Times They’re A Changin’

First, check out this week’s AmStreet entry, “Never the Crime, Always the Cover-Up” in which I give a hearty welcome to the Street’s newest co-blogger (and TTD’s newest commenter!), BossKitty.
The point there is that, as with the case of Abu Ghraib, and even Plamegate, it’s not the people actually responsible (i.e., Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, et al.) who pay the price for official misdeeds, but people down the line… usually way down the line. It is my hypothesis that the American people at least as expressed by their 1/100 scale model in Iowa, are sick and tired of it. Hence, they rejected the spouse of Bill “all my friends are celebrities, millionaires or both” Clinton on the Democratic side in favor of the Black Constitutional law professor. Hence, even the Republicans rejected Hedge Fund Mitt (whose sons are “helping America” by not volunteering to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, but by aiding his candidacy), and Hollywood Fred Thompson, and Deal-with-the-Devil John McCain, and Rudy “Influence Peddler to the Stars” Giuliani and the other “above-the-law” Republicans, in favor of the sincere socially conservative but economically liberal Mike Huckabee.
Huh? You got it: the Black man Obama, and the not-all-that-affluent White man Huckabee, are gentlemen who have at least thus far had to live in the same world as the rest of us, rather than in the rarefied world of privilege that has one set of laws for themselves (i.e. none) and another for the rest of us. (Sorry Hillary, but Hyde Park is closer to the world the rest of us live in than Chappaqua and Georgetown are.) Hence, the corporatist super-elite can merrily favor candidates who will criminalize abortion, knowing that their own family members will always be able to obtain grey-market or even overseas abortion should it become necessary. Or espouse the view that sacrifice in a time of supposed national emergency shall be borne solely by military members and their families, while America’s most affluent will not only not send their own children to fight, but won’t even pay more in taxes!
And here we are. While I have little doubt that the super-smart and super-charismatic Barack would ultimately prevail in a general against the insular Arkansas governor, it is conceivable that if these two gentlemen emerge as their party’s candidates we might have a genuine campaign based on actual visions for the future of this country based on the lives of, oh, over 99% of the people living in it, rather than of those of the super-elite (who have been more than well-served in the era of Bush-Clinton-Bush).
A dog can dream. This has been… Times They’re A Changin’.