The 2010 Elections

All things point to Democrats losing seats in the mid-terms. The only question is how many seats? The 2006 and 2008 elections were massive blowouts with Democrats first taking the House and then winning a super-majority in the Senate. To be fair to Senate leader Reid, D-NV, the 60 vote majority was brief and sporadic, what with the illnesses of Kennedy and Byrd.

The 2006 and 2008 elections were the result of a long wind-up of the left-wing. Many organizers were furious with the selection of W by the Supreme Court and never got over it. Count me among them. Networks were created, rallies were formed and voter registration drives were manned and carried out.

It was during this time, W's second term, that I decided to do my small part. I set a goal of registering 3 people and making sure they voted. I tripled that and felt good about it as we took back the House.

And Pelosi took impeachment off the table.

I stayed in the fight anyway and phone banked, and continued to recruit voters. Mostly I targeted apathetic voters and encouraged them to return to the polls to support worthy Democrats.

This happened millions of times across America and resulted in a massive defeat of Republicans across the board.

But then something happened. For some reason those elections were interpreted as wanting moderately Republican legislation that the Republicans were not in favor of supporting. Legislation could not be more liberal than the most conservative Democrat in the most conservative district in the country.

In other words, all the hard work the Democratic base had put in for all those years was merely to protect the most corporate friendly Democrats--even those we took great pains to eliminate--like Joe Lieberman.

I can point to two unqualified liberal legislative acts signed into law by President Obama; The Equal Pay Act, aka the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Hate Crimes Bill, aka the Matthew Shepard Act.

At his point, I'm wondering, is this it? Is this the best we can hope for? All of our hard work and we get health insurance reform that just guarantees more customers for wretched health insurance companies subsidized by tax dollars? No public option or expanded Medicare, or drug re-importation?

Financial regulatory reform that is thin milk, headed up by Chris Dodd, D-CT, who is retiring this year and trying to feather his bed at some financial institution?

Lobbyists are still writing our legislation. All we did was shuffle some names around at the K-Street hand-out line.

No doubt things would be far worse with a Republican Senate, a Republican House and a (shudder) McCain-Palin administration. That isn't even the point. The point is a lot of people really worked their asses off to get corporate friendly legislation that is viewed tepidly by most of the voters and hated by all right-wingers.

This is what they call "the enthusiasm gap."

Why should I take my time to recruit voters, phone bank, precinct walk, rally and network? What shall be my battle cry, "We Suck Less?"

Oh, I'll vote and even donate to very carefully selected candidates, like I did with Bill Halter, the one candidate running for US Senate in Arkansas who might have had a chance in November. Obama and Bill Clinton and the entire incumbency protection racket threw everything they had behind the corporate friendly Blanche Lincoln, D-WalMart.

Blanche supported the Employee Free Choice Act when the Dems were in the minority, but when the Dems were in the majority and it could actually pass, well, she couldn't support it anymore. She was in favor of the public option until it could pass, then she was against it.

The Obama administration laughed in my face when Blanche beat Halter and told me I wasted my time and flushed my money down the toilet. Now, Arkansas Democrats are deeply divided, it's Blanche's numbers that are in the toilet and the rightwing are a cohesive voting block.

See, no matter how much leg you show Republicans, they're just not that into you.

And now, I'm not either.