Bailout Signals the Election Is Over

Beat the Devil

By Alexander Cockburn

This article appeared in the October 27, 2008 edition of The Nation.

October 8, 2008

Election day is officially November 4. A month earlier voters started mailing in their ballots. We can expect the usual uplifting essays, extolling the spectacle of millions of Americans peaceably exercising their democratic rights, so unlike in Cuba or North Korea.

Unusually early, the real election day this year fell on October 4, the day the House of Representatives finally approved the bailout bill already passed by the Senate two days earlier.

Real elections mostly come after the symbolic election day. They are staged, sometimes protracted events, designed to remind voters that no matter what they may have thought they were voting for when they went to the polls, no matter who the victor or what his pledges, reality is in charge.

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About Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn has been The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist since 1984. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the best-selling collection of essays Corruptions of Empire (1987), and a contributor to many publications, from The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal to alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. With Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the newsletter and radical website CounterPunch, which have a substantial world audience. more...
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