Larry Ray : Democrats ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’

Battered Monarch Butterfly resting in Texas on trip home. Photos from Larry Ray / The Rag Blog.

Getting it on:
Monarchs have a tough lesson
for flighty Democrats

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / November 16, 2010

These photos were taken in Texas recently. They show a battered migrating Monarch butterfly feeding on milkweed nectar and resting after clearly flying in very windy conditions.

Someone suggested that the beaten up butterfly, merely resting on its 5,000 mile migration flight from Canada back to Central Mexico, literally “on a wing and a prayer,” could be symbolic of “The Democratic Party after their recent election mauling.”

Nice idea, wonderful photos, suggesting strength and determination. But given the Democratic party’s recent implosion, if they were scheduled to all move in one direction, like a mass migration, they would argue, delay, fight, and piddle around, and those who actually got airborne would fly an erratic path probably at the wrong time of year to procreate. Which is why the Monarchs do it.

And speaking of procreation, when today’s Democrats aren’t getting screwed by Republicans they wind up screwing themselves. Even Monarch butterflies are smarter than that.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

The Rag Blog

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3 Responses to Larry Ray : Democrats ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’

  1. Anonymous says:

    I believe that the Monarchs migrate to Mexico or California as the weather cools. Either way, they may have soon have to worrying about immigration officials – who will easily identify them by the color of their poor battered wings .

  2. TGhe Dems may have a long time to figure out what went wrong. Redistricting will prevent them from regaining the House anytime soon. In 2012, 23 Dem seats are up and they will be facing the results of Citizens United–limitless corporate money.

    The most pathetic thing is the Senate Dems cloistered for 10 hours over their problems and then placing all the blame on Obama. They were all too concerned with policy and unconcerned with explaining what they were doing.

    But there are deeper problems. Democrats assume that most voters are issue-oriented and concerned about bread and butter. Since the late 1940s, we knew better than that.

    Dem strategists need to stop being policy wonks and start studying political psychology and cognitive science.

    Lets begin with something simple. A LSU study shows that since 1979, areas where the economy was the worst produced the most political extremism. But the extremism was not directed against the spokesmen for the capitalist elite. It went against people trying to help the masses. In 2010, in the third district of Pennsylvania, the two counties with the highest unemployment– 11% plus– produced massive votes to reject the Congresswoman who supported the stimulus and extended unemployment.

    The progressives are in deep trouble. So is Obama. No one wants to admit that racism was a big factor in 2010, but it was. In Florida, a man who ran against Obama became governor even though he paid a $1.7 billion fine in 1997 for defrauding Medicare.

  3. Very insightful, Sherman. Hard to turn around racism that is still deeply embedded in 2010. Even harder in 2010 to get the Democratic party to sit down and figure out who they should be. It is going to take a real housecleaning to thin out the Kumbaya oldsters and useless blue dogs.

    Thanks, Larry

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