The fact that certain Democrats, and even Obama himself (albeit tenuously) that supported this GOP plan of raping of America's elderly tells everything that The Gadfly needs to know about the subject of going all in on investing trust in the Democrats:
Back in November 2012, with the Bush tax cuts scheduled to expire and sequestration looming, liberals were divided among two and a half significant schools of strategic thought.
One (mine) was that President Obama should let all of the cuts expire, allow sequestration to kick in, then return from a restful Christmas break with an “Obama tax cut” bill in hand. As a gesture of goodwill to Republicans, that bill would have reinstated all of the Bush tax cuts for the first big chunk of everyone’s income, but in return they’d have to agree to rescind sequestration entirely, and partially offset the cost of all this new spending and tax cutting with a cap on tax expenditures for high earners.
The other (and a half) was that Obama should cut a deal of some kind before the New Year’s “cliff.” Some of the people in this camp believed Obama should pocket the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for top earners and call it a day, fight sequestration separately (which is essentially what happened). Others, including Obama, believed the best option was to reach a big fiscal accord, built up from the baseline of higher taxes on rich people, from which he’d agree to some entitlement cuts, Republicans would agree to close some tax loopholes, and the parties could put sequestration and budget brinkmanship behind them for years.
This is how a Democratic president ended up supporting a Social Security cut called Chained Consumer Price Index, which reduces spending by indexing benefits to a less generous measure of inflation.http://www.salon.com/2014/02/20/gops_social_security_disaster_how_conservatives_lost_their_chance_to_cut_benefits/
Comedian Bill Maher has frequently made the observation that in the past 35 years, all politics in this country has shifted quite noticeably to the right -- with the Democrats becoming the Republicans of Eisenhower's age and the Republicans just becoming batshit fucking insane, lunatic radicals. And he's right.
The Gadfly grew up believing (perhaps without merit) that the Democrats actually gave a shit about the working class and even the middle class of this country - and that they were the only barrier preventing the Ebeneezer Scrooge's of the Republican party from putting us all in to workhouses.
The Gadfly isn't so sure anymore. When Democratic Senators starting sounding off about making cuts in Social Security just so that Wall Street and the wealthy can grab even bigger slices of the economic pie, well then that's when The Gadfly pulls back and begins to wonder just who's side these so-called Democrats are truly on.
The Gadfly currently does not monetarily support the Democratic party, or any other political party for that matter. And The Gadfly will continue to not financially support the Democrats as long as they continue the trend of being nothing more than a "kinder, gentler" version of today's Republicans.
None of this is an epiphany for The Gadfly. The Gadfly has been an independent voter for several years now, although admittedly he does tend to vote Democrat if for the sole reason that the Republicans just keep offering up candidates who talk like they have recently been released from a mental institution.
What scares The Gadfly more than anything is that if this current status quo is "normalized" -- in other words -- The Democrats are now Republican Lite and the Republicans are now Mussolini's Fascists -- that does not bode well for the future of American democracy or the quality of life for the American people.
Once again The Gadfly will defer to his old friend George Carlin to tell us like it truly is:
----TFG
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