Flying Pink Unicorns

Do we want McCain to win? No.

Someone I know, a swing voter no less, has suggested the following:

One point you may not have considered. For most of the past 40 years, we
have been protected from most presidents' extreme positions by
Congress. Often it has resulted in gridlock, which was preferable to
the President's desires.

It is almost a foregone conclusion the next Congress will be heavily Democratic. The numbers in the Senate are overwhelming. Hilary with this Congress would be
dangerous. Viva McCain!

There is some truth in this, particularly if you think America is basically on the right path and needs only a few tweaks rather than more radical surgery. I believe it needs some radical surgery.

First, I will stipulate that after the 2008 elections the dems will control both houses. They are very likely to keep the House; there have been a bunch of GOP retirements.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/house_republicans_face_late_ex.html

In the Senate, it is almost a sure thing that the Democrats will expand their narrow majority, as the GOP is defending many more seats, due to their success in 2002 (Senate seats are up every 6 years) and the Republicans are defending several tough seats the democrats are favored to win, while the only democratic seat which the GOP has a good chance to win is Mary Landreau's (my guess is she loses).


So given a democratic congress, why do I think the country is so broken as to risk total democratic control under Hillary (or Obama)?

First, by far most important, and last, if necessary, is health care. Many of America's short and long term problems begin and end with health care. America as a nation now spends more than $2 trillion a year, or more than 1/6 of our GDP on health care. And, in my opinion the system is badly badly broken. This is one of those issues where the GOP is out to lunch and the democrats are basically sensible. Even "socialized medicine" (ever hear of Medicare? VA care?) is hugely preferable to the mess we have now. Either of the dems will push hard with a dem congress to begin to begin to fixing it. McCain likely won't. We just have to fix health care!

Second, and almost as important, maybe even more important, is that sad, sick state of the GOP itself. Argue with me if you wish, but the GOP is sick-- this is the party that used to stand for restrained spending and balanced budget for heaven's sake!!! Now its the party where Rudy Giuliani had to pretend to believe on the campaign trail that his income tax cuts in New York caused city revenues to soar (It wasn't the soaring stock market and the booming economy, but CITY TAX CUTS that caused city revenues to soar). This is just idiotic, rather like believing in FLYING PINK UNICORNS. (See my earlier post about stupid things said in a GOP debate). The modern GOP is wedded to pretending to believe in idiotic nonsense like this, and plenty of the masses of GOP-voting dittoheads actually do believe it. Well, people believe in the earth being flat, and that we were not evolved from primates. Some people will believe anything (a dispiriting number of the people who will believe anything in America these days are Republicans).

It is my opinion that a big democratic victory in November, including the Presidency, might well cause the Republicans to actually rethink who they are and what they stand for. This would be a very good thing. America has only one sensible party on policy these days, and that party, the democrats, has flaws all its own, notably backbone. In a 2-party system, it is disastrous to have one of the two parties go off of the deep end believing in flying pink unicorns. And this, along with health care, is why a president McCain could be very bad for America, even if McCain himself wasn't.