Jan. 6: The Day the Democrats Stood Up With One Voice to Say ...

There have been days in my life where my sense of reality has rocked back on its hinges, finding it just flat-out hard to believe something.

I encountered that the day that the Supreme Court awarded Bush the 2000 election. I encountered that even further when the American populace said last November to Bush, "Hey, dude, you're doing fine! Keep up those massive expenditures, and make sure nobody different from me can marry, 'cause God knows that's the important thing!"

Today was another moment like that, when I read the news stories about today's challenge to the Ohio electoral votes, and the subsequent votes in the Senate and the House.

The House of Representatives, at the very least, has a little chutzpah. 31 votes, including my own Congresswoman (thank God for Jan Schakowsky), to object to Ohio's electoral votes. But when did my senses rock?

Oh, when I happened to read about the Senate vote.

Why, didn't you hear? Every single Democrat in the Senate objected to the Ohio electoral votes. It was an amazing show of solidarity and pride in progressive values and the bedrock principles of democracy. Yeah, sure, there were 55 Republicans all cursing them down, but every single one of the 44 Democratic Senators, as well as Jeffords, stood up and made sure America knew that Ohio's elections weren't conducted fairly. A lost cause, but a moment of nobility, and one that the Democrats will forever be remembered for.

Or ... not.

Excuse me, I think I must've been channeling a mirror universe there.

Because the vote that happened?

74-1. Seventy-four-to-bloody-frickin'-one.

Sen. Clinton? Sen. Kennedy? Each one of the 74.

Sen. Obama? Check. Hey, way to start setting up your voting record with us Chicagoans, Barack ol' boy!

And let's not forget the man of the hour ...

Cheney: Kerry? Kerry? Kerry?

Kennedy: Um, he's in Iraq. My chief of staff's aide's lover's friend's lawyer's clerk's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who went with Teresa on the plane last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Cheney: Thank you, Simone. I mean, Ted.

Kennedy: No problem whatsoever.

Sen. Boxer: "I think this is the first time in my life I ever voted alone in the United States Senate, and I have to tell you, I think it was the right thing to do."

Politics as usual. Politics that's safe. God forbid we alienate by taking a stand for what's right, even if the very basic elements of America are being considered or at question.

But what do you do? Stop caring about politics altogether? Or join a third party, which at best has gotten 2% of the vote (cf. Anderson in 1980)?

I hope, with every fiber of my heart, that I'm able to post to this blog in early February and tell people that there's hope that the Democrats may find their gonads after all, because there's a new DNC chair in town ... Howard Dean.

Where the hell is this country going off to? And where do people with half a brain go from here, if our two-party system is falling apart with spineless idiots giving in to facist neocons because they like their jobs way too much?