Why Racism Won't Disappear Anytime Soon....

There are those who want us to believe that racism is over and it's time to move on.  Anyone who doesn't, to use the parlance of Sarah Palin, is just dwelling on "scars." 
But a scar is healed and I think racism has left a much deeper and more recent wound than Palin might want us to believe.  

I still remember the Willy Horton ads and Florida 2000 and Georgia any-year-you-care-to-name (where voters in black precincts are much less likely to have their votes counted). In the country we live in, where African American unemployment is double that of whites, where you are much more likely to be in poverty if you are black than white and where public services that disproportionately help black citizens are being cut to finance tax cuts that disproportionately go to wealthy white citizens, this issue is not going to go away any time soon.
Certainly not if white agitators such as Andrew Breitbart go out of their way to try to discredit African American organizations such as Acorn or the NAACP.
It is true that despite the fears of many whites interviewed prior to the election and of Glenn Beck since, President Obama has not advanced a "black nationalist" agenda. There has been no move for reparations or more aggressive affirmative action programs. If anything, he has gone out of his way to demonstrate that he is not racially biased, even rushing to fire Shirley Sherrod, the African American Agriculture employee whose father, incidentally, had been murdered by a white farmer.
McCain's 2000 primary run was torpedoed by a successful push polling campaign, probably launched by the Bush campaign, that asked South Carolina voters if they would vote for a man who had a "love child" with an African American woman. When they said no, they asked the voters to observe McCain's family closely. (He has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh, I believe.) The fact is that ugly campaign worked, and that was only 10 years ago.
I disagree that racism is not a factor in the attempt to "get" President Obama if for no reason that Beck, a telepundit on the most watched "news" network said so, calling a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”
When armed white men from the south showed up to shout down town hall meetings to discuss ways of insuring our children, saying they wanted "their country back" the echoes to the segregationist standoff of a generation earlier are hard to overlook. In both cases, you had a predominantly white, rural population feeling it was being victimized by an overreaching federal government that was presuming to tell them through "activist courts" "legislating from the bench" how to run "their" communities (never mind that in many cases half of their communities were non-white).
When Sarah Palin was asked to name a Supreme Court decision she felt represented an overreaching federal government or judicial activism, she of course drew a blank. One possible explanation is that she really didn't know (most likely).
But another more disturbing possibility is that she did, but did not want to say it: Brown v. Board of Education. Perhaps even she appreciated that if what she was really calling for was a return to the days of the Thurmond segregationist platform (what another Republican, Trent Lott, recently referred to wistfully as something that might have avoided all that trouble over all those years), that voters would consider that too radical. But giving a nudge-nudge, wink-wink nod then playing dumb may have been a much safer strategy (just as she quoted Reagan in his ad campaign against the great evil of Medicare during the debates without identifying either speaker or issue (knowing probably that many of us would go dig it up on her own)).
It is correct that I have not faulted or credited Bush or Clinton for the color of their skin. There is frankly nothing remarkable about another white male president in a country that has only - until 2008 - elected white male presidents.
The election of an African American president, on the other hand, receiving more votes than any presidential candidate in American history, in a country that is only about 15% African American is absolutely remarkable, noteworthy, and a reason to be proud. We went from being a country literally founded on the backs of slaves to one in which a man whose parents' marriage would have been illegal in many states when he was born became president.
When I see an articulate, thoughtful president who has committed no crime and whose policies are centrist to a fault being called (by white commentators) everything from a racist to a Maoist to a Muslim to a non-American to a Marxist, the burden is on those who come up with these ridiculous charges (charges not leveled against any white president) to prove they are not racist. When someone responds with antipathy way out of proportion to any available information, then some other, unstated factor must be at play. It's possible it's his tone of voice, his maddeningly calm manner, or his ability to sink a 3-pointer (nothing but net) while soldiers and journalists look on. Possible, but I don't think it's likely.
Those who hate President Obama generally have consistently hated him before he even had a chance to do anything to allow them to rationalize their rage.
Those who claim they are mad, mad, mad because of healthcare reform ignore the fact that they were almost all on camera being mad, mad, mad before healthcare reform was even a twinkling in Congress's eye.
Those who claim they are furious about the Wall Street bailout and stimulus plan have to explain why their fury was so remarkably absent when a white man occupied the oval office (and started both policies).
Those who claim they want to see yet another birth certificate have to explain why such a bizarre request (most of us do not have multiple birth certificates and the state of Hawaii has been more than generous at putting this matter to rest long ago when Obama filed his candidacy) was never made to a white president. Isn't foreign just another code word for Other, for Not Like Us?
Even if Sarah Palin is not personally racist (I just think she's relatively oblivious to the suffering of African Americans since she comes from a state with so few (3.5%) and where all the white residents receive welfare payments just for living in Alaska), I'm sure she understands that many of her supporters are, just as Reagan knew damn well what crowd he was playing to when he used the term "welfare queen" over and over again in campaign speeches.
The fact is that we are not over our past because our present still needs a lot of work. Sarah Palin says these are scars, but I think they are partially healed but infected wounds.

