I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It was like I could see the whole thing, one long chain of events that stretched all the way back before Larkhill. I felt like I could see everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen. It was like a perfect pattern laid out in front of me and I realized that we were all a part of it and all trapped by it.
Thus, the intrepid Chief Inspector Finch sets the stage for the climax of
V for Vendetta. I, too, cannot get certain feelings out of my mind. Like the good inspector, I was lead down this path by certain events which I cannot help but interpret as non-coincidental. I very well may be misinterpreting things, but that doesn't explain why the thoughts refuse to budge no matter how hard I try to rationalize them away.
First, there seems to be a disconnect between the big issue polls and the specific candidate polls. The candidate polls are showing things to be much tighter for November than the big issue polls. The one exception is presidential approval which has somehow ticked up the past couple of weeks. But when one looks at the big issue polls, one only observes a monolithic down slide, all in the Dem's direction. I know the simple answer to this, that people somehow do not see their representative as responsible. But I do not think that is the dynamic this year. Here's why.
There is much talk about the failure of the O'Neill principle, "All politics is local." I've heard and read it from several informed sources. If true, this midterm election seems to have taken on a solely national character, with local politics playing a reduced role. So why are the individual candidate polls so disconnected? Is it really that people like their representatives? Or are the polls missing something, or some group of people?
Looking at the candidate specific polls, one sees them jumping around, flipping back and forth. They're up one week, down the next. These polls look volatile and there seems to be no universal agreement among the collection. Are the magnitudes of these discrepancies normal? I don't know, but I can't help but think that when one looks at the bigger picture that this appearance of volatility may be more than statistical jitter. I think one can include the Chimp approval poll in this group.
Consider all the anecdotal evidence which is being reported from all quarters. Every day we see more of it. Republicans switching parties, former died-in-the-wool Chimp supporters changing their minds, former Republicans running under the Democratic Party banner, polls showing increasing numbers of independents supporting Dem candidates, people being convinced to remove ChimpCo bumper stickers, etc. The collective record of these events shows that anger against ChimpCo seems to be both deep and pervasive. And it is all going one direction.
Then, there is the current disposition of the 2006 campaign predictions from prognosticators on both sides. There are dozens of Republican-held seats in play, with more every week. The number in serious danger of flipping is above what we need in the House, and near the mark in the Senate. Yet, not a single Democrat-held seat is in similar danger. Not one! The closest race for the Dems is Menendez in NJ, and no others equal it in either the House or the Senate.
There's one poll number that is consistent in both value and trend. That's the Congressional approval rating, which has continued its slow, deliberate descent throughout the past months. It's current value is a positively tiny 25%.
ChimpCo is showing lots of signs that it is very scared. They are doing all sorts of weird things, taking positions counter to their best interests. There's talk of them beginning to lose fundie support. Prominent Republicans are failing to support ChimpCo on important issues. The Chimp himself is acting very, very strangely. His speech patterns are even more broken up than usual--he seems incapable of speaking in anything other than short bursts of phrases and sentence fragments. His outbursts of anger are truly worrisome.
Then, there's the torture issue. There's talk from important insiders that things are going to break on this story soon. Does anybody seriously believe that the good American people will stand for this? (No, I'm not talking about the 25%.)
In my over forty years of political activism I don't think I've never seen anything like this, not even during Nixon. Are we seeing a confluence of monolithic forces which indicate something big is afoot? If so, maybe it's something that the polls, the pundits, the journalists, and the candidates are not picking up? Or, maybe it's something of which they are not speaking? Is it possible, with them all focused on individual, narrow domains and events, that they are seeing the trees, but not the forest?
Many here at DU similarly focus on minutia, or on a single issue. It is the source of much stress around here and many, including myself, conflate individual events well beyond their probable significance. Why are we so tempted to see only individual events, detached from their context? From my thinking, this cannot be correct.
There might be another apt metaphor in chaos theory. When a system is strained beyond its operating limits it can begin exhibiting chaotic behavior. The ability to predict outcomes becomes impossible as the system flips erratically from one state to another. However, the end result of all these crazy fluctuations can be a complete state change, like when water freezes.
ChimpCo has been flying the ship of state well beyond it's recommended operating parameters. The tipping point may have been reached long ago. We may be in the throes of a state change. Maybe all we need to do is to see to it that the system settles into a state that favor's America's future. Let's all keep pushing our advantage.
Sorry for the long screed. It's just that these thoughts won't go away.
;-)
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