Oh, joy. Look who’s in the news again:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the longtime Democratic senator from Connecticut running for re-election as an independent, says the party leadership has assured him he would keep his seniority if he returns to Congress.

Local Democrats are responding with irritation, political opponents voice disbelief, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) denies making a decision.
But the strongest response is likely to come from Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) who views Lieberman’s independent status as an opportunity to press Democratic leaders to restore seniority he lost four years ago.

If Lautenberg retrieves seniority accrued during 18 years of Senate service before retiring in 2000, he could leapfrog Lieberman to lead the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee or the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Lieberman has served 18 years in the upper chamber. Lautenberg has served a total of 22 years, but he has only four years of recognized seniority because he retired from Congress for two years in 2000.

While even Lautenberg’s allies admit the chances of jumping over as many as five lawmakers on either committee are small, the senator thinks he has a strong case.
Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, does not want to wrestle with these questions in public before the Nov. 7 election.

“The caucus won’t make any decisions until after the elections in November,” said Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley.
While that response implies that Lieberman’s status is to be decided by the entire caucus, senior Democratic aides say questions of seniority are largely decided by Reid.

Lieberman said he would keep his senior position in the caucus, even though he lost Connecticut’s Democratic primary, and is running against Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, whom the Senate Democratic leadership has endorsed.

“That’s what I’ve been told,” said Lieberman in an interview Friday, before Congress recessed for the election. “Caucuses like to keep as many members as they can, not discourage membership,” implying that leaders risk his defection to the GOP if they strip him of seniority.

Lieberman said he assumed that would mean he would continue to serve as the top Democrat on the governmental affairs panel. It would also allow him to become the most senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. But Lieberman said his desire is to stay atop Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

It looks more and more likely that Lieberman will win reelection. A poll released last week by Quinnipiac University showed Lieberman holding a 49-39 percent lead over Lamont among likely voters.

That could create big problems with Democrats in Congress and around the country if their party takes over the Senate. The governmental affairs panel is primarily responsible for oversight and investigations of the executive branch.

If Democrats take over either the Senate or the House, it is expected they will pour much time and effort into investigating the Bush administration. And many Democrats think Lieberman, who lost the primary race because of his perceived closeness to the Bush administration, is not the right person for that job.

Joe’s got the whole fucking Democratic caucus of the Senate over a barrel. Nice job, Reid. I suppose now is not the time to say, “we told you so.” Someone make an inappropriate joke about being stabbed in the back.

Anyway, this is the perfect compliment to some reading I was doing this morning. I am a charter member of the Billmon for God party:

The comparison with the Whigs is spot on, in fact I’ve made it myself. The rise of slavery as the great, polarizing issue in American life and politics did them in. The Democrats (oh, the irony) where superbly successful at demagoguing them down South, while their wishy-washy, kinda sorta anti-slavery positions were never hard enough to satisify Northern abolitionists.

The party never really stood a chance — not as long as the farmers of the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) were enthusiastic members of the cheerfully racist, bellicose, expansionist coalition that Old Hickory had forged.

The Whigs tottered on for a time by recruiting a succession of war heroes as candidates (sound familiar?) but by the 1852 election the jig was up. The abolitionist wing — the wild-eyed lefty bloggers of the 19th century — grabbed control of the party, dumped their own president (the blandly moderate Millard “Lieberman” Fillmore) and nominated a slightly less moderate anti-slavery general named Winfield “Lamont” Scott. And got their heads handed to them.

After that the party fell apart as Southern “Bidens” and “Nelsons” bolted to the Democrats and the radicals formed their own splinter parties. For the next eight years the United States was, in effect, a one-party state.

There remained, however, a core of old Whigs — including an obscure ex-congressman who had made something of a name for himself as a railroad lawyer in Illinois — and they gradually gravitated to the one of the splinters, which merged with the leading radical abolitionist splinter to create the Republican Party.

The rest, as they say, is history — a rather bloody history, but also glorious and revolutionary: leading to probably the greatest single blow for human progress ever struck on this continent.
If that was the way of the Whigs, then I could definitely go for it (not the blood, but the reborn, revolutionary party). And if the price that had to be paid was the destruction of the pathetic remnants of the Democratic Party, why the hell should anyone cry over that? It’s practically a corpse. Let it rest in peace.

snip

The Democratic hegemony of the 1850s collapsed because the country changed — it was in a constant process of change, with the industrial revolution in full swing and the frontier moving west at a couple hundred miles per year. Hungry for free soil to homestead, the Old Northwest bolted from its alliance with the slaveholding South and cast its lot with the Republicans and Lincoln. War came, and when the smoke cleared the political balance of power — and the country — had been completely transformed.

