Senator Reid,
The results are in it would appear. I hope you do not believe the pundits. I sat at a table of long term, moderate, business owning Democrats over breakfast last Saturday. The elder of the group, a loyalist from the steel mills of PA who now runs a successful consulting group, admitted that he was giving up. Giving up on the party he has defended for 55 years! As he observed, "You don't ask people who consistently fail to give you advice if you want to succeed."
We had been talking about the willingness of the Administration to solicit the advice of Wall Street and to ensconce failed figures such as Geithner and Sommers. We know that throwing money at a problem to avoid a meltdown, while it may be necessary, is not the same as having the sense to avoid it in the first place--or as the stalls and compromises on financial reform already underway would suggest--even the second time.
Congress did not get much higher regard. The Health Care debate was an exercise in bad negotiation. No one publicly demanded what should happen to people who can't afford health care, or how much of a business' bottom line should have to go to pay for the marketing budgets and executive pay of for profit insurers. You see Senator Reid, we're actually pretty smart out here, and we understand when what we're getting isn't political compromise but capitulation. We're not a bunch of radicals, we're hard working people who believe in sticking to some core values. And when we see a Party that is unwilling to be scorned by the folks who have brought us the mess we now face, we know that there is not a whole lot to be gained by going out of our way to support them. Better to spend time with family, hunker down and save your business, and pray that you can keep the insurance you have then waste your time giving to and supporting a Party that is too worried about making friends with the bozos who created the mess than welcoming their derision as the cackles of fools that it really is.