Someone needs to really explain to me what the hell difference it will make anyway.

In 2006, Democrats took back the house...and held it for a whopping 4 years.

In 2008, the GOP ran the global economy off a cliff that should have crippled and discredited their philosophy and their party for a generation (think of Hoover Republicans in the 1930s or 1940s...not a very influential bloc, right??) The depth of their failure played a large role in allowing America, the deeply divided and still fighting the Civil War country in some areas albeit by proxy instead of with bullets, to elect the first minority President. The unthinkable in 1964 was reality in 2008, a black man was President of the United States.

So what did we achieve with this historic shift in power structure for the country???

In 2008 and 2009, we watched "TEA party" terrorists commandeer the national discussion as the media cheered and selectively covered everything at the behest of their pay masters. We wasted hours, days, weeks, months talking about "death panels", the invention of a Alaskan twit who could not summon the gumption to serve ONE gubernatorial term in the hinterlands of a state with less population and a single borough of New York City... We FAILED. Miserably.

In 2010, Democrats were ROUTED in the mid-terms. Historically swept out of power in the House and going from 60-40 Senate in 2008 to 51-49 in 2010????

The intervening 4 years have been a farce of inactivity and sniping at the ONE achievement of the President, the Affordable Care Act, choosing to vote 50 (FIFTY!!!!) times to repeal the law. We are left with a divided and disfunctional government and the mere fact that it is still possible in 2014 to speak Republican economic philosophy without derision - talking about nonsense like the primacy of debt reduction or the efficacy of tax cuts - after what the outcome in 2007 was of their unfettered implementation of neo-Con policy is depressing beyond words.

And that brings us to the now...where 55 votes in the Senate is not enough to get an up or down VOTE on proposals. Its not possible to pass anything into law without 60 votes and the Democrats are not going to do a damn thing about it....Reid's "nuclear option"?, really? Let's just say that if Fat Man and Little Boy went off like Reid's bomb we would have needed a lot longer to subdue Japan and end WWII.

I am beyond frustrated with the spineless nature of the Democratic Party leadership. The leadership is feckless and the willingness to fight the crazies on the right seems to be non-existent. The party has moved so far to the right that it more resembles the Republicans of the 1970's and early in the Reagan era than the party of FDR, JFK and LBJ. Even the signature win of the Obama era - the advancement of gay rights to remove things like DOMA and DADT and bans on marriage equality are diminished, not in their importance but in their significance by the fact that the driver of these changes is more societal changes in attitude and less bold leadership by Democrats.

We are in an ugly place...a party of leadership stooges, bought and paid for by many of the same donors who already own the right. A party that is confronted by obstructionist, arrogant fools and yet incapable of even holding up the mirror to them so that the public can see them for what they truly are... A divided government without the will or the mechanisms to actually DO anything other than spin its wheels and waste our time and money as the planet warms, the ice melts and millions of species disappear in the coming decades.

Democrats have issues that history will judge us on...not each other. The climate change and overall direction of the economy - towards greater and greater inequality without any kind of REAL opposition from the left will be our eternal badge of shame...and I KNOW there are many TRYING to stay positive, stay engaged, stay active...I respect them and their efforts, but I say here and now that without a total overhaul of party leadership (maybe throwing out EVERYONE over the age of 30 because they are co-opted, contaminated or cowed), the fate of the party is bleak.

Flame away...attack the messenger if needed, but please, don't trade sunshine and lollipops and consider the ONLY big issue to be the 2014 mid-terms or the 2016 Presidential election when its still MARCH of 2014, we're already treating the Obama Presidency as a lame-duck and have given up on passing meaningful legislation in the Senate because the right MIGHT be filibustering (again, still?) and the REAL issues are being ignored every second of every day...