swamp drainage detritus
There have been easier times to be a Democrat. Think way way back to the halcyon days of two years ago. The summer of ’08. Basking like a lazy cat napping in a sun-drenched window box. Now, not so much – Nancy Pelosi must be thinking someone on her team swallowed a bad news electromagnet the size of a Buick.
Obama’s poll numbers are falling faster than the barometric pressure in the eye of a hurricane. The wars rage on, and scariest of all may be the haunting cries from the swelling ranks of unemployed in the streets, like beckoning zombies: “Join Us. Join Us.” If the polls don’t turn around, many incumbents will.
Against such an unfavorably stacked deck, what the Dems definitely don’t need is an ugly, self-inflicted election year corruption scandal twining up their legs like an anaconda in the early stages of a goat swallow. I’m talking, of course, about Democratic Representatives Maxine Waters (CA) and Charlie Rangel (NY).
After 12 years of wandering in the wilderness, upon taking over Congress in 2006 the Speaker pronounced her intent to “drain the swamp.” The problem is that if you do that, then you got to deal with all the creepies crawling around the bottom, including those big old alligators who’ve got nowhere to hide. Drained up or not, they still know their way around: where the sharpest marsh grasses are and how to blind adversaries with a face full of swamp gas.
Waters is a 10-term Representative while Rangel is completing his 20th, and both seem perfectly content to take their entire party down rather than walk away from the cash cow they affectionately call public office. When they say this is not about the money, but about their dignity, you can pretty much bet… this is about the money.
They were investigated by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, one of the great oxymorons of all time, akin to rotary cell phone or George W. Bush Think Tank or Martha Coakley Campaign Strategy Handbook. The committee’s been around at Pelosi’s behest since 2009, charged with slapping on the waders and heaving out the bilge pumps.
The two members in question could have escaped with a slap on the wrist but are demanding public hearings. And they’ll get their day in court, in September, right before the general election, which the Democrats need the same way a musk ox needs day-glo targets painted on its sides in the shape of a rifle’s crosshairs.
Republicans, like their mascot the elephant (loxodonata africanus), are herd animals who understand that protecting the pack is their number one priority. Donkeys, however (equus asinus, and where we get the word asinine), are principally known for stubbornness, a demonstration of which is now in session. You got to love them. They’re like carnivorous snails who will eat their own, but only when they get around to it.
Democrats may not have invented the circular firing squad, but you got to admit, they sure have perfected it.
Milwaukee native Will Durst is now a San Francisco-based political comedian who often writes. This being an example wherein he castigates the rich: a group that stubbornly refuses to include him as a member. His new CD, Raging Moderate, is now available from Stand Up! Records on both iTunes and Amazon.
