From the people who brought you co-existant dinosaurs and humans, we have much chest thumping about the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.  DJohn, and Gordon Osmond have said that the fact of these results proves that “the emperor has no clothes.”  I’ll confess that I am a little concerned the independent voters who helped the Democrats in 2008, have supported the G.O.P. in 2009.  It is a concern.  But to qualify that concern, I offer the following.  Winter is coming to Ohio.  It gets cold in Ohio, and I like to wear lots of wool sweaters.  In the warmer seasons I pack those bulky sweaters away in cedar closets.  It is time for those sweaters to come out of the closets, and that is a hassle.  One of these days I’ll need to unpack, and rotate warm weather clothing away in its place.  That concerns me more than the G.O.P. wins in Virginia and Nj., and it should be about the same for you.  

Legislation will be difficult for the foreseeable future because the Democrats have a big tent.  That “big tent” is just a nice way of saying that we have members who would hardly be considered Democrats except for their self declaration.  In many cases it means little, but little is more than nothing.  The Republicans have a small tent, and some want to keep it that way.  Sarah Palin makes money by speaking to crowds of the faithful who prefer a small, “ideologically pure” group.  So she gives them what they want, lip service.  Rush Limbaugh is of the same sort.  Rush reaches many, many people, but he influences few.  Remember Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”, which was intended to help eliminate candidate Hillary Clinton’s primary competition so that the G.O.P. could run against her?  I give you, President Barack Obama.  Remember Rush Limbaugh’s flirtation with NFL ownership?  I give you, the ticket window.

Left, right,  and middle, it is a real pain in a pigs ass watching the sausage of legislation get made.  I’m not fond of the fact that the “public option” is somewhat diminished in the bill most likely to be passed.  But a healthcare reform bill will likely be passed.  If the President got only one term, and managed only that, I would take it.  Although I am quite certain that some reform legislation will be passed, and fairly certain that even more will be accomplished in this and a succeeding term.  I would like to see these wars brought to a close.  I would like to see GLBT citizens guaranteed the full measure of rights that we are all entitled to.  Hell, I would like to see mine guaranteed too.  I would like to see real, meaningful regulation of the financial industry.  We are no safer now than we were before Glass Steagall was created in 1933.  Derivatives, and credit default swaps are still legal.  Hedge funds are still basically unregulated.  Everyone from the far right to the moderate Democratic “Blue Dogs” who take the concepts of a “free market” as articles of faith are oblivious to the fact that hedge funds and other unregulated trading groups essentially control our market( read not at all free), and possess the motive, means, and opportunities to sink large corporations with private, unregulated trades.  The market is not free even among the titanic heroes of the free marketeers.  It is a ruse as real as transubstantiation, and as long as we have guppies who believe that they are conservative free marketeers, we will have schools of guppies, read the middle class, swallowed by sharks.  The system, our system, of a “free market” in sheep’s clothing is designed for it.  

So we have much to do.  We still have those who say dragons are circling, and only they can protect you from them.  A fool and his democracy are soon parted.  There is a lot of work that remains in making this a more perfect nation.  There is a fascinating interplay between reality and perspective.  If you have a place that you normally hang your keys, and one day you dont hang them there, your keys will remain out of place until you find where you put them.  Reality is stubborn.  We can only see our perspective, and we tend to see reality when we bump into it.  Even when we measure it, we are limited by the instruments, and techniques that we use to measure.  Reality is transcendent.  And reality is reason and facts.  The reality of yesterday’s elections is that Corzine was an unpopular Democratic candidate in a Democratic state.  Deeds was not up to the deed in what remains to be Dixie.  And in NY-23, they do not believe in dragons.