Tuesday’s Election: A Revealing Picture

h/t: Kos

The Teabagger Fringe thought they could barge right in and flex their muscles, which of course are all located below their heads.   The Fringe thought they could easily throw their weight around in a district that had been such easy pickings for Republicans for decades.   Had the national GOP just stuck with their mainstream candidate, things would have worked out just fine.  But no, they caved once again to the bluster of the Fringe and now they are turned out of a seat they’d grown quite comfortable in claiming as exclusively theirs.

The thought that NJ and VA governorship gains by the GOP actually strengthen the party’s hopes for the ‘10 midterms may be misleading.   Neither Democrat was an especially appealing candidate, nor were the Republicans who beat them the sort of folks who are beholden to the frighty-righties.

However:

These elections recall the central point of the 2008 Democratic Party triumph, namely that it was beholden to the progressive expectations of significant and dramatic transformational change.  Specifically:

• Financial sector reform
• Economic Recovery–with specific relief for the embattled Middle Class
• Healthcare Reform (see above)
• Transparency in government
• Ending BOTH foreign occupations
• Closing Gitmo and black site prisons
• Bringing the architects of torture and other criminal constitutional violations to justice

Just because the Republican Party is devouring itself and becoming more lunatic-fringe controlled by the day, does not mean Democrats can afford to dawdle and diddle in so-called Centrist and Bluedog political behaviors, which do little else but perpetuate the corrupt, dysfunctional systems that brought about our present national calamity.

Democrats were elected to take great progressive strides in a relatively short period of time.  The governor’s races in VA and NJ hopefully send a message that mediocrity, timidity and corporate lackey behavior won’t get out the votes.  The NY congressional race hopefully sends a message that will bolster the more reasonable, moderate, and sane faction of the Republican Party.  It also sends a message that the smart money needs to move away from the Palin-Limbaugh-Joe the Plumber bunch; if it doesn’t, and if the extremists continue to exert dominance and gain control of the party, 2010 and 2012 will not be opportunities to regain lost GOP power.   But Democrats had best not take this for granted, or by 2014, we’ll have a barter economy and be at war with Honduras (to borrow and tweak a line from Bill Maher) under the Palin- Pawlenty administration.