Note to Palin Supporters: Katie Couric is not running for office - Sarah Palin might be...

Note to Palin supporters who want to make Katie Couric the issue, now that Sarah Palin has refused to sit down and talk with her a second time:  Couric is not running for office.
Oh, and she's not that tough of an interviewer.  Consider these tough, impossible-to-anticipate questions:


“When it comes to establishing your world view…what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read?”


Would you have trouble answering this question?  I doubt it.  But Palin did.  That is frightening in a world where she might have to answer yes or no about deploying an aircraft carrier (or which Korea to send it to).  But the even larger point is that she considered this a "trick question."  She was caught having to admit that she basically DOES NOT READ!!!  This is very frightening, to have someone a heartbeat away from the presidency who relies on Fox News (everything else is the "Lame Stream Media") for her information. 
Here is how Palin answered the question: 


PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —
COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.
PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.
COURIC: Can you name any of them?
PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.   


She could not name a single Supreme Court Decision.  (Roe v. Wade was part of the question as I recall, so we are not 100% certain she could identify that.) 


"Well, let's see. There's -- of course -- in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings." 


[What kind of sentence is that anyway?  A 6th grader who forgot it was her turn to present to the class could have pulled something out better than "in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings."  Really?]


She could not name a single piece of legislation on which McCain voted in a way that she considered to be "maverick" despite using the term repeatedly. 
She claimed erroneously that Obama had voted to cut off funding for our troops (and never corrected that misstatement (which led to cries of "TRAITOR!" and "KILL HIM!" at her rally, cries she ignored)).
She ran as the candidate who wanted to get government off our backs, yet her state, Alaska, was a huge net recipient of your tax dollars and mine:  $321 per person (v. $22 per person in Illinois).
She falsely claimed that her running mate voted to reform bankruptcy laws to help distressed homeowners; as it turned out, not only was McCain absent for that vote, he opposed the reforms. 
She believed apparently during the debates that we are still in the Civil War, referring to McKiernan several times as McClellan (a Democrat, by the way, who ran against his former CIC, Republican Lincoln).  
I am not sure how any of this can be blamed on Couric who simply did what any good journalist should do:  ask questions and press until they are honestly answered.  
Now if you want a tough interview (I don't think the Palin interview was that), dig up Couric's interview with Ann Coulter.  Ouch. 
At any rate, none of us is voting for Couric.  We might be confronted again with the possibility of voting for Palin.  You and I deserve to know what newspapers she reads and what Supreme Court decisions justify her railing against "activist judges."  And just as significantly, we deserve to know if she is just making it up as she goes along, as she did with death panels.  

The Thanksgiving-Washington Myth

Perhaps myth is over-stating it, but you may have seen something floating around the Internet, perhaps emailed by a Christian friend, that reads as follows:


It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour...requefted me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many...favors of Almighty God... -George Washington


