Staying the course!

dr. elsewhere here

Well, there you have it. The House has been returned to the hands of the people, and we will have our first female Speaker! We have so many reasons to be bursting with pride. Especially for Joe's stellar coverage in the wee hours!

And though we should be majorly excited that Congress is rid of the likes of Sherwood, Weldon, Pombo, and Shaw; Republicans even lost DeLay's seat in TX and Foley's seat in FL. We also have our first Muslim in Congress, Ellison from MN, who is also MN's first Congressional representative of color. However, we should all be pretty disgusted that Tammy Duckworth was defeated west of Chicago for Henry Hyde's vacated seat. Who are those people??
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)


Especially since Dems made such a great showing in the Senate, as well. Far closer than most predicted, it's still down to MT and VA, with MT leaning to Tester and VA to Webb, both Dems over Republican incumbents. Allen appears to have signaled his intent for a recount, which is going to be pretty interesting, given that the FBI was called in to investigate robocalls in that state within the first hours of the day, in addition to intimidation calls. I'm a bit nervous about MT, though, because the count has been delayed due to machine problems, our antennae should be alerting us to that familiar pattern, a pattern I'm surprised we did not see more of last night.

The iffy seat in the Senate, no matter what happens in the remaining counts, is of course Lieberman. Should both MT and VA go blue, both more likely than not at this point, then the real count stands at 49 even with two independents. One of those independents is of course Bernie Sanders of VT, who will always caucus with the Dems, being more liberal than most of them put together as our first Socialist in Congress. That leaves Lieberman.

We cannot count on Lieberman to vote with the Dems, even if he caucuses with them as he promises that he will. His promise is entirely motivated by his intent to retain powerful positions on key committees. These include Small Business, Environment and Public Works, Armed Services, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It's easy to see how his Republican leanings could sabotage the Democratic agenda in those areas. No doubt Jerky Joe will fancy himself a kingmaker, and will drive a hard bargain with both parties, playing both sides of the aisle. Sadly for him, his ego is so subject to hubris, it will be interesting to watch his penchant for duplicity swallow him up. Any show of bipartisan efforts on his part should be viewed with a very jaundiced eye.

A moment of attention should be paid to Harold Ford's impressive showing. Everyone on the screens, right and left, were offering him kudos for a spectacular campaign, and the final numbers blew away the polls, showing him closing a 12 point lag to only 3 points. Definitely impressive for him, but shameful for the voters there because it does appear that disgustingly racist ad of a few weeks ago did successfully play to those lingering base sentiments in TN. Even with Ford's almost excessively moderate, even Republican lite, positions on most issues. But on the other hand, we could look at his impressive showing as a hopeful sign of shifting views there.

For all these reasons to be celebrating, we really should be shifting our attention to the ghastly irregularities, all over the place. Joe was absolutely right; even though the Dems won, "we the people" wuz robbed! Gosh, even the mainstream media are covering it. CNN just showed a US map with all the states that reported glitches colored in; well over half the states, which is absolutely alarming. The trouble with the coverage, though, is that they're painting it as a "coulda been worse" situation.

This is what we need to jump on now, with a vengence. And I use that word intentionally; we must revenge our democracy even though we have won so soundly in Congress. This is our golden opportunity to recover our election process, wrest it from the grips of the goons, and we cannot let up just because we have such strong wins. Everyone needs to be reminded that we can never expect to gain any traction on this issue when Democrats lose.

The position everyone should be taking now is to emphasize that Democrats are pursuing this essential issue of election reform precisely because it is the foundation of our democracy, and EVERY CITIZEN - DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN - STANDS TO BENEFIT FROM REFORM OF OUR ELECTION PROCESS. Rahm Emanuel coined what should be our rallying cry from here on out: "The American people should never lose their zeal for reform." The good news is that now we have the attention of Republicans on this issue, including the MD governor.

What stands in our way, in my humble opinion, is the lack of rhetoric in any campaign about the bane of our existence, namely the horrendous unleashed power of corporations. Make no mistake; the alarming "irregularities" we witness now as so much commonplace are feeding right into the hands of corporate power and its intent to increase and maintain it. They have a stranglehold on every aspect of our lives, and certainly of our government, and this is the power we need to be speaking truth to. If we could get the attention of our leadership on this, we might have a prayer.

I'd like to get back to that prayer in a second, but first a really huge elephant in the room. Where is Karl? What of his promise of an October Surprise? Will anyone hold him to that? Was it really nothing more than the predictable but highly orchestrated death penalty for Hussein? Whatever happened to the genius? I cannot wait until we hear from these clowns, beginning with Bush at 1 today. Poor Kenny Mehlman has been spinning himself silly, but he's succeeded only in making himself appear increasingly absurd. Which is as close to the truth as he'll ever get.

But wouldn't you have loved to be a fly on Bush's wall last night when we took the House? And don't you know these guys are starting to really sweat? Pelosi has mentioned the subpoena word already, and so those battles begin. But between a decidedly unfriendly Congress, the Libby trial, all those ongoing investigations into Abramoff and Cunningham and Halliburton, the Plame lawsuit, and Iraqi bloodshed, you gotta know these guys are starting to lean psychotic in their attempts to maintain their imperial delusions.

Finally, let's return to hope. Throughout last night's returns - the first mid-terms I have ever watched with such diligence, I admit - I found myself literally, physically relaxing. I found myself actually recognizing this country again, remembering what it's like to have some hope for a voice in my governmental process. I am frankly not that worried about Bush and Cheney's belligerence in refusing to bend to the will of the people, as these behaviors on their parts will serve only to expose them for what the tyrants they are, or the tyrants they wannabe. The more they reject the will of the people, the more they turn a deaf ear to our voice, the stronger the rejection will become.

The hope this brings to my heart reminds me again that powerful scene from The Control Room when al-Jazeera reporter Hassan Ibrahim, a Sudanese, responds to a loud anti-American debate with his colleagues by saying he (yes, this man, this Sudanese Muslim) believes in the American people, he believes in the American Constitution.

There is now a real mandate, fellow citizens of the reality-based community, and we canNOT sleep on our laurels. Now is the time to act, and we need to truly stay the course now, a real course of moral and democratic integrity. First, hold the voting irregularities at the forefront of the country's attention. And second, hold corporate feet to the fire on all its multiple abuses of power, most importantly in control of the media. Everything else follows from here.

We'll be discussing these matters in more detail in the coming weeks. For now, ain't it nice to return to some semblance of democracy, or at least a hope and a prayer for democracy? Our efforts have not been in vain.