Take a listen, study the lyrics.

Tumble outta bed

Dolly in "9 to 5". Her fellow secretaries were played by Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, at the time two of the most politically progressive actors in Hollywood.

And stumble to the kitchen
Pour myself a cup of ambition
Yawnin, stretchin, try to come to life
Jump in the shower
And the blood starts pumpin
Out on the streets
The traffic starts jumpin
And folks like me on the job from 9 to 5
Chorus:

Workin 9 to 5
What a way to make a livin
Barely gettin by
Its all takin
And no givin
They just use your mind
And they never give you credit
Its enough to drive you
Crazy if you let it

9 to 5, for service and devotion
You would think that i
Would deserve a fair promotion
Want to move ahead
But the boss won’t seem to let me in
I swear sometimes that man is out to get me
Mmmmm…

They let your dream
Just to watch ‘em shatter
You’re just a step
On the boss mans ladder
But you got dreams he’ll never take away

On the same boat
With a lot of your friends
Waitin’ for the day
Your ship’ll come in
And the tides gonna turn
An its all gonna roll your way

2nd chorus:

9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
There’s a better life
And you think that I would daunt you
Its a rich mans game
No matter what they call it
And you spend your life
Going funny if you want it

3rd chorus:

9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
Theres a better life
And you dream that I would daunt you
Its a rich mans game
No matter what they call it
And you spend your life
Going funny if you want it

It’s a song about unfounded hope, and unblinkered reality. It’s a song about exploitation, expendability, and redundancy. It’s a song about a system that’s trapped us, a system that as recently proved simply doesn’t work.

The Reagan Revolution didn’t just change our economic priorities. It changed us philosophically and spiritually, Americans, too. We became more shallow, more individualistic, more selfish, more interested in conspicuous consumption and less interested in the communitas and its welfare. We decried the social contract as a burden on our freedom, and saw poverty as weakness.  Now, in these dark times,  we may be suffering from the hubris of our arrogant wilfullness, succumbing as we did to easy credit, and simplistic marketing, and believing that those prettly little kleenex and spit houses we bought with money we didn’t have were actually worth what we were told they were worth.

The movie “9 to 5″ came out in 1980, the year that Ronald Reagan was elected on a promise to bring “morning to America” Nearly thirty years later, that morning has turned into something darker, more determined, more malicious than we ever imagined. Will today’s new reality shift our priorities, and make us realize that the behemoth of growth, progress and wealth was founded on very little, and has perhaps been fundamentally punctured? Will reality change us, will it make us reflect perhaps on how easily we allowed ourselves to be led?

I doubt it. But if we don’t, we may not learn the lesson that may be the only path to recovery. The need to recognize our weaknesses.

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a fresh faced bill clinton in 1993. he came from hope, he ended up nowhere.

In 1993 Clinton arrived on a heady wave of enthusiasm, dedicated to undoing some of the excesses of Reaganism. He made a few stumbles, he announced a sweeping healthcare initiative and he got nowhere. There are many reasons for his failure. The sheer newness of the administration, presentation issues, and this – he got very limited support from a Democratically controlled Congress. That opened the door for Gingrich’s charges of stasis and corruption that led to the Contract for America, and sweeping mid-term victories. That broadly was the end of the Clinton Administration as an effective liberally-driven government. It’s the main reason that the Reagan Revolution was not shattered. Clinton became merely a painful interregnum.

Cut to 15 years later.  Obama is getting it right. The budget is a great document, the bipartisan experiment is over, the decision to leave troops behind in Iraq is correct, and the healthcare, energy, and education agendas are on course. Now it’s up to the Democratically elected Congress to respond. Obama’s charm offensive is wasted on the GOP. Obama appears to have realized that. The true targets of his charm offensive should be members of his own Senate caucus with a more conservative viewpoint.

By making an end run around the Democrats in the Senate by courting Snowe and Collins of Maine, Obama will be able to skewer Blue Dog Democrats with the charge of obstructionism, and privately at least, be able to warn them of what could happen if they let him down. Obama is a student of history, and he knows better than anyone what happened to Clinton.

The GOP is winging it’s way to virtual irrelevance, thankfully, with the exception of the tiny rump of Republican moderates in the Senate. The success of the Obama administration rests on many factors, but the willingness of Democrats in the Senate to hold fast will be a key element. Let’s put the majority whip to work, and hope that Obama makes his displeasure clear, public and effective in dealing with recalcitrants in his own party. They must tow the line – or face the historical legacy that they opened the door to yet another conservative backlash, with all the destruction and injustice that would usher in.

