plan b and progress

that plan b thing last night was bizarre. i still haven't heard a plausible explanation of what boehner was trying to do, and it seemed almost precisely formulated to alienate his own tax obsessives. i would expect he cannot persist as speaker. perhaps it was actually a test to see whether he could command his own caucus? now, on the other hand, if i were a democrat, i would be concerned by the triumphalism, which becomes ever-more extreme. see, progressives have always believed they own the future. they believe more or less that their kind of progress is inevitable and also something they willl push like mad. they view themselves as spokespersons for the future. this tempts them to believe that they have found the millennium at the election; listen to the victory raps in ads by msnbc hosts, for example. there is so much gloating and so much bludgeoning of the 'right-wing crazies' (cf krugman again today). if you think american conservatism is over, i think you will very soon be absorbing another refutation of your theory of history.