Nobody Asked Me, But...

That this week -- and beyond -- will produce a blogospheric maelstrom of triumphalism, recrimination, finger-pointing, dire prognistication and hindsight punditry vis a vis yesterday's election is already as obvious as could have been predicted, and your reporter dips his pen into that gurgitation with more than a little reluctance.

That the Democrats' humiliating defeat in Massachusetts will have political consequences well beyond the Commonwealth goes without saying, as does the fact that the GOP has again outfoxed, outmaneuvered and snookered the hapless Democrats by smartly infusing a local contest between two unexceptional candidates with the simmering national concern over the gridlock in Washington.

That the GOP has caused that gridlock is beyond irony, with a Republican establishment grimly prepared to throw out the baby (the country) with the bathwater (the adminstration) by whatever means necessary to discredit the president and his program. Republican counter-arguments that Democratic revanchists tried to do the same to G.W. Bush have some merit, but fail to reflect the vast difference in motive and malignity.

That the president shares in the blame is equally evident. Undeterred when the GOP threw back in his face his initial overture to jointly devise an economic stimulus plan, he has doggedly continued his foredoomed and futile effort to foster political consensus on issues vital to the commonweal.

I submit that the Cold War strategy of containment and isolation is as valid on the Potomac as it is geopolitically, and it's time for Mr. Obama to aggressively forward his progressive agenda without further regard to the sniping and obstructionism of an opposition admittedly committed to bringing him down.