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For a President apparently more politically savvy than most on arrival in the White House, he let himself down badly. He forgot that Bipartisanship BS is only meant to be trotted out for winning elections. After they’re over, you kick the losers when they’re down. But Obama’s flaw is that he hates the idea of being hated. So instead, the President got an earful of whining from the GOP who had ample opportunity to diss the plan, and Obama ends up looking like an unconvincin blowhard, after only a week on the job.

The lesson of the day is pretty simple. The GOP is more right-wing, doctrinaire and disagreeable than ever. They’re MO is very simple. If the President had ignored them they would have bleated on that nobody listens. If the President gives them the time of day, they give him the finger. Neither apporach is without costs, but the former is a far better alternative, considering that right now Republicans are more discredited than at virtually any time since Roosevelt.

Politics is not a pretty business. It never was and it never will be. The sooner Obama realizes that the better, because right now he’s at risk of becoming a victim of his own magnanimity. Most kids learn it in the school yard. There are certain people that are just dangerous to be friends with. Obama apparently missed that memo.

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you wanna see my resume?

Ted Kennedy, one of the scions of the family, is sadly unlikely to serve much longer in the Senate. Before this week when his niece Caroline decided she’d kind of like to be a Senator too, that would have left only one Kennedy left in Congress, Ted’s son Patrick, elected as a Congressman for Rhode Island in 1994, at the highly qualified age of 27. Since then he’s driven drunk into the Capitol building, and checked in to rehab for an Oxycontin addiction, both sterling qualificiations to be a Kennedy in Congress, no doubt. His signature achievement appears to be, well, being a Kennedy.

To suggest there are double standards for the Kennedys is just too shocking for words to many, but at least the raw political savegery that put Sarah Palin into a position of prominence has nothing whatsoever to do with her name or family. Caroline Kennedy just gets to make a phone call to be considered for an “appointment” to office. Palin at least had to be elected Governor of Alaska. One can understand LBJ’s feelings about the Kennedy’s. He was a poor boy from Texas made good. The Kennedys were America’s blessed, for reasons which to some extent remain a mystery.

Oddly enough, for a first family, they certainly are a blighted lot. One secret lobotomy (how very regal of them), two assassinations and a slew of airplane crashes, as well as a rape acquittal, various stints in rehab, and a fatal car accident (for the passenger that is). The ones that dodged the Kennedy’s usual fate have ended up in mediocre positions at best. And yet, the American Aristocratic myth bizarrely persists. The one President they had among them was famous for a failed invasion of Cuba, the beginning of the Vietnam quagmire, and okay, defusing the Missile Crisis. Not much to speak of at home at all. Why all the fuss? Because his dad was a bootlegger, and social climber, because Jack dated Marilyn Monroe? It’s hard to know. And yet the myth persisted.

But even if Caroline is appointed to be Senator, and it certainly seems possible she will be despite opposition to the idea, the Kennedy mythology should finally begin to fade in the next few years, as America lurches into the future, and the surviving generation of Kennedy’s is astonishing by virtue only of its ordinariness. Of course, the irony is that in Illinois, the sale of a Senate seat is the centerpiece of a scandal. The fact that Caroline Kennedy’s last name clearly could be buying her one too seems to attract little notice. She’s a perfectly decent woman of average charisma, intellect and appeal. It’s a wild guess but if the same woman was named Caroline something other than Kennedy, I doubt Governor Patterson would even be taking her call.

But then who needs qualifications to be a senator these days.

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aren't they sweet together. not

Rick Warren is a more agreeable and far smarter version of Focus on the Family’s repugnant James Dobson. If you’re going to try and turn the country into some kind of boring Christian nation, you don’t harangue people to do it, like Dobson. You have to jolly them towards the Rapture, with a Starbucks latte and a good time.

Warren is, sadly, a very influential man in certain quarters. He will look upon his appearance at Obama’s inauguration as a huge victory for his roly-poly propaganda approach. He’ll stir up his troops in favor of the new President, he’ll be able to show nice pix of him blessing the new Prez, and he’ll be able to say, look what kind of influence I have. It’s a huge ego trip for him.

Oh, and he’s being used by Obama quite brilliantly.

