Appearing on "Hardball," the Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky just said the oddest thing. The left, he said, isn't "fired up" over the midterms, but should House Republicans move toward impeachment--their lawsuit being maybe but a preliminary diversion--then watch out. The left would become motivated.
For starters, allow me to confess that I'm unsure who "the left" is these days. The term once meant something--unionists, university students, the intelligentsia, civil righters, the working class with a measurably raised social consciousness--but what it means today, I can't say. The Internet is partly responsible for my mystification; what in too many instances calls itself the voice of the left is largely a fringe, as loud and unpleasant and ideologically saturated as the right. Perhaps that's a generalization with little merit. But so is "the left."
At any rate, it's not "fired up" says Tomasky. And the sad part is, he's not wrong. Since we have no better definition, let's assume the left is that majority or at least plurality of Americans who agree with, say, increasing the minimum wage, and that same-sex marriage is the business of same-sex partners and not Ralph Reed, and that clean air and drinkable water are rather worth regulating, and that maybe the loyal opposition to President Obama should be loyal to its country and thus try to come to some compromise on what the majority of Americans aspire to.
Isn't that enough to be "fired up" about? More than enough? Are we as an electorate so jaded, so whipped, so resigned to the monotony and mediocrities of partisan warfare that only insane impeachment attempts can fire us up? Has it come to that?
If so, we're in bigger trouble than whatever Republicans can land us in.