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Now that we voting Americans have sniffed out (and successfully snubbed) the gang of Republican swindlers, chickenhawks, bigots
and fake moralists who waited behind Door Number One for another shot at pillaging the national interest, the big question
in the audience is, What will we get from our pick, the Dems, as they leap out from behind Door Number Two?
Will we get something approaching what the Dems promise: a publicly-sanctioned flurry of accountability on Iraq, Afghanistan,
torture, and the staggeringly corrupt leadership and domestic policies of the Bush regime? Or, in the tradition of "Let's
Make a Deal," will we get something closer to what the Democrats have actually shown us to date: a seemingly subcortical aversion
to standing on principle, even when said principles offer the assurance of voter support? Can Dems collectively rip six years'
worth of electrodes from their skulls and re-train their synapses for the act of leadership?
Not to be a killjoy or anything. Hey, I was dancing and shrieking last Tuesday night like every other quixotic progressive
I know. After six years of blithely-accepted atrocities, we now have good news by the bucketful: American voters are smarter
than Karl Rove thinks they are. Fear and lies -- Rove's stocks in trade -- cannot, thank God, be counted on to permanently
impair the brain functions of white working- and middle-class voters. New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by all appearances,
intends to start handing out subpoenas like candy to Bush operatives who lied us into war, into illegal surveillance, and
into Republican protection of a Congressional pedophile. Charles Rangel will chair the House Ways and Means Committee. John
Conyers -- John Conyers! -- will chair the House Judiciary Committee. Donald Rumsfeld, that sneering draft evader who thought
he could torture his way out of abject failure as a military commander, is gone. George Allen, that maggot-minded racist who
defiled the State of Virginia as its U.S. senator, is gone. Ted Haggard, whose concealment and then denunciation of his own
escapades with a male prostitute served as a flaming rebuttal of the far right's bigoted false gospel, is gone. As are --
or will be -- a slew of other miscreants who believed they could forever ride the coattails of the so-called "war on terror"
and "defense of marriage" in their own pursuit of power. None of them will be missed.
But the question still sits there blinking at us: Who are these Dems, really? Who are these folks who will soon call the shots
in both Houses? Ben Cardin, Democratic Senator-elect from Maryland, who recently surmised that if the Dems gained control
they would avoid confronting President Bush? Barack Obama, whose carefully inconclusive jargon increasingly resembles a magnetic
word kit you can endlessly rearrange on your refrigerator? Hillary Clinton, who voted for the Iraq War and who still talks
about finding a way to win? There is plenty of thoughtful analysis in the blogosphere these days about the limitations of
the new Democratic majority (Ian Welsh has a Nov. 10 post at The Agonist about the Dems' current backpedaling on Medicare, David Corn has written about the new pressures on Democrats to actually govern, etc.).
But I didn't feel a true chill down my spine about all of this until I heard Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), say bluntly last week
in a Pacifica Radio interview that this incoming class of congressional Democrats is the most conservative he has ever seen.
This happened, Moran explained, because the Democratic campaign leadership (meaning Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee) decided early on to choose and fund conservative Democratic candidates over progressive
ones. But the DCCC's belief that only right-leaning Dems could win turned out to be wrong, Moran said, and Moran now regrets
that a number of strong progressive Democratic prospects were pre-emptively cut out of the running by Emanuel in spite of
their having polled as well or better than other Democrats.
It is no secret that the Democratic Party has veered to the right. But to hear a Democratic congressman detail his party's
methodical exclusion of progressives -- and to hear him go on to say that some of these excluded progressives might have won
races that conservative Democrats went on to lose -- is, as I said, downright chilling. Think about that when the members
of the new Democratic majority take their seats next year.
Is Bush now weakened and somewhat disoriented within his imperial bubble as a result of the legislative power shift? Absolutely.
Is the Republican Party divided and in danger of internal rebellion, especially from camps (such as the "Christian" hard right)
who no longer trust the White House leadership? No doubt.
But if you think the party is finally over for certain mealy-mouthed Democrats who stand for nothing, think again. And keep
your eyes open.
And speaking of parties being over, Lindsay Beyerstein, aka Majikthise, has uploaded a downright poignant series of photos from the aforementioned racist George Allen's victory-turned-defeat party
on election night, which she attended. It almost makes you feel sorry for the young Republican I'll-kill-for-that-internship
set. Almost.
© 2006 Bruce A. Jscobs (Posted 11/13/06)
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