Depressed ramblings about the election

Gosh, I can’t wait to see Shrub looking even smugger than he already looked. Well, the D’s really did have nothing going for them this year except that they weren’t R’s. The election was a pudding without a theme, in that it’s impossible to say what the results mean because no one stood for anything. A billion dollars in ads and nary an issue raised. I wonder, if Paul Wellstone had died, and received all that adulation, two months ago, would the D’s have learned anything from it, and campaigned differently? Which of the remaining congresscritters would you miss if they died in a plane crash tomorrow?

But let’s not blame the politicians, not entirely, for this was a consumer-led failure. The politicians were so timid because the voters demanded nothing of them. There were no campaigns worthy of the name holding their feet to the fire on, for example, the environment, or health care, even the war, there’s no strong demand for a war with Iraq. People may see it as necessary, but no one’s especially enthusiastic except Rumsfeld and his ilk.

And the Bush administration, which looks to be so heavily backed right now, has totally failed in all its stated objectives. The tax cuts didn’t revive the economy, and won’t. No one thinks the US is any safer from terrorism than it was a year ago, and they haven’t even found the anthrax guy--well, haven’t arrested him anyway--much less Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. Remember the story I mentioned 3 weeks ago about the CIA distributing a picture supposedly of him, but with one more eye than Omar actually possesses? I think that came from a British source--why has no one domestically even mentioned it? If ever there was proof that the Bush admin was incompetent in its stated number one goal, this was it. Instead, Bush has raised Iraq, which does not threaten the US but could probably be beaten in a straight war, the only sort the US is actually any good at, into a bogey man.

The sort of good news is that Tom Daschle will almost certainly think better of running for president, which he had no chance of succeeding in. Of course that puts Gore back more firmly as the likely D candidate, and he has no chance either.