Friday, October 17, 2008

Election Observations: are we in trouble

The gang at the lake has been compiling their comments on the election while engaged in their fall search for the best recording by Julie London. The energy has been high and the debates fierce. The gang divided further with each new London song they hear. Oh wait, this was to be about the election. Sorry.

The first conclusion is that neither candidate has a chance of producing the change in the minds of the voters and their own rhetoric. The same for bringing the country together. While Obama claims to be able to do this the most, it is he who is faced with making Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi agree. You know income transfer from one group to another is not what people around the nation hear in the word change. Obama’s theme is change, but simply reversing a policy falls far short of what people see in the word. He says one thing but still means that one group loses as another gains. The sides shift, but is this the “change” he implies and people believe in? No. Is “change” marked by the additions to the “rescue bill?” How is money for the rum producers of Puerto Rico and indicator of change? Obama’s chance of changing the Congress is less than zero, meaning he is going to bring more of the same.

Second, the whole thing comes down to buying out groups. The election has become, and maybe always has been, a bribery process. Only the Christian right is not being bought out, and that is because their issues are cultural and not economic. The promises are so large that neither can deliver er and we are set up to have the same old-same old of promises that fail to be met. The vice-presidential candidates already were asked to identify areas they thought might not be met because of having to cut back, and Biden’s answer was an iffy cloud of gas.
Third, the tax the rich theme of Obama shows he has no understanding of how the world works. The money of these people will be sucked out of the United States to foreign places and trusts. He can ask Ted Kennedy how this works. His family knows how it doers. Which Caribbean island was it that the Kennedy clan has its trusts? That income Obama wants to tax will be gone from our soil. And if you just do not seel the stock, you pay no tax, either. More clouds.

If Obama wins, which is likely unless the hidden racial bias of many suddenly shows up in the ballot booth as some are thinking it might, he will face a world buoyed on his promises and defeated as the baby-boomers were with J F Kennedy’s death. Can the country, like it is, stand more loss of faith in our political system? Let the low confidence in the Congress numbers point your way to a “no”.

We are in trouble and pitting one group against another is not going to help in any way, relying on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to point the way to change is an expression of the faith of children in a real adult world.