Overcoming My Blue DNA

(click for most painful size)

This photo couldn’t be more instructive.

It went down my throat last night simultaneously with the news that the “bipartisan” Senate vote to balance (i.e. limit) troop deployments had gone down to defeat.  In the “fool-me-for-the-seventh, or-is-it-the-tenth-time?” hope that Reid and Company had finally conceived a workable approach for reigning in the President and the war hawks, the result — as is obvious here in Senator Webb’s case — was a real blow.

That’s where this gets interesting, however.

If this photo almost neurochemically induces a Democrat to feel for Jim Webb, isn’t it that same instinct that set up Jim and his bill in the first place?  In other words, what this photo seems to psychologically expose is the vulnerability, on the front end, and the emotional thrashing to the Dems on the back, of perpetually feeling they can reach out and touch someone.

I, for one, never again want to read, see or hear the phrase: “But we don’t have the votes.”  Like it is our job to override Cheney/Bush (and their uniformed finger puppets) rather than show them the boot(s), and then stonewall them with our simple majority?

So, while availing myself of this emotional image, I’m rallying my will to override my overly blue DNA.  Although I can feel the reflex rolling around in there, I’m decidedly not going to feel Jim’s pain.  Instead, I’m going to appreciate … no, relish the fact that Jimmy learned something yesterday — a hard lesson about what it’s like to seek compromise with people who feel nothing.



(image: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.  Washington.  September 10, 2007.  nytimes.com)