If you Google this quotation, you will get many hits to Christian web sites, most of which are attempting to make an in-your-face-Secular-America! case that George Washington was overtly religious and on record as essentially ordering the United States to pray (presumably to a Christian god).  
There are several problems with this interpretation.  
First, Washington did not actually write these words.   Although he did sign a similarly-worded proclamation at the request of Congress, the historical background is more consistent with Washington's Deist impulses.  Washington generally eschewed and mistrusted overt expressions of religiosity, as did most of the founders, who were much closer historically to the religious wars and mass murders that convulsed Europe shortly before the founding of the United States.  All were steeped in the ideas of John Locke and Voltaire who railed against the dangers of religious excess, especially of a Christian variety.
Second, William Jackson, not George Washington, wrote this document (although George Washington signed it).   He wrote it not because it would have entered his head to do such a thing but because some members of Congress requested it (although others felt is was intrusion into a personal and religious affair, or mimicked the fake compulsory shows of thanksgiving demanded by European monarchs).  
Third, the actual statement he signed (see below) has been altered by religious apologists wanting to make Washington appear to be more religious than he actually was.  I have included the complete paragraph of the proclamation in question, highlighting in red the alterations made in the circulating Internet version:  

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me 'to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks-giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Washington did not capitalize pronouns referring to "Almighty God" as a Deist would not generally do (he did, however, capitalize Nations).   This insistence on avoiding overt religiosity among the founders was fairly consistent; the Declaration of Independence makes a vague reference to "Nature's God" and a "Creator" but does not capitalize any pronouns related to this creator either.  The Constitution does not mention God at all.  Washington is elsewhere on record as stating that the United States is "in no ways a Christian nation." 
A full text, showing Washington's actual spelling and capitalization is available at the Washington archives or the University of Virginia. 

Les matins de Jénine - My Review

Public Reviews Written by You 

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				Les matins de Jénine by Susan Abulhawa Edition: Mass Market Paperback Price: £5.62 Availability: In stock but may require up to 2 additional days to deliver
excellent book but a bit heavy-handed, 23 Nov 2010 This review is from: Les matins de Jénine (Mass Market Paperback) This was an excellent book but there were some distracting literary and historical devices that detracted a bit from the power of the narrative. I enjoyed - if enjoyed is the correct word for such a tragic book - this novel. As much as I support the plight of any people dispossessed, misunderstood, and whose suffering is discounted - the Palestinians are all of these things - I must admit that Susan Abulhawa's treatment of the topic was a bit heavy-handed, perhaps not from a historical perspective but from a what-are-the-odds perspective. For a protagonist to be in all the wrong places at all the wrong times struck me as a bit far-fetched, plot-wise. The Palestinian diaspora is huge, the world's largest refugee population, so the probability of happening to pop into and out of Sabra and later Jenin struck me as low. Other literary devices that struck me as unlikely were the snatched baby who just happened to have an identifying scar, the extremely high body count in one family, and the almost complete absence of Palestinian violence or provocation. Yes, having your home taken away is cruel and unjust, but so is stepping onto a bus laden with explosives and to deny that the latter was occurring makes the actions of the Israelis seem gratuitously cruel. An author diving into such an explosive, painful recent past is challenged with a central question: do I want this work to be a transcendent, universal work of literature with lessons for all of us or do I wish it to be a polemic that delivers a powerful political message even if in doing so it requires air-brushing away some nasty historical counter-evidence? I think the author chose the latter approach, and although the book is at times lyrical, at some level I felt my emotions were being played upon for maximum political impact. There are worse literary offenses, but does anyone who knows anything about the history of the region think anything good is going to come to those she has befriended in Shatila? Or from her visit to Jenin that just happened to be during the Intifada and the Israeli promise to level the camp? The introduction of Ari as a prominent, sympathetic Jewish character is important, as was perhaps the recipient of the snatched brother, whose anguish represents in so many ways the anguish of a people looking for "their" land while knowing at some level they have stolen it from someone else. The character of David also creates an interesting "what if" and shows how arbitrary yet fatally divergent the accidents of one's upbringing and affiliation are in that part of the world where your right to live may be a function of who your mother is. That distraction aside, it is an outstanding book. Anyone who does not understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should read this book. The chronology is itself revealing, reminding us again of the temporal and logical relationships between the massacres at Sabra and Shatila and the advent of suicide bombing against the United States who until then were seen as honest brokers in the region. I was intrigued by the cover of the book and looking for something to read in French (I was unaware it was originally written in English!), and knowing what happened in Jenin, I knew it would be a difficult read. I found it haunting and disturbing and perhaps that is a good thing. We all need to experience a little piece of the pain of those who have been displaced and occupied and largely forgotten or discounted. Interestingly, I read this while exploring my own roots in Eastern Europe looking for traces of a grandfather arrested and executed during another of history's all-too brutal occupations, so could relate to Amal's (Amy's) desire to assimilate versus longing for her past, and her daughter's desire to find out who here "people" are and were. Although the climate and particulars are radically different, the elements that really matter - dispossession, displacement, cruelty on a massive scale, and abandonment by an oblivious West - are present sadly in both situations and in so many others. My daughter once asked me why people do such cruel things and I cannot answer that question. But part of the answer must lie in our inability to forget that when we take something that is not ours from people we have convinced ourselves are Other and therefore not as worthy to own it or perhaps even to live, then we can do some very ugly things. Throw in nationalism and religious differences and you have an ugly, lethal mix. This book is a voice from one of those Others reminding us all, if we will listen, that They are Us. We are all brothers and sisters and every act of murder is really part of an extended family dispute. We forget that at our own peril.

