Those of you who closely followed last night’s election results may be perplexed by my assurance that the Democrats still retain sizable majorities in both the House and the Senate.
True, the 112th Congress will be dominated by TP/GOP newcomers, but the 111th Congress still has one session left to go, and Dems would be foolish to waste it.
If obama’s feeble electioneering efforts can be compared to a batter in baseball taking a called third strike to end the game, a football analogy better applies to this lame duck Congress. The two-minute warning has sounded, but the Dems still have the ball. Instead of taking a knee, they should employ a hurry-up offense to drive down the field and put up at least a field goal before the Half.
The players to lead this drive should be QB Russ Feingold and the other numerous Senators and House members who will shortly be benched. No time for huddles, just run a few set plays — HR 676, for example. First drafted in 2003, and submitted every year since, HR 676 is a real universal healthcare reform bill that would really work. Its 88 co-sponsors expected it to finally be debated in 2009, but the bill was rudely shoved aside to make way for the lemming march for the perverse “obamacare”.
It took a resounding drubbing to pound into these politicians’ thick heads that obama was toxic. As lame-ducks, they have nothing to lose — allegiance to obama cost them their jobs. In contrast, they have much to gain — to have any hope of reviving their careers, they must jump from this sinking ship. Overtly telling obama to ‘shove it’ will be both cathartic and constructive.
Passing HR 676 would also effectively repeal obamacare, thus beating the GOP to the punch. An on-sides kick, if you will, to boldly retake possession of the agenda.
During this final session, a slew of true liberal legislation ought to be brought before the House, no matter how slim the chances of passage, if only to show what these particular Democrats stand for. Feingold’s Rebels could also pass numerous non-binding resolutions declaiming the wrong direction taken over the past two years. For an electorate that sullenly voted in the last three elections against one party then the other, these parting pieces of legislation would give a reason to vote for the Dems in 2012.
The clock’s running — snap the ball, Russ!
(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane’. All rights reserved.
True Liberal Nexus 
Brilliant idea! If only the Dems had the balls (pun intended).
I feel really bad about Feingold. :(
Feingold has some time on his hands to do some thinking now. He’s too good a talent to allow to languish, but he should stick to his principles from now on.
That’s what can happen when a chant gets going about “throwing ALL the rascals out”; good people get swept out along with the bad.
Since more Democrats than Republicans were occupying high political offices, it stood to reason that any effort to “throw the bums out” would be MORE harmful to Democrats than to Republicans. THAT was the Republican plan for re-taking power — and even the Democrats got snookered into chanting on behalf of the Republicans.
Too many liberal Democrats enthusiastically took up the chant to “throw them all out,” and now we are seeing what can happen when we fall prey to that sort of political foggy thinking.
Russ Feingold has been one of the good guys, but he went out with all the others who were swept away in this urge to “get everyone out.”
Next time, I hope we stop and think for ourselves before we join in Republican chants that harm our own interests.