With the election of Republican senator Scott Brown in Massachussets,
we are now ushering an era of eternal gridlock when absolutely nothing
will get done in the US Congress thanks to the stubborn game played by
the politicians ever since Barack Obama was elected president.
One one side are the Republicans, a highly disciplined bunch who are
doing everything to block any initiative set forth by the Democratic
White House. Mind you, they are not doing that because they want the
best for the nation. They act out of bitterness for having lost a
majority they took for granted during the Clinton years. In the
meantime, they wreaked havoc to the country pushing and approving stupid
measures like rejecting Universal Health Care, excessive deregulation,
the war in Iraq, the Defense of Marriage Act, The Patriot Act, the
current Immigration laws and the tightening of the Cuba embargo – to
name a few. Republicans in Congress follow the lead of a bunch of
religious zealots who seem to forget that there is a Constitutional
separation between church and state.
On the other side are the Democrats – feeling too entitled after
successive wins in 2006 (during the midterm elections) and 2008, they
are a polarized bunch with pretty much zero unity. In the party you find
the extremely liberal, moderates and the so-called Blue Dog Democrats,
who are part of the party in name only. Their views essentially follow
the Republican party line, like Rep. Michael McMahon, Staten Island's
sad excuse for a Congressman, who only got his elected because Vito
Fossella – the former occupier of that seat – got involved in a sordid
sex scandal (so much for the family values he supposedly represented)
and did not run for reelection. Oh, and there was also the fact that his
strongest opponent died before election day. But I digress.
Oh and then there are the Independents – another bunch whose ideals
go from liberal to ultra-conservative and pretty much follow their
whims. An example of that is Sen. Joe Lieberman, who got booted from the
Democratic ballot only to reemerge as an Independent. The senator often
ignores his own constituents – for instance, in spite of the fact that
the majority of people in his state support Health Care, his stance has
been more on the Conservative side. Oh, remember that he backed John
McCain? Enough said.
Until Senator-elect Brown won in Massachussets, the Democratic party
had a comfortably (albeit shaky) filibuster-proof majority in the
Senate. The situation has now changed, and now God only knows what the
future will bring. In the meantime, bipartisanship becomes something for
history books, since the parties are so damn polarized that no one can
find a way to
The Democratic party needs to learn a lesson from their counterparts
across the aisle: without party unity, nothing will ever get done. For
instance, the Health Care debate has been delayed for eons thanks not
only to the very Red State democrats that the president's election
helped bring to Congress. But now we'll be a nation in Gridlock --- and
that might cost the Democrats the White House after only four years.
