If we get the blame anyway; why not? -OR- Damned either way, go down fighting!

What could possibly be bugging liberals and progressives? Our guy is leading; their guy is still in the non-starting gate. Sure he's only single digits behind in what should have been a slam dunk cakewalk landslide. MeCain been in the hole digging away since locking down the nomination in June, and hasn't hit bottom or China yet. He has no traction, no groundgame, no money...
Obama is rubber and MeCain is glue...

If any challenge is coming, it's yet another Hail Mary; some off the mat Haymaker that'll render the 14.999 round pummeling moot.
So Nah, that can't be it.

Gee, could it be that the strumming and chumming has begun? That even after "our" guy wins, he will "naturally" govern from a center/right position, because we are still, at root, a center/right country? What ground isn't strewn with shards of broken glass from the worst stumblefuck ever, is either hallowed ground of our ancestors or endangered nesting ground of our future generations? This is no time for radicalism. Even though we've gone down the wrong fucking road for thirty fucking years, selling off national treasure as worthless trinketry, gutting anything that even resembled progressiveness and built a bureaucracy designed to prevent even a glimmer of light to shine on the hope and aspriations that propelled this campaign season. We can now only accept the inherent and deliberate design flaws and keep shoveling fuel into the furnace. Your job is to muck out the stable and get the stains out of the tapestries while we plot and scheme your demise.

We have to be "conservative" in our approach? Really, really? Conservative? A steady, don't rock the boat, hand on the tiller. Can you smell what's cooking here? What kind of idiots do you take us for? Oh yeah, THAT kind.

`Twas ever thus? The demonicly possessed liberals and progressives who, if you believe the hysterians, are responsible for everything that went wrong, is going wrong, may go wrong... the doomsday clock of our very civilization, cannot be allowed to put their concepts, precepts, thoughts and ideas into practice. For to do so would surely unravel the finely tuned, perfectly perfected perfection of four decades of rock steady right-of-center-right rule.

Of course, that makes perfect sense.

I have a radical idea. Since we DFHs are to be blamed anyway, why don't we really apply some liberal/progressive ideas and principles in their un-bastardized form and see what happens?
Social programs where the funding actually arrives intact at the spigot end. End the war in Iraq. Bring the troops home. Give Washington D.C. a cleansing enema, re-allocate the $3 Trillion budget rationally and show how it's supposed to work. How it could work if reasonable people use reasonable thinking skills and avoid the parasitic colonies who set up camp.

Sans a spine transplant, how will this likely play out? Conservatively?

A Universal Single Payer Healthcare System for EVERYONE?
Not exactly, we'll put some lipstick on the old one. Watch more hospitals, in acutely underserved areas, CLOSE forever, while subsidizing growth and expansion of huge, for profit, medical centers. But they assure us they will open hundreds of under-equipped and understaffed satellite centers as they continue swallowing up the remnants until they can all be safely closed and forgotten.

Investment in Alternative Energy and sensible Mass Transit?
Mega Oil and Power has given us assurances that with a ten-fold increase in direct subsidies and tax-breaks they will be able to roll out our new dependent energy grid just as soon as the last profit is squeezed out of our fossil fuels. In laymans terms, when the gas gauge reads empty and we've transferred the environmental nightmares of our industry to the taxpayers, only then will we pull the plug. Our new technology will be available to anyone willing to pay the going rates.

Balanced budgets and debt reduction?
We're working on it. We have a 50 year plan that we're hopeful will see us safely through the next campaign cycle when we will really start thinking about working on it in earnest.
As the planet's second largest employer, we have a responsibility to honor the committments of St. Ronnie that the civil servants who answered his call will be able to pass their position on to their children and grandchildren.

Affordable housing?
We're all pretty much in agreement that this pipedream is now safely behind us. Aren't we? After all, it ended up costing the taxpayers a trillion dollars and left us with a glut of unaffordable housing. Didn't it?

Quality Education?
As soon as we can figure out what that is supposed to be, we promise to start thinking about looking seriously at ways to improve things. Realistically? Kids don't vote.
The private sector has responded, where applicable, by providing safe alternatives to public warehousing of tomorrow's all-voluteer armed forces.

But hey, Rome was built in a day. We will move quickly on some important Legacy items. Our Audacity of Hope LayAway Centers will be opening up soon.
Applications now being accepted.

The cock-eyed optimist in me would dearly, whole-heartedly, gleefully, ecstatically LOVE for the cynic in me to be proven wrong.
What can I realistically expect? What would I consider a win? Not much and I may already be a winner. (C'mon Publisher's Clearinghouse!)

I'll accept the pyhrric victory that at least the Supreme Court will be around to protect us from the monster truckers, power grabbers, aesthetic councils and fundie morality patrols.

I will cling to my own audacious hope with the conviction of a Red Sox Fan. If we can seal the deal next month, if we can avoid freak injuries between now and January, if we can arrive at spring training with some or all of our off-season acquisitions in camp, settle on a starting line-up and rotation, avoid clubhouse distractions and off-the-field stupidity, get on the same page and JUST BELIEVE!...
2009 will be a banner year.