the citizen-viewer

I’m calling “last throes” on the McCain/Palin insurgency.

Now what? First, a much very sweet, very delicious week after the election. Hell, even the weeks coming with Republican hand-wringing, trusted heroes falling by the electoral wayside, and finger pointing.

But eventually, the Democrats have to govern. I’m bracing myself for disappointment. Not since 1992 will they have held all three branches, and now they can rely even less on the remnants of the Dixiecrat southern conservatives than they did 16 years ago.

Why won’t Obama be the liberal messiah? Because he never was. And because the party’s swing vote base, that which cannot be pissed off, is in suburbia. The suburbs don’t want anything that will change the basic way things are. A couple of stats:

1) This year as in recent elections over half of all votes cast will be from suburban voters. That corresponds to over half of America living in suburbs.

2) Since Reagan, at least, the presidential winner has won the suburbs (Gore won them in 2000, but then again he won the popular vote).

And a question: What do suburbanites care most about?

There’s a lot to be said but I’ll throw out two priorities:
- property (home) values.
- being able to consume at a suitable level, let’s call it the “American standard of living.”

Mess with single family home values and consumption and you’re finished. This actually explains some of the Bush/McCain collapse. They have no answer for either the housing crisis or the pocketbook crisis caused by high gas and inflation, and they look like out-of-touch country clubbers.

Today’s revelations about Palin getting more than double the median family income in free high-end fashion is the nail on top of the nail that was driven into the last nail in the GOP coffin.

Houses and shopping are the gods of the majority party, no matter its name. It will be a better political world under the Dems, but it will still be a suburban one.