Cheesehead

Like many atheists, I subscribe to a few vaguely karmic precepts about the nature of fairness and comeuppance in this universe. So I feel no hesitation in publicly wondering if Russ Feingold isn’t some kind of cosmic counterbalance to his lamentable Wisconsinian political ancestor, Joe McCarthy Himself. Could the state that begat one of the most injudiciously destructive jagoffs in the whole sordid history of American jagoffs finally find itself atoning through the apparently maverick actions of what my grandfather might call “that boy with the nice Jewish name?”

Perhaps. But setting cosmic karma and other such fripperies aside, it’s painfully obvious that the Democratic party will once again slither away from Opportunity like a snake from a mongoose. These are, after all, people with neither dignity nor honor. A coworker asked me what I thought the Democrats were afraid of. I said, “The Democrats are afraid of governing.”

There are other reasons, which I’ll write about in the future. Principle among them is the obvious support of the institutional Democratic party for the general project of expanding the government’s police and surveillance powers. But deep at its root, the party’s fear is no more or less than the ineluctable outcome of its intellectual bankruptcy and moral cowardice. The Democratic Party has no project. “If we get rid of George Bush, what will we do?!”