Elections Have Consequences

Every new assault on progressive values by Republican politicians and jurists is a potent reminder of the truth about elections.

If Democrat Michael Dukakis had been elected president in 1988 instead of George H. W. Bush, Clarence Thomas would not have been sitting on the Supreme Court in 2000 to join four other Republican appointees in handing the presidency to George W. Bush.

We have no idea how a President Al Gore would have turned out, but you can bet there would be no Samuel Alito and John Roberts around to make up a conservative-reactionary bloc of five justices dismantling age old judicial precedents.

Which means there'd be no atrocious 5-4 decisions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, reversing a 60 year-old ban on unlimited corporate and union political expenditures, and (Lilly) Ledbetter v. Goodyear, reversing a lower court and allowing gender pay discrimination.

November brought us a gaggle of reckless right-wing governors and legislators driving radical social agendas under the pretext of deficit reductions.

In Maine, the governor has proposed weakening child labor laws and undermining minimum wage provisions. Throughout the Midwest, Republicans are decimating longstanding labor contracts.

Here at home, a pre-Gov. Rick Scott Florida suddenly looks like a progressive paradise after steep cuts in funds for education, suicide prevention, costal clean-up, the disabled and homeless, rape victims, minority contractors, state pensions and business and developer regulations.

There's plenty of money however in all the states to reduce corporate taxes.

Meanwhile in Washington tea party-addled House members have voted to repeal health reform, to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act and to slash funds for favorite Republican whipping boys, Planned Parenthood, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts and NPR. They also want to revisit the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

And here we thought it was jobs and the economy they were worried about!

True 2010 was a "tide" election with tea party fanaticism and disillusionment with President Barack Obama driving the vote. Still, many of the races could have gone the other way including here in Florida if more Democrats and progressive independents had voted instead of sitting on their hands brooding about Obama's lack of political purity.

In the first column I wrote for The Suncoast News, I berated liberals for turning away from Obama and asked they consider this choice: "A guy in the White House with all the right instincts trying to straddle the chasm between progressive idealism and centrist reality or cons plundering the country's resources, exploiting the powerless, strangling the commons and distorting truth and justice."

This week the president filed papers with the FEC officially kicking-off his 2012 reelection campaign. We'll see if liberals learned anything about elections.