I GIVE UP

No, I'm not really giving up. I've been blogging for eleven years to defend progressive ideas in general, but also to defend Democrats against Republicans and the right. It's quite possible that I've done more of the latter than the former. And, yes, when I see a Democratic president doing a Bush-like data sweep of phone metadata, I ask myself what the point is.

But I support Democrats primarily because of the difference between the two parties' approaches to the treatment of ordinary schmucks in this country. I don't love the financial deregulation and welfare cutbacks of Clinton or the corporation-coddling of Obama, but the Clinton tax increase was the right thing to do and the highly inadequate recovery policies of Obama nevertheless did more to put a floor under the Great Recession than austerity did in Europe. And what's most important is that the GOP wish list for the economy amounts to a massive increase in economic inequality -- go look at graphs of wealth transfers under the Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney budget. Then recall that the GOP's 2016 nominee might be Rand Paul, whose own budget is even worse.

So, yes, I'll defend a maddening level of pro-plutocrat corporatism against a wholesale abandonment of the notion that the preservation of a middle class and the amelioration of poverty are worthwhile goals. Add that to Democratic versus Republican attitudes on women's rights, gay rights, the rights of non-whites, the role of immigrants, the limitation of creeping Christian theocracy, guns, voting rights, etc., etc., and yes, I am still going to defend Democrats -- even after this surveillance story, and even after all the civilian drone casualties and so on and so on.

But no, I'm not a happy Democrat today.

Now go read the sixty million identically self-righteous blog posts about all this. Yes, all those people have a point. But I'm not going to write that post. I'll be here waiting for the moment when we're ready to talk about something else.

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ALSO, TOO: Read Joshua Foust.