridlock would become worse. It's no use predicting either future. Between now and November, Romney will be forced against his will to show more of his actual political beliefs. One wonders if he really knows what they are.
Follow Deepak Chopra on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DeepakChopra
Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Amen to this statement... ;-)
Government of The One Percent, by The One Percent, and for The One Percent.
We simply don't know if Obama plus a genuinely progressive Congress would reverse that.
Obama's not getting meaningful relief to underwater human-being victims of the housing crisis (versus the predatory banking corporations) suggests he (or those who control the information and options meaningfully presented to him) are of and for The One Percent. The same comment applies to the Obama administration's failure to break up the too-big-to-fail banks.
For sure Romney would not reverse that worship of what The One Percent thinks they need.
However, assume that in a Romney administration the pragmatic businessman / Olympic games administrator that he once was would rule over the idiotically unrepentant dogmatists that his campaign has picked up and allowed to write his material. For example, the Bush-Chaney neo-con team got us into two less-than-well though through wars. They are now pushing Romney's rhetoric against Iran and (of all countries) Russia. It doesn't help that Romney is personally stuck in the 50s.
A pragmatic Romney could be able to figure out that what The One Percent thinks they want, extreme austerity re social spending and further tax cuts on their income and assets would in fact be counterproductive for their well being because it would totally tank the economy.
If he were elected and governed as a middle-moderate Republican, not unlike what he did as Governor, then the U.S. could benefit if he had the pull over a Republican Congress to genuinely and humanely tackle the deficit, immigration reform, infrastructure repair, economic inequality, and using federal dollars to undo the last few years of state and local layoffs of productive government workers.
If he were elected and governed as he has campaigned, the economy will tank badly and the environment will suffer real damage. Here, "damage" is another way of saying that favored industries take private profits from polluting activities, while that same pollution passes socialized and large costs onto the public in the form of increased medical expenses, decreased quality of life, and pollution cleanup efforts.
Does the U.S. public want to roll those dice? Unfortunately between the Fox-Murdock-Limbaugh misinformation machine and secretly funded propaganda "advertisements", many voters and potential voters can't tell what's a real issue and what's an attempt to manipulate them
Hardly a mention about National Security Leaks. And likewise with Holder and guns.
But here is Deepak Chopra at his finest. Nothing but Vitriol for Romney campaign.
I suggest that Deepak is the utmost hypocrite of them all....preaching yet living the most extravagant lifestyle of the 99%
He lost my respect a long time ago~ along with most scientists.
Our democracy has been hijacked by multinational corporations and there are only two ways that I know of of how to get our Country back. One is by voting... if you don't vote, you have voted... period. There is no such thing as not voting. There is no being apolitical. No such thing. We must get people to the polls.
The other way we can get our Country back is through the streets and that could end up being a very bloody and and wasteful event.
So I urge any and all of you who may read this and do not vote for whatever reasons you harbor, to please reconsider, become informed and make a stand. This is a crucial time in this Country's history and in the history of the world. Please know that your voice and your vote do count.
with blood.
I might suggest you go out there tomorrow and scream bloody murder.
And admit that perhaps you are some kinda crazy nutso agitator willing to see the
deaths on the streets to support YOUR ideals. SAD