The Election and After

Rant One

I’ve been taking some time off---obviously. I haven’t really had much to say about the election, a state of affairs that seems to have affected more than one member of the blogosphere. We won what we won, lost what we lost, and although there have been plenty of voting machine problems there does not seem to have been any out-and-out fraud.

I’ve been bemused by the talking heads’ analysis of the Democratic victory, which is that it evidences a great swing to the center. Sorry, but I think that’s a big heap of horse poop.

What happened was that Americans were dismayed by what they took to be an attack on some of the axioms of American Democracy, one of the most basic being the rule of law. They were appalled by the notion that the law was to be the law except when the Great Decider decided it wasn’t.

Most of us having been raised on the notion of equal justice for all were aghast at the notion that that no longer applied, even to citizens--- who could be arbitrarily imprisoned without trial or access to the evidence against them. Habeas Corpus? Drowned in the neo-con’s bathtub.

We were repelled by the notion that our privacy could be violated without the protection of judicial oversight.

More than once Republic committee chairs refused even to entertain issues proposed by Democratic members, a violation, it seems to me, of the notion of fair legislative procedure, which requires that opposing ideas be heard, even if the majority will, in the end, reject them.

None of these violated principals belong distinctively to the left or the right, but to the very foundations of American democracy. Rising up in defense of them does not constitute a great movement toward the center.

“Hands Across the Aisle” and “The New Bipartisan Spirit” are all well and good, but there was none of that from the Neo-Con Republic Party when it was in the majority. Democrats should use their power fairly, but by God they should use it…and undo some of the damage of the last six years.

There is still a great difference between the Repulic Party and the Democratic Party. We forget this at our peril.