Progressives whine about the distasteful quality of Warren blessing the new boss, but to use a phrase from Obama’s playbook, “they just don’t get it”. If ever there was a sign that Obama might just be talking bipartisan BS, rather than believing in it, this may be it. He chose to have Warren at the Inauguration, not because he likes the guy, but because he wants to get the support of the millions of people in Republican congressional districts and states for his agenda. Sure, he  uses the political cover of “disagreeing without being disagreeable” as political cover, but this is effective GOP busting politics. Just imagine, the President runs up a policy that the GOP in Congress just hates. They vow to crush the initiative, filibuster, you name it. Then the emails start coming in. “Obama is a great Christian, and he’s a friend of Rick”. “If it’s good enough for Rick, it’s good enough for us, and on and on.” Suddenly, the ground under the average GOP footsoldier in the house is gone, and he’s softening his line on that progressive initiative.

Voila.

And what about Rick? Having been duped, does he backslide and look thoroughly un-Christian about the President, or does he accept the fact that he’s been out-maneuvered. My guess is that Warren’s ego is too important to the guy for him to risk even looking remotely bad, so he’ll probably go along with the gag to look good.

Politics is not a pretty business. Obama’s already told us he’s happy talking to the enemy. Most people think he means Ahmadinajad, but Rick Warren qualifies too. Progressives need to get a sense of the real world, rather than hanging their hats on issues the whole time.

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You can bet that Obama’s healthcare reform package is going to contain an awful lot that the GOP Senate Caucus is going to hate. In about three seconds all talk of bipartisanship will be off, because they will filibuster. Or at least try to. My guess is that the Dems end with 57, (they will probably win Minnesota by a handful of votes). That means, including Bernie Sanders, and the recently exonerated Joe Lieberman, they’ll have 59 votes. That leaves them one shy to beat the filibuster.

Which is where the fair ladies of Maine come in…

Senator Susan Collins

Senator Olympia Snowe

Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are the two most moderate Republicans left in the Senate, according to the National Review 2007 Vote Ratings. Last year they each voted on the “Liberal” side (according to the National Review Criteria) over 47% of the time. Before Obama starts negotiating with the GOP (never a particularly savory affair), he’ll go to Collins and Snowe first to help him beat the filibuster and get the legislation he wants through Congress intact. They’ll be hearing the words “It’s the President” from their assistants an awful lot in the next couple of years.

Collins and Snowe are pretty much borderline Republicans. A couple more important votes to the left and they might as well be in the Democratic Caucus. And while there are a number of Blue Dog Democrats who might be suspect on some key issues, going to Collins and Snowe first will always strengthen the President’s hand in dealing with his own party.

Collins and Snowe. Get to know those names.  Pretty soon, they’ll be bigger household names than even, I don’t know, Sarah Palin.

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i am grateful

We now know for sure that Obama wanted to keep Lieberman on board. I’m certain his voice was the key to his survival as chair of the Homeland Security Committee. Obama probably didn’t make his reasons clear, but it seems certain they were straightforwardly tactical. Lieberman is in the Senate for at least four more years. So it’s a good idea for Obama to own him to help him beat GOP filibusters. It’s unlikely he cares much for a turncoat, but the key here is appearances. Who doesn’t like to be forgiven, and who doesn’t like to be seen as forgiving?

Lieberman was kind enough to do his part by saying that he was grateful to Obama for putting in a good word for him, a not so subtle hint that the President-Elect was running the show. The whole episode made Lieberman go all warm and fuzzy inside.  Katie Couric interviewed Lieberman earlier…

He added that he thought the Democratic message on the subject was, “it’s time for us to reconcile, to close ranks.” He added he was “very grateful” and “in some senses feeling closer to the Senate Democratic caucus than I have since the 2000 election.”

For more info go here

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The truth is that attempting bipartisanship is a recipe for total disaster. The nation is in deep trouble on all fronts. It needs real change (not just the half-baked rhetorical kind). To make the truly progressive advances the country needs means breaking some eggs and seriously pissing off some vested interests. And with the mandate that the Democrats have there’s no need to even talk to the GOP, let alone bring them aboard on the process. They are in the wilderness and that’s where they deserve to stay.

We have to hope that Obama is smart enough not to embrace his own Bipartisan BS. The choice of Rahm Emmanuel as White House Chief of Staff is clearly a very good sign that the next President is ahead of the curve. Emmanuel is a true attack dog, just the kind of enforcer to strike fear into recalcitrant Blue Dog Democrats looking over their shoulder. When Emmanuel is on the prowl, there are going to be casualties. And that is a good thing.

If Obama governs from the center, like he suggests he will, there is no question he will fail to halt the decline of this country. He’s talked a great deal of “sacrifice”. The sacrifice required to transform the nation might include his own popularity. Nothing less than sweeping legislation on all fronts is needed. If he doesn’t enrage large chunks of the population he’s not going far enough.

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