Mass panic.

There’s a lot that can be said about the Senatorial special election in Massachusetts on Jan. 19, and I’m not going to say very much of it. (You’ve probably heard most of the political post-mortems already.) Looks to me like the good people of our neighboring commonwealth have seen fit to hand Ted Kennedy’s old seat to Mitt Romney 2.0, a slight upgrade from the original model (this one, at least, confirmably anatomically correct). As far as his political positions are concerned, it’s a mixed bag – a little angry anti-bank populism (People are mad, damn it, and so am I!), a little love for waterboarding, some tin-foil hat-ism, and the usual measure of running away from his most inflammatory comments, like passively questioning president Obama’s origin as the son of two legally married individuals. (Smooth.) There’s also the listing from political side to political side as needed, like voting in favor of Mitt Romney’s statewide health insurance system in Massachusetts, but opposing the national version. He should blend in nicely with the G.O.P. caucus, though poor Jim DeMint will have to forfeit his crown as the party’s Senatorial winged Adonis. (Sad. Very sad.)

Indeed, his greatest political impact may indeed be the effect his election is having on the Democrats, who have been rending their garments, flagellating themselves, etc., ever since last Tuesday. One gets the impression by listening to heavyweights like Bart Stupak and Evan Bayh that their strategy moving forward will be something like stand quietly at the back of the chamber and hope their constituents will elect them by default. Even my own home district Congressman Mike Arcuri is sounding a little timorous, perhaps because the Republican fool who nearly unseated him in 2008 has announced his intention to try again this year (a mere day after Brown’s election) and local tea-party freak Don Jeror (a.k.a. Mr. “You are LYING to me!”) has said he is looking for a conservative Democrat to challenge Arcuri in the primary. (Jeror has been making the error of using modern human language in his search for an electable caveman. He should use grunts. Try it, man!)

Tin-foil hats aside, I’m beginning to think the hyper-conservatives have been right about the Democrats all along: bloody hell, they ARE surrender monkeys! In all seriousness, I think this has just given them the excuse to openly channel their inner Republican (to the extent that they haven’t been doing it up to now). Of course, with this week’s Supreme Court decision removing any restrictions on the flow of corporate cash into political advertising, any Democrats who maintain a less-than-congenial relationship with Exxon-Mobil, Google, Cargill, or any other firm with deep pockets will likely find their districts flooded with attack ads, paid shills, and every kind of legal sabotage money can buy. Yes, folks – George W. Bush and his reactionary predecessors are truly the gift that keeps on giving. The 5-4 decision to sell our electoral process to the highest bidder was advanced by two Reagan appointees, one Bush I appointee, and (crucially) two Bush II appointees. Is it too late to say, we should have kept W out of the White House?