{"id":290,"date":"2012-11-03T10:48:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T10:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=290"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:39:55","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:39:55","slug":"on-wishing-they-might-both-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=290","title":{"rendered":"On wishing they might both lose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few brief thoughts about the US election. <\/p>\n<p>&#8211; I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.co.uk\/2009\/12\/my-posts-on-obama.html\">never been a fan of Obama<\/a>, all other things being equal I would be rooting for him to lose on Tuesday night. All other things are not equal, however; &#8211; one of the principal things that I don&#8217;t like about Obama is that I see him as a machine politician without any particularly strong guiding principles of his own; I suspect that he is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jack_Ryan_(politician)#2004_U.S._Senate_race\">personally<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tony_Rezko#Real_estate_dealings\">corrupt<\/a>; and most especially I see his policies as being driven by established vested interests in the various spheres. Crucially, Goldman Sachs alumni seem to have been in charge of the economic policy, and I&#8217;m not in favour of anything that favours the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405\">vampire squid<\/a>;<br \/>&#8211; but what is the alternative? Romney is hardly someone to shake up the system and take on the vested corruption is he? To again refer to a Matt Taibbi article &#8211; yes I&#8217;m a fan &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829\">Romney is absolutely a product of the capitalist system<\/a>, and a member of the financial elite. If we&#8217;re looking for a radical change of path, Romney is not the one to deliver it. If he wins the presidency, I don&#8217;t see any change of course on the horizon;<br \/>&#8211; hence, my preference would be for both to lose! Which won&#8217;t happen. The thing is, I suspect that &#8211; just as with the UK elections of 1992, the winner of the election will be inheriting a poisoned chalice, and that the 2012 election is a &#8216;good one to lose&#8217;. The magnitude and extent of the bad news falling on to the US is only going to increase &#8211; a superstorm Sandy in several spheres. Which is why I&#8217;m kinda-sorta rooting for Obama to just edge it, ideally in a contested election, that he wins through the electoral college and not via the popular vote;<br \/>&#8211; who would I rather see leading the US? Someone with a track record of opposing corrupt entrenched interests, ethical and pragmatic, and a committed belief to the highest values that the US represents; ideally someone who was also prepared to accommodate a decline in the US empire and recognise the Limits to Growth. Nobody qualifies on all those scores &#8211; but <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.co.uk\/search\/label\/palin\">there is someone who does come close<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few brief thoughts about the US election. &#8211; I&#8217;ve never been a fan of Obama, all other things being equal I would be rooting for him to lose on Tuesday night. All other things are not equal, however; &#8211; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=290\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palin","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-4G","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6229,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/6229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}