This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close: ‘The brokenness of this system’
Matt Taibbi rocks it again. I have been commenting on how the fact that the race was this close to start with was bothering me. Not that I am a huge Obama fan, but that the GOP ran on the same policies that got us into the mess - double down on their ideology rather than reform and were polling even with Obama and the Democrats. So to see Matt Taibbi touch on this also is somewhat gratifying.
….snip….The mere fact that Mitt Romney is even within striking distance of winning this election is an incredible testament to two things: a) the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party, which would have this and every other election for the next half century sewn up if they were a little less money-hungry and tried just a little harder to represent their ostensible constituents, and b) the power of our propaganda machine, which has conditioned all of us to accept the idea that the American population, ideologically speaking, is naturally split down the middle, whereas the real fault lines are a lot closer to the 99-1 ratio the Occupy movement has been talking about since last year.
Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world’s wealth, depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got it) the instant it all went south.
These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard work. They not only don’t oppose the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the construction of new factories in places like China and India.
….snip….
The fact that Barack Obama needed a Himalayan mountain range of cash and some rather extreme last-minute incompetence on Romney’s part to pull safely ahead in this race is what really speaks to the the brokenness of this system. Bruni of the Times is right that the process scares away qualified candidates who could have given Obama a better run for all that money. But what he misses is that the brutal campaign process, with its two years of nearly constant media abuse and “gotcha” watch-dogging, serves mainly to select out any candidate who is considered anything like a threat to the corrupt political establishment – and that selection process is the only thing that has kept this race close.
…snip…
But when one of the candidates is Mitt Romney, the race shouldn’t be close. You’ll hear differently in the coming weeks from the news media, which will spend a lot of time scratching its figurative beard while it argues that a 54-46 split, or however this thing ends up (and they’ll call anything above 53% for Obama a rout, I would guess), is evidence that the system is broken. But what we probably should be wondering is why it was ever close at all.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/this-presidential-race-should-never-have-been-this-close-20120925#ixzz284nEpiQt
I read some comments and I thought this was a good reply back to Tiabbi:
wonderful article (as always) by Matt Taibbi but I’d be remiss not to point out that Taibbi, either by sheer lack of forethought or intentionally, ignores the 900 pound gorilla - RACE. For many Americans - many of whom fall into the so-called 47% - Romney’s whiteness more than makes him eligible to receive their vote, but disqualifies Obama, despite the fact that Romney’s entire professional career consisted of closing down businesses in the United States and shipping them overseas or “restructuring” them and they lose their employees while his bank account gets bigger. Oh, and did I mention he dodges taxes by keeping funds in foreign tax havens? These are things that crush Middle America, whether in the form of depressing wages or lessening the government’s revenue base (taxes). These should be things which are self-evident to the average person who does the calculations, but instead they fall for the “otherization” of the President. And make no mistake about it, the right and Romney’s campaign does it precisely because it WORKS. And the fact that many feel that the President hasn’t done enough to stem the tide of economic bleakness plays into some of this, with some feeling he’s perhaps not up to the job. Of course, the collapse was a consequence of almost 3 decades of flawed economic and financial modeling which cannot be fixed in 4 years so easily, but very few want to hear that. Moreover, there is NOTHING in Romney’s record that suggests he can turn around the economy, despite his touting of his “business” record, but his whiteness means he’s competent for many. If you think i’m making this up, think about this - imagine if a black Democratic president presided over a huge financial collapse and the ensuing elections featured a black Democratic candidate and a white Republican in which the black Dem candidate asks voters to trust him to turn things around because of his “business record”. Now honestly answer if you think he’d win or not.
That Obama won only 53% of the vote in 2008 despite the collapse and McCain’s ridiculous “response” (along with his generally inept campaign) is testament to the notion of white privilege in American politics.