"Deal With It"

It always amazes me when people (Olbermann and Maddow come to mind) suggest that Democrats should, now that they are in power, do precisely what Republicans did when they were in power; namely, shove the minority aside into a position of irrelevance. Given how bitterly these people were complaining about being in that position at the time, why would they then want to put someone else into it?

I think it is to the great credit of the Democratic party that they have not pulled a bunch of parlimentary parlor tricks to render the opposition irrelevant. The fact that under democracy the majority rules does not mean that the minority should be rendered impotent; that’s not politics, it’s common human decency.

If it makes legislating more difficult; well, so be it. Democracy is hard. Don’t sit around and cry about it, do the hard work and solve the problems that come with perhaps the best system of government, for all of its flaws and shortcomings, that the world has yet come up with.