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Some More Election Thoughts: Failure is not an option.

Failure is not an option.
This is a longterm struggle and we will win some and lose some.  Our country is stronger for the give and take.  I just wish we didn't run crazy people for high office and didn't think it was necessary to lie so much.  If you don't like providing healthcare to children or don't want to pay for it, say so, but don't fabricate death panels to make your case.  And if you don't like Obama, don't vote for him, but don't call him a Muslim (hoping enough Americans share your religious biases to vote against him) or a Marxist-Leninist when he's not.  Don't make stuff up.  There is enough to argue about that is real without creating phantom arguments.
If this is the best the defenders of the large corporations can do - especially after Citizens United legalized the purchase of elections by those corporations - and with 10% unemployment that favors whoever is NOT in office with those headline numbers, whatever their ultimate cause or direction, then I am not as worried.
With Faux News and hate radio blaring nonstop, the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove pumping billions into every race they can find, with this last election, a non-presidential one, blowing out past records for money spent (many countries could be run on what ours spent on ludicrous, dishonest attack ads), I am surprised any Democrat got elected.  The fact that we control the Senate and won key elections in our largest, most prosperous and populous states (New York and California) is very hopeful.
Money can't buy you love and it can't buy you an election either (although it can come close).
I imagine after 2 years of Republican control of the House (assuming some Tom Delay or Jack Abramoff type of scandal does not lead to some game-changing turnover) people will realize you can't run a government on platitudes and given a choice between the guy who is convinced government can't do anything right (and wants to prove it by running it) and the guy who agrees with Winston Churchill that however imperfect democratic government is, it's better than all the alternatives, going with the guy who believes in what he is doing is the better bet.
If Republicans successfully abort healthcare reform before it is out of the first trimester, 50 million Americans will find themselves lacking both health insurance and any hope of getting any.  Then what?  Why is 45,000 dead Americans a year,  the body count from a respectable excess mortality estimate made by Harvard researchers an acceptable status quo?
We turned our society upside down, suspended habeus corpus, held people indefinitely without trial, engaged in torture, invaded and occupied two countries, in response, directly or indirectly, to the death of 3,000 Americans but forcing people to pay for health care before they need it to prevent many times this number of deaths is considered some Stalinist left wing plot.   Since 9-11, if the study's death rate remained constant (and it was written when the number of uninsured was much lower), then 405,000  Americans are dead now who would not have been had we had universal healthcare.
And before launching some abortion-kills-more-people retort, remember that this is not an either-or argument.  Not a single abortion is prevented, and many may be prompted, by the for profit status quo.  Insured women are less likely to have an abortion than their uninsured counterparts.  Countries with universal health insurance have far lower abortion rates than ours.  If you're pro-Life, you should be fighting like mad for universal healthcare.
If getting government off our backs means some of us will die of  preventable or treatable illnesses, others will go to crumbling schools, and still others will work in unsafe mines or drive over uninspected bridges or eat uninspected food, then I very much want government on my back, thank you very much.   I don't want government in my daughter's uterus, in my bedroom, or monitoring my telephone conversations (they are boring anyway), but I do want them making sure the car I drive is as safe and fuel efficient as possible and that our foreign policy is reality-based, not faith-based, so that my son will not be deployed in a war by a President channeling spirits instead of reading reports.

