Learned Helplessness and Fighting the Power

The Moderates think it's a sure thing. It seems the DINOcrats on the Armed Services Committee are more than willing to let the Fixer and his boys handler Der Decider. It's like both sides want this to go through making as few waves as possible.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted 24 to 0 to approve Robert Gates, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Iran-Contra scandal, to be the new Secretary of Defense.

Amazing, isn't it? Some people actually still believe a bunch of Democratic Senators who've been spineless cowards as the minority will be something other than that come January.

(They won't.)

- The Dark Wraith

Some more points from the Dark Wraith worth considering:

...it is no less a sweeping statement to declare that the very same electorate that twice put a man like George W. Bush into the Oval Office has somehow in two short years had a fundamental change of mind about what constitutes desirable qualities in a President. To assume that a welcome transformation of the majority of Americans toward progressivism is underway is folly. Far more likely, the majority is looking for what George W. Bush was supposed to be as a conservative that he failed to be in that role.

Should that be what was truly behind the Democratic gains in November, the outlook is bleak. Republicans could very well hold the White House in 2008 and might even re-capture either the House or the Senate then. Any reciprocating "warmth of sentiment" Democrats might have toward the majority of voters right now must be tempered by the real possibility that a care-taker Congress has been put into place while the electorate sorts out which purveyor of Right-wing policies can best achieve the results Mr. Bush could not. This possibility makes the next two years crucial for the newly elected Democratic majorities in the House and Senate because they will have but 24 months—just one session of Congress—to do what they can to repair the damage wrought not merely by George W. Bush, but by the politics of a Republican Party that remains incapable of wise, prudent, and responsible governance.

It is altogether possible that the moral and financial mess wrought by the Republicans cannot be undone, but it is the duty of the Democrats to do what they can. Sadly, though, they should not labor under the misimpression that any repair they do will be rewarded by the voters in 2008, at least not as far as the Presidential race is concerned. The majority two years from now will be quite a bit like the majority that put a failed President back in the White House in 2004. To imagine that those voters have really learned their lesson is to ascribe to them something last month's elections did not and certainly could not demonstrate, something the Quinnipiac poll shows is still missing. The people who voted for Mr. Bush have not learned contrition, much less have they become ashamed of themselves for what they did in 2000 and 2004.

There is precious little evidence that the majority of Americans understand that George W. Bush is more than just another failed President: he is, in fact, a failed President they chose, not once, but twice.

It's worth nothing evidence does not suggest a majority supported Bu$h in either election. Unless, of course, you mean a majority of campaign dollars. Given that criteria, corporate America went for Dear Leader in a big way.

However, a majority was willing to go along with the results. It would have been interesting if a million protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks had shown up on Inauguration Day. One can always wonder what will happen in 2009 if the same kind of miscarriage of a $election happens again.



One thing is for sure: you won't catch Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama behind that mask.