11
The winners in the election of 2008, the most fractured election to the House of Representatives by far at that point, were few and far in between. There were a few more obvious ones. The Prohibition Party, having bided their time for the previous fifteen years, exploded to the national scene with a bang, or rather, taking an advantage of a disillusioned public and gathering the votes of those who wanted to see a new face, of which there were many. Today, they were led by the wife of the party’s original founder, Hillary Clinton, whose zeal in getting the teetotaler moralistic message of the party across could not be underestimated. Newt Gingrich was another potential victor - the professor and prolific author who spent most of his career stamping propaganda posters and history textbooks during the Communist era now found himself the leader of the largest Democratic-Republican breakaway, even larger than the “continuationist” DRUSA. I suppose you could say the Labor Party and the former Sovereign Liberals were “winners” in a sense as well, in that they did not collapse after having lost their populist momentum since four years ago. In her opening statement after reelection to the House of Representatives, Sarah Palin made sure to note that rising dangerous forces such as the Prohibition Party, or the “ultra-leftists” in Tom Perez’s New DSA who had the *audacity* to speak in favor of things such as LGBT rights and drug legalization, need to be stopped. Congratulations, the biggest threats to America’s political establishment four years ago, you are now a part of America’s political establishment.
But the biggest winner of all was President Nancy Pelosi, who may have made sure to mention that she hopes for political unity even in the most fractured Congress she received, but was reacting to the results with glee in private. A divided, and thus weaker Congress meant that more powers would have to return to her. It was a process which started before her time - Michael Ignatieff had to resort to executive orders more often than not in order to keep the nation running when Congress became too divided to operate - but it was a process which ultimately ended up associated with her name. After over a month of negotiations, deliberation, and several potential candidates suddenly getting their name dragged through the mud as allegations of corruption and electoral law violations, the House of Representatives ultimately decided on Steny Hoyer, a former member of the Democratic Republicans recommended by President Pelosi, as a candidate whom a large enough majority of Representatives did not hate. Forming a stable majority was… ahaha… not going to happen without divine intervention, but Congress did see the formation of several cliques which generally voted in the same way and thus began to cooperate. An alliance between Prohibition and the NAACP, two of the most socially conservative major parties, only made sense, but it turned far more awkward when it was joined by Palin’s Swift Change Alliance and Gingrich’s Liberal-Socialists. And, of course, the party which *called* itself Conservatives, that being the National Union bloc led by Johnny Edwards, refused to entertain the idea of aligning with the conservatives and instead chose to cooperate with the liberal socialist New DSA instead. The two of them shared a common pro-Eastern bent, but it made Eastern political pundits feel rather awkward about their initial predictions of a “plural right” grand coalition. The happy marriage between Labor and the Democratic-Republicans turned rather uncomfortable, or, to be more accurate, abusive, as the power balance in Congress shifted severely in Buffett’s favor. It was either surrendering to their splinter parties or serving a billionaire oligarch, however, and like any proud socialist, the DRUSA chose the latter.
Though the parliamentary elections were dramatic and yielded fractured results, the Presidental election did not see anywhere near as much opposition. After the debacle of the election of 2005, which even saw a few US citizens take the country to court for such a misrepresentation of the popular will, new ambitious candidates who could burn out when placed on the national stage had yet to grow up. And Pelosi held a few advantages which her predecessor did not have in 2001, when he narrowly won his second term. For one, she was far, far more popular. Ignatieff’s first term did not really end on a high note, it was only when he got reelected that the situation began to stabilize and the tide started to turn in his favor. Pelosi, on the other hand, presided over four years of relatively high economic growth and growing optimism towards the future, and having been managed by a totalitarian dictatorship for half a century not too long ago, the average American was quick to connect this prosperity to the woman in charge. This, combined with her hostile rhetoric towards what she declared to be the partisan establishment, crafted the perception that she really was accomplishing things up there, even if it generally just stayed as rhetoric. Of course mommy Pelosi is making things better, look, she ripped up that politician’s speech transcript in front of the camera and declared that all of Congress has been performing subpar in her State of the Union speech! Ignatieff did not have this sort of heavy handed act, he appeared rather frail and bookish during most of his two terms - he tried to make himself appear an erudite, but that hardly resonated with the average steelworker in Pennsylvania or oil rig worker in the Mexican Gulf. Cheney before them both was certainly bullish, but also very clearly partisan, too, which gave any appeal he held a ceiling. Pelosi suffered from neither of those issues and thus won American hearts by the millions.
