Many years ago Greenfield was a WBAI reporter. In his ascent into mainstream broadcasting, his earlier affinities disappeared. That's what makes this crystal ball article interesting:
The labor movement had provided the foot soldiers and the financial fuel for the Democratic Party for decades, But now, thanks in good measure to the most “progressive” members of that party, there was no work for the men and women who built houses, maintained roads or worked for contractors whose invoices the government could not pay. How was this good for labor? “We must return to bipartisanship!” the political class thundered. And from countless corners of the country came this question: Just what had bipartisanship done for us lately? In the 1990s, the Clinton White House and the Republican Congress jointly embraced the explosion of so-called innovative financial instruments, free of regulation, that within a decade had trashed the economy, wiping out millions of jobs and trillions of dollars’ worth of savings. A few years later, a Republican president gained the support of prominent Democrats as he led the country into a disastrous war. “When 2 parties are gridlocked — disaster,” read one widely circulated tweet. “When 2 parties work together — disaster. Enough!” Then came two House special elections in late October 2011. In a heavily Democratic congressional district in California, a 55-year-old school administrator — running as an independent with the slogan “Enough!” — routed her Republican and Democratic opponents with nearly 60 percent of the vote. And in an Ohio district that had been voting Republican since the Civil War, an unemployed factory hand, running with the same slogan, trounced his major-party rivals. Within two days after that second vote, hundreds of Facebook pages and Web sites had emerged, all working off the “Enough!” theme. full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-happens-to-american-politics-if-we-default-hello-third-party/2011/07/11/gIQAu869FI_story.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
