The financial crisis described slightly differently.

The financial crisis is the one thing that could have turned Obama's election - which was about young people's energy, new ideas, the blurring of standard GOP/Dem party lines - into nothing more than a middle chapter in a litany of grownup problems. It's the one situation in which Obama is no longer the bold (comparatively) young reformer but just another guy trying to fill the Big Political Moment.

I wrote this back in the day:

What are Dems getting out of Obama? How is the party establishment hoping to play his election, and what happens to his candidacy now that he's (sort of) the presumptive nominee? And what is it like to be a Young Voter in this extremely consequential election, voting for someone who seems to be as Outsider-y as you can get, yet who would never ever have gotten this far without the intrinsically creepy mechanisms of modern-media politics, to which he's rhetorically opposed? And, and: What kind of political generation is arising from the very, very questionable feelings of agency and 'ownership' that Internet/distributed political financing and the constant blather of blogs seem to promise? There's reason to believe that Young Voters are more apathetic than they've ever been, across the board; what does it mean that they're rousing themselves to vote for this guy?

What do these assholes think this is, a game?

Back then I really thought the election was about a sea change in American governance. I was excited about the election as such, the symbolism of it, the pragmatic power-sharing and -shifting of it. (Yes we did! and so forth.) The financial crisis - and the hyper-partisan mudslinging that's followed, much of it nonsensically 'socialism'-themed - hasn't suddenly turned Obama mortal and fallible. It's shown that as far as our nation's ruling class of venal middle-aged assholes was concerned, the election was never going to be allowed to change anything.

And that, ladies and germzzz, is my cup of fresh-brewed morning cynicism for today!

Comments

[The Good Doctor]

Took you a long ling time to get here, in your Buster Brown's fella'.

Now, go get fitted for some honest wingtips so that you can (what is so inelegantly and naively referred to as) walk the walk.

[But...Oops! just a minute: do not let me forget the Palin Erasership swash you sketched out with such a facile hand later on -- that plopped you right back into the kiddie seats of self-understanding: she doesn't sound like a politician to you, you say. THAT'S what you want? Go grab something on NBC all day today and you'll hear plenty of that to store your larder for a month.]

We'll save your allowance for you so you'll have a real larder backed up when it comes time to pick out the wingtips ~ your choice of black, brown, or the ever useful true French rump horsehide cordovan.