blargblog

This Week's Cartoon (9/1/03)

Happy Labor Day, and all that. It's hard to celebrate in a "jobless recovery" (an oxymoronic phrase if there ever was) and with union membership down to 13% among workers, most of them cops and firemen hailed as heroes while screwed in their paychecks and resources. Unemployment in my dear city hovers around 8%, and the competition in my profession (graphic design) is so intense I am somewhat-but-not-much grateful for the job I have.

So I guess that may explain the deflated tone of this week's cartoon. Not that you'd expect an In Contempt strip to provide an inspirational battle cry for change. More like a rage-filled blood-curling scream of righteous indignation. Or a simple Bronx cheer. Today we receive a heavy sigh. Conversations with like-minded armchair politial wonks inspired this strip, with the emotional registers following the sequence the cartoon portrays: disgust and rage against the current status quo; much conjecture about who's got the electable moxy to defeat Bush; strategic recipes for the 2004 election (the Dean-Clark ticket idea seems very popular); and the eventual resignation that being a liberal Democrat today often means voting for candidates who in another time (say 30 years ago) would have been moderate Republicans. We want Bobby Kennedy, we get Nelson Rockefeller. (Actually, I want Shirley Chisolm, but that's just me.)

Oh, and: Why did I put Dean-Clark in the "delusional" category? It depends on quite a few factors, really. First, Clark has to enter the race. Then Dean has to maintain his momentum long enough to secure the nomination. Then Clark has to set ego aside and accept the veep offer, provided Dean thinks to actually offer it. Then both of them have to mount a campaign that smartly nails Bush's economic record and neutralizes his bullshit boasting of his national security record. And throughout all of this we must cross our fingers that events do not get worse in either Iraq or the War on Terrorism.

There is this strange meme parroted among the conservopundits that liberal Democrats are hoping the economy stays crappy and that Iraq deteriorates (how low can you go?) so that public support for Bush will diminish enough for a Democratic candidate to gain traction against him. This theory ignores two things: a) this has already happened, Bush's approval rating has dipped below 60% in most polls; and b) another terrorist attack or an escalation in violence in Iraq could always inspire the public to rally around the President, as it has in every instance since the attacks on September 11th. Democrats know this. As human beings, they want national security and the Iraqi situation to improve (hence those voice-in-the-wind calls for UN involvement); as political strategists, they should want little change in the shapes of things from here until November 2004.

In other words, to close this loop, there are too many conditionals out there to make Dean-Clark a sure thing. But then I have no better alternative to offer. So, hey, go with it.