Congressman (Elect) Mike Pompeo: Give a Dollar to Charity for Every Dollar Spent Campaigning

An open letter to Mike Pompeo, who graduated #1 in our class at West Point and recently was elected to the United States Congress as a Republican representing Kansas's fourth district:


Dear Congressman (Elect) Pompeo,
You campaigned for a smaller, more limited government, a central tenet of the Tea Party you support.  Smaller government means fewer social services, so private charities must fill the void. Many are skeptical that this private-public gap will be filled.  I am proposing a way to prove your critics wrong.
Specifically, I am challenging you to do the following:  why not donate $1 directly to a charity of your choice for every $1 you spent on your campaign?
According to the Federal Election Commission, your campaign received $2,031,065 as of October 13, 2010 (I imagine the final figure is greater and that all this was spent by election day).   Why not donate a matching $2 million to a local shelter, the Salvation Army, or another deserving charity?  About 672,000 people live in your Congressional District meaning this donation would be less than $3 a person but would go a long way for the few who really need it.  Maybe you could provide shelter for the homeless or prevent a homeowner from losing his house.
Such a generous action on your part could purchase tremendous good will and would help dispel the notion that Republicans do not represent average Americans, many of whom are struggling.
Thank you for considering this request and congratulations!

Sincerely,

Mark

Mark Vakkur, MD
www.vakkur.com
mvakkur@gmail.com
Geneva, Switzerland

Why We Should Not Read Too Much into the Election and What We Need to Do To Win a Few More

I think people are reading far too much into these election results.  The bottom line is that we did much better than I anticipated (OK, so I have low expectations).   The craziest Tea party nut jobs lost.  Republicans like to win more than anything else, and they are smart, so I think they are less likely to run extreme candidates in 2012, which is good for all of us.
The economy is horrible.  Unemployment is in double digits.  Yes, I believe this is the result of Bush mismanagement but also part of a business cycle that is disconnected from politics.  Nevertheless, people vote according to the most basic principles and economics drives the boat.   It probably wouldn't be too hard to develop a simple model predicting how many midterm seats will be lost by the incumbent party given a certain unemployment rate going into the elections.  I would bet that that model would predict that we should have done much, much worse than we did.   When you take into account the Faux News phenomenon, Hate Radio, and the Koch Brothers now being able to pump as much money as they like into elections (thanks to the Supremes), I am surprised that any Democrat won.
Nevertheless, I agree we have to get on message and stay on message and reduce our policies to their most concrete and graphic terms.
Saying you're pro-Life is easy; defending the idea of empowering a government bureaucrat to force your daughter to have her rapist's child (as Palin has repeatedly stated she wants to do) is quite another.
Saying you don't want a government takeover of healthcare is easy (especially when no one proposed such a thing) but defending the idea of letting even a single child die of a treatable condition because her parents worked for the wrong employer or were between jobs when she got sick is much harder.
Saying you oppose deficits and debt is easy; explaining why you then support tax cuts that created that debt in the first place (and have obviously done nothing to grow our economy) is harder.
We need to keep firing at them and now we don't have to be the only ones driving while they keep jeering from the back seat hoping we will fail to get the car out of the ditch they drove us into.  It's their turn (at least in the House) to put up or shut up.
And we have to use the L word more.  I don't care if Jon Stuart thinks it's not nice, we can't sit back and ignore it when the other side lies.  Sarah Palin's death panel fabrication should have been a career ender as a credible infotainer (or whatever she is) just as Dan Rather's far less egregious lapse ended his career.  We should hound these people when they lie and repeatedly and often remind people that they have not yet retracted, explained, or apologized for past dishonesty, so why should anyone believe them now?  Remember that the same people screaming about the risks of a nonexistent government takeover of healthcare with nonexistent death panels are the ones who screamed a few years ago about the nonexistent WMD threat in Iraq.  A broken clock is right twice a day, but these guys don't even have that kind of batting average.
And that's all I have to say about that.

