The coming Democratic electoral disaster in November has captured everyone's attention. Analysts tell us that Democrats will be losing big if the economy doesn't improve quickly in ways that will touch the lives of ordinary people. People captivated by fright tend toward the irrational. The idea that Republicans will do all they can to break government apart, then campaign on a platform of repair loses its irony as people face a personal economic abyss. Political analyst Charlie Cook says we should look to employment to forecast the election. "The market could go up substantially and I don't think it's likely to change the outcome." He predicts voters "are really only aware of unemployment." He's right.

Democrats will lose in a major way this year, but liberals have much to cheer about. The longer term is reflected in a Florida poll that foretells the future of the Republican Party. Conservative Charlie Crist, current popular Governor is about to lose to a more extreme conservative, Marco Rubio. "Lose" is too mild a word. In the Republican primary, increasingly right wing members of the party will be throwing rocks at him. He will lose in a tsunami. He started as the overwhelming favorite, and is now 32 points behind.

Rubio is likely to win the general election, once again depending on the economy. But the nomination of candidates who are ever more extreme does not bode well for the GOP. The economy will not be glued to the bottom of the ocean forever. And the pressure on candidates to race off the rightward edge of the charts has been accelerating for decades. Rubio is part of a national trend. Conservative ascendancy in the Republican party has resulted in a sort of cannibalism. Conservatives once gunned for moderates. Now, as membership in the GOP shrinks, conservatives are under fire as not conservative enough. It's the French Revolution applied to politics.

Unemployment is like a slasher movie. Nobody is safe. In the general terror, one statistic stands out. Current polls actually show voters preferring Democrats, although by a narrow margin. Republicans stand to win, not because they are more popular, but because their supporters are more enthusiastic. Those who prefer Democrats are dispirited, likely to stay home. It is an off-year election. It is an off year economy.

A thinly veiled racist presentation by a Republican staffer, showing operatives how to raise funds is creating headaches for the party. President Obama is shown in white face, ostensibly as the Joker of Batman fame. As significant is the unfortunate image Republicans have of contributors. Frighten the little ones enough, and they will hand over their cash, says the presentation. Big donors have matching egos. Flatter them, and they will support the party. All like Pavlov's dogs, salivating at the bell. There is insult there for everyone.

Certainly it is offensive. Absolutely, it is a GOP headache. But the offense will fade. The headache is temporary. More serious is that it illustrates the rightward, cynical direction of a party in a resurgence that is destined to be short term. Serious Republicans who look to the future will see a blank.

Harry Reid is definitely running for re-election. It's official, he wants to remain a United States Senator. Polls show him behind pretty much everybody's crazy aunt. Pundits speculate that his chances increase dramatically if a Teabag type independent joins the race. The theory is that extreme conservatives will divide the vote between said conservative and some traditional Republican, and Senator Reid will slip in. Polls show him getting a not quite plurality when the vote is split. Maybe he could win.

That won't happen. The far right are extremists. They back goofy policies more from anger
than from reason. The sort of government most seem to want is less traditional conservatism than the image of the old confederacy. Their slogans are often self-parodies. Keep government out of Medicare? The policies they crave are idiotic, So it is quite natural to assume they are idiots. That sort of assumption is how elections are lost.

Electoral history teaches us that voters know how to game elections. We can look to famous three way elections of the past. Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948. He got some votes. But his votes came from states where votes would not be divided. The electoral college makes Presidential elections into more than 50 separate elections, one for each state plus territories. Voters in each state will cast their votes in a way that get them the candidate that will be closest to their ideal, among those with a reasonable chance of election. Thurmond won with two sorts of voters: those who thought he had a chance of winning in their state, and those who genuinely did not care who won, if it was not the racist they wanted. Twenty years later, George Wallace got the same results.

In 1980, John Anderson was the choice of many Democrats who still voted for Jimmy Carter. The logic my father found compelling was my suggestion that, although Carter was incompetent, Reagan was possessed by demons. My dad could live with incompetence. A minion of Satan was out of the question. In 1992, voters for Ross Perot genuinely came to hate President George H. W. Bush. They didn't mind either major candidate winning, since the other would lose. So wasting their vote became an option.

Teabaggers will benefit Democrats in the long term, because they remain part of the shrinking Republican base, driving candidates to the absurd right. In the near term, this effect may be overwhelmed by the economy. In Harry Reid's case, a third party candidate will help him only if one of two things occurs. If a substantial number of far right voters genuinely don't care whether Reid or a conservative Republican wins, they will vote for the extremist. Or, if extreme voters come to believe their guy has a reasonable chance of winning, votes could be divided.

Either way, Harry Reid would have to thread a very tiny needle while riding a very large camel. He is more likely to win by persuading voters that he is the best candidate. If the economy improves in time, he may have a chance. If not, he's back to manipulating threads.

We believe that our government under both Democrat and Republican control has led to massive national debt, crushing deficits, increased taxes; while establishing a large and powerful federal government in a direct refutation of the founding ideals of America.

