Saturday morning crystallized what this campaign is really about. I will now outline my theory of this year’s Presidential race.
Other have hinted around the edges of what I’m about to say, but no one’s made the connections.
It’s so simple, but maybe they don’t grasp it.
Though not directed by an Allen, Coppola or Scorsese, this year’s election will be a truly New York Story.
The most important names in this year’s Presidential race belong to two obscure New York State members of the Congress, one of whom will end his political career without serving even one full term, and another who seems virtually certain to end up in the same position.
And yet they define the parameters of the Presidential race, which is really one between Kathleen Hochul and Bob Turner.
When we look back on this year’s Presidential race, the back-story will concern political pornography: The old Times Square of grind houses, grind joints and grinding may have been transformed into a theme park more dangerous to one’s wallet than the one filled with unsavory characters, but this year’s Presidential race will still be remembered as a New York Story.
In some ways the narrative is worthy of an Orgasm Denial Story Board, as it all stems from the aftermath of the exploits of two New York guys, Chris Lee and Anthony Weiner, who couldn’t keep their shirts on, and whose efforts to expand the base of their enthusiasts ended up in degradation, humiliation and chastity (both politically and literally), which though often the protagonist’s goal in this sort of story, does not appear to have been such in either of these instances.
Anyway, like other politically monogamous states, during general elections for President, New York is like a loyal but neglected spouse, taken for granted, and not partaking in the thrills of courtship. Lavish sums of money are not spent in any effort to get our favorable attention. As in any marriage, we get screwed more frequently than those whose attention is being sought, and we enjoy it all far less.
And though we probably get lied to with the same level of frequency, it is done with far less creativity and ardor.
Admittedly, unlike most states which do not swing both ways, we are not ignored totally. Like California, we function as a sort of political ATM, meaning that while traveling on the campaign superhighway, candidates will occasionally take an exit to our service area in order to enjoy a pit-stop and refuel.
Especially among Republicans, it is hard for candidates to think about New York and resist the temptation to take a dump.
But thanks to the chain of events owing to Lee and Weiner, this year, New York defines the Presidential campaign narratives of both political parties.
On Election Day 2010, Congressman Lee (R-NY) won re-election with 76% in a district which last elected a Democrat in 1968. On February 9, 2011, Gawker published an expose about Lee (who is married) soliciting sexual partners on Craigslist. He resigned the same day, just in time to avoid stories about his possible transgender curiosity.
On May 24, 2011, the district elected Democrat Kathleen Hochul to Congress, in a race which gave Democrats a shiny new narrative.
The Democratic Party’s greatest attrition in the 2010 tsunami came from senior citizens, the only element of the population benefiting from socialized medicine and scared to death by the Republican Party into believing that someone might actually try to ensure their care is provided in a rational, cost-effective manner.
The Republicans, who admitted in 2010 to seeking draconian cuts in all domestic spending affecting those who vote at lower rates than those over 65, also said they were so opposed to looking at Medicare–the single greatest hole in the deficit and that they opposed diverting any possible recoverable wasted Medicare funds to either deficit reduction or other programs. They didn‘t even want to use them to cuts taxes for the rich! And then they railed about death panels and other manner of obscenities.
And, by those means, they took the House.
Then came the truth.
The Republican Party did indeed oppose providing medical care to the elderly in a rational, cost-effective manner.
In fact, they turned out to oppose providing it at all.
The Republicans, turned out not to be total hypocrites. Not only were they seeking draconian cuts in all domestic spending affecting those who vote at lower rates than those over 65, they wanted to eventually go after those over 65 as well, as long as they were under 55 now.
And it turned out they while they were opposed to using the funds they recovered from gutting Medicare to fund other programs, Republicans were in favor of using such funds to cut taxes for the rich!
They opposed death panels, except for the one called the House Budget Committee, which they were using to kill Medicare.
The truth about the GOP agenda is that its specifics were to save the Medicare village by destroying it, followed by raping and pillaging, and giving the spoils of the war on the less fortunate to our society’s most well-heeled, as the tributes of their victory.
The embodiment of these truths had a name: “The Ryan Plan.”
The House Republicans, cowed by their most right wing extremist elements, actually held a vote on “The Ryan Plan,” even though it could neither pass the Senate nor survive a Presidential veto.
Exposure of these truths called “Ryan” cost the GOP the Lee seat, which they had held steadily since the 1970 election.
The Ryan Overreach and the Hochul Body-slam in response was to become the new Democratic narrative.
It lasted as such for exactly three days.
On May 27, 2011, exposure of something much tinier and less significant than this truth took the heat off this narrative.
The thing which was exposed on May 27 was Anthony Weiner.
