Gin, Rummy!

"You don't sound very excited. *I* sound more excited than you do."

Out of the mouths of Libertarians, specifically one Libertarian, my friend, the Native (Upstate) New Yorker, yesterday evening in a follow-up discussion on the recent mid-term elections.

The Libertarian was commenting to me on the Democrats' ascendancy to power in both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as the Wisconsin legislature, his current state of residence. In Pennsylvania, the vote's not in--literally, as who controls the state House of Representatives, Democrat or Republican, hinges on absentee and provisional ballot counting in Chester County.

The state Senate remained with the Republicans. But to our credit, our certifiable, right-wing U.S. Senator, Rick Santorum, was sent packing from his McMansion in Northern Virginia back to his modest bungalow in Penn Hills, and we reelected our generally-seems-to-have-a-clue Democratic Governor, Ed Rendell, for a second term. So yay us.

(Editor's note: Senator "Sanctimonium" has been criticized by many for having his primary residence in Leesburg, Virginia, or some other taste-forsaken 'burb, a token home in Western PA, and costing Pennsylvania taxpayers beaucoup bucks for the unique internet charter school the Santorums use to educate their children in Virginia, not PA. As if they couldn't have solved everything by buying a McMansion in the suburban Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area that York and Adams counties, Southern PA, are rapidly becoming a part of. But then that would have made them too close for comfort to me, and the Senator really does seem more like the sort to live in Loudon County. And, no, that's not a compliment.)

The Libertarian, who has been known to favor conservative stances and policies on occasion, and I, the amateur Green, who has traditionally voted Democrat, was chastising me gently over the return of the Democrats, something an ol' liberal like me should be jumping for joy over.

You would think, wouldn't you?

"Well, I'm feeling cautious. Let's wait and see what happens next."

Cautiously optimistic?

No, just cautious.

After all, as I explained to the Libertarian, I've been half-expecting the recently let-go Donald Rumsfeld to lead a coup d'état. I imagine tuning in to Good Morning America and instead of updates on the TomKat nuptials (which would immediately make me gag and run for the bathroom) and Desperate Housewives' trivia, Diane Sawyer interrupts the morning's ka-ray-zee hijinx with a breaking bulletin out of Washington. Flash on the screen, an image of Donald Rumsfeld's head popping out of a Panzer tank, his thick skull adorned with an Muammar al-Gaddafi-of-yore military chapeau, leading troops across the Arlington Memorial Bridge and toward the National Mall, where he will announce the Glorious Revolution has begun, comrades. Please turn yourselves into the authorities and spare your loved ones the trouble of doing it for you.

Ah, I love the smell of Donald Rumsfeld's napalm and my own paranoia in the morning.

* * *

But despite the scent of a sticky incendiary gasoline gel I fear breathing in, the air does seem a little cleaner and fresher now that the odiferous elections are over with, at least for another two years--or, rather, at least for another month or so until the speculation over who will run in the next election begins in earnest. Oops, too late.

Maybe everything seems shiny and new because I'm not as much a Green as I would like to think myself, despite my voter registration card to the contrary. Perhaps it's that my secret, shameful Democratic Party fantasies have finally come true--they won an election! And, as the Daily Show's Jon Stewart put it to Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean in a post-election appearance, did so "without uttering one coherent strategy about anything." Or words to that effect.

Dean, to his credit, took it with very good humor. But the winner can afford a chuckle at his expense, I guess. Or he chuckled simply because he knew it was true. I hate to even hint at agreeing with Sugar Land's own, Tom DeLay, about anything, even a given like the fact that water is wet, but I can't help but wonder if he had a small point when he said on MSNBC that the midterm election results were indicative more of the Republicans' losing rather than the Democrats' winning.

But he told a lot of other whoppers in that interview, too, like one about his not being guilty of corruption because he was "being indicted based on laws that don't exist." Whatever, Mary. Go stand in line with the other perpetrators-as-victims, please, and say hello to O.J. for me.

Still, no matter how you spin it, Congressman Frito DeLay, the Republicans did lose. Maybe not by much, but in your black-and-white (but still mostly white, I suspect) worldview, hey, that's all it takes! No more lobbyist funding for your daughter's baby shower from now on, possum. Please do fade into obscurity promptly, you arrogant mo' fo'. And take your don't-know-the-meaning-of-the-word-"hubris" colleagues with you.

But for now I can't get too hopeful. More relaxed and less likely to bolt to Canada maybe, but not yet hopeful. There's still that little problem about the Democrats not having a clue what to do next (at least not one that they've clued me in on, and we used to be like *this,* I tell ya). Eventually they're going to have to propose something forward-thinking, positive, relevant, and effective, instead of their usual orchestra-without-a-conductor (or even musical instruments) approach to issues. I can't say that I feel real confident, especially when Dean says something like, "Well, we're not going to try to impeach the President."

Good, glad to hear it, but, dude, this was under serious consideration? Like don't go all Don Quijote on me, OK?

Granted, given the little that I understand about federal politics, there are probably any number of good reasons for impeachment--oh, say, like 150,000 of 'em, which is the approximate number of persons who have died in a certain Middle Eastern country as a result of an ill-conceived war on its soil. Call me crazy, but that seems like a slightly more compelling argument for impeachment rather than, I dunno, lying to Congress (a bit like coals to Newcastle, that is) about getting a hummer in the Oval Office from a too-eager-to-please-and-talk White House intern.

Nonetheless, however justified, the idea of screwing around two more years on a series of pointless, ineffective investigations, hearings, and votes would just be a colossal waste of time and money. True, you're Congress, that's your job, but still . . . .

What do I know? I'm just a voter. I'm sure you, oh Democratic politicos, are far wiser and can see how the nation's citizens would rejoice and praise you for such a strategy.

As just a voter, though, even one who has been allying his bad self with independents of late, a word of advice: Really, you might want to propose a plan or something here, more than one that clings to some long-lost Great Society dream that's never gonna get funded or one that's simply anti whatever the other side of the aisle is for. True, everything that the other side of the aisle represents does seem thoroughly horrendous and of no benefit except to their nearest and dearest (that is to say, their bank accounts and their bank accounts' best friends). But as boring and obvious as it may seem to you to talk to us hoi polloi types, there does seem to be a need to explain clearly and yet somehow pithily (I'm talking to you Al Gore and John Kerry) why this other crud is either bad for most of us (e.g., ending the estate tax, attacking "activist judges," selling out the nation to the highest bidder, et al.) or a ruse to distract us (same-sex marriage, Terry Schiavo, et al.) from the real issues of the day (Iraq, healthcare, the social safety net, the growing inequality among citizens of our no-fair land, et al.).

C'mon, it's not that hard. Driving around the country outside the Greater Washington area (or, heck, even within Washington--have you been to Southeast D.C. recently?); visiting a campus other than your alma mater, an Ivy League one no doubt; dining out in our Fast Food Nation near the end of a pay period every now and again; or trying to figure out your private insurance during open enrollment (assuming you have insurance, that is)--you might just pick up a few pointers about what's really going on out here in Podunk, the Flyover Zone, Great Unwashedboro, or whatever it is you marbled-hall, block-headed types like to call the rest of the nation west of I-95.

And a Dale Carnegie course or two wouldn't hurt either.