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At times it feels to rank-and-file teachers like the wealth and power of the entire nation is aligned against them. For me personally, May 7, 2012 was one of those times.
In a few weeks, California will hold its primary election. Not much news will be made, since the two major parties' presidential candidates are already known. But this election will be different for Californians in a major way. Because when the general election rolls around in November, there will likely be no third parties on the ballot for voters to choose from. Furthermore, in some races, there may be only one party represented on the general election ballot.
Music history aside, it was a somewhat eclectic week in politics. The House -- in one of their rare moments when they actually meet and attempt to get something done -- passed a bunch of bills which have exactly zero chance of becoming law. Well, at least they had fun, right? Republicans were doing their usual clown routine out on the campaign trail, including questioning Obama's commitment to America and (once again) his birth certificate.
The thought which keeps flitting through my mind is whether the Republicans are going to face their own "PUMA" problem this fall. For those who don't remember the term from 2008, PUMA stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" and was the rallying cry of the non-existent hordes of pro-Hillary Democrats who were reportedly going to cause major disruption at the Democratic National Convention, and then throw the election to John McCain in the fall.
Is the Republican Party going to have a PUMA problem on their hands during their national nominating convention? I'm not, of course, referring to the possibility that mountain lions will be stalking folks inside the convention center, but rather that a group of folks under the "Party Unity, My Ass!" banner will disrupt what is supposed to be a well-scripted and well-choreographed coronation.
The filibuster is in the news these days, it seems. Harry Reid recently admitted on the Senate floor that he had been wrong not to follow the push by progressives in his own party to revamp the filibuster rules when he had the chance. Now, it seems, there's a lawsuit which will attempt to convince the Supreme Court to overturn the filibuster as being unconstitutional.
For now, I'm just going to go with my gut. Paying little or no attention to actual polling (where it even exists -- it's still mighty early), instead I lay out today the states I'll be watching closely, and how I think the chips will fall in November based only on my gut feelings. If this sort of thing doesn't interest you, well, there's plenty of other stuff on the internet to look at, right?
We're throwing our usual format away today, because this was a momentous and historic week in American politics, and we thought it needed the entire column to address. Call it an extended rant, rather than talking points. There are two parts to this rant. The first is positive. The second is negative. Then, I (hopefully) change it all back to positive at the end.
Senator Richard Lugar's loss in his Republican primary in Indiana this week continues a trend which has been evident for at least the past two decades in American politics -- the matchup of our political divide with our ideological divide. What this means for the future is really anyone's guess, other than that "R" or "D" after a politician's name is a lot easier to "read" these days.
The media -- pretty much all of them -- just got "played," by the Obama campaign. And they don't even realize it yet. What we just witnessed, for roughly the past four days, was not a "breaking story" or even an "evolution" of any sort. What we just witnessed, capped this morning by President Barack Obama's statement of support for gay marriage, was nothing more than the introduction of a new (political) product. It was a "new and improved" product rollout -- nothing more, nothing less.