You Wait Sixteen Years and What Do You Get?

The parallels of this fall’s midterm elections and those of 1994 are clear. Then, the party of a Democratic president in office for two years after defeating an incumbent Republican lost both Houses of Congress. A similar result is considered possible in November. Both elections involved vociferous opposition to the president and his party, even more so this year. Contrary to conventional wisdom I consider health care reform merely a secondary issue in each case. What they have in common is the age old resistance and concomitant anger by those who have, to the possibility of giving to those who haven’t.

Since a larger proportion of the have nots are people of color the matter of race becomes an important part of the equation. In l994 we had the specter of Reagan’s fictitious welfare queen picking up food stamps in her Cadillac. Today we have a black president, which adds to the rage of the poorer members of the Tea Party, at heart Republicans who are not yet housebroken.

A big difference in the circumstances surrounding this election is the state of our economy which is conducive to incivility. In spite of Republicans’ well deserved reputation as the party of the rich, the fact that the problem is mostly their creation and the initial TARP financial bailout having been requested by a president from their party, they have succeeded in reversing much of the public perception. To the lesser informed, Democrats are the party of finance and Republicans the populists. This rhetorical legerdemain is the result of the continuing drain on the Treasury from bailouts necessitated by problems our current president inherited.

I don’t see how this myth can prevail once Republicans have taken their inevitable stand against tightening restrictions on the financial community, particularly if they vote as a block as they did with health care. A lack of proper supervision of Wall Street has preceded our two biggest financial disasters of the past hundred years. Anybody keeping score knows where the parties generally stand. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fired the opening salvo when he said that regulations would lead to giant bailouts of financial institutions, presumably like the ones taking place lately. Is he dyslexic? This sort of logic is too Alice in Wonderland for anybody with a modicum of knowledge, which excludes the Tea Baggers who apparently come from there.

The long slough to some kind of health care bill seemed like it took forever. The floor is now being occupied by a simpler, but at least as important subject. To paraphrase the Maxwell Anderson lyric to the Kurt Weill melody, it’s a long long time from May to November. The longer the better.