Democrats Laying the Groundwork for 2016 Catastrophe

Democrats may have gone to bed crying softly into their pillows in the wee hours of early Wednesday morning last week but awoke determined to double down on exactly what it was that got their clocks cleaned in the first place. You would think that after receiving such an ass-whipping that there would be some sort of soul-searching and a rethinking of their overall strategy prior to 2016. But we are talking about the Democratic party here so the only logical thing to do with the iceberg in sight is to order the engine room to crank it up to ramming speed. On Thursday, Senate Democrats once again elected Harry Reid to be their leader.

The intrepid Reid's fingerprints were all over the great beat down of 2014 and early indications are that they will also be on the torpedo hit amidships in two years if Queen Hillary the Inevitable gets rejected by the electorate in her Quixotic quest for power. If Mrs. Clinton goes down she is going to take the entire party down with her and there is no Plan B for the future. Republican strategists must be salivating at the prospect of a Democratic party self-immolation -- that is if they can stop bickering among themselves long enough take advantage of the rare historical opportunity to deliver the killing blow to their nemesis. The scheming Karl Rove once spoke of a "permanent Republican majority" although he could never deliver it. That prophesy is within reach if all that the GOP does is simply stay out of the Democrats' way as they continue to march off the edge of a cliff like a pack of drunken lemmings.

According to a story from the website of The Washington Post entitled "Sen. Harry M. Reid sees dissent but holds onto Democratic leadership role":

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid faced the first internal opposition to his grip on power Thursday as at least six Democrats rejected his bid for another leadership term during an emotional meeting following last week's drubbing in the midterm elections.

Quelling a small but vocal rebellion, Reid (D-Nev.) won reelection to another term atop the caucus, now as minority leader after eight years in the majority. But his victory came only after a 31 / 2-hour meeting that became a forum for political grievances and a rollout of an expanded leadership team meant to balance the caucus's ideological and regional diversity.

Four straight election victories had produced unwavering support and increasing power for Reid in the Democratic caucus, but the repudiation on Nov. 4 tested his clout.

On Thursday, he listened to his critics complain about the party's campaign agenda, and some demanded that he steer away from confrontation with Republicans.

But Reid had no trouble securing the leadership spot because hell, if you are in a hole just keep right on digging until it becomes a grave. Common sense would dictate this but the Dems are just asking for a bigger shovel. This should do wonders for the party base that in a rejection of both President Barack Obama and the thorough rot of the party leadership stayed home in the mid-terms. There is already more trouble brewing with the desperate Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana getting behind a bill to approvethe Keystone XL pipeline in the Senate next week. The Democrats are also scrambling to ensure that there will be no real reform of the NSA Stasi's domestic surveillance and data-mining programs. This will endear the party to environmentalists and progressives who will vote Green, libertarian or just stay home. It is fascinating to watch this slow motion train wreck because the party is determined to stay the course leading towards political extinction.

Reid's smoothest early move has been to eliminate a potential key anti-Hillary voice in giving Senator Elizabeth Warren a "special" leadership post as an "envoy" to the party base or in cruder terms, a Judas goat. A column from The Boston Herald, "Harry Reid plays Elizabeth Warren like a chump with new post" sees this as the Machiavellian political masterstroke that it is.

Harry Reid and his loser Democratic colleagues dangled a meaningless leadership post in front of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and she took the bait.

Hillary Clinton must be getting a big, loud laugh out of this one. Warren is the biggest threat to her path to the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and now the Massachusetts senator is on the party's leadership team. The same team that just got smoked by the voters.

How can Warren lead a liberal insurgency against Clinton when she's no longer an insurgent? A few weeks ago she was getting headlines calling out the Senate for being sexist. Now the headline is, "Warren takes Senate leadership post."

Taking Reid's offer is a risky move for the freshman senator's future. If Democrats lose big again in two years, she will get part of the blame. After all, she is the "strategic policy adviser for the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee."

It brings to mind Lyndon B. Johnson's classic remark - reportedly about J.Edgar Hoover -that he'd rather have him "inside of the tent pissing out than outside of the tent pissing in". So it is all in on a proven bad game plan in order to feed the lust for power of the Clinton mafia who may have a crackerjack political organization but a bad product that may not be able to close the deal with voters. The much hyped war on women figures to be a big part of Hillary's 2016 campaign but consider all the good that it did last week when it went up like a bag of flaming dogshit left on the doorstep at DNC headquarters. But hey, this is just how the Democrats roll anymore.

After the Tuesday massacre Obama wasted no time in continuing to alienate progressives. He nearly immediately announced that more troops would be sent to Iraq and has spent the past week slithering around the Pacific selling the highly secretive TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) which is another job killing corporate giveaway. He has also renewed the vitriolic and lie-filled Putin bashing after a brief hiatus in a signal that the great neocon rebooting of the Cold War is on again. The reviled and demonized Russian leader got the message and is leaving early from the G20 summit after being set upon by the yappy little attack poodles of Uncle Scam, notably the fascists Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper, either of whom cold stand in for Norsefire Party Chancellor Adam Sutler in the movie "V For Vendetta". These dumb bastards just won't quit until their idiotic and childish games end up getting us all incinerated in a nuclear exchange and the jousting is only going to get worse in the coming presidential race. 

The imminent TPP deal is especially vile in that it indicates a degree of collusion between Obama and newly crowned Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who are on the same page when it comes to screwing Americans over for their corporate benefactors. McConnell is taking fire from the right though so he has now launched the smokescreen of Obama's "War on Coal"after dear leader wandered off the reservation with his recent climate dealwith China. This is the truest barometer of just how batshit fucking crazy that America has become in that every goddamned thing has to be a "war". There is the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on women, the war on obesity, the war on Christmas and far too many other "wars" to list here. What it all amounts to is a war on everything that was once decent in this country as well as a final pitchfork in the ass of anything that it was alleged to have once stood for. Why not just admit it that the war on stupidity was lost long ago. Our pathetically failed political system is a damning testament to that.

So now the perfect storm is coming for the Democratic party as it currently exists under the abominable master plan of running as less overtly fascist Republicans and cherry-picking special interest groups for votes. The turnout in the mid-terms was reportedly the lowest in 72 yearsand there is a reason for this that goes beyond the obvious voter suppression tactics and deluge of corporate money. As I recently wrote in my piece "The Democrats Got What They Deserved"the party has grave problems right now due to years of rottenness, fecklessness, deal-cutting and betrayal under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The term "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"has been used by the right-wingers with great effect when it came to vilifying the French for their less-than lockstep support of neocon wars of aggression. It could more appropriately be applied to the Congressional leadership of the Democrats, particularly with Mr. Reid who is already carving out a big wedge of limburger to nosh on in the new GOP controlled Senate.

The American nightmare continues but don't expect to wake up anytime soon because now all that the Republicans have to do is keep their shit together and come up with some sort of message that appeals to a marginally bigger slice of the demographic pie and they will control the political system for generations. They may not even have to do that considering that the Democrats are hellbent on hitching their wagon to the "drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC's game of thrones" that is Hillary Clinton. It was her hubby who wedded the Democrats to corporate and Wall Street interests and it is only fitting that she will be the one who finishes the job of destroying the party that used to stand for FDR style economic fairness before it sold it's wretched soul and sold the rest of us down the river in the process.