Last Call

Daniel Sinker at HuffPo reminds us that with the Left finally back in power that This Too Will Pass.

And so now a new group of the dispossessed have taken to the streets, arriving through a multitude of pathways, to speak in one voice against.... Taxes? Gun rights? States rights? Immigration? Obama? Coffee?

OK, maybe it's not one voice. And maybe it's not a coherent message -- actually, strike the "maybe" in that sentence. And maybe most of the groups are simply showing up to rally around their specific cause, and don't actually care about tea at all. And maybe the whole choice to rally around the term "teabagging" without double-checking its sexual meaning wasn't the brightest decision in the world, making it a very easy target for the Rachel Maddows of the world.

But haven't we been here before?

Haven't we -- the left -- been the teabaggers for decades? As you write off the right's tea parties as messageless, unfocused, marginalized ranting, don't forget that the left had our fair share of messageless, unfocused, marginalized ranting over the last twenty years. And that, ultimately, we needed those twenty years to understand how to become organized and take back power for ourselves. Without two decades wandering the desert, we wouldn't have built the modern infrastructure that the left stands on now. So laugh if you want, but today's teabaggers may be tomorrow's resurgent right.

That resurgent right will have a legitimate issue unless Obama changes his tune on the economy and wiretapping damn fast.

And that fact that he won't unless forced to do so by circumstance all but assures that the Left will not have 28 years in power like the Right did with the dawn of the Reagan Era. We had 20 years of Republicans in the White House, and the one Democrat that got in not only would qualify as a conservative Red State Dem today, he managed to hand Congress over to the Republicans as well, ultimately leading to Dubya and the situation we have today.

I'm still convinced that only the failed economy crashing in October plus the devastatingly bad performance of Sarah Palin killed the GOP. Otherwise we'd be looking at President McCain right now and a spending freeze in the middle of the worst economy in 80 years.

Keep that in the back of your mind. If Lehman Brothers had been saved and the economy held up until after the election, and McCain had picked, oh, anybody else as a Veep...Obama would have almost certainly lost and right now we'd be in an even worse economic situation. But you know what? The Democrats would still be in the wilderness.