As long as our country has Gail Collins, Rachel Maddow and Elizabeth Warren,\u00a0 I can clutch a tiny bit of hope in my wrinkly, age spotted hands.<\/p>\n

Truthfully, I’ve given up looking for the next progressive era.\u00a0 In the 20th century, our society swung back and forth from conservative to progressive times as regularly as the big old clock in the White House hallway.\u00a0 During the 1920’s, 50’s and 80’s we took a step back to figure out how to incorporate all the\u00a0progressive changes from the previous years.\u00a0\u00a0According to this cycles theory, the 1990s and early 2000’s should have seen a burst of new laws and programs to extend and improve on\u00a0the progress made earlier.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0times had changed by the end of the “American century,” and another giant leap forward was not in the cards.\u00a0 Michele Bachman\u00a0is crowing now about how the tea party destruction of Obamacare is their historic opportunity to bury liberalism forever. Given all the cuts to programs that help the poor, the Affordable Care Act may be the only survivor of the right wing, corporate funded attacks on American families.<\/p>\n

But all is not lost.\u00a0 Better late than never.\u00a0 Every revolution needs\u00a0a whole slew of different talents.\u00a0 First, someone has to distract us from the pity party we\u00a0so much enjoy.\u00a0 Gail Collins does this with pin prick humor.\u00a0\u00a0Then we need the\u00a0‘splainer.\u00a0\u00a0 No one can teach us what we need to know better than Rachel Maddow.\u00a0 OMG – charts, maps, historical lessons.\u00a0 Who knew that the number of federal judgeships was evenly divided between those appointed by Republican presidents and those appointed by Democratic presidents?\u00a0 And that there are 93 vacancies?\u00a0\u00a0 We would never get that kind of background – that very important information – from lamestream media.\u00a0 So now we know why the whole confirmation of judges thing in the Senate is such\u00a0a big deal.<\/p>\n

Once our attention has been diverted away from all the terrible news, and the cloud of doom has been lifted from us, we need a charismatic leader to inspire us to crawl out of our protective cocoons.\u00a0\u00a0 Elizabeth Warren has\u00a0the right combination of\u00a0talents and the sincere desire to make life better for\u00a0the 98% of us not\u00a0part of the robber baron class.<\/p>\n

So time will tell.\u00a0 Harry Reid finally got enough\u00a0support in the Senate to change the filibuster rules.\u00a0 Rachel Maddow says this is “a really big\u00a0deal.”\u00a0 I’ve been pretty hard on old Harry from time to time.\u00a0 I’ll call his office today and thank him for finally bringing the hammer down on\u00a0Republican obstructionism.<\/p>\n

But the good old boys’ time is about up.\u00a0 The times they are a changin’.\u00a0\u00a0Economic populism is in the ascendancy.\u00a0 We can never go back to the days of Camelot, but we can\u00a0pull ourselves together for the next reimagining of what a fair and just society looks like.\u00a0 Let’s do it.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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As long as our country has Gail Collins, Rachel Maddow and Elizabeth Warren,\u00a0 I can clutch a tiny bit of hope in my wrinkly,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":628,"featured_media":26744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2109,994,93,1453,113,77,16,877],"tags":[747],"yoast_head":"\n