2006 Election: An alternate view.

tonight's guest blog is from Bruce Stutz, author of Chasing Spring.
Hope you and Gina allowed yourselves some pleasure over the election results. As narrow as the victories were they will give the country a breathing spell before the next election when that mental patient McCain, who's already shown himself to go to the highest bidder, will run his primary against a not much less soulless Hillary Clinton. One can hope they'll beat themselves silly and someone with some intelligence and with no particular allegiance to God (Obama fails for me on that account), runs. Bush & Co. pretty much succeeded in their agenda—stacking the supreme court with the dimmest legal minds and Christian Right to Lifers, stripping away environmental regulations and, in the Park Service, Forest Service, and BLM getting in people who will give away the store. Although the news media proclaimed that voters' concerns over the Iraq war proved that national, rather than local, issues were on the minds of the electorate, the fact is that within the context of the world at large our entire national politic is "local." What goes on in the rest of the world with regard to ideas, opinions, understanding of cultural complexities and interactions is of so little concern here—we are so ignorant of the rest of the world—that our national politics is by its nature "local." It's why we won't elect a woman president or a black senator or have a national health plan or see the world in terms other than our own local yokel concepts. If the Democratic party (notice how Bush continued in his press conference, to call it the Democrat party) remains the weak at the knees group they've been—why did Kerry apologize? Why did it take so long for Hillary to come out against the war? Why is Joe Lieberman still a fucking senator?--two years from now the Republicans get it all back with Rick Santorum leading the charge. The Dems have accomplished the impossible—become both horse's asses and pussies at the same time.