John McCain's Crack-Up
It Can Only Get Worse by November
by PM Carpenter
These days, is there any other political parlor game that can possibly compete with 'What's the Matter with John McCain?'
It's easy, it's fun, it's wholesome entertainment for the whole family. It's bipartisan. It's sweeping the nation. And its popularity derives from the simple formulation that there are not, really, any wrong answers, since no one really knows for sure just what in the hell is wrong with the man.
Life In the Post Political Age
by Joe Bageant
The reality of the post political period is best highlighted in the failed themes and ideas of Barack Obama's two primary opponents. The Clinton campaign was based on pushing two concurrent ideas: the inevitability factor of her candidacy and the other was her supposed experience. The only thing inevitable in the post political period is ceaseless change, which she could hardly offer while running against the candidate of "Change". How valuable of an asset can experience be in a culture where knowledge, wisdom and history are frowned upon?
John Edwards campaign on the other hand was dead on arrival. His theme and emphasis was America's ever widening class differences, a platform as truthful as it was irrelevant. The use of the word "class" will end any political career in America. That truth violates the primary narrative that our elite use to justify their legitimacy, which is the supposed meritocratic nature of America society. While the post political constituencies have absolutely no interest in class, whose very acknowledgment are the bases of all real politics and whose acknowledgement would only lead to an existential crisis in its ranks. In the post political period the only differences allowed can be in style and modes of consumption.
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