In short, since 2006, the Ds have done everything in their power to split their base, adopt R-friendly policies, and relegitimize the R brand. And in 2010, the voters did at least three things: (1) the under-the-bus Ds stayed home; (2) other voters punished the Ds for non-performance; and (3) other Ds voted for the real Rs instead of the faux ones.<http://correntewire.com/if_ifs_and_buts_were_candy_and_nuts_every_day_would_be_christmas#more>
In short, the legacy parties have nobody to blame for the shutdown than themselves, but the Ds are more culpable than the Rs. The Rs were and are a known quantity, but and so the Ds worked very hard to make sure they regained as much power as possible.
If you can keep your head when all around you, are losing theirs and blaming it on you....
It's not about Ds being "weak" or "caving," a dangerous assumption if ever there was; you don't bat 1.000 (or 0.000) for the season w/o a plan. If Ds had used their overwhelming mandate to pass a WPA, Medicare for All, reined in the empire, let "too big to fail" banks fail (and their executives do the perp walk) - all overwhelmingly popular - the Rs would've been relegated to something below third party status. Rather, since both legacy parties have the same, exact, identical agenda - funding the rentier class by dispossessing the bottom 99.9% - overwhelmingly unpopular, especially when detached from a partisan context - each party needs the other to perpetuate an illusion of choice amid such policy outcomes.
The difference b/w a pwog D and a Tea Party R - the acceptable spectrum of "debate" - is that one says the govt. is broke NOW (“deficit hawks”) and the other implies that the govt. can go broke at some undisclosed time (“deficit doves”) (HINT: it can't, as a nation sovereign in its own currency - see Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 of the US Constitution <http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei>). (Not so) Ironically, they're willing to exercise this power - "printing" money (literally changing numbers upward or downward on a spreadsheet for accts. at the FED) w/o issuing debt instruments (bonds) or raising additional revenues to fund no-bid contracts, bailouts, and subsidies for mandates to purchase private "products," but neither pwog D "deficit doves" nor TP "deficit hawks" are willing to publicly acknowledge the modern operational realities of our monetary system. Bernanke let it slip:
In the midst of the ["]crisis,["] Bernanke had freedom to act immediately ["shock-and-awe"/shock doctrine] - he doesn't need permission from Congress or the president [dew-mocracy, bro!]. While they debated on Capitol Hill, Bernanke cut interest rates nearly to zero; then he used Depression-era emergency powers to launch a dozen rescue programs of his own. There was support for money market funds, mortgages, short term lending to small business, and support for auto loans, student loans and small business loans - commitments of a trillion dollars, doubling the size of the Fed's balance sheet. [these programs are identified on the left-hand side of the chart below - all of the "facility" stuff]<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/12/60minutes/main4862191_page2.shtml?tag=contentMain%3BcontentBody>
Asked if it's tax money the Fed is spending, Bernanke said, "It's not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing."
"You've been printing money?" Pelley asked.
"Well, effectively," Bernanke said. "And we need to do that, because our economy is very weak and inflation is very low. When the economy begins to recover, that will be the time that we need to unwind those programs, raise interest rates, reduce the money supply, and make sure that we have a recovery that does not involve inflation."
What we haven't answered yet is where/to whom is this newly-"printed" money is allocated. What do you suppose a financial sector recently flush w/ money (and future guarantees of new cash infusions) after over-leveraging themselves do? Maybe engage in the same practices? Maybe dispossess people of their homes, flip them and begin the cycle anew w/ the expectation of further cash infusions b/c they're "too bigger to fail"? Maybe engage in speculation on staple items like oil and cotton and food that aren't accounted for in conventional inflation indices? So newly-"printed" money allocated to rentier class can lead the sort of inflation ignored/censored by monetarists - the kind that dispossesses the non-rentier class.
Newly-"printed" money allocated to the non-rentier class, can absorb inflationary tendencies in two ways: First, through full employment (anyone willing and able to work guaranteed a job provided by federal funding) acts as an upward pressure on wages. Think about it: If you can find a job, you'll tend to look for the job that pays you the most. Second, through a simplified tax code (more brackets, less loopholes), with additional brackets above the current top bracket, and that taxes accumulated wealth at levels at least commensurate w/ (if not, exceeding) labor-derived income would have a dampening effect on inflation by removing excess dollars - especially from the rentier class that might otherwise leverage markets and rapidly drive up prices. Together, these policies result in median household wages outpacing inflation - more spending power, even if nominal inflation is higher than in the past few decades (this is likely indicative of downward wealth redistribution - primarily by eroding the value of accumulated wealth).
So it's not just how much money is "printed," it's to whom it is allocated. And, remember, every policy is redistributive. It's just that for the past 30-35 years, virtually every policy has been *upwardly* redistributive.
* * *
It's almost like Ds needed a resurgent R party to pull this off - and the ultimate objective of SS/Medicare privatization (of course, like Obama/RomneyCare's mandate to purchase a private "product," kicking in *after* 2012). Ds had to work really hard to re-legitimize the Rs, demonstrating the parties' mutual owners' necessity to obfuscate their common policy objectives. It wasn't R filibustering, as filibusters aren't merely threats to filibuster, and i don't recall Jim DeMint [insert other R scapegoat] reading out of a phone book. It wasn't "weakness" or "caving," as evinced by policy outcomes during the lame-duck session last year. And the final go-to justification - that Ds are "less evil" - doesn't stick: what good parent would leave their child w/ a "less evil" babysitter?
Finally, a question: Ds often convey their desire for a Palin candidacy, and not just b/c of their visceral hate for ambitious women, arguing that she's a "right-wing extremist" and wouldn't be electorally viable (LOL...and Romney is?!); however, does this entail Ds running on & delivering leftist policies (e.g., jobs program, Medicare for All, public banking, etc.) OR "running to the center" to keep an "extremist" from winning? Answer this question and you've done the proof confirming the mutually-reinforcing nature of the legacy parties and their uniformly-held right-wing policy objectives.*
* See "The Rachet Effect" <http://smithbowen.net/linfame/stopme/chapter02.html>.
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