It could have been worse...

Well, it could have been worse.  If Christine O'Donnell had won in Maryland, I think I would have had real doubts about the viability of representative democracy.  But I would have gotten over them.  

I was saddened that Russ Feingold lost in Wisconsin.   That's pretty mysterious to me.  What did Russ Feingold ever do to betray the interests of Wisconsites?  The media are saying that Feingold took some maverick positions against the party--like refusing to support the Iraq War when it was all the rage--& so he didn't get much support from the Democratic Party establishment.  It seems like there's a price to pay about being prematurely right.  Feingold was outspent 4-1 but that still doesn't quite explain it.  So was Jerry Brown.  

Here's hoping Bennet and Murphy hang on in Colorado and Washington.  

And I think of Ma and Pa Ferguson & Pappy Lee O'Daniel, governors of Texas back in the day, who were Tea Party types before their time.  (Blago of Illinois is the only current analog of theirs I can think of...)  (In *O Brother Where Art Thou?* the incumbent Gov. of Mississippi was modeled on Pappy Lee--can't recall if the Coen brothers actually used his name). During the reign of the Fergusons, if you had a relative in the pen you wanted to get pardoned, it was pretty simple.  Just buy some expensive bull semen from the Ferguson's breeding operation...) 

Representative democracy is like an unspecialized amoeba-like organism that lurches through its environment, sending out a pseudopod here and getting burned, another over there and finding good stuff to ingest, far more adaptable than say, koalas, who can only eat eucalpytus and have to rely on an unchanging environment--even though they are a lot cuter. 

I think it will be interesting to see how the presence of the Tea Party folks in the House of Representatives affect Republican Caucus discipline.  Not that much I'm guessing, but I still hope they screw it up.  I know that among the Tea Party types there are  some who genuinely believe in limited government, fiscal conservatism, reining in Wall Street and the big corporations.  My guess is they will be corrupted in the twinkling of an eye.  But I could be wrong.  Some have said that I've been wrong before.  

R. 

 

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