Party realignment now finalized in DC

Democratic Party = party of governing, or occasional stabs at it during moments of crisis, with good and not so good members and policy positions.

Republican Party = party of obstruction to efforts at actual governance, with varying levels of skill and shamelessness. But all are, to borrow an observation from Garrison Keillor,  “above average” at it. Something about brain chemistry, I suspect.

The Senate’s passage Tuesday of the economic recovery package followed a now-familiar 30 year pattern. The Democratic President Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him in 1993, faced a monolithic wall of GOP opposition to his economic program. But Republicans Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George W. Bush 20 years later enjoyed substantial Democratic support for their dangerously irresponsible and regressive tax cuts that as predicted drained the federal treasury. Now as then, for Republicans the road to economic stimulus is a one-way street.

This is why two is not enough. To borrow from another good writer: “We can do better.”