On Election Day 2010, Congressman Weiner (D-NY) won re-election with 60% in a district which last elected a Republican in 1920. On May 27, 2011, Weiner tweeted a shot of his underwear-encased erection to a stranger he met on line, who happened to be both adult and female, though that was about the only good thing one could say about Weiner’s luck over the next couple of weeks. He announced his resignation on June 16, 2011.
On September 13, the district elected Republican Bob Turner to Congress, in a race which gave Republicans a shiny new narrative of their own.
While the winning Democratic narrative in the Hochul race was to talk about the GOP’s actual plans for governance, the Republican narrative in the Turner race was to complain about Obama and the economy and try to obfuscate what was actually contained in their own plans.
Though he’d previously run as “a quintessential Tea Party candidate,” who only days before the seat became vacant said “My desire to go to Congress was to fix what’s broken and go home. End subsidies. End government dependencies. Dramatically cut the budget by 30 or 35 percent. Slash capital-gains taxes down to zero. Cut taxes across the board,” Turner suddenly switched course.
Asked about the Ryan plan, Turner responded by condemning Health Care Reform’s efforts to save Medicare by trimming its waste-line, as if that were an attack on the elderly, who have earned the right to have money flushed down the sewer in their name.
But Turner refused to take a position on the Ryan Plan.
Turner also hemmed and hawed on “Cut, Cap and Balance,” noting his opponent David Weprin’s refusal to support the bill as proof that Weprin refused to support a balanced budget, but refusing himself to state his own position on CCB.
It was a truly pro-abstinence platform; “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” may have come to end, but Bob Turner wasn’t saying “Just Say No,” it was more like “Just No Say.“
Further, Turner found people who, for their own reasons, were willing to lie on his behalf.
Former Mayor Ed Koch, whether to make a point about Israel or to avenge some old slights, gave Turner cover, vouching for Turner like a kosher stamp on the issues of Medicare and Social Security, even though Turner had a paper trail which indicated that he was more traife on those matters than spare ribs in lobster sauce.
As it turned out, Turner actually opposed saving Medicare and Social Security as we know it– Bob Turner's commitment to Social Security turned out not to encompass most of those not already receiving it.
Turner told true-believing attendees at the fundraiser that among his most important goals was to preserve Social Security for people 55 and over, but not for everyone else.
This was, of course, pretty much the Ryan position, although, as is now the GOP model, Turner was far vaguer on what he actually did favor.
But Ed Koch was not the only ally Turner had in obscuring the truth. There was also the mainstream media, which seemed to consider every revealing Turner Freudian slip as something that didn’t count because it hadn’t been approved by his very professional handlers, and refused to actually subject the proposals of either candidate to rational analysis, usually preferring a he said/he said analysis, rather than trying to sort out the truth, thereby leaving the impression that even verifiable facts were just matters of opinion upon which reasonable people can disagree.
And so it is in the Presidential election.
A pro-Obama Super-PAC conducting a focus group found that undecided voters given an accurate description of the Ryan plan opposed its provisions but refused to believe that Romney would ever support such a thing.
Cutting Medicare in order to lower taxes for the rich is a central provision of Ryan, but voters found the Plan so wretchedly deplorable they found the allegations that Romney endorsed it to be ludicrous.
“… respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”
But it’s worse than that.
Not only has the mainstream media obscured the truth about the Romney agenda, they’ve even obscured the truth about its primary author, presenting him as a truth-telling deficit hawk, working for bi-partisan compromise, rather than what he is, a far right wing Ayn- Randian ideologue working to abolish the social safety net and transfer wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich, intending to slash virtually everything from the budget but defense, support for current retirees, and a few boondoggles for his friends, with no concern about deficits whatsoever except as a means to his real ends.
Mitt Romney is Bob Turner—he intends to make this campaign about the present state of the economy, the deficit (which is, at best, tangentially related to the former) and in selected places, issues like Israel. Romney does not want to talk about the radical agenda he actually wants to implement—an agenda which has precious little to do with the present state of the economy and everything to do with the future of the American Social Contract, which, despite his disdain for Europe, he wants to transform into thin slices of Swiss Cheese.
Barack Obama is Kathleen Hochul—he’s not too happy with the economy or the limited manner in which the Ryan/Turner Party has permitted him to address it. S/He must deal with an alienated base which assumes the presidency has magical powers he’s failed to use, and independent voters who assume the same (while desiring somewhat different policies than the base). S/He wants to assay blame where it is actually due, but s/he really wants to change the discussion to a comparison between what s/he is proposing and what is actually being proposed by the oppositions.
Obama/Hochul is no longer about “change we can believe in;”
Obama/Hochul is all about “change we can avoid.”
Gatemouth endorses Kathleen Hochul for President.