-"Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"--Thomas Hobbes.
How many more polls will tell us that the "American people want the parties to work together to solve problems" only to have the same American people vote for those who refuse to work together?
How many more polls will tell us that the "American people dislike negative campaigning" only to find the same American people vote for those who employ it most outrageously?
How many more times do we have to hear this pablum on national news, sanctimoniously regurgitated by high-paid political 'strategists' from both major political parties, with fawning anchors lapping it up?
These are the same sources that are telling us that the 2012 election is going to be very close.
It will not be. The 1980 election was very close in the polls -- until the last weekend, when people decided, in large numbers to go for Reagan.
2012 will be a blowout, one way or t'other.
The choice is very basic: are we in this together, or, is it every person for himself?
The American people are fed up with stalemate and inaction. They do not believe any of the traditional news sources anymore, and fewer and fewer people get their "news and information" from them.
And, polls to the contrary, the last thing the American people will believe is anyone who says that they are looking forward to working with the other side.
In 2012 the election will be about power, pure and unadulterated.
No one believes the indirect impact of this or that policy -- an incentive for corporations to hire workers, a tax cut to stimulate the economy. The only policy message that resonates anymore is the direct one -- spend this money, on this project, and it will create X number of jobs. Cut my payroll tax, and I will have more money to survive.
In 2012, the Obama campaign will be not just to re-elect him, but to give him a Democratic majority in both Houses, so he can enact his program that has been blocked by the Republicans. And, his program should be more ambitious than it currently is.
In 2012 the country will either re-elect President Obama, and have Democrats take control of the House and grow its majority in the Senate -- or, it will elect a Republican President, maintain the Republican control of the House, and have the Republicans take the Senate.
Republicans, including their Presidential candidates, have already pigeon-holed themselves into the "every person for himself" position. It is also no longer theoretical what that position gets you -- Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan.
Republican obstructionism provides the Obama campaign the opportunity to ask not only for his re-election, but for large majorities that will enable his programs to be passed. One suspects that an Obama re-election, holding the Senate and re-taking the House will be accompanied by a change to the filibuster rules in the Senate. A repeat of Republican obstructionism as in the first two years of the Obama Administration would be intolerable to those who vote for the "we are in this together" side.
One way or t'other, the 2012 election will be a blowout.
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Because the two-party system has proven its uselessness, voters via computer elections will establish the Rise of the Third Party. Can such a drastic change take place in ten months?
Where there is a Will, there is a way. Twenty-one Talking Heads have published the time is ripe for the burial of the two-party system, and the birth of a new single majority.
"GOP filibuster blocks Obama's jobs plan"
http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/gop-filibuster-blocks-obamas-jobs-plan-1908529.html
"You can’t complain that Obama didn’t do enough to produce jobs when the Republicans filibustered his Jobs programs"
http://investmentwatchblog.com/you-cant-complain-that-obama-didnt-do-enough-to-produce-jobs-when-the-republican%C2%ADs-filibuster%C2%ADed-his-jobs-programs/
"Republicans Filibuster Small Business Bill:"
http://washingtonindependent.com/93079/republicans-filibuster-small-business-bill
"Democratic jobs bill advances past GOP filibuster"
http://www.thegrio.com/politics/democratic-jobs-bill-advances-past-gop-filibuster.php
"Dems break GOP filibuster on new jobs, state aid bill"
http://www.thegrio.com/politics/senate-jobs-bill-clears-key-opposition-hurdle.php
"Small business $30 billion credit clears Senate hurdle after Dems cracked a GOP filibuster"
http://www.thegrio.com/politics/senate-set-to-clear-30b-credit-for-small-business.php
2. You assume that voters in other states care about what has happened in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. That may be true for voters in some of the states that border on one or more of those three, but it isn't likely to have any impact on voters anywhere else.
3. Republican obstructionism may give Obama the opportunity to ask for a large majority in Congress, but that doesn't mean he is likely to get it unless he can convince the voters in most of the states outside the South that adoption of his proposals, whatever they may be, will solve the jobs crisis and the country's economic and other serious problems.
-In an environment where, quite honestly, President Obama can take to the campaign, with the clear case that he's proposed a myriad of various ideas, across the spectrum, to try and improve things for the general public, only to sit and watch the Republican Party, en masse, decide that they'd rather not do anything, whatsoever, to help things for people, all in the name of winning an election, I think a national campaign would speak for itself.
Mind you, the map that is being considered for such a message is different from the one that I think you're think about.
The South that you're talking about, as far as I'm concerned, is not the South that the everyone else is looking at. North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida are not longer part of what constitutes 'the South' proper, and Missouri, for all intents and purposes, hasn't been a part of that discussion for a while either.
The West Coast, the Southwest, Colorado, the Northeast, "Scranton to Oshkosh", Florida, Missouri and the Mid-Atlantic.
Of course, the parties need to make it a national election.
In the past, the rhetoric has tried to make big distinctions but people never connected to them.
Now, they do.
Relying on polls--fatally flawed to begin with--will be a huge mistake.
Both Obama and whomever the Republicans put up, should ask for a mandate. One of them will get it.
The big question is, as you point out, whether we will stay in this Stockholm Syndromesque relationship, or turn to other abusers for protection.
But that is where we find ourselves. If we thought 2008 was bad, when spending on presidential campaigns reached new levels, this with be the Niagara of all Niagaras.
I hope the American people wake up and realize that if you're not progressive, you're regressive. You might personally want to retreat to the "safe and secure past," but as a country we cannot afford to do anything but move forward. If we do not, China certainly will.
Four years from now it may be too late to catch up.