Much faster than I could ever dream

Can you believe the cable shows can find assholes brazen enough to defend this shit? Yeah, I can believe it, too.
It's sort of heartening, in a way. Republican commentators and politicians made their bones by pandering to mouthbreathers and racists for so long that they have no reasonable constituency to move on to now that supply side and peace through strength are utterly dead political positions. Their base consists almost solely of Biblical literalists, broke-ass Wall Street pretenders and those idiots who don't listen so much as wait for you to finish talking. All the crap they insisted was true has been proven wrong absolutely and unmistakably to all but a few million Sarah Palin fans.
Anyone who knows me or has read this blog knows that I am pessimistic about our immediate future. No amount of belief in Barack Obama can change the fact that our economy is steadily going away. People are realizing how derelict we've been in letting the ruling class have their way since Reagan came in power. I sense a general belief in Obama to do what he can, but there is no quick fix and we have no idea how bad or good things will be a few years from now. We are going to live week-to-week and month-to-month for a loooong time.
The only good I can see in the immediate future is the death of the national Republican Party. As much as cable pundits try to give Republicans leverage with Obama, the rest of the country has tuned them out. We've written off conservatives even faster than lefties like me thought possible. There's not going to be any "things still suck in 2010 so we'll vote Republican" swing next year. If anything, I expect even more conservatives to go down to increasing progressive Democrats at the polls in the next Congressional cycle.
Obama is not FDR and this isn't the 1930s, but that's good. FDR inherited an economy and nation capable of working and growing, but mired in ages old notions of rugged self reliance and distrust of government. Obama doesn't have as far to go as FDR did. People these days talk a good game about hating the government, but we've all seen how well it can work (Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants, the Interstate Highway System, etc., etc., etc.).
Obama is in position to make the case that we need not inflate bubbles and overlook the general welfare to make the world safe for millionaires, that the working class is much larger than the upper class and our needs are more important than theirs. Call it class warfare if you want, but it's a fact.
I just hope the president is able to convince the public that healthcare should be a collective, not-for-profit arrangement; we could have better medical services for much less than we pay now. Forgiving student loan debts, reinstituting strict usury laws and enabling renewable, household-based energy sourcing like solar and wind are all desireable, too. Busting up factory farming and cracking down on the crap sold at supermarkets and fast food restaurants wouldn't hurt either.
We're ready to follow, I think, and Barack Obama is obviously ready to lead.