Let's see how much of that actually happens before you start calling people idiots, shall we?

I quite understand this feeling, pw, and I'm not above a bit of schadenfreude myself.  Trouble is, the satisfaction enjoyed by the relief of discomfort is almost completely neurotic and, perhaps, ultimately destructive.  I can't help comparing it to the pleasure I imagine a self-harmer derives - feeling the pain and then relishing the gradual return to some kind of normality.  We oughtn't to forget that it's not only Tories and Republicans who can provide the experience you describe.  The very same Tony Blair whose arrival was greeted with such optimism ended up with many of his ex-supporters wondering how long it would be before he finally departed.  Many months before Blair even suggested he was ready to hand over there was a TV programme called 'Do you still trust Tony?'  I'll never forget the terse contribution of Harry Enfield (who had been a big supporter): 'Do I still trust him?  No, I wish he'd just go'.  And the joy expressed by many when he finally did go - even though he was replaced by the charmless and, it now transpires, clueless, Gordon Brown, was palpable.

I've nothing against Obama in particular; and he'll have his work cut out to be worse than Dubya.  In the end, as many of us predicted, even the supporters of capitalism could be trusted not to take a chance on someone as spectacularly incompetent as Palin getting near the levers of real power.  But neither Obama's skin colour nor his good intentions will change the fact that he has to help run the system on behalf of the bosses.

I don't see obama as someone really motivated by 'things'

http://www.wisestartupblog.com/the-elitist-barack-obama-drives-1-car-and-owns-1-house/1409

He did politics, then law, seems a fairly grounded individual really, a kind of 'mr smith' goes to washington.

capitalism appears to be dead, state intervention is the new fashion

Certainly not.    The 'All politicians are the same/Obama won't immediately abolish international capitalism therefore is as bad as McCain' crew do damage and deserve to be poked with a stick at times such as this. If they'd been listened to, together with the faint hearts, cynics and doom merchants as represented on this thread, no one would have campaigned for Obama and Sara Palin would now be a heartbeat from the nuke button. Such people, who act to put the likes of Palin in charges of ICBMs, condemn women to back street abortions and open the classroom door for creationists, deserve to be called idiots. Because that's what they are. I expect rednecks and free marketeers to pooh pooh and talk down a black, left of centre Presidential candidate, but to see it on the alleged left is a disgrace. It's also extremely funny.




Bws,

I wouldn't disagree with any of that - the enthusiasm of Congress Democrats for the bank bailout is an example of how the interests of capitalists are defended, although it would be wrong entirely to dismiss the view that the fallout from a banking collapse would have hurt the poorest most (and still might).

But there are some good things to come out of this election.  One of them is that the choice of Sarah Palin seemed to be a bid by the Republicans to ignite the culture wars that have aided the Republicans in the past - slamming the Democrats on issues like abortion, guns and prayer in schools - and this time it didn't work.  The economy mattered more.  And if the high turnout means that people who have never participated in the electoral process are now readier to make themselves heard and to voice their demands, and articulate the deep inequalities in American society and expose the lie that market capitalism enriches the whole community, that can only be a good thing.

She did get by far the biggest and longest cheer from McCain's supporters at his concession speech though. I'm far from convinced we have heard the last of her.