At MyDD there is a post by Jonathan Singer entitled Social Security Privatization Fails; GOP Turns to Public Schools. It’s a very good post but the title is way off, as demonstrated by this paragraph:

The Social Security trust fund might run empty in 35 years… partially privatize it. Want to add a prescription drug program to Medicare… partially privatize it. Want to make the War in Iraq seem less expensive… partially privatize services (to Halliburton and others). Public schools are underperforming because of budget cuts… partially privatize them through vouchers.

Contrary to what the title says, there have been no failures for the right in this battle to privatize the government. The move to destroy SocSec is a part of a bigger plan as the above paragraph makes clear. There was no loss for the people who want to destroy SocSec as long as there was movement on any of the fronts Jonathan mentions.

In 2000, they came in gunning for the privatization of public education. NCLB was an immediate and gigantic win for them. Since it exists to create “underperforming” schools, the voucher talk, which is the subject of Jonathan’s post, is an extension of that win. Simply making the destruction of SocSec a topic that can be discussed without drawing gasps from the crowd is a win for them. Medicare Part D, of course, another gigantic win. Of course BushCo’s War on Iraq speaks for itself. Listen closely: it’s saying “At least I’m winning the Privatization War.”

These people don’t think in the short term and in terms of isolated wins and losses. They think in terms explained in thereisnospoon’s already classic dKos diary, Why the Right-Wing Gets It–and Why Dems Don’t.:

The mission of a think tank is to introduce ideas into public discourse and normalize them within the public discourse. The steps an idea takes to full legitimacy are roughly as follows:

–Unthinkable
–Radical
–Acceptable
–Sensible
–Popular
–Policy

If the left used that theory, we’d be hearing about living wage, universal health care, fair trade and voting reform every day in unflinchingly uncompromising terms.

Back in stupid reality, we’re already at the policy level when it comes to the privatization of war, education and health care with quite a bit of that progress coming in the last five years. As for the failure Jonathan mentioned, the destruction of Social Security is hovering somewhere between Sensible and Popluar with the battle heating up again.

Where are the Dems? Where are the blogs? There is No Crisis is shuttered. Josh Marshall is sounding the warning but nobody is listening. Here we have a perfect opportunity to move the window back even just a little bit by using the disastrous privatization of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit* to expose these developments for the treasonous and theiving schemes they are, part of a unified theory of the destruction of the public sector. And yet we are essentially silent and the fucking Democrats are complicit.

Pardon my rage.

There have been plenty of failures since 2000, it’s too bad than none of them happened on the right.

* I’d throw the horrendous privatization of our elections in there as well but I’ve grown weary of fighting that fight for today. Ain’t nobody but some sterling exceptions that want to talk about it in blogtopia or beyond. But I guarantee you this: when the people behind dismantling the public sector get together to socialize, the biggest laughs are reserved for their wonderment over how they were able to disenfranchise the country so easily.