Count me in among those who are furious, livid in fact, over the Democrats' Alito debacle.
The responses I've seen fall in two general camps: 1) abandon the Democratic party; and 2) continue fighting the "good fight".
There's a third way: let's stay in the Democratic party but let's start seriously thinking about replacing the current batch of Capitol Hill Democrats (along with the entire Democratic leadership) with a better batch. We are the shareholders here. Let's fire management and get ourselves a new one.
I hope this doesn't come across as a troll, coz I'm dead serious.
The Democratic leadership is fundamentally rotten. I don't know whether it is corruption ("the best opposition that money can buy"), or general incompetence, or blackmail, or infiltration, or whatever. The reason behind the Democrats' weakness is far less important than the fact that it exists. It is persistent and undeniable.
Let's make a concerted effort to defeat and dislodge those Democrats who are failing us, and replace them with more worthy alternatives.
OK, here's the rub: those of us who know enough about the ins and outs of running for national office, campaigning, etc., more often than not are already employed by and therefore beholden to an incumbent.
In other words, this is a very hairy problem, but we have to face up to it. We have to face up to the painful truth that the Democrats in Congress are as much part of the problem as the Republicans. For all intents and purposes, the Democrats have become the Republicans' accomplices. We have to face up to this and do something about it.
Needless to say I am not, for one second, advocating yielding a seat to a Republican. I am talking about replacing rotten, spineless, duplicitous Democrats with good ones, fighting ones. And the same goes for the entire Democratic leadership. The whole operation is so rotten that it is hard not to conclude that they have been infiltrated.
kj