Paul Krugman notes the irony of the jammed parking lot at Boston's airport the night of Romney's, uh, victory celebration on November 6. No, not too many big cars at Logan, says Krugman -- just not enough room for Romney supporters' private jets.
Oops, fellas. The political situation has changed. Those jet owners were "misinformed about political reality."
But the disappointed plutocrats weren’t wrong about who was on their side. This was very much an election pitting the interests of the very rich against those of the middle class and the poor.And the Obama campaign won largely by disregarding the warnings of squeamish “centrists” and embracing that reality, stressing the class-war aspect of the confrontation. This ensured not only that President Obama won by huge margins among lower-income voters, but that those voters turned out in large numbers, sealing his victory.
The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn’t. The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election. ...Paul Krugman, NYT
Face it. This isn't about fiscal responsibility. After their total irresponsibility during the Bush years (and look at the debt Reagan left behind), the Republicans' claim to fiscal rectitude may be the greatest example of chutzpa in our history. No -- they want the money, e.g. the power, to remain in the upper stratosphere of our polity. It's as simple as that.
For now we have the upper hand and, damn!, we need to keep it!
...Keep your eyes open as the fiscal game of chicken continues. It’s an uncomfortable but real truth that we are not all in this together; America’s top-down class warriors lost big in the election, but now they’re trying to use the pretense of concern about the deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Let’s not let them pull it off. ...Krugman, NYT
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By the way: at some point we're going to have to talk about how money didn't buy the election. Both sides threw whole ingots at each other but the most invested side didn't win. Karl Rove has gone underground after what can only be described as one of the most dramatic failures of political calculation ever.
We need to remember that the Republicans didn't just lose the White House and an embarrassing number of seats in Congress. They lost the cherished belief that they could buy the 2012 election. So behind all this -- behind even Paul Krugman's worry about the money/power guys keeping their money and their power -- Republicans may be waking up at 2 a.m. to the horrible thought that money's not going to secure their future. Where they're still throwing money and power around, though, is in individual states. Which reminds me to remind you about Bill Moyers' program on ALEC. America's need to be as conversant with ALEC as they are about Al Qaeda -- and realize ALEC is a much worse problem.
