Next Issue
It will be going to the printer’s shortly, so we should have it within the next couple of weeks. But if you can’t wait, here’s a sample:
Congratulations, Democrats. The Republicans have have become so atrociously incompetent that the voters elected you in a landslide in spite of a mere 20% support for a Congress you currently run. This election was handed to you on a silver platter, but despite how disatrous the last eight years have been, Republicans avoided a full-scale blowout and are already regrouping. They are constantly reassuring themselves that the United States remains a “center-right” country, and many believe that they lost this year because they weren’t conservative enough. Rumors abound of right-wing darling Sarah Palin making a run for the presidency in 2012; if successful, it would realize the worst nightmares of many Democrats. They can avoid this debacle by going back to their roots-liberalism. Since Ronald Reagan triumphed in 1980, his philosophy has governed the country. Even the lone Democrat in the White House since then, Bill Clinton, has been severely limited by Reagan’s legacy (see health care reform). But now that method of governing has led us into an abyss: two badly run wars financed by heavy borrowing, an economy in free fall and crumbling entitlement systems, a massive national debt and the dire global warming crisis. It is ludicrous to suggest that the United States remains a predominantly conservative country after conservatism has been so heavily discredited and Barack Obama has been put in the White House, but liberals must remain wary. The United States isn’t really leaning left at this point either; the country doesn’t know where the hell it wants to go. We now have an opportunity to prove that liberalism works, that higher taxes on corporations and the uber-rich actually benefit the country, that the government can take the lead on protecting the environment, that the economy must be regulated for its own good, that diplomacy is the best method for settling disputes, that our education and infrastructure systems can no longer simply be left to crumble and that civil liberties must be protected. As Bush has so masterfully proven, these are not opinions but cold, hard, facts. This should be the election cycle that historians mark as the death of Reaganism. But if the Obama administration doesn’t deliver, lacking a viable alternative, America will turn right back to the same failed conservative principles that have been destroying us for the past twenty-eight years. The greatest share of the blame has been going to the Bush/Cheney administration; most Americans don’t recognize that Reaganism itself has been proven unworkable. And that’s why this election cycle is destined to be pivotal no matter what its final result. Obama and the Democrats can deliver on their promises to bring this country a new era of prosperity, or they will fail and turn America back to the conservative principles that could eventually destroy it.
