Everybody is talking about the election and what the Democrats taking congress means for the country.
Donald “Uncle Remus” Rumsfeld and his unknown knowns has been shown the door.
Bush the Elder has already sent in one of his guys from the glory days of Iran-Contra to impose a little realpolitik on the Pentagon.
So good stuff there, but the political landscape for the next two years is not radically different than what we would have had with a GOP congress.
Don’t get me wrong, I did a little victory dance when AP announced that Webb had shown Mister Maccacca where he could put his good ole’ boy act, but not much is really going to change.
Republicans are so afraid of sharing ideological ground with Dubya at this point that they were going to force him to change course on
Iraq anyway, and Bush doesn’t have the political capital to do much more right now than clear brush in Crawford.
So the GOP was going to hide under their collective desks for two years anyway and not do anything to antagonize the voters.
The Democrats will come in and make a show of bipartisanship. They’ll pass a few bills with GOP support. They won’t be able to get anything controversial past Bush, and they’ll be walking on eggshells. They realize that the voters have them on a pretty short leash. Once you get the electorate awake, you have to be careful what you do while they are still paying attention. So in the end, slightly better for the good guys, but no major accomplishments that the Democrats will be able to point to at the end of the day. And as long as there is someone keeping an eye on George, making sure he doesn’t have Ted Kennedy strapped to a water-board in Cheney’s basement or something like that, I’m cool with not fixing Social Security for a couple of years. Just don’t break anything worse than it already is and I’m happy.
The real change to come out of this election will be an improvement of the local bar scene. I know this sounds like a stretch, but bear with me. Roughly 35 Republican elected officials are going home to Jesusland. I don’t know too much about how these staffs are comprised but let’s assume that each of these 35 Republicans has 5 senior staff. Each of these 5 senior staffers has 5 or so assistant senior staffers and each of these underlings has 5 or so assistant-to-the-assistants, interns, admins and assorted political leaches hanging around, wasting my oxygen. So that’s 35 X 5 X 5 X 5 or 4,375 fewer Republicans. Since I have no idea what I’m talking about, let’s also assume that holding leadership of the House and Senate, along with the individual committees of these august bodies requires the services another 300 or so Republicans that will now have to hit the road. I know zip about lobbying but I’m going to assume that losing 35 seats and the majority in both the House and the Senate is going to reduce the demand for conservative-type lobbyists, also known as fuck-sticks. Let’s say that each elected official can support 5 fuck-sticks, which means that DC is now 175 fuck-sticks lighter. The mistresses and wives will probably go home too. Knock off another 50. By my completely arbitrary and almost certainly inaccurate calculations, 4,900 Republicans will be leaving the city come the end of the lame-duck session. Running a search for bars in DC on AOL’s Cityguide produces a list of 285 bars of varying quality and repute. I’ll grant you that most of the people I’m describing here would never hang out someplace like the Velvet Lounge or DC9. In fact most of them probably drink in Bethesda, but I’m making a statistically tenuous argument here and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let something like the facts stand in my way. 4,900 assholes. 285 bars. That’s 17.2 fewer assholes per bar.
What does this all mean for me? It means that on the average night out I’m much less likely to run into some self important blowhard that keeps spilling his Dewar’s and water on me. I really hate that. First of all, respect my personal space. Second of all, who orders a Dewer’s at Madam’s Organ?
17.2 per bar. That’s a lot of jerks that will be quickly removed from my life. Those three girls at the end of the bar, wearing pearls over their sweaters and talking about how feminists are ruining it for everyone and making it much tougher to get a guy to buy dinner? Gone. The dude next to me giving frat boys everywhere a bad name while he tries to decide which of the three girls at the end of the bar will be most impressed by that fact that he gets coffee for Rick Santorum? History. Mike Dewine? Totally gone, and thank god, because he always blows his cigarette ashes all over the place when he gets hammered. That’s just plain inconsiderate.
4,900. 17.2 per bar. Expelled. Re-located. I know that they’ll be replaced by similarly self-important Democrats, and while I find them only slightly less distasteful on a personal level, I tend to agree with their politics. Also, their women are a lot better looking and are a lot less likely to remind me of Katherine Harris.
Labels: I'm a drunkard, My 'The City', politics
