November 2010 Catastrophe: All Incumbents Voted Out

Catastrophic November: 

All Incumbents Voted Out

by Green Education Network Chairman and CEO Gregory Hilbert

 

I hope to God I am able to open the eyes of the many good people on Care2 and elsewhere who are calling for a WHOLESALE house-cleaning of Congress in the November 2010 elections, most especially those heaping criticism on Obama. The consequence of such an indiscriminate house-cleaning would almost certainly be catastrophic. It would condemn you and I and our children to a life of deepening servitude to a wealthy elite, and our grandchildren to the inheritance of a planet  in which tens and then hundreds of millions will perish annually before the end of the century, until the global population starves down to a sustainable level. The power of that wealthy and often corporate elite is now poised to achieve our servitude and the ongoing plunder of our planet’s resources with the unwitting help of some of the same people who realize the January decision of the Supreme (sic) Court has unleashed corporate greed to complete its usurpation of government of, by and for the people.

Yes, many of the same good people who are ferocious over the fiat allowing corporate elites to issue  unrestricted payments to the campaigns of conservative candidates those same corporate elites want elected starting this November. This November. 

Into the vacuum of a pervasive sweep-out of incumbents would come a flood of fiscal and social conservatives FAR more sympathetic and beholden to corporate interests than many if not most of the current incumbents. A good number of the newly-elected would ride into office on campaigns financed not by donors cut from the same cloth as the enraged people on Care2 or Green Education Network users like you and I, but by corporate executives and industry associations free to spend all they want, in the open or through PACS with names like “Committee to Clean House” and “Government For The People” and “Down With Big Government” and “March On Washington With Your Vote” and “Committee to Elect Non-Incumbents”.

THE SENATE: The current make-up of the U.S. Senate is 57 Democrats, 41 Republicans, and two Independents. 36 of the 100 U.S. Senate seats are up for election on November 2, 2010. Of those, 19 are held by Democrats, and 17 by Republicans. THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: All  435 House seats are up for election. Of those, 256 are held by Democrats, 178 by Republicans, and 1 is vacant.

History shows that Democrats will lose seats in Congress because the current President is a Democrat. Further, the majority party always loses seats during a poor economy no matter who or what party or factors are to blame. Add to this a general “vote all incumbents out” by frustrated independents and more Democrats than Republicans, in the context of an economy that is far worse than “poor”.

For the sake of keeping the math simple, assume 75% of incumbent Democrats are voted out of Congress in November, and 50% of incumbent Republicans. Further assume that every voted-out incumbent is replaced by a true Independent, or an independent maverick of either party, or a third-party write-in. For the sake of simplicity call them all “Independents”. Here’s the “swept-clean” Congress on November 3, 2010:

SENATE                                        

Democrats  43   Republicans  32      “Independents”  25   

HOUSE of REPRESENTATIVES                     

Democrats 64    Republicans  89    “Independents”  282                    

The above might not look so bad to you until you consider who all those newly-elected “Independents” would be. Most would not be the kind of candidate my kind of Care2 or Green Education Network user would vote for, because most of the non-incumbents they would want to choose from would not be candidates! Republican and greatly frustrated independent and conservative-Democrat voters will yield a choice to vote for an Incumbent or a candidate who will most often speak the rhetoric of “cleaning house on Washington, reigning in big government run amok, getting America working again and prosperous like it used to be, cutting the crushing deficit that incumbents bull-dozed onto our backs, reducing taxes and helping American businesses and industries compete in the global economy so they can hire more good Americans and give them health insurance and a way to support their suffering families and again pursue the American dream”.

Taken as a whole and setting aside exceptions, those newly-elected Senators and Representatives will be YOUR enemies arriving inside the last fort you would defend, pouring out of a TROJAN HORSE made to order by wealthy corporate elites whose names are known to lobbyists, to Chamber of Commerce and industry association officials, and to political campaign treasurers, but not to you.   

I am not here to champion Obama or Democrats per se. I am as greatly troubled by mounting anecdotal evidence of scattered duplicity and acquiescence to corporate special interests among a number of Democratic congressman as the next. But for God’s sake, people, the bulk of the nightmare we now live is a consequence of the Bush years and it was wrought by the close alliance of corporate greed with the Republican party and a Republican administration. And yes the snake of corporate greed is now coiled around most of Congress and a phalanx of political appointees. But think a moment. Who appointed the Supreme Court justices who set the snake loose on us just in time to destroy any chance to salvage government of, by and for the people? Republican Presidents, including the Bush oilmen. And as I recall, the VP of the last Bush was a Halliburton corporate elite who bragged “You can’t touch me”.

What I am urging is more discriminating thought and rhetoric (I should talk, I know) as we approach the November elections. Expose corporate infiltration, denounce those who have sold us out, demand the rest act courageously and decisively, and make it plain you’ll vote them out IN November if they’ve failed to act unequivocally LONG BEFORE November. 

Just don’t play into the hands of those who would love nothing better than to see an indiscriminate tide throwing all incumbents out. There are babies in the bath water. And the collective greed of the corporate elites and selfish “haves” won’t much care if the tide of the new bathwater soon runs red with your children’s blood.  As for example in a holocaust of war over access to oil. You didn’t think those hundreds of billions and thousands of lives we’ve spent so far in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan were just to hang a tyrant and shoot a few  terrorists did you? Might insuring access to oil have something to do with it?

So let’s not be surprised that a majority of Americans are easily manipulated by experts at manipulation. Here’s a parting thought to underscore my point.

 Citizens United is the group that won the Supreme Court decision unleashing corporations to spend at will to win elections.  Citizens United is a group of lobby-savvy attorneys who cater to conservative clients. Want to know what they are saying in their gleeful emails these days? They are talking up their REDUCE WASHINGTON campaign. They want to throw every last one of those big-spending Incumbent Democrats out of Washington. They want corporations relieved of their tax burden. They are shrewd people. They know most of us are disgusted with TV media. So they plan to make life difficult for big corporate media who do not help them enlighten you how good life will be now that corporations are free to fund election campaigns. They like to point out that labor unions are freed up to compete too, and we all know how wealthy and powerful they’ve become. And they like to point out that citizens just like you and me can form corporations to compete to raise money and spend it to elect our own candidates. Yes, we who have the resources of our depleted life savings and a few hours of evening and weekend time are free to compete fair and square with $10 Billion dollar corporations acting in concert with one another on company time. But just so you understand about the media Citizens United types are talking about in private. Not Fox News or the Reilly Factor. No, most Citizens United and Reduce Washington and (Republican) Tea Party types don’t have a problem with them. But organizations like PBS or MSNBC, well, that’s another matter isn’t it?

Oh, I forgot to mention, 36 of 50 governorships are up for grabs in November too.  Even corporations not so big as Exxon or AIG can easily fund the election of Sara Palin-types in states where their interests are concentrated.  And I’ll bet the CEO of Goldman Sachs wouldn’t be averse to slapping down a few tens of millions to make Donald Trump Governor of New York, at least until there’s a President who’ll welcome him often at the White House. And heck, Donald could start grooming Miss America for a run at the next Republican VP nomination. Wouldn’t that make for some great golf weekends!

–Gregory Hilbert Feb 3, 2010

COMING SOON: Catastrophic November: All Incumbents Voted Out. What it means for Sustainability, the Environment, Global Warming