Some Things

From the NY Times:

"Fresh off their sweeping victories in the midterm elections, Congressional Republican leaders on Wednesday said that they would use their new majority in the House and bolstered ranks in the Senate to pursue a vision of smaller government and lower spending, as well as the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of the year.

"At a news conference at the Capitol, the likely House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, and the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, invitedPresident Obama to work with them on these and other goals. But they also quickly adopted an aggressive posture on some issues certain to antagonize Democrats, including a vow to repeal the big new health care law."

So these are some things you can now expect to become real issues. It will be interesting at least to see how Republicans try to sell the Bush tax cuts as good for the deficit, which seems to be the main thing they have conditioned their supporters to care about. It'll probably go something like "Trickle down economics blah blah entrepreneurs blah blah what makes this country great blah." Probably. Although, remember that President Obama still has that nice big veto pen, which hopefully he will make copious use of, and the Democrats still control the Senate. However, you do hear an alarming amount of rhetoric coming from people like Michele Bachmann, who is expected to challenge for the newly vacated Speaker of the House position, about investigating Obama for "un-American activities," with the goal of an eventual impeachment. Ludicrous? Absolutely. More ludicrous than impeaching a President for getting an extra-marital blow job? Nah, brah. Also, comments from Evan Bayh, also in today's NYT, which illustrates how all Democrats, are missing the point of yesterday's election results:

"And we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters. During election season, Congress sought to placate those on the extreme left and motivate the base — but that meant that our final efforts before the election focused on trying to allow gays in the military, change our immigration system and repeal the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. These are legitimate issues but unlikely to resonate with moderate swing voters in a season of economic discontent."

The truth is exactly the opposite of this. Remember all that talk of an "enthusiasm gap"? It's not conservative, or, as Bayh would have it, "moderate" Democrats who were unenthused. It's precisely these "zealous" supporters who were so disappointed with the lack of progressive action by people who call themselves progressives that have been turning against the Democrats. This is obvious when you simply look at the stats of which Democrats lost their seats. Half of the Democrats who bids for re-election failed were among the "Blue Dog" conservative Democrats, while many more liberal Democrats who were expected to be beaten, such as barney Frank, retained their seats. It seems pretty clear that the message delivered here is that the Democratic base wants less pandering to moderates and conservatives and more of what the party purports to stand for. If you were watching MSNBC last night you noticed this misreading of signals all over the place. Also, just to be clear, Democrats aren't trying to repeal the Bush tax cuts. They are about to expire. There is no need for repeal. They are done. What they want is for them not to be renewed, and for the roughly $700 billion dollars of revenue that regularly taxing the rich would generate to go back to the government.

Finally, pour some 40 out for our fallen homie, King of Comedy on the floor, Alan Grayson, who was defeated yesterday. We will miss treats like these: