The Election Is Over, But We Still Have the War

"Thunder may be impressive, but it’s the lightning that gets the job done."

-- Mark Twain

Once upon a time, a mid-term election was an opportunity for the minority party to take control of Congress and leverage its newfound clout into forcing a president to change direction. Think 1994 and the Contract on . . . er, the Contract With America.

The Democrats got themselves some clout yesterday in a most impressive showing, seizing the House and coming within a hair's breath of taking the Senate. (I will go out on a limb and predict that the Dems will take both of the closely contested seats in Virginia and Montana after the counting and recounting is over. Update: Tester has defeated Conrad in Montana.)

So the system more or less worked, and that Great American Center prevailed has it has repeatedly down through the years when the political fulcrum has swung too far to the left or right.

But I do not see any leveraging of consequence when the 110th Congress convenes in January.

Faggedabout sea change. Think log jam.

It does not help that the Democratic leadership, from House majority leader-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi on down, did not inspire confidence during the campaign now thankfully concluded. Methinks they set the bar too low in challenging Republican candidates on issues of consequence ranging from the Iraq war to homeland security to the taxes and the economy and heath care.

Leverage or not, as has so often been the case in these Dali-esque times, history does not necessarily apply, and 1994 might as well have been 1894.

That is because when the sun came up in America today (actually, there was a hard rain at Kiko's House) we still had a president who is extraordinarily stubborn, partisan, insular and arrogant.

And beyond axing his defense secretary, he is unlikely to heed the clarion call for change that voters sent him -- if for no other reason that it would alienate his methamphetamine snorting, sodomizing fundamentalist Christian base.

If The Decider was half the leader he should be -- and anywhere near the leader that Bill Clinton was when faced by a Republican majority after the 1994 mid-terms -- the Democratic inroads would be an opportunity for him to reach across the great divide and actually try to accomplish something of lasting value in the last two years of his wretched reign.

I myself am setting my sights lower.

All I am hoping for is that the election will be remembered as the beginning of the end America's long national nightmare.

Oh, and by the way, fuck you Karl Rove.

(Image: "Geopoliticus Child," 1943 by Salvador Dali)