Blago's Revenge

Everybody screwed this one up, and now the Democrats are threatening to prevent the legal, if “tainted”, appointment of Roland Burris to the Senate. What a bunch of yahoos.

This is what happens when the makers and interpreters of the law decide that, when the rules won’t produce the political results they want, then fuck the rules; give the rules twenty bucks and a bus ticket out of town and fuggedaboutdit.

Christ Almighty, we’ve had eight years of that kind of thinking, and it nearly killed us. And if we’re going to pull this country out of the grave that Republicans have dug for us, we dare not sit quietly by studying the tips of our shoes as the Democratic Leadership stumbles their way into Act One, Scene One of the Obama Administration by showing their collective asses to the world, exhibiting the same contempt for the democratic process and the rule of law for which we on the Left have always been more than willing to call out Republicans.

Of course, on the upside, the amount of clean, rotational energy capable of being tapped from Abraham Lincoln spinning in his grave will be more than enough to power every home, school, church, bar, mall, gummint building and office complex from Funk’s Grove to Navoo.

  Driftglass

I just like it that Driftglass has found an upside to this fiasco. The idea that the Democrats are showing their collective asses isn’t something new, however.

And what would the right thing have been?

To strip Blago of his appointment authority, and then hold a special election.

And why didn’t they do the right thing?

Because they wanted a sure thing. Because they didn’t trust the voters. Because the stink coming off of the open sewer of Blagojevich-style politics might very well be enough to drive voters to punish his Party by electing a Republican.

[...]

So rather than manning-up, taking their lumps, facing the real problem and the possibility of an embarrassing-but-not-fatal electoral reversal, national and state Democratic Party Leadership from Senate Majority Leader Reid, to the Illinois Secretary of State and Attorney General have instead been desperately bending themselves into the seventh dimension tossing out progressively weirder ad hoc workarounds, hoping that no one would notice that their “solutions” are illegal, ridiculous or both.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.