The Democratic Party?

Kinda sad, actually.

Here's a president doing really bad, stuck in a war that has no way out or up and swimming in the middle of a massive scandal in his party. And nothing's going on.

The press has been shifted further and further to the Neocon/Big Business/Believer right. While one can't judge what will happen with the new Supreme Court Members, things are likely to shift further to the pro-rich and pro-corporation side of the ledger. More people are falling to the wayside, and all you hear are celebrations along the lines of "things are getting better."

And what happens? We get a bunch of bullies in congress, and they bluster their way to victory after victory. And what do the Democrats do? Talk about bipartisanship, spout the occasional "they lied" (which is quickly shouted down, in lockstep fashion, by the organized right) then run like hell to make out like they're still buddy-buddy with those bullies beating them up.

What I fear now is that the Democratic Party has become a Straw Party -- something used when either agreeable patsies are needed for some henious actions or an enemy is needed to beat up on, then set in the corner and left alone.

Notice that the places now allowed to vote "Democrat" in the presidential electoral college are those places which the factions of the Republican party view as the home bases of their enemy:

• Neocons: The Northeastern Seaboard
  
• Evangelicals: The Left Coast (Hollywood and San Francisco)
  
• Big Business: Unionized Midwest (or what they can get away with: I'd be afraid if I were Ohio and I keep shrinking like they have)

And naturally, this "enemy" is kept marginalized and separated so that the "Real America" knows their unitedness.

Also note how badly New Orleans has been treated since the Hurricane conveniently opened the (conveniently located) not-quite-quality leevees and flooded out the poorer, blacker (and conveniently Democratic voting) parts of the city. They knew how weak the leevees were, and that they broke immediatly (if not sooner).

But yes, I'm now worried. We may now have one-party rule with a mechanism to identify that party's enemies for exploitation. And they may be able to do it down to the individual -- bad enough that these computer programs actively massage the vote, but I'll bet the other side of the coin has yet to be revealed -- that these voting machines take fingerprints and match them up to the FBI files, giving a name and face to the vote. Say goodbye to the secret ballot, hello to the Nationwide Tammany system (though now for the rich).