But if you try sometime, you just might find...

I (along with a few million other folks) got an email tonight from Organizing for America, the Obama administration's grassroots/fundraising arm. It's basically a "calm down, Dude, nothing is fucked" missive. Par for the course politically, especially after a loss as humiliating and preventable as Tuesday's. There's one gem of a line in it, though, which will bring me into the first post on the "now what?" following Coakley's loss.

"We could have simply sought to do things that were easy, that wouldn't stir up controversy. But changes that aren't controversial rarely solve the problem." There's a civil response to such a statement. I choose to forgo said response.

Are you guys fucking kidding? Seriously, please tell me you're joking. I'll grant you, nothing about this year has been easy politically. And there has certainly been more than a bit of controversy. But to imply that this is because the Dems have been boldly striking a new path and the squares just can't handle it? That's just... that is an Augean level of bullshit. Yeah, that's right. I'm so pissed about this that I've gone to the classics nerd place.
The Democratic Party has spent the entirety of the last year (hell, of the last decade or two) bending over backwards in an effort to be non-controversial. Everything they do shows a desire to find the mushy, inoffensive middle and snuggle up there forever. One imagines caucus meetings on the Hill: "Does this bill do anything?" "No, but David Broder wrote a glowing column about it, then called me and said I reminded him of a young Sam Nunn!" There's a little-known saying, which I can understand that the Dems may not have encountered, about what happens when you try to please everyone. (Hint: it's not pleasing everyone.) Take healthcare. The Democrats have begged, compromised, and bludgeoned their way to a sensible, incrementalist baby step of a bill which doesn't open the floodgates to single-payer and, AND! cuts the deficit. And what has it gotten them? Senator Scott Brown, for one. (Hey, I got through typing that without puking! The scotch must have worked.)

Understand the following, O wise leaders of the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy. There is no comfort to be found in the middle, marshmallowy soft though it may be. I'm going to highlight the next sentence, because it's the most important one in this post.

Compromise is a means, not an end.

This is what people always get wrong when they make the "ah, Ted Kennedy would have helped here, 'cause he was a real horse trader. He'd have found the middle ground, and the bill would have passed." Horse traders don't look for the middle ground. Any horse trader who wants the middle ground goes out of business. You know why a horse trader trades his horse? To get a better fucking horse!
If tomorrow morning, Red Sox fans read that Theo Epstein's traded Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, and a handful of prospects to Toronto for Adam Lind and Vernon Wells's salary, and justified it by saying "This was as far as the other side wanted to go, and leading a baseball team means making compromises," I somehow doubt we'd be erecting a statue. In fact (and this is important) some of us would start calling John Henry and urging him to hire Toronto's GM. Because that dude got shit done.