06-06-2012, 02:01 PM
Ted King wrote:
There are probably many reasons Walker won so convincingly (by a larger margin than the last time those two faced each other) - a lot of which portend bad things for Democrats in the upcoming general election; e.g., over a third of union members voted for Walker (seems as though the Reagan Democrats are still a significant factor).
I'm getting pessimistic about Obama's reelection chances and the Democrats in congress's chances of holding a majority in either the House or Senate. Once again, there are a lot of reasons - the bad economic situation to which many people react emotionally by wanting to give the other party a try, Citizens United, white winners of the American economic game's attitudes (that doesn't imply a general sense of overt racism) toward the non-winners, voter suppression by Republicans in control of state governments, too many low income people's sense of powerlessness that leads them to not vote, etc.
Part of me thinks that maybe it would be better to just let the right wing of the Republican party (like Walker) have their way - they will be either be proven to be right and things will get substantially better and I'll have to reevaluate my views, or as I suspect, they would be proven to be very wrong and we can finally put them behind us once and for all. But it makes me sick to think of what I'm convinced now will be a LOT of unnecessary suffering if the right wing Republicans get their way.
I'm feeling the same way, already I've been seeing anti-Obama ads running regularly, but no pro-Obama ads yet are airing. The power of the ad is pretty amazing, here the Michigan government wanted to create another entry point into Canada to alleviate the traffic, but the sole private bridge owner, who has a monopoly for getting people into and out of Canada, put up negative ads regularly for a period of months. The legislature finally vetoed the proposal, people were falling for the misleading information in the ads.
Truth-in-advertising pretty much doesn't exist anymore.