Why Georgia Voters Who Voted Down a $10 Tag Fee to Finance Trauma Care Are Simply Wrong

There is such a thing as an informed opinion.  Not all beliefs are equally valid, even widely held ones.  As Galileo reminded us a few hundred years ago, the popularity of an opinion does not prove it since so few people reason well.  
Anyone who believes that paying an extra $10 in tag fees is less costly than having an emergency room fold or someone die because a trauma center is beyond the golden hour away does not understand probability and statistics (which unfortunately is most people).  When we drive our cars, whether we get in an accident or not, we probabilistically bear the cost of the loss times the frequency and distribution of the loss.  You don't have to be an insurance company actuarial to realize one or two saved lives will offset a $10 fee.  For God's sake, that's 2.7 cents a day!  How can one claim to be pro-life but values that life at less than a nickel a day?
Taxes and insurance premiums both represent a trade-off most mature and intelligent adults accept (unless either is too high, which is not empirically true here).  In exchange for a  small certain loss ($10) we offset a potentially catastrophic but low probability loss (or in this case, help pay for it).  Those who want the benefit of an extensive trauma network, one of the best in the world, but don't want to pay for it are trying to get a free ride.  
If they understand this, then they are immoral.  If they do not understand this, then they are ignorant.  Some of course (Sarah Palin comes to mind) are a little of both.
I think it's time we stand up to the bullies spreading hate and misinformation just as President Dwight D. Eisenhower (a Republican of course) did in his time:  "There is a splinter group, of course, that believes that you can [attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs]... Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Their numbers remain negligible but they are rich and figured out that if you buy a news station you can buy an election by duping people into voting against their economic interests.  That's what they did here. This was the most expensive election in United States history and it wasn't even a presidential election!  Most of the billions spent went into nonsensical, misleading attack ads.  Sadly, those ads worked. 
As Goebbels, arguably the inventor of using modern media for propagandistic effect, put it best, a lie repeated often enough will be believed. 

Sarah Palin Self-Made E-card I Sent To A Tea Party Friend Who Thinks Palin is a Feminist...

   3 Out of 6 Ain't Bad...

  scroll down or click for the back of this self-created e-card...

For a Coin!

Would  Sacagawea and her anchor baby have been deported by the Tea Party (they look Mexican)? 

"Gotcha!"

Happy Birthday, XXXX!  

Too bad that Girl Power thing didn't work out for 

  Sharon and Meg and Christine...

    

(Even though it's not my birthday, Christine 

was a present to all of us  from Sarah.)

But if you ignore gender, you got a nice birthday present on Election Day... 

And one of the women Republican feminists sent home was that evil Nancy so that's 

one less woman in power.

With feminists like this, who needs chauvinists?

Now if we can just get Republicans to vote for women the way Democrats do!

Mark

There is a Difference Between Losing Some Elections and Losing Your Country

Unlike Sarah Palin, I won't whine and snivel about wanting my country back.  There are no tanks in the streets, no midnight knocks on the door, and we didn't even completely lose this election.
There is a huge difference between being a minority party and an outlawed one, as is the case in China or Egypt, for example. 
The Republicans will probably obstruct, but since they control the agenda of the House, they will be expected to do something other than just say no.  Gingrich found this out the hard way when he shut down the government, losing his job and his majority in the process.

At any rate, Democrats still control the Senate and the White House.  

So those of us who believe in those radical progressive concepts such as insuring our children or fully funding the obligations we have to the least among us should all cheer up.
It is natural for the incumbent party to lose seats in the midterm election.  The  proportion of this loss is directly proportional to the unemployment rate.
The Republicans, if they are smart (and many are), will put away the champagne and look at how they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in several key races.  Perhaps they will realize that running right wing nut jobs like Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle is a bad substitute for a strategy.  Sarah Palin and the Koch brothers might have a little less influence in 2012 than they had in 2010.
  
Ironically, this could be bad for the Democrats, since the Republicans are less likely to run an unelectable extremist, but good for the country, since even an unelectable extremist can drag the political discourse into the mire, as Palin's addition to the McCain ticket illustrated.

At any rate, reading too much into the Congressional races to glean hints of the 2012 presidential race is dangerous.  Most of the anger of Americans is with Congress (over 70% disapprove) not with the president (who enjoys about evenly split approval to disapproval, something Bush with mid-teens approval ratings could have only dreamed of).  