Can the same thing happen again? Maybe. Maybe the immigrants or the information revolution or economic distress or some other irresistable force will push the wheel around again and leave the Dems on top, or bring a new party to power — instead of leaving us with a hapless bunch of windbags who have to rely on the mother of all sex scandals to overcome their own handicaps.

But there’s a strong smell of fustiness and decay in the system — almost like the sour, medicinal odor of a nursing home. America isn’t a spring chicken any more. At times (like now) you can almost hear the arteries hardening, even if you’re not standing next to Dick Cheney. We’re getting pretty set in our ways.

The instruments of top-down manipulation and control, and the enormous quantities of cash available to power them, may be too strong for economic change and social evolution (the godparents of political realignment) to overcome. Political change — much less fundamental change, the kind that frees the slaves or brings malefactors of great wealth to heel — may no longer be possible in American politics.

I’m an inarticulate putz next to Billmon, but I share a lot of his pessimism. The “instruments of top-down manipulation and control” have been my number one concern, alongside the other top concerns I have about what’s racing to meet us in a bleak looking future beset with problems that a would take a passel of Lincolns, Einsteins, and Roosevelts to solve.

But as for the present, analysis like this is exactly why I resist calls to be enthusiastic about Democratic victory this fall. Let’s say they win and Lamont loses. Senior Bush cocksucker Lieberman will do his best to ensure that no real action is taken to hold Bush accountable, or to stop the progress of the most damaging programs and policies enacted in the Reign of Terror. And when Joe’s not on his knees servicing his Master, Biden, Hillary and the Gang of Thirteen will pick up the slack.

I don’t have to make this up out the tortured foil covered recesses of my own wine fogged mind; all I have to do is look at the Democratic party’s voting track record for the last six years. I don’t see how sharing power is going to halt the slide towards Republican Lite that’s become the modus operandi for almost half the party.

I appreciate that the alternative, true NeoCon rule, is worse. But by how much? It seems like every day the answer to that question is less than the day before. As Billmon puts it, it shouldn’t take the Worst Possible Sex Scandal for the Democrats to win this election. And yet somehow, it does.

I’m not a fanatic Kossack, so I can’t quite contextualize this diary from the height of the Clone Wars there. But I’m going to guess it’s a response to calls by some to embrace the idea that the Democratic party needs to “speak to moderate conservatives” a la Obama’s lickspittle at the altar of religious conservatives.

When the Democratic Party stayed out of power, then they tossed the feminists out, so they could support Reid for Majority Leader. I still voted for Democrats, because I am not an feminist, and the alternative is so much worse.

When the Democratic Party stayed out of power, then they tossed the academics out, so they ddin’t have to put up a real fight for a balanced budget. I still voted for Democrats, because I am not an academic, and the alternative is so much worse.

When the Democratic Party stayed out of power, then they tossed the activists out, so they ddin’t have to fight for voting rights and sound elections. I still voted for Democrats, because I am not an activist, and the alternative is so much worse.

When the Democratic Party stayed out of power, then they tossed the economic populists out, so they didn’t have to fight the bankruptcy bill. I still voted for Democrats, because I am not an economic populist, and the alternative is so much worse.

When the Democratic Party stayed out of power, then they tossed the pro-choice voters out, so they coudl grandstand on Schiavo. I still voted for Democrats, because I am not an pro-choice voter, and the alternative is so much worse.

Then they decided to toss me out. I didn’t vote for Democrats any more, because I coudln’t tell how the alternative was any worse.

In 2000 there was more than a dime’s worth of difference between the Demcorats and Republicans, but they are spending it really quickly.

I don’t know if he’s being tongue in cheek or what, but it’s very close to how I feel. Taken together with the history of the Whigs, I’m left feeling very comfortable about my being a Radical interested most in What is Right and Good, instead of what works for right now the better to save DINO ass.

If I have a point (which is very hard to keep in my head with a bundle of cuteness like my niece pulling on my computer cords) it’s that I’m ready to have a different conversation. I appreciate how I should vote. I’m the same as the Religious Right- even if my Democratic reps are perverts, I’ll probably still vote for them because the alternative is worse. But increasingly I see this as Kabuki, an exercise in feel good futility. There are more pressing issues we will face than which rich, white, conservative male Protestant is going to be ripping us off this year.

Getting back to Billmon’s post,
let’s take a second look at the closing paragraph:

Political change — much less fundamental change, the kind that frees the slaves or brings malefactors of great wealth to heel — may no longer be possible in American politics.

What does that mean to you? What does it mean as you determine your social course of action? What plans are you making for the future, in which “slavery to the malefactors of great wealth” is a likely condition of the majority? I no longer subscribe to romantically dystopian narratives of the Great Overnight Crash. But I do worry about Lambert’s excellent track record of predicting how the tyranny of brown people overseas today is the future for citizens tomorrow. I want to talk about what we can do in a post-Federalist reality, as a collective and as individuals.