Prior to November 2006, life was delightful. Republicans held the White House and both houses of Congress, and we Democrats could credibly claim to be wonderfully and deliciously powerless! If you Proles wanted some Prole-stuff that might reduce the incomes of any Job Creators, we’d say "Sorry, we'd love to, but we have no power to pass legislation!". Since Republicans didn't have a supermajority, we could theoretically stop legislation to grab more of your stuff for the 1%; but that might cut down on contributions and goodies from the people who pay for my dog's orthodontist, so we could always count on Lieberman, Bacchus, and some other practical Democrat to help us out by voting with our good friends on the other side.

In short, we could ensure that our wealthy patrons could get whatever they wanted without any whingeing from you Proles who we need votes from. Until Dean. Oy, vey. Dean came into office and crafted a brilliant @#$%ing strategy by which we'd actually run and back competitive candidates in every congressional race in all 50 states. He called it The 50-State Strategy. We called it 50 Shades of Oh Crap We're Screwed, for obvious reasons.

And we did “win” big: for the first time in more than a decade, we held majorities in both houses. It was awful. While we didn't have the Presidency and could still claim the inability to pass veto-proof legislation, it became harder to keep a straight face while telling you Lumpenproles that we couldn't possibly block Republican legislation. Times were tough, but at least we knew we had something: we knew we could count on Hillary becoming the 2008 Democratic Presidential nominee, and surely we could ride her pantsuit-tails to losing the Presidency and both houses of Congress, no? We had a path forward, if we could just stick it out for two years.

Then things got even worse. First, Obama beat Hillary on the whole "Hope and Change" spiel that somehow worked better than Hillary's "Who the @#$% else ya gonna vote for, chumps?!". And, seizing the moment, Republicans took the opportunity to become so utterly unhinged and loathsome that some of our internal polling showed their approval ratings at less than zero percent. Less than zero percent!