Zombie Politics

Joe Costello predicts that Republicans will gain traction if Democrats don’t wake up.

Left for dead after November 2008, the Republicans look pretty good for a bunch of zombies. The neo-cons plan to destabilize the Middle East and southwest Asia seems fully entrenched. In fact since the Democrats’ triumph last November, we can’t talk about simply occupying and destabilizing Afghanistan, we need in the same breath add Pakistan into the mix too, and the destabilizing of Pakistan seems to be going along swimmingly. At the same time, despite its two year and counting implosion, the Reagan Revolution seems fully in control of the economic debate in DC.

What’s been laid bare in the past ten months is the simple fact that the Democrats regained control of DC on the cheap. Before regaining power, there was no great revaluation of principles brought about by the decline of the New Deal coalition, nor was there a massive movement from the bottom like the conservatives in the 70s and 80s that brought the Republicans back to power. The Democrats gained power with the American people’s exhaustion of a corrupt, bankrupt, and decadent Republican elite. And in a two party system, you only have one other choice, begging the question — what happens come next November if Americans aren’t charmed by Democratic rule? It will be an election of the living dead between zombie Democrats and zombie Republicans — advantage zombie Republicans.

If you believe this implausible, I highly recommend a piece by Eliot Spitzer (ND 2.0). There’s maybe a half dozen people in this country who both understand the financial industry and can talk intelligently about electoral politics, that is, to the extent anyone can talk intelligently about electoral politics. Spitzer warns Democrats that Wall Street is an issue, which, if used smartly, can indeed raise the political dead. One thing, I’ll say about the zombie Republicans, outside of their lemming march off the cliff with W in 2006, they’ve proved a little more politically pliable than our zombie Democrats.

Lesson for Democrats: shrinking Wall Street will lose campaign dollars, but every dollar lost will equate to a hundred votes at the ballot box — count on it! Unfortunately, as we all know, zombies just aren’t that smart.

Joe Costello was communications director for Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign and was a senior adviser for Howard Dean’s effort in 2004.