Yikes McGee: Yikes' blog

John Boehner took the reins as Speaker of the House of Representatives yesterday commenting that “The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin carrying out their instructions.”  I’m here to note some irony, since the people had also voted in 2008 for the election of Barack Obama based on the platform he presented, and yet John Boehner and essentially all Republicans in Congress rejected the will of the people and instead greeted the duly elected President with a solid two years of constant, unrelenting demonization, and unprecedented obstruction.  At least Obama came by his mandate honestly, presenting a platform of change and bipartisanship that the American voter had longed for through the long Bush years.  Boehner and the Republicans, on the other hand, launched a campaign of misinformation, distortion, out and out lies, manipulation, and extreme propaganda in collusion with the increasingly right-wing media, with the expressed objective [...]

The Democrats are the most powerful group in American politics today, at this moment.  They can continue that way or lose it all tomorrow; it’s up to them.  Tomorrow, Election Day 2010, can lead us into a generation of decline under right-wing regressive political ideology if the racist and sore-loser wings of the Republican Party and their media propagandist colluders have their way.  They have methodically demonized Obama every day since he was elected, and the media has relentlessly repeated the narrative of the foregone conclusion of the Republican resurgence without much substantiation thousands of times.  If their 2 year propaganda program proves successful, then aside from the Gerrymandering party the Republican Governors will have with redistricting, the environment will be under attack, consumers will suffer, unions will be targeted to harass, campaign finance reform – forget it; there will be more wars and lots more religion, the rich will get richer, [...]

Progressives could take over on November 2nd if they wanted to.  Sure, that sounds crazy in the context of what we're being fed by the media, but it's not as crazy as the bizarre alternative they present with a straight face – returning the repugnant Republicans to power.  Yes, we are all confused and/or frustrated with Obama and certainly at wit’s end with the Democrats in Congress because none of the promised Change has occurred yet, but rest assured, only change for the worse will result from Republican gains.  Voters on the left can make matters worse by punishing the Democrats for being too weak, or we can strengthen the Democrats by increasing their numbers.  Tactically, a lack of pragmatism on the part of Progressives could prove historically disastrous.   
If you believe the media, Progressives, in spite of their victory in 2008, are now ready to throw in the towel just two years later. Of course, I don’t usually believe the media, [...]

I hope that progressives, liberals, Democrats, all those on the left will realize that holding their noses and voting for the weak Democrats is better than letting the unrepentant Republicans take over, with their increasingly radical right-wingnuts. It's true that the Democrats are total chickens, but they're our chickens for the most part, and if we abandon them to the wolves they'll get eaten and then we are all screwed. I say, strengthen the chickens, build them up, get more of them, and then we can try to get them to do the right things. I interpret the onslaught of the extreme right, with the media carrying their water, as simply another attempt to steal yet another election. After a decade of disappointments and election thefts, we finally got a popularly elected president in the White House. The historically unprecedented obstruction, the bizarre and extreme propaganda, the constant, outrageous demonization is all designed to render the peoples' will [...]