Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before

The leading Democratic Presidential candidates can't stop answering Mike Gravel's question, "Who do you want to nuke, Barack?" The senate just voted overwhelmingly to further expand the Executive Surveillance State, because, after all, this Executive has proven to be ethically rigorous and practically restrained in its use of the vast powers already conferred on it by the Congress, and yet, "That this could ever turn out not to be the case is simply astounding, and it is a measure of just how much damage the George W. Bush 'administration' has inflicted on our Constitution." Might we now safely say that it was not the George W. Bush administration alone, that there may have been some co-conspirators at the scene of the crime? That quote was pulled from a post fronted on DailyKos today, entitled "There is someting fundamentally wrong here." I'll say. There are now a couple thousand Kossians shuffling in and out of fluorescent-lit conference rooms to learn how best to pimp and underwrite the party of Pétain. John Dean just told them that his biggest fear is that a Democrat will be elected President and, surveying the buffet of newly acquired presidential powers laid out before him, will say, "I like what I see." His remark was greeted by the silence of self-doubt and self-recognition. Unfortunately, this crowd has epiphanies like a whore has johns: often and not for long.

Having honed my predictive powers watching this same history repeat itself ever-faster for the last half-decade, allow me a magic 8-ball moment. The Democratic blogs will rapidly begin Project C.Y.A. by parsing the Ayes and the Nos from the Democratic ranks, and the cries of disappointment, shame, and rebellion will quickly devolve into turgid discussions on whom to selectively "target." They will draw on their successful campaign to oust Joe Lieberman and replace him with an anti-war liberal. Through all this useless blather, they will all still promote the Democratic Party as an institution. Well, I've got my popcorn.