I should be asleep, but Loki got really cranky in the hurt way,so I dosed him. Urhg. Im a case.

Oh damn. CSI is making me sniffly already, and I'm only a few minutes in.

I think I missed the sniffliest first quarter. Bur I'll check it on the web.

Yeah, the rest was not so sniffly-worthy

Jesse, she's off the show.

A good article on the Republican politics of class warfare: [link]

billy, at this point, everytime I interact with a foreigner, I have the urge to apologize for my country. I know you've interacted with the board here, and spent significant time over here, so you're probably not judging all Americans by what's going on currently in our politics, but geez, I wish an apology from me would either make things better or remind you that we're not all like that.

Thanks, Liese and bon bon. Bummer!

billy, at this point, everytime I interact with a foreigner, I have the urge to apologize for my country. I know you've interacted with the board here, and spent significant time over here, so you're probably not judging all Americans by what's going on currently in our politics, but geez, I wish an apology from me would either make things better or remind you that we're not all like that.

Hee. Honestly, I'm surprisingly optimistic about your political landscape. I think the Bush Presidency is a reminder of Lincoln's adage about fooling the people. The Economist published an article in 2006 that stuck with me: [link] I think this is pretty accurate. Rove came up with a winning strategy for Bush: tack hard right, play up the social issues, fire up the agitated god-botherers. Polarise, polarise, polarise. And no one does agitated like the Republicans' agitated god-botherers (not to mention the message of all terror, all the time), so it worked.

But this strategy is going to kill the party for some time to come. You can fire up your base, but you're going to fire up your diehard opponents with it too. See this election: nominating Palin covered McCain's right flank, but it did even greater wonders in getting the Democrats to embrace Obama. His support among Dems rose 15-20% post-Palin. And the people in the centre, they don't trust the extremes of either party so much. If you're spending your time shouting God, gays and guns, your position in the centre is going to be soft.

Upshot: this strategy doesn't necessarily stop you winning; but it stops you winning big. You're not going to pull a Reagan. Both elections, Bush won by one state, with a narrow and hotly contested margin. And he only got that far against uninspiring opponents, and in 2004 in a climate of fear. Rove won for Bush, but not for the Republican Party.

Taking it further, since you (and we) have a two-party system, those parties have to multitask. The Repubs include supporters like the aforementioned agitated God-botherers, small-government free-marketers, pro-business corporate welfare aficionados and neo-cons (now on the wane). But the Bush Doctrine panders to only one segment - the South. Small-govt conservatives are outraged with Bush. They're directing it at McCain in the aftermath of his mortgage plan. There's a faultline developing here. Social moderates are going to find the Republican Party that Bush and Rove created less and less hospitable.

The culture wars drive that further. To quote the first article I linked to: "over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts." This isn't the party of Lincoln. It's not even the party of Nixon. Hell, it's barely the party of Reagan. He could win 49 states; Bush could only ever win just enough. And now the pendulum's swinging back. Times are volatile, and people are remembering that competence matters.

(Finally, I may add, the Dems have seized the opportunity. they ran a 50-state strategy in '06, and in '08. They're building a new broad church, and it's working.)

So America is, after all, smarter than that. I get the fear after 9/11. When it happened I was in an office tower next to City Hall in Pennsylvania, with confirmed strikes in NYC to the north and Washington D.C. to the south, and one plane missing somewhere over Pennsylvania. But America is waking up from it. There's a lot of damage been done, in many different arenas, and there'll be consequences; but America is waking up from it. So is the rest of the world, I think.

Plus, in no other country can the electoral process be this entertaining. Seriously, Palin?

Plus, in no other country can the electoral process be this entertaining. Seriously, Palin?

Heh. Don't you guys have your own brand of right-wing crazy going on down there, or am I, ahem, misremembering?