Put on your raincoats heavy weather on the way

A coming blitzkrieg of ugliness, a veritable shit storm of hyperbola, is bearing down upon us. Relentless political propaganda with unlimited corporate funding (thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision) will spew forth like diarrhea from our big HDTVs. It has already started in the so called 'battleground States.' How it plays out and which side prevails is of major importance. Carefully crafted bullshit will determine our future. Will the ongoing middle class-killing wealth extraction from the producing class to the ownership class continues unabated? Will the present US recession/depression or whatever it is be exacerbated and feed into a global economic meltdown by a tragically premature implementation of budgetary austerity? Barack Obama, who despite a disappointing first term, still represents the least dangerous approach to the crisis. But although he has lost much of his luster, he still retains his gift for oratory and some lingering measure of charisma. His opponent Mitt Romney, decidedly uncharismatic and only a second choice for most of the Repub base, is an empty vessel waiting to be filled with whatever will get him into the White House. With a very polarized electorate, and many States, indeed whole regions, locked into ideological rigidity, the election will turn on which candidate and party can carry a majority of the 12 or so fickle 'swing States.'

This Presidential election is deadly important. Some may argue that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are two sides of the same coin, and in some ways they are right. But while Romney is a moderate Repub pretending to be an extremist, if he prevails a new viral version of Republican ideology will overwhelm his centrist inclinations. In short the whack job extremists will take over. What limited cushion a center-right Democrat like Obama provides will go out the window. The crazies in the new hard right that presently controls the House of Representatives will be in the drivers seat. And heaven help us! Also a whole pack of baying hounds could well come in on Romney's coat tails - and the Senate could easily tip. We think things are bad now – imagine a monolithic control of all three branches of government by a raving mob of Paul Ryan acolytes and social reactionaries. Even Barry Goldwater would be scared shitless. At least Goldwater had some integrity. This crew thrives on, as did the Bush II Administration before them, wholesale prevarication and boldly false realities.

Hanging over this whole election year like some evil specter of doom is a draconian federal spending reduction law poised to go off automatically if no budget agreement is reached. It is weird pseudo-agreement formulated as a gun-to-the-head threat to force comprise (but so far failing to so.) Obama's offers at compromises were humiliating capitulations. But as bad as the they were, they were not a sufficient enough servile surrender to satisfy the rabid pack of pitchforkers in the House GOP.

It all boils down to which side can effectively convince the so-called undecided voters in a few critical 'battleground States' that the other party's candidate is evil incarnate. Ironically two major coastal population centers are off the table – New York and California. All speeches, photo ops, interviews, debates and most importantly political advertising will need to be directed at this small by critical population of voters, many who are only marginally informed. This is indeed a sad state of affairs. It leads to a dumbing down of complex issues, much abject pandering, bucket loads of schmaltz - and that's just on the Demos side. From the Repubs there will be their standard anti-tax demagoguery, repackaged supply side economics, dog whistle racism and lots and lots of liberal baiting. Both sides will engage in much old fashioned flag waving jingoism (“American Exceptionalism” as it is now called by the Repubs.) But the biggie will be white-knuckled concern for the new boogieman looking in the window – The Deficit with much overwrought talk of Zimbabwe-level hyperinflation on the horizon.

While the swing voters in the 'purple' States are the primary target, there are at least four other distinctive voting blocks at play and whose votes are not necessarily a foregone conclusion:

• The mainstream GOP which has transformed itself itself into something new under the sun – an institutionalized American far-right party. Ronald Reagan succeeded where Barry Goldwater failed. Goodbye Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and even Richard Nixon. Many old line golf playing country club type Republicans must be a bit embarrassed by what their Grand Old Party has mutated into.

• The Frankenstein monster of the GOP base, opportunistically cobbled together over the years by party operatives, it has now become an almost uncontrollable mob. It is comprised of an hodgepodge of inveterate liberal haters: anti Federal Reserve and tax phobic Tea Partiers, bible thumping evolution denying Christian fundamentalists, “Birthers” stubbornly clinging to a lie, Second Amendment gun nuts wallowing in paranoia, 'free market' Ayn Randian-ophiles, plus assorted racists, gay haters and red neckian anti-immigrant 'nativists". And they all have one thing in common - they all positively loath Barack Hussein Obama.

• The loyalists of the Demo Party. These are the spokespeople and pundits one mostly sees on MSNBC and PBS supporting Obama on various fronts and gratuitously denigrating Repubs while only gently chiding their man, Obama, even as he stoops to conquer. For practical reasons they are reluctant to break with the Administration, tacitly accepting its position on most issues. But they are, too, dismayed by the Democratic Party's and Obama Administration’s reluctance to wage a robust counter attack on the new dangerous surging right.

• The Occupy movement is now the wild card. People even who don't agree with them  respect their principled audaciousness and their role in identifying the real powers that be, the .01% behind the curtain and the banker elite. Their rabble-like style, resolute resistance to authority and sometimes even anarchist tendencies get mixed reviews from the 99% they claim to represent. Yet it is a welcome if yet indeterminate factor. Will their stance well left of Obama and outside the established political framework help or hinder his reelection? Will they grudging vote for the lesser evil in their mind, Obama, or not even participate? Obama has a poor record in supporting his Demo base especially the economic left (Glass Steagall anyone?), minorities, labor or the greens.

• Then of course we have the disaffected 'swing voters.' How will they respond to the propaganda blitz headed their way and designed to turn their pretty little heads? Many are in bad shape financially and/or emotionally – unemployed or underemployed, or their mortgage foreclosed on or underwater, or they have a new but shittier job, or there are just plain fed up with a dysfunctional system. They are perched in front row seats as they sadly witness a once proud nation slide inexorably into decline. Will they be stupid enough to take the time honored approach of disaffected voters and throw the toggle switch 'tossing the bums out' and vote the erstwhile bums back in? The Repubs are counting on it. The Repubs count on short attention spans, poor memories and the fine American traditional of hating taxes. And now that the Federal and State revenues have been decimated by decades of tax cut pandering, the Dreaded Deficit (that the tax cutters conveniently ignored as they actively participated in its run up) can be disingenuously blamed on the hapless fall guys - the Other party, the feckless Democrats.

The mainstream media will continue to do its part in keeping us bewildered yet titillated and provoked but no closer to understanding much of anything. Stay tuned!