I was also about 40 meters to the left and maybe 20 meters monument-side of the last jumbotron.

And I agree, they walked the line on commenting on politics without actually becoming political perfectly. They are absolute geniuses at that.

1) Eliminate the filibuster. This should’ve been done already, but it might get done with this next congress. Even if they don’t eliminate it, they should stop honoring secret holds. If someone wants to filibuster, they should have to do it on the senate floor.

2) Whenever the republicans start cock-blocking legislation, the democrats should table that legislation and find something that is an intersection of good policy and good politics, but is ideologically opposed to modern conservatism. That is to say, something that polls very popular, preferably in the home states of the republican problems, but that is also very effective. There are plenty of examples of programs that fit this bill. S-CHIP. A single payer option in the health care bill, for FSMs sake. Lots of things poll well but get ignored by the democrats. Then, they should introduce and debate these things on purpose. The republicans will oppose them, as they have to. Then the democrats should, both personally and through allied organizations go into the home states of the people causing the problems and aggressively run ads supporting the popular program and denouncing the problem child.

3) Profit. You could pretty easily own a lot of republicans who live in only marginally republican districts, some of whom are the worst offenders for obstructionism. They would not be in congress 2-6 years (depending on whether they’re house or senate) after you started actively pursuing the program. You could do the same thing with blue dogs.

Basically, Democrats are afraid of “playing politics”, so they don’t even play. Republicans only know how to play politics, so they never do anything and get anything worthwhile done. It is quite possible, even easy, for democrats to start playing to win and actually improve the governance of this country significantly. They’d just have to do it over the whining of the chattering class, the media, who would feel the poor republicans were being unfairly hurt by those nasty democrats kicking their asses with popular programs.

I do agree with you about the 2 party system, though. We need an overhaul, badly. One that includes proportional representation.

I agree with your comments about the innappropriateness of Stewart trying to make an equivalency out of Fox/Beck and MSNBC/Olbermann, which I personally think are very different, given how little care Fox/Beck shows for the actual truth.

I’m so glad that you got to the rally! I just wish I’d known approximately where you were in the crowd as I was watching. I really liked Stewart’s monologue at the end – and overall I’d have to say that they came much closer to making it apolitical than I thought they possibly could.

You know I’ve always cried at the top of my lungs that the two party system will never truly work, which is something that hits me over the head in obviousness every time a macro view of anything political comes up. This is why the main thing I can hope for is a break in the system to house more political parties. How many other industrialized nations do you know with only two parties?

I do wish mine breathed a bit more. My feet get very hot in them. On the other hand, I’m probably gonna buy some of the neoprene ones for winter…