Well the landslide will bring it down.

Nan­cy Pelosi com­ment­ing on The Col­bert Report:

“I watch it all the time,” said House Minor­i­ty Leader Nan­cy Pelosi (D‑San Fran­cis­co), “and I think, ‘Why would any­body go on there?’ ”

Am I alone in think­ing that this was the quaint­est elec­tion in mem­o­ry? I can think of few things that sound more like a Pyrrhic vic­to­ry than tak­ing back Con­gress, espe­cial­ly since the exec­u­tive branch has cir­cum­vent­ed it so eas­i­ly in the past. Even as exit polls showed a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans sup­port some form of troop with­draw­al from Iraq, Howard Dean addressed the ner­vous media to say that no such thing will hap­pen on a Demo­c­ra­t­ic watch. The midterm elec­tion pro­duced the most con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus in mem­o­ry, rife with “blue dogs” and re-brand­ed, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly vacant New Dems.

How­ev­er, a num­ber of pop­u­lar memes were debunked in the course of the night thanks to the mixed sig­nals the elec­tion sent. The polit­i­cal schiz­o­phre­nia that char­ac­ter­izes a new gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can vot­ers still holds sway, rang­ing from absurd­ly xeno­pho­bic [see Ari­zona] to cau­tious­ly opti­mistic, often in the same state. The USA is not only con­ser­v­a­tive, but it’s also wild­ly reactionary.

It’s been said in the past, but it’s worth repeat­ing that the fear-mon­ger­ing red/blue divide does­n’t hold; Amer­i­can pol­i­tics lacks that sort of sharp-edged con­flict. Instead, Amer­i­can politi­cians cater to the least informed, most reac­tionary cohort — the soft mid­dle — and hedge their bets accordingly.

That said, it’s great to see fright­en­ing nation­al fig­ures like Rick San­to­rum go. Yet as go light­ning rods like San­to­rum, so goes much of what foment­ed bur­geon­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion. It’s a shame that so much polit­i­cal cap­i­tal [blech!] was wast­ed on Sen­a­tor-elect Casey, Jr. As the war rages on a whole new gen­er­a­tion will be sub­ject to a seem­ing­ly end­less aus­ter­i­ty binge. Yet Repub­li­cans will return to their chick­en lit­tle pol­i­tics of para­noia and woe-is-me mar­tyr­dom. Smug, self-sat­is­fied lib­er­als will rest on the lau­rels of unseat­ing San­to­rum as though they brought about revolution.

In times like these timid lead­er­ship will accom­plish noth­ing. Expect noth­ing less.