Why We Can't Let the Conservatives Win in 2010!

I am behind in posting not because I have developed another case of writer's block, but because I have had trouble prioritizing what to write. Since last Saturday's Wretched Reactionaries Rally in Washington, everyday the news has presented a veritable smorgasbord of dumb. Where do you start.

I was in fact writing my own addition to the punditure (literature from pundits) attempting to answer the question, "Why are all those white folks so angry? Did Obama order the all the "all-you-can-eat" buffets closed being a menace to public health? (Look at the protest crowd pictures and see if you can tell why that might not be a bad idea.)

While looking for a good conservative pundit (pardon the oxymoron)—representative of those who stuck there thumbs in their ears and held their fingers over their eyes shutting out the overt racism of some (no, racism does not explains all the anger, but you have to rationalize real hard to ignore its significance)—I ran into something more important.

What I ran into is why all this matters—why liberals, progressives, and independent who have not had their anti-information vaccines must band together and vote to keep Democratic control of congress. It is not that the teabaggers, anti-healthcare, anti-government, anti-Obama crowd are racists or bad people. It is because they represent a reactionary base that will vote to put Republican politicians in office, and those Republican politicians are dedicated to a no progress agenda that is strangling the country.

In one of the videos of the 9-12 March on Washington I watched a woman yelling at the interviewer that she didn't want Obama's stimulus, she didn't want Obama's healthcare reform, and she didn't want big government. (One wonders if she didn't want the stimulus if she would gladly give back the tax cut that went with it?) And it is this compulsive need to reject change that is a danger to this country.

In his column for Sept 15, 2009, Thomas L. Friedman recounts his visit to the "war room" at the Silicon Valley Applied Materials facility. In this room, Applied monitors and interacts with the, "14 solar panel factories it’s built around the world in the last two years." None of them had been built in America.

Germany, China, Spain, India, Italy, Taiwan, and Abu Dhabi all have solar power panel factories, but not the US. Why? According to Friedman:

The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.

Progressive legislation fostered the creation of this green industry which is now the second largest manufacturing industry in Germany. Even China has come to understand that it cannot continue to pollute as it has and that , "clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry." And it is gearing up to export it's factory output. As Friedman puts it, "If you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China."

Yet can you imagine the teabaggers embracing the kind of regulatory reform necessary to pave the way for the US to join in the global expansion of the solar panel industry? I can hear the cries of "socialism" and "big government" and "I want my pollution back" echoing through the protests now.

The lack of regulatory underpinnings to support the expansion of solar power is only one example of the kinds of transitions the United States must embrace rather than struggle against. And just like the stimulus, that undoubtedly helped many of those now inveighing against it, such transitions will end up providing jobs and otherwise helping average Americans.

We who would push America forward into reforming our current systems and into embracing new industries that can restore our manufacturing base do not have to fight the Teabaggers and Anti-Obama forces in the streets. Numerically they are insignificant. When they rant about the need for Obama to listen to the people, they forget that he is listening to the majority. But that will not matter if we do not begin preparing now to persuade the persuadable independents, and muster our forces at the 2010 ballot boxes.

You can bet the 9-12 protesters will vote in the next election, but they can only have a significant impact if we let them, if we fail to get out the vote. Friedman's article paints a portrait of why defeating the reactionary forces matters at mid-term. We don't have to fight with them, but we must not let them win the one contest that matters.