IS THIS THE YEAR?

Bill Clinton wasn't supposed to win in 1992. After the first Gulf War, Bush-Daddy had such high approval numbers that a lot of potential Democratic candidates decided to wait four more years. It was left to an unknown governor from a small Southern state to take on the GOP - and win. The right wing was shocked and disgusted, but they behaved themselves for a while. They were sure that Clinton would fall on his face and fail to govern effectively. Remember poor Jimmy Carter?

Only he didn't fail. His pragmatic and responsible approach to governing actually started to make things better. After a year in office, after the dire wailing from the right about his first budget, after the idea of taxing people more who can afford to pay more started to make sense, they regrouped. They started a non-stop smear campaign that lasted seven more years. Sadly, it worked.

When Al Gore should have been elected President - and was, if you counted our votes instead of Scalia's one corrupt vote - our nation was stolen away from us by essentially a new political element in this country, the Fascists.

You may or may not know what fascism is. It is a political system that emphasizes nationalism and conformity and especially a unification of industrial, military, and political leadership. It is a totalitarian approach to government in which a powerful elite exercise power for the growth of the nation, a nation of loyal and subservient and usually white people.

This is exactly what the Republican Party has become. They promote defense policy to benefit defense companies - like the Star Wars boondoggle and the Halliburton/Blackwater/Etc. contractor army they sent to Iraq. They promote health policy to benefit the health corporations that use 1/6 of our national income to give us a life expectancy that ranks 49th in the world, just above Albania. Those darn Canadians, with a national health care system? Seventh.

And these traitorous fascists are now Obama's political opponents. But they have some problems of their own. Eight years of right wing power nearly destroyed our economy, produced unjustifiable wars that weakened our military defense and disgraced us before the world, and shredded our hallowed human rights, including a de facto suspension of any right to a fair trial and unchecked government surveillance of all our private communications. Anyone who was paying attention knows that Republicans can never be believed or trusted again.

Fortunately for the fascists, there are some people you CAN fool all of the time. Apparently they make up about 25% of the American electorate. Probably they are descendants of the American Loyalists, the folks who fought against the Founding Fathers to remain loyal to a King.

But Obama is working hard to do the right things. And the right things will eventually start to work - just as they did for Clinton. A final withdrawal from a stable Iraq. A final defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. An improving economy. Better financial regulations to protect our pocketbooks and our financial systems from Wall Street parasites. A strategy for national energy independence. A health care system motivated by providing health care instead of by profiting obscenely from the sick and the dying.

In time, things will get better, and it will become obvious that the scare tactics of the right wing were just self-serving lies. In time, the right wingers will be exposed as the democracy-hating, soulless, corrupt monsters they are.

Is this the year?

I certainly hope so.