 - - Tea Party of Nevada, in its Constitution, January 27, 2010

A little over two years ago, Mike Rogers, blogger, fundraiser, pro-gay activist, attended a conservative prayer vigil on the steps of the nation's capitol. He handed out leaflets, McCarthy style, naming 27 “known homosexuals in the Bush administration and Republican party.” The organizer of the political prayer event, Patrick J. Mahoney, ordered him to stop, then directed his flock not to accept the leaflets. They contradicted conservative election prayer.

The ethics of outing gay public personalities is clear. Don't do it. While the Supreme Court says that public personalities have little legal right to privacy, it seems clear that a moral right exists. But Rogers makes a fine distinction. He insists he is not outing gays. He is reporting hypocrisy.

Certainly hypocrisy is there, at least in some cases. When Mark Foley solicited "inappropriate" emails from teenage House pages, his example was not the first. Foley's targeted pages were later attacked by conservative bloggers, who published their names and addresses, Michelle Malkin style. It seems the youngsters were guilty of tattling on Mr. Foley. I suppose a point of clarity is in order. Malkin did not participate in attacking the interns. She only published name, address, and driving directions to the homes of small children whose parents had allowed their photos to be used in a public health reform effort. Nothing gay about it. Strictly business.

Larry Craig's wide stance was destined not to be the last instance of hypocrisy. Both Craig and Foley were self-contradictions, leading secret lives while attacking gays. Reverend Ted Haggard resigned as President of the National Association of Evangelicals after a male companion outed his secret life. Haggard had also been actively anti-gay. Most recently, Roy Ashton, an anti-gay Republican State Senator in California, was arrested on a drunk driving charge after leaving a gay bar with a male companion.

It is not difficult for most to gloat. A person I admire greatly points out a very simple moral equation. These people are all, everyone of them, garden utensils, political hoes. Considerable surface evidence supports this observation. They advanced their careers substantially by attacking gays.

I see a story more complex and considerably sadder. Each had a world view shared by many of us raised in an earlier age. It was a simple world way back then. There were no gays with a different sexual orientation. There were only perverts, deserving of our contempt. A lifetime struggle against themselves had to produce at least some who were viciously anti-gay.

It is hard to imagine lives of daytime antagonism and nighttime urges that would not also involve considerable self-loathing. Deliberate or not, these are tragic figures. More important, the pathology that a deeply ingrained denial of self entails is not limited to public figures. Many suffer in silence.

It is an affliction imposed by society. It ought to stop. It eventually will.

I’ve always believed that my personal life is personal and I have a public role, a public job, a public responsibility. But I felt I could keep the two separate.

 - - State Senator Roy Ashburn (R-CA), March 8, 2010

We need to preserve traditional values for the future of our children. Children must be raised with morals and principles.

 - - Roy Ashburn, State Senator (R-CA), March 31, 2005

Sources tell CBS13 that a state senator from Southern California was arrested for allegedly driving drunk after leaving Faces, a gay nightclub in midtown Sacramento, early Wednesday morning.

 - - News Report on a local Sacramento, CA Television site, March 4, 2010

... there is a company wide policy that says drivers are not supposed to carry more than $20 on them at any time.

 - - Pat O'Leary, owner of a NC Domino's, March 5, 2010
     On why a driver, the second this year to be beaten severely during a
     robbery, should compensate his employer. The first victim died without
     repaying Domino's.

"Hobo" is not a new term. It has not been used recently, however, until it was applied by a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives to America's unemployed workers.

Senator Bunning's solitary filibuster, the one that delayed unemployment benefits to all those "hobos" and their impoverished families, obscured a more important drama a few days before. A few Republicans, just enough to overcome another tiring filibuster, voted for a jobs bill.

Economists are warning that the danger of another downturn is not a thing of the past. This one could hurt. Here's why: The federal government shot billions of dollars into the economy to get folks working again. But at the same time, state government cut their spending way back. So the combined stimulus to the economy was zero.

Yup. Zero.

Here's the way a stimulus works. Recessions happen for number of reasons, the biggest of which is that money gets sucked out of circulation. The money doesn't just disappear. People and institutions hoard it.

This happens every once in a while in markets. Toilet paper shortages provoke a few laughs, but the principle is the same. Folks stock up because everyone else is stocking up and nobody wants to get caught on the tail end, so to speak. The Hunt brothers, fabulously wealthy, got even richer by manipulating the silver market a few decades back. They bought up a lot of silver without telling anyone, which started a run on the market. Then they quickly sold what they had. They made a huge profit before they caused the market to collapse.

The problem with the money shortage is that it is not just speculators who get hurt. During the Great Depression folks who had been working hard all their lives up until then were selling apples on street corners to get by. It could still happen again. Government has to step in. Putting cash into the market can, if done massively enough, pretty much end the run on money.

So Democrats put together a Republican bill. Tax cuts for the wealthy, incentives for mega-corporations, that sort of thing. Trickle down. It's not as effective as the measures Democrats wanted to take. But it was the only way to get Republican support. Most Republicans tried to keep it from coming to a vote anyway. But a handful defected, and that was enough.

A lobbyist who met with Republicans explained why they voted no to their own type of measures, voting against the country. "They are not opposed to the bill, they just believe their rights as the minority have been abridged."

Republican officials opposed boosting the economy and putting people to work because ... well ... their feelings were hurt.