Hey Libby, Ya Lookin' Forward To November?

I don’t know about you, but frankly after two weeks I’m a bit Spained out. Time to get back to business, don’t you think?

I’ve been thinking about current events and things going on in the world, and inevitably, given the time of year, my thoughts have turned to baseball and politics. It was just a little over a year ago that I announced my forsaking of the Chicago franchise of the National Baseball League (their name shall never be mentioned again), and while I am quite happy with my new team (go Yanks!) I do find it hard to remove the bitter taste of bile that has built up from over 40 years of rooting for the team that time forgot.

That team, as many of you are well aware, is working on almost 100 years of baseball futility. 100 years. The law of averages almost dictates that such an awful record is virtually impossible to achieve without really trying to mess things up, and truthfully, to explain that team’s record, it isn’t hard to point out that they did seem to go out of their way to get things wrong.

I won’t bore you with the litany of missed opportunities here, except to say that there not only were many, but they also were created with a sort of spirit crushing perfection that would be an inspiration if your goal in life was to become a laughing stock. Fairly routinely, the team whose name shall not be mentioned would come close to breaking the “curse” only to wind up failing in some spectacular, wildly creative way. The ’69 collapse, Leon Durham’s Gatorade soaked glove, Steve Bartman are some examples and those occurred just in my lifetime.

I bring this up because having followed this team for so many years I became somewhat trained in spotting lost causes…..a bit of a savant you could say. Sure, I took me far too long to dump Chicago’s north side team, but I was emotionally involved. I had an investment, and like all fooled investors I was more than willing to through good money after bad in the pursuit of the hopeless promise that things will get better “next year”.

So it is with some authority then that I want to speak with my liberal friends. Oh these are heady days for you aren’t they? Bush seems lost, the public appears to have turned against the Iraq war, and of course Tom Delay announced his retirement earlier today. The world looks pretty good for you. A well played spring, thoughtfully executed fall and bingo, the November elections may just yield, if not a championship, certainly some impressive electoral gains for your hero’s the Dems.

To quote a previous President Bush, “Not – Gonna – Happen”.

Sorry guys, but we’ve seen this show before, and it always ends with some creatively spectacular misplay by your favorite team. Just two years ago the Republicans re-nominated a weak Presidential candidate who was eminently beatable by virtually any historical standard of popularity. The Democratic response? Run a candidate so lacking in personal stature that he had virtually no chance to win.

For most political organizations, the humiliation of a significant loss to a man considered by most of the party faithful to be a complete idiot would be humiliation enough. Especially when considered in the context of a presidential election history so bad that the party has gone nearly three decades without fielding a candidate who was even able to muster more than 50% of the vote, even when their candidate won! As John Belushi used to say, “But Noooooooooooo!” This is the Democratic party, the (insert name of team that shall not be named here) of the political world so they must do more. And boy did they ever.

The Dems, did something so spectacularly stupid, so stunningly incompetent that it reduces even those of us long accustomed to wildly inept displays of stupidity to slack jawed amazement. The Dems went out and elected a lunatic to head their party.

I could go on, but to do so would be more of the same, and could only be viewed as gratuitous piling on. My point is simple. Today, things look pretty good for the Democratic Party. Ted Kennedy is getting ready to stop all judicial appointments for the remainder of the Bush presidency, and Robert Bird can’t wait to redirect spending from the War on Terror to more unneeded West Virginia highways.

Yet we all know that isn’t going to happen because, after all, this is the Democratic Party. Already storm clouds are appearing on the horizon. For example, today Delay withdrew from the race and by all accounts this should have been the top story of the day. A real embarrassment for the Republicans. Yet there was Cynthia McKinney, in all her Leon Durhamesque glory crowding out the news with her assault on a Capital Hill policeman. Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from folks, and next November we’ll be hearing that old familiar refrain.

“Wait until the next election”.