DELAY WILL FALL LIKE LIGHTNING FROM THE SKY (TIP OF THE HAT TO J.C.)

Listening to an hysterical... I don't know what she is... maybe a Democrat, maybe an independent... could be anything, has been everything (even a right wing loon)... anyway an hysterical famous person prognosticating on the radio (when I was driving way across town to the only store that can be depended upon to have actual organic vegetables and actual raw food) I shuddered at an aural mirror (or is that an echo chamber). Here she was, beating up the Democrats, like I always do-- BIF! BAM! POW!-- and... well, like Kyle or Stan would say, "I learned something today."

It's so easy to see the Democrats as a pathetic herd of cats, each craven, self-important, little turf-protector a big cheese in his own universe. And THIS is what's gonna defeat the Rovean Empire's machine? It seems impossible. But let me dig back into my Poli Sci 101 class in the 60s. Chances are you never heard of Bob Michel. Michel started serving in Congress before I knew what Congress was and he served as Minority Leader for almost my whole young person life-- the 97th through the 103rd Congresses. He never served as (Republican) Majority Leader; he came to define loser. He was an Inside-the-Beltway establishmentarian first and foremost, leader of the kind-of-opposition after that, and ideological... not. I mean, maybe a little. But not much. People used to call him "a good sport."

More idealistic (ideologically-motivated) Republicans wanted to strangle him. Eventually one did-- Newt Gingrich did him in, took over and lead the House GOP to "glory days" that are only now winding down. Today the Democrats seem like the perpetual minority in need of leaders with balls. The famous lady on the radio today was beating them up good. I do it all the time. But, sans an innovative, risk-taking muthafucka for a leader (like the execrable Newt was), minority parties can't do much, other than allow the majority party's own inevitable hubris to bloat it up and bring it down.

I mean for me it would be easy to fix this right now. Howard Dean is the head of the Democratic Party. Until there's a Democratic president, Dean is the leader. My first IM this morning was from Air America's L.A. star talker, Johnny Wendell. He was quoting Krugman's column before I had my honeydew, blueberries, flaxseed, pomegranate seeds and pecans: "Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and compare them with Colin Powell's pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we know now, it's clear that one man was judicious and realistic, while the other was spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got switched in the way they were presented to the public by the news media." OK, Johnny and Krugman probably see it the way I do. What about Nancy Pelosi? What about Harry Reid? Not to mention Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. Or the two corporate Joes from Connecticut and Delaware. Or Kerry or Edwards. Or anyone who fancies himself a future occupant of the Oval Office. So everyone's off and running in his or her own direction, often as not, a self-serving one, calculating how to come out on, or near the, top inside the minority party.

But, like I said, hubris was inevitable and, like Jimmy Cliff said, "the harder they come, the harder they'll fall." And as long as I'm quoting... Jesus could have been thinking of DeLay and Cunningham and Rove and Pombo and Frist and Ney... and on and one when he said “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky." Amen, brother, Jesus, Amen! And if we watch over the next few months, we all will.