So that’s it? The Republicans can’t govern, and the Democrats don’t want to govern?

The worst is that I can’t help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They’re afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That’s the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

Well, maybe so. After all, anyone who lets Joe Lieberman push them around in public runs a terrible risk of looking like an absolute pussy. (To employ the not-prime-time working class vernacular of my ancestral homeland.)

I suppose the most despondent (despondentest) response to the decision of Massachusetts residents to elect yet another sociopath to the World’s Most Asinine Deliberative Body is from Mr. D. Aristophanes of Sadly No. The Cerulean Cherub is not much happier, though he wanly extends the vague hope that just maybe the sleepyheads will awake and find their ass with both elbows.

Myself? Well, I don’t actually have an anything remotely resembling and enthusiasm or optimism gland. I hoped the Democratic Party would make use of their historic victory to, you know, do things. But then I also hoped the Mets would make the playoffs last summer. I knew they wouldn’t, no matter what I said or did. But I hoped! Even after I saw David Wright get dinged in the head, I hoped. What can I say? It’s the condition of the hereditary Democratic voter. I knew better, though.

That said.

Let me yell at everyone now, though, for a moment. Remember the bad old days of Bush/Cheney, back when the progressive blogs started — and that was all there was? I do! In that dark backward and abysm of time, when things got really bad, we all used to turn to each other and say, “remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Meaning, what, did you expect to “win” in less than, say, a generation? 30 years or so, at least? Looking at the dysfunctional corporate/media cesspit that is DC, and how messed up the Democratic party is, how fast did anyone imagine serious meaningful change could be implemented?

It is a long haul. Always was. The electoral cycles tend to obscure this point, but if anyone ever thought transforming America so as to make it actually progressive wasn’t a generational project, well, think again.