In a party system as divided as America had at that point, holding the Presidency would have been an incomprehensibly valuable boon for any one of the main parties. Not even a party member, just a sympathizer would be enough, who would be able to, if necessary, pass through your desired policy via executive orders or simply pressure the rest of Congress to follow your lead. And yet, none of the parties, not even the strongest ones such as Labor, Prohibition or the National Union, held any illusion that they could defeat Pelosi. Not when she constantly polled at near fifty percent of the vote, not when one of the things she was *actually* competent at was getting the law enforcement on her side and thus making sure that no scandal could possibly take her down. So, instead of engaging in a Quixotic struggle against a fully operational Pelosi political machine, the American political establishment instead chose to extend an olive branch. The first party to reach out to the President and begin negotiations was the National Union, who had been sympathetic towards her for the past four years already. After some issues were ironed out and the party’s requests accepted, the Union placed her full weight behind Pelosi’s reelection campaign and dipped any of their own exploratory committees in the mud. They were followed by the Democratic-Republicans, then by the NAACP, then by Labor and the Swift Change Alliance… Even Prohibition, whose bread and butter was quixotic campaigns with no chance of victory, ended up acceding to this showcase of national unity (or at least partisan unity). Now that they have tasted actual power and the taste brought addiction, the Clintons could find a lot of common ground with Pelosi than, say, a year before, when they actually spoke rather harshly of her. One after the other, competition challenging Pelosi began to dissipate and dissolve. Some chose to simply withdraw their campaigns and never speak of them again, others threw their full weight behind the President for increasingly convoluted reasons. Of couse, the average person was catching on, and so, after a certain point, Pelosi’s ratings stopped to grow and the anti-establishment crowd started eyeing the potential opposition. At this point, however, it was far too late. When the entirety of the political establishment, the cliques of oligarchs and all the news outlets they controlled, all stand behind a single candidate, what could be done to oppose her?
In theory, there were seventeen candidates in the election of 2009. In practice, however, there was one candidate and sixteen stragglers who didn’t notice, or refused to notice, that things have changed.
But the biggest winner of all was President Nancy Pelosi, who may have made sure to mention that she hopes for political unity even in the most fractured Congress she received, but was reacting to the results with glee in private. A divided, and thus weaker Congress meant that more powers would have to return to her. It was a process which started before her time - Michael Ignatieff had to resort to executive orders more often than not in order to keep the nation running when Congress became too divided to operate - but it was a process which ultimately ended up associated with her name. After over a month of negotiations, deliberation, and several potential candidates suddenly getting their name dragged through the mud as allegations of corruption and electoral law violations, the House of Representatives ultimately decided on Steny Hoyer, a former member of the Democratic Republicans recommended by President Pelosi, as a candidate whom a large enough majority of Representatives did not hate. Forming a stable majority was… ahaha… not going to happen without divine intervention, but Congress did see the formation of several cliques which generally voted in the same way and thus began to cooperate. An alliance between Prohibition and the NAACP, two of the most socially conservative major parties, only made sense, but it turned far more awkward when it was joined by Palin’s Swift Change Alliance and Gingrich’s Liberal-Socialists. And, of course, the party which *called* itself Conservatives, that being the National Union bloc led by Johnny Edwards, refused to entertain the idea of aligning with the conservatives and instead chose to cooperate with the liberal socialist New DSA instead. The two of them shared a common pro-Eastern bent, but it made Eastern political pundits feel rather awkward about their initial predictions of a “plural right” grand coalition. The happy marriage between Labor and the Democratic-Republicans turned rather uncomfortable, or, to be more accurate, abusive, as the power balance in Congress shifted severely in Buffett’s favor. It was either surrendering to their splinter parties or serving a billionaire oligarch, however, and like any proud socialist, the DRUSA chose the latter.
