This whole “change” thing.
The 31st of May, and what a day in the bizarre world of modern America. A second crane crashed down to the street in NYC. A military judge in the Guantanamo trials was summarily dismissed after publicly expressing frustration that the military prosecutors weren’t sharing information with the defense. Is this a “show trial” or what?? The Obamacans and Clintonistas are slugging it out at the DNC Rules Committee over whether to seat delegations from Michigan and Florida where state parties knowingly scheduled their primaries earlier than the rules allowed. So the Rules Committee will decide whether their rules were really rules? And the rules shouldn’t be followed because….Hillary would lose? And then, yesterday, a Field Poll in California showed that if the elections were held today in CA, then Obama would win over Hillary and over McCain in the general. And a new report suggests that the world is experiencing more extreme weather than at any time since we have been recording such things. Oh, and GM is finding that people just aren’t snapping up those huge SUV’s that have been retooled (at a cost of $4k per) as “hybrids” thus increasing their mileage from 14 to 20 mpg. Now, there’s a shock.
So the real question I have this morning is “what in the world will progressives do if things really change next year?” In many ways, I don’t think we have a clue. We haven’t been in a position to drive policy for so many years, I think we have forgotten what matters. This recent experience watching the political machinations in Washington over the once-every-five-years Farm Bill does not give one comfort. For years, progressives on both sides of the aisle have been arguing that farm subsidies no longer provide a safety net for family farmers, as originally intended, but basically act as corporate welfare enriching the already large, successful agri-business enterprises.
So here comes President Bush saying that it is time to severely limit subsidies, especially because we are experiencing record commodity prices. And what did our progressive leaders in the Congress do? They decided that the status quo was just fine, not wanting to jeopardize recent wins in some rural areas. Wow. Makes you want to work really hard to make sure progressives win…..so they can continue the status quo? I think we still have some work to do. This whole “change” thing better be more than a slogan.