Democrats are Morons, But Can Republicans Avoid Being Idiots; "It's the Economy, Stupid" Edition

Income inequality is getting worse. The economic recovery that this president likes to talk about is only benefiting Wall Street. The stock market is up, but real wages are not. Most Americans are worse off, with their incomes either flat or declining.

This would seem to be progressive gold. Democrats could make a serious stab at fixing the Federal budget deficit proposing to go back to much higher brackets on the vampire class. They could make a serious attempt to level the playing field (taxes) between investor income and wage income. They could talk about how the real unemployment rate is probably closer to double the published rate of 8.1%. There could be a serious discussion about revamping the tax code to make it attractive to run businesses that employ Americans and make it tax-punitive to engage in vulture capitalism.

Add to that the recent news that the "austerity is good" economic theory, a theory that is akin to trying to cure malnutrition by fasting, turns out to have been fatally flawed. If there was ever a good time since 1941 to beat the drum of progressive economics, this would be it. If there was ever a time to stand up for the wage-earners, the working stiffs, this is it.

So what do the Democrats do, instead? Obama's big idea to address budget issues is to make things harder on seniors, by pushing to cut cost-of-living increases by using a different system to calculate CPI. So the argument can be made that the Democrats are going to try to save Social Security by making life meaner for seniors. And, let's not forget disabled veterans, for whom a chained CPI system will impact even worse.

Then, with an economy that is pretty much stalled (unless you're in the economic vampire class), the Democrats spend three months of political capital blathering about meaningless gun control bills. They let Diane Feinstein's new AR ban come up for a vote, instead of quietly killing it in committee, thus setting off an uproar among voters who own weapons.

The Democrats spent three months playing right into the GOP narrative of "you know, they really do want to take your guns away from you", a narrative that is reinforced by laws enacted in New York and Connecticut. If the Democrats in largely rural and western states tried to talk about economic fairness, the Republicans will be whispering "and you know, if you vote for those guys, they'll come for your guns."

The Democrats are morons.

But that may not translate into electoral disaster, for, as the past few election cycles have shown, the Republicans are idiots. The GOP has been, for all intents and purposes, seized by a bunch of ideological lunatics who would rather nominate a series of unelectable candidates, rather than a more moderate candidate who has a shot at winning a general election. Recent history bears this out:

2010: The Republicans nominated senatorial candidates in several states that they should, arguably, have had a good chance of winning. Harry Reid was not at all popular in Nevada, he had huge negative numbers in the polls, but the GOP ran a candidate who was so crazy that she lost. The same thing happened in Delaware, Colorado and Washington. The Republicans had a tougher road to hoe in Connecticut, but they went with Linda McMahon,a candidate whose sole claim to fame is being married to the guy who owns the WWE or WWF or something like that and she lost.

2012: In Missouri, Claire McCaskill was not at all popular. The Tea party folks managed to nominate the most conservative clown they could find, a man who promptly put on a pair of golfing shoes and stomped on his own dick. He lost. In Indiana, the Tea party was instrumental in kicking Sen. Lugar, a Republican, to the curb. The Indiana Tea party guy was only a little less inept than the Tea party guy in Missouri, which is why that seat switched to the Democrats. The Tea party guy lost in North Dakota. In Connecticut, the Rasslin' Lady' money pretty much scared off the professional politicians in the GOP, she ran again. After spending close to $100 million on her two attempts, she was beaten so badly the second time that the race was called fifteen picoseconds after the polls closed.

The Democrats currently have 53 Senate seats (or 55, if you also count the two independents). Angle, McDonnell, Mourdock, Akin, Buck, Rossi, Berg, and maybe McMahon, twice, all lost for the Republicans. Do the math. Without the Tea party driving the GOP into Batshitland, the Senate would be in GOP hands today.

And possibly even the White House. The crazies pushed the GOP candidate, a Republican who won statewide office in Massachusetts, so far to the right that he was unrecognizable. Worse, he was inauthentic, because he had to discard so many of his previous positions in order to win the nomination. The one other candidate who might have made a serious try for independent and center-right Democrats sank so fast that he might as well been wearing cement shoes.

The Republicans are idiots.

And as for the rest of us? We are so screwed.