Fear and Loathing along IL-47

 I miss John Edwards.

First,because he had such beautiful hair; Second, because he more clearly and forcefully set forth the progressive solutions that I think are the right thing for our country; and third, because if this were still a three-person race, none of this media-abetted mudwrestling would be going on. 

The third part is simply a structural fact: in a three-person contest, if A attacks B, C looks better; if B attacks C, A profits the most. And if A attacks B and C, A looks like the nasty one. No matter who A, B, and C are.

(Now, of course A and B are Hilary and Barack, and C, being J. Sidney McCain III, looks good.)

I have long felt that none of this matters, though, and it's beginning to look like I'll be missing John Edwards for the second reason.

I live in the 14th Illinois Congressional District, the scene of the great battle where Gyro Gearloose defeated Scrooge McDuck for the Congressional Zeet. (Or where Bob Foster Kane defeated Jim Overly-White in the Battle of the Century.) My brother, who doesn't normally do this, asked that I blog about the election.

Well, there are plenty who were closer to the fight, and I can't claim to have special psychic connections to the folks in Henry County (IL-14 is gerrymandered practically out to the Mississippi) But here it is.

Perhaps the biggest underappreciated factor in the race was hoe disliked Jim Oberweis is--by conservatives as well as liberals. Now, Oberweis Dairies is something special out here from the Fox River to the Rock--they have milk that will raise your eyebrows when you drink it, fabulous ice cream and the best egg nog I've ever had in my life. And drive west of the Fox, and you'll see family farm after family farm with signs out on the roadside saying that they proudly supply milk to the Oberweis dairies. That was Jim's grandpa, though--he's the millionaire child of privilege who's decided he's going to buy himself a seat in Congress. Chris Lauzen, who would have been the Republican organization's candidate, is a standard-issue faceless party regular (nice, personable guy)--he very well might have beaten Foster. As everybody said, this is a red, red district. But those rock-ribbed Republicans who aren't sure about public libraries--they stayed home. And the growing number of Hispanics came out against the immigrant-baiter.

But there's more than that, I'm convinced. Oberweis rang all the usual bells--pro-life, evil Meskins, raise your taxes (although the big glossy cards that scarily quoted Foster saying that he had yet to see a problem that couldn't be solved by throwing at it rang a little absurd coming from someone who'd spent a million dollars on his campaign.) Still, the fact that this three-l-lllama didn't get them out of bed says something important.

What it says is that things are bad and getting worse. The fact that gas went up 20¢ a gallon in the week before the election did far more than Barack Obama's ad (which I think most Democrats took as a 'yeah, whatever'.) Gasoline, health care, rising food prices--the door slamming on home equity as an escape--and the big wave rising up in front of their eyes of a recession--a bad, bad recession--the last thing most people are worried about is that They're Gonna Raise Yore Taxes.

Let's get something straight: calling the previous period a 'housing bubble' papers over a vital aspect of all this. The 'housing bubble' was Bush's, like the 'dot-com bubble' was Clinton's, right? One apiece. Only while the .com bubble had twenty-year-olds driving around in Ferraris and people seeing their 401(k)s approach seven figures and companies that sold nothing get billions of dollars in capitalization, the housing bubble had teetering middle class families staving off financial collapse by tapping the inflated equity in their homes after the Clinton IT job was replaced by the Bush stockboy job. The housing bubble didn't even get  to the surface before it popped--and not a shiny red car in the turbulence.

All the 'bubble' did for the middle class was stave off destruction, so that you didn't lose your place in 2003. The millions of people who watched the business news and heard the suits talking about the 2001 recession as if it were over and were puzzled--time just started running out.

And at least in the Great Depression, they had a great boom time before the fall, rather than seven years of scraping and dodging and borrowing and hoping to God you don't have to go into the hospital--If the hammer comes down, as it looks like it might, how the hell are we going to survive, let alone keep the house and send the kids to good schools?

This is why I think that all this sniping between Barack and Hillary won't make a difference, because this is not a prosperous character-driven election--this is a desperate solution-driven election. And while the atrocity in Iraq is easily fixed (leave) and the assault on our Constitution likewise (root them out and put them in jail), against the financial inundation that by all indications is rearing up in front of us--ESPECIALLY since the solutions may not come until next january--how will even the Chosen One save the floating bodies in their millions this time?

The good news is that this is going to be a 1932 election. That, of course, is also the bad news. One party is currently saying 'here is how we're going to deal with your problems', while the other party is denying they exist, and trumpeting the fears that people who were secure and doing well could find their way to worrying about.

I, frankly, think the november election will be a rout, no matter whether it's Obama or Clinton. (Or a brokered convention that nominates Al Gore and George Clooney.) But this gives me no joy right now--because I'm wondering if I'll recognize  this country by November.

We're scarcely doomed--and I'm far too stupidly optimistic to think this inevitable--but I think that those of us from Elgin to Lily Lake to Elburn to Spring Grove to Yorkville--to Sandwich to Somonauk to Earlville to Mendota--who drive along realizing that not one of those Oberweis signs is in front of a farm that's doing well--all of us are looking at the growing shadow with bleak apprehension--and hope against hope that it won't be 1932 this November.