Repeating Myself

Repeating oneself is a perquisite of advancing years.

Today, I read a Republican pundit commenting that the Democrats still don't have much of a plan. (I saw a relevant quote somewhere that I'll add shortly). He did admit it's possible they don't need a plan.

Well yes, fool, that's the point. The party out of power doesn't need a plan. They just have to be the party out of power, especially when the party in power has screwed up even half as much as this one has. Just as Republicans never learned, from 1933 to 1981, how to be the party out of power, they have never learned how to cope with one in the years since. They desire hegemony, as I've said before. They want it because they can't imagine governing in any other way. Seems they can't imagine a whole lot else.

Now then, about pundits. It's become evident to many people that pundits miss many of the small changes. I suggest they miss all of the big ones, because they are too hooked into the way things are. That history M.A. of mine pops up in inconvenient ways sometimes. Recently, it's been reminding me that the pundits didn't expect Andrew Jackson to be elected. When he was, they didn't expect things would change much. They thought these things even though Jackson had more decisively "won" in 1824 than Gore did in 2000. They thought them even though the drastic social and political changes associated with Jackson's administration had already begun. They had been quietly perking along at the local and state level for several years before Jackson turned the establishment of his time on its ear.

Something is happening. It's happening now, and the pundits are probably going to miss it again. The velvet revolution will have happened here before one of them really gets that it has happened.