Looking for silver linings...

Please forgive me if I'm a day or two behind in my efforts to recover from Tuesday's devastatingly bad news -- I've been incredibly busy at work and have been putting in really long days back to back to back. As I start to ponder the meaning of all that's transpired this week, I've found that the news is not all bad.
Even before the election, many democrats quietly wondered if this was an election that we really wanted to win. Now they're saying it out loud:

Bush has spent the last year blaming all his ills on 9/11 and Bill Clinton. Well, those boogeymen are now done. Bush is now inheriting his own presidency, and he has a serious mess on his hands.

The big silver lining, and it's significant, is that Kerry won't be tarred for cleaning up Bush's mess. Had Kerry gotten us out of Iraq, he would've been blamed for "losing the war". Now Bush will ineptly lose it for himself. Kerry would've been forced to make sense of a mess of a budget. Now Bush will be responsible for his own half-trillion dollar deficits.

And how can you fix the problems if you can't even admit those problems exist?

It is our job as Democrats to build our infrastructure over the next four years, first to take out the Republican majorities in Congress in 2006, then to reclaim the White House in 2008.

Many of you have emailed to ask me what you can do. For now, just be ready. Armies have to rest, regroup, recharge, rearm, before they fight the next battle.

In the short run, this loss really sucks for us, but in the longer term, it may be more of a problem for the republicans. They've taken a hard right in recent years and Bush is now poised to really jam down the accelerator and veer off into dark, scary, hate-filled places that only religious wackos could love. And in the process, he may drive the republican party completely off the rails.
Now, the reason I didn't accept that postion before the election was because there was so much at stake. Bush has really fucked things up in just four short years, and he needed to be stopped. Remember, though, that it's not just us liberals who felt that way. A lot of republicans (the real conservatives) were both scared and disappointed by Bush's first term. He ran up the defecit and fought an expensive, imperialist war with little support from our shrinking field of allies. Also notable is what Bush didn't do, and that will become even more important in the next four years. Bush scared a lot of jesus freaks out of the woodwork on election day, and they're going to have high expectations for the second term. With the white house, both chambers of congress and the supreme court in republican hands, if Bush doesn't outlaw being gay, abortion and stem-cell research once and for all, he's going to be in big trouble with the fire-breathing nutjobs that are his base. And I do suspect that the they are in for some disappointment over the next few years.
Which brings me to a tidbit of news, which is also another lesson in being careful what you wish for:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The presumptive incoming chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee denied on Thursday that he had issued a warning to President Bush not to nominate anti-abortion judges for the Supreme Court.

Pennsylvania's Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican who supports preserving the legality of abortion, spoke after his reported comments on the issue a day earlier angered conservatives and stoked some calls for Republicans to find another Judiciary Committee chairman.

Specter was quoted as saying in a post-election news conference in Philadelphia on Wednesday that it was "unlikely" the Senate, including its new members elected this week, would approve a Supreme Court judge who would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

But Specter said in a statement issued in Washington on Thursday, "Contrary to press accounts, I did not warn the president about anything and was very respectful of his constitutional authority on the appointment of federal judges."

"I have never and would never apply any litmus test on the abortion issue," he said.

Bush has yet to make a Supreme Court appointment, but with Chief Justice William Rehnquist ailing that could be about to change, and several other justices are thought to be close to retirement.

Earlier on Thursday, a conservative group called the Concerned Women for America declared that Specter's reported comments on abortion had "disqualified" him for consideration for chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which votes on judicial nominees.

Republicans hope to use their increased political muscle to press forward their agenda after Tuesday's election in which they kept the White House and expanded their majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate.

According to seniority-based traditions, Specter is in line for the chairman's post, but even before the controversy over his abortion remarks, some Capitol Hill conservatives grumbled about whether he was right for the job.

However, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, said he expected Specter would be named the new chairman later this month.

Specter's statement on Thursday, Graham told Reuters, "puts some perspective on what he allegedly said. I know a lot of people feel uncomfortable with the thought process that was attributed to him."

For a little while on election night, it seemed as though democratic challenger Joseph Hoeffel might unseat Senator Specter, who is one of the few moderate republicans left in Washington. If that had happened, chances are the judiciary committee would have been led by someone from the extreme right. Whew.