128773478691263236I swear to some amorphous sky deity, the next politician or pundit, male or female, who tries to extol the virtues of “bipartisanship” is getting a swift kick in the groinal area. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama signaled on Wednesday that he might be willing to scale back his proposed health care overhaul to a version that could attract bipartisan support, as the White House and Congressional Democrats grappled with a political landscape transformed by the Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race.

Mister President, stop it. I beg of you — just . . . stop it. Remove yourself from the confines of your ideological ivory tower and get a grip on the realities on the ground. This is Washington, D.C. we’re talking about here. These people are not your friends. They do not want to reach across the aisle and work with you for some greater good. They never have and never will:

Top Republicans on Wednesday were hostile toward President Obama’s plan to create a bipartisan commission on cutting projected deficits, raising doubts about the prospects of a main piece of his budget strategy.

Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate, was evasive when pressed by reporters at the Capitol. “I’m not going to decide today what we’re going to do in the future,” he said. But the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, seemed to suggest that Republicans might not take their allotted seats on a commission.

Still, Mr. President, you persist in this ridiculous charade, issuing a statement today after the the Supreme Court’s Judicial Activist Society’s disastrous decision in FEC v. Citizens United that calls for yet more bipartisan-flavored cotton candy:

This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.

Riiiiight. Everyone knows that the Republicans, no ordinary slouches when it comes to convincing the Leviathans of Industry to pony up the filthy lucre for their re-election war chests, are just dying to legislate away this financial windfall. I’m sure their response will be “forceful,” indeed.

Meanwhile, amid all the Coakley post-mortem clucking, Rahm Emanuel’s BFF, head of the DLC, and “Livin’ in the ’90s” fan Bruce Reed drafted these pearls of wisdom:

By definition, independent voters don’t care about party labels and disdain partisan gamesmanship. They want Obama to keep pressing both parties to work together—no easy trick these days—and they want their president to be a spur to congressional action and a check on congressional excesses.

BZZZZT, wrong answer, Mr. Reed. Come join the 21st century. Independent voters want Mr. Obama to get the job done, by any means necessary. They don’t give a Norwegian rat’s ass about “bipartisanship” at this point. One year later, the vast majority of Americans are in the same lousy shape–if not worse off–as they were on January 21, 2009 and are still traumatized by the eight years preceding that. They are now thoroughly disgusted with the Beltway self-absorption and obstructionism on both sides of the aisle. They want solutions, and they want them now. Call it “nondenominational populism,” if you will.

So here’s my suggestion: You were elected for a reason (I mean, other than to prevent Sarah Palin from getting her hands on the nuclear football). Stop with the eleventy-dimensional chess and drop the bipartisanship fetish. Drop it faster than you dropped your progressive campaign staffers on November 4, 2008. It isn’t helping you one iota with the American public; instead, you look like you’re more infatuated with the process than you are with your core principles.

That sure as hell doesn’t bode well for any of us for the next three years.