Though the parliamentary elections were dramatic and yielded fractured results, the Presidental election did not see anywhere near as much opposition. After the debacle of the election of 2005, which even saw a few US citizens take the country to court for such a misrepresentation of the popular will, new ambitious candidates who could burn out when placed on the national stage had yet to grow up. And Pelosi held a few advantages which her predecessor did not have in 2001, when he narrowly won his second term. For one, she was far, far more popular. Ignatieff’s first term did not really end on a high note, it was only when he got reelected that the situation began to stabilize and the tide started to turn in his favor. Pelosi, on the other hand, presided over four years of relatively high economic growth and growing optimism towards the future, and having been managed by a totalitarian dictatorship for half a century not too long ago, the average American was quick to connect this prosperity to the woman in charge. This, combined with her hostile rhetoric towards what she declared to be the partisan establishment, crafted the perception that she really was accomplishing things up there, even if it generally just stayed as rhetoric. Of course mommy Pelosi is making things better, look, she ripped up that politician’s speech transcript in front of the camera and declared that all of Congress has been performing subpar in her State of the Union speech! Ignatieff did not have this sort of heavy handed act, he appeared rather frail and bookish during most of his two terms - he tried to make himself appear an erudite, but that hardly resonated with the average steelworker in Pennsylvania or oil rig worker in the Mexican Gulf. Cheney before them both was certainly bullish, but also very clearly partisan, too, which gave any appeal he held a ceiling. Pelosi suffered from neither of those issues and thus won American hearts by the millions.
In a party system as divided as America had at that point, holding the Presidency would have been an incomprehensibly valuable boon for any one of the main parties. Not even a party member, just a sympathizer would be enough, who would be able to, if necessary, pass through your desired policy via executive orders or simply pressure the rest of Congress to follow your lead. And yet, none of the parties, not even the strongest ones such as Labor, Prohibition or the National Union, held any illusion that they could defeat Pelosi. Not when she constantly polled at near fifty percent of the vote, not when one of the things she was *actually* competent at was getting the law enforcement on her side and thus making sure that no scandal could possibly take her down. So, instead of engaging in a Quixotic struggle against a fully operational Pelosi political machine, the American political establishment instead chose to extend an olive branch. The first party to reach out to the President and begin negotiations was the National Union, who had been sympathetic towards her for the past four years already. After some issues were ironed out and the party’s requests accepted, the Union placed her full weight behind Pelosi’s reelection campaign and dipped any of their own exploratory committees in the mud. They were followed by the Democratic-Republicans, then by the NAACP, then by Labor and the Swift Change Alliance… Even Prohibition, whose bread and butter was quixotic campaigns with no chance of victory, ended up acceding to this showcase of national unity (or at least partisan unity). Now that they have tasted actual power and the taste brought addiction, the Clintons could find a lot of common ground with Pelosi than, say, a year before, when they actually spoke rather harshly of her. One after the other, competition challenging Pelosi began to dissipate and dissolve. Some chose to simply withdraw their campaigns and never speak of them again, others threw their full weight behind the President for increasingly convoluted reasons. Of couse, the average person was catching on, and so, after a certain point, Pelosi’s ratings stopped to grow and the anti-establishment crowd started eyeing the potential opposition. At this point, however, it was far too late. When the entirety of the political establishment, the cliques of oligarchs and all the news outlets they controlled, all stand behind a single candidate, what could be done to oppose her?
In theory, there were seventeen candidates in the election of 2009. In practice, however, there was one candidate and sixteen stragglers who didn’t notice, or refused to notice, that things have changed.
