Couldn't Have Said It Better....

This from Salon's Andrew Leonard. It expresses my guarded optimism exactly. I suspect Leonard speak for many who grew up in the age of Reagan when business was king and poverty, pollution, and fairness were just a bunch of airy fairy ideas:

The moral authority of the Reagan revolution has collapsed. It will be many, many years before a Republican can address the nation with a straight face and declare that what we need is more deregulation. Oh, they'll try it -- I've heard Senators and Representatives make that very case this week. But the majority of Americans will not pay attention to their garbage.

Some evidence for this can be found in the reaction to the presidential and vice-presidential debates. Last Friday and on Thursday night, Americans watched candidates from both political parties make their traditional pitches. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden delivered what, to my ears, were very familiar Democratic calls for more tightly regulated markets. John McCain and Sarah Palin, while giving lip service to "oversight," still pumped out traditional Republican talking points about tax cuts and worn out bromides about "getting government out of the way of the people."

All my adult life I've watched this tug-of-war, and since my very first vote in 1980, have been disappointed and disgusted at the result: A sellout of the American public to the forces of greed.

The results of the snap polling after both debates, declaring Obama and Biden the victor, shocked me. Not because I thought they were the wrong interpretations of what had happened, but because I just am not used to the majority of Americans seeing through the malarkey.

Let's hope we are finally turning the page on an age of greed and militarism.