Natural Order

by digby

Most of you probably saw this already over at Kos, but I think it’s worth taking another look at. It is interesting that nobody has mentioned this before:

Democrats now have 233 seats in the 110th congress, more than Republicans have had since 1952. The Republican “revolution” never secured this large a majority in the House.

Meanwhile Karl Rove is telling people “the election was awful darn close.” Right.

Those arrogant Republicans thought they were building the thousand year Reich and the Dems managed to build a bigger majority in one go. But the truth is that Republicans are not a majority party and never really have been — when they get into power they can’t seem to help themselves and they become excessive and out of control. Power doesn’t become them.

But that doesn’t mean they (the Republicans) aren’t able to advance their cause; they are very effective as a minority party and they know how to advance their agenda as the opposition. In some respects they govern more effectively from the minority position than from the majority. The Dems never mastered that skill and don’t function any better out of power than the Republicans do when they are in power. So we are probably heading back to a more natural state of things, but I would caution that it doesn’t mean that the Democrats will easily be able to enact a progressive agenda. They have to outsmart an opposition that knows exactly how to manipulate things to get their way while blaming Democrats for the inevitable fallout.

The good news is that the Democrats have spent some time in the wildreness and hopefully they’ve grown more savvy. With some coattails next time, they could start to get something real done starting in 2009.

edited slightly for clarity.

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