Since there is no evidence that the economic cycle has been abolished, it is highly likely that the economy will be roaring by 2012.  If so, discontent with the Presidential and Senate incumbent party will be lower (although watch Republicans try to take credit for the recovery from the recession that they created under Bush and that ended (according to economists) under Obama before election day).   That recovery plus the inevitable disillusionment that will follow from sending telegenic, tea bag-waving rabble rousers to Washington  will likely undo some of the damage done yesterday to the progressive cause.
The Dems did a poor job of getting out a simple message and repeating it often.  In contrast, this is the core of the Republican strategy. Democrats should have trumpeted the many meaningful things they got done:
 -  Healthcare reform has been unsuccessfully tried for the better part of a half century; President Obama and the Democratic Congress got it done in under 2 years despite a vicious right wing smear campaign and Sarah Palin's fabricated death panels.  

 - President Obama delivered on his campaign pledge to end our combat mission in Iraq. 

 - Democratic Congress passed meaningful financial regulatory reform that protects consumers and makes a future financial melt-down and bailout less likely.

 - President Obama turned around what could have been a complete meltdown of the Western financial system by injecting billions of liquidity into the system; many economists believe unemployment would be 20% and the economy in far worse shape had Obama not continued the Bush-Paulson bailout that the Tea Party successfully blamed him for.

Like the stock market, politics follows a sometimes volatile trajectory but the longterm trend is up.  Just think:  only 6 years ago, Republican strategists were able to use homophobia as the central pillar of their campaign strategy (distracting people with gay marriage prohibition amendments when we should have been talking about Abu Ghraib).  Now we know that many prominent Republicans are gay and homophobia does not sell to most voters anymore, even conservative ones (Sarah Palin tried to ban a library book on homosexuality from her local library when mayor but hardly mentioned the subject this election cycle).

If history shows anything it's that Americans swing wildly from one election to the next.  Nothing is ever over.  If people are still out of work in 6 months to a year, they will demand results from Boehner.  All the platitudes about getting government off their backs mean nothing to the guy who lost his job and is losing his house and (thanks to Boehner if his threats to "kill" healthcare reform are delivered) his health insurance.  A tax cut does you no good if you have no taxable income and hopefully many Americans will understand that campaigning for massive tax cuts they will never enjoy does them no good if their neighborhood is losing cops, firemen, and teachers.
Progressives needs a pit bull - imagine a Karl Rove or Sarah Palin but with ethics.  This should not be hard, since we enjoy a huge advantage:  as Stephen Colbert once lamented, reality has a well-known liberal bias.  The truth is on our side.  We don't have to lie to make the other side look ridiculous.
Advocating tax cuts while howling about the deficit makes no economic sense.   Saying tax cuts pay for themselves when they clearly haven't makes no sense.
Saying that giving people tax deductions to offset taxes they don't pay anyway to buy health insurance they can't afford from for profit companies who won't insure them makes no sense.
Saying that the world is only a few thousand years old and our 99% genetic congruence with chimpanzees is a wild coincidence and that we should teach this to our children in science class makes no sense.
Saying that oil companies and coal mining companies and hedge funds should get to self regulate when clearly they have never been able to do this makes no sense.
Calling a centrist president who has been friendly to a fault to a for-profit insurance industry a Marxist-Leninist makes no sense.
It is not enough to say this once; we have to hammer it home at every opportunity.  That's what Republicans do; they take a message, even an inherently dishonest or nonsensical one (that more tax cuts will help balance the budget, for example) and repeat it ad nauseum until people at the margin absorb it.
So it will be easier in some ways to hold the Republican sound bites up to scrutiny because they will have a living laboratory in which to put up or shut up.  No more chanting "treason!" or "kill him!" from the sidelines.  They are controlling part of the government so many of them have ranted against in the most graphic terms, describing it as a "beast" that needs to be drowned or  bludgeoned.
Of course, turning a government over to those who hate it gives them an opportunity, as did Bush and Cheney, to illustrate how inept government can sometimes be.
Let's hope the voters - and the surviving Democrats - hold them to account.