The Death of the Democrats & the Republicans

In many ways I am more disillusioned in the politics of this country than the day that George Bush had Colin Powell lie in front of the UN about weapons of mass destruction.  I was part of the rebellious group in 2003 that helped push Howard Dean and his brand of the Democratic party forward.  Last night as we were flying back from New York I finished the book “Herding Donkeys”, the new book about what Howard Dean had done in term of fighting the establishment Democrats and the following period when he led the DNC with the 50 State Strategy which led to the Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008.  That book has helped crystallize what I had been feeling over the past year, something was wrong with the Democratic party.  It is clear that the grassroots nature of the Dean Revolution had been co-opted by Rahm and Obama after the election and turned back into a top-down structure of elitist Ivy League technocrats.

Ironically the Tea Party has essentially started their own revolution in the Republican party and as this book points out, has even adopted some of Deans talking points.

What does this all mean to me at this point?  First, from a Macro Economic Cycle standpoint,  the most crucial period is the next 6 years.  I had thought we might follow what John Mauldin calls the Muddle Through Period but I would have to say that at the moment things could get a lot more dire during this period.  For the moment my comments of September 10th of this year stand as my best guess of the upcoming period.

For the election tomorrow, things may actually be better for the Democrats than most commentators and polling predict.  This is because of two points, one is that 20 percent of Americans now do not have landlines for their phones and polling has to estimate direction for this younger group, and secondly to my comments of a few weeks ago, most of the undecideds are Democrats.  And after reading the book “Herding Donkeys” I am not sure who I want to win.