Federalist Pleading

I don't even know what to say about the election on Tuesday. According to a stack of polls coming out in the last two days, the margin on preference for Democrats has narrowed to 4%, which would sound good were it not for the fact that, as Paul Krugman pointed out in a recent column, gerrymandering and the nature of the Senate (all states are equal) means that Dems need to be up by 8% nationwide to effect the leadership of the Congress.

This is discouraging news -- not because it means the election might be lost, but because it means that if it is lost the election will give the Bushies free reign to continue with their current rampage of delusional, hypocritical, intellectually lazy, warmongering, war-criming, civil-rights-depriving, totalitarianism-loving, bigoted, gay-bashing, corporatizing, fearmongering, lying, cheating, stealing, venomous bullshit -- all the while claiming it as a mandate.

This is beyond partisanship. I know most of you agree with me, and most of you know me, but we've got some readers checking in lately from far-flung places, where there are congressional seats in play, and I am begging you, all of you -- vote Democrat, just this once. I'd be a fool to promise that everything will instantly get better; but I can promise that the "business as usual" steamroller will finally meet with some resistance. If you're a patriot at all, and for possibly the second time in my life I'm using that term in all seriousness, that should be motivation enough.

At the founding of this country, James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that the logic behind representative democracy was precisely to provide an avenue for correcting our current situation:

When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government on the other hand enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our enquiries are directed: Let me add that it is the great desideratum, by which alone this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.

We can't say he didn't warn us. And if we don't do something about the tyranny of this (partial) majority now, I cannot imagine what lies ahead.

So vote, dammit.

PS The first time I ever called myself patriotic, by the way, was right after 9/11, so Dick Cheney can kiss my royal Irish ass.