Bleak

So what can we expect if and I mean IF the Dems take either house next month? Will we get better oversight of the out-of-control Presidency? A renewed respect for the Constititution? An end to the Iraq nightmare? A real commitment to rebuilding the Gulf Coast?

Don't bet on it. In a preview of his upcoming Rolling Stone feature on the Worst Congress Ever, Matt Taibbi expects largely more of the same partisan venom and corporate appeasement that has characterized the legislature for the past decade or so... just with a different clique nominally calling the shots.

Which is not to say the two parties won't work together. They will - -just not on anything constructive. What most people fail to understand about congress is that there have been some highly consistent areas of consensus even in these incredibly contentious past ten years. In the areas in which both parties typically agree, like military spending and giveaways to the more generous donor industries, Democrats and Republicans have worked swimmingly even in the most publicly antagonistic periods of the Bush and Clinton years. They helped each other sign off on the Iraq war and stroke the credit industry with the bankruptcy bill. They cooperated to pass a spate of free-trade agreements, the WTO, the MAI, GATT, and a host of other legislative monstrosities.

Where they couldn't cooperate was in the area of upholding their constitutional responsibilities, and practicing bureaucratic self-defense. The social divide between Republicans and Democrats had to be a big part of the reason congress lacked the institutional stones to really stand up to the president on the torture issue, to fight back when the Vice President ignores a subpoena of the GAO, to demand someone's head when the defense department openly refuses to audit itself. The Republicans in congress have been so busy in the last ten years figuring out ways to shut Democrats out of the process that they forgot how to stop the Executive Branch from giving it to them up the ass. The result is a congress that is not only grossly corrupt and completely beholden to financial interests, but totally castrated in the national political arena, a tawdry little sideshow that drones on idiotically on CSPAN while the White House rules the country more or less absolutely (an additional insult; not only is the congress a disgrace to two millennia of democratic tradition, it's the worst show on television).

Taibbi is essentially correct. The Democrats have not demonstrated a capacity or willingness to effect change on any relevant issue. They are, however, hoping to take advantage of numerous instances of documented Republican corruption, in order to put themselves in a position to punish Republicans for... well... mostly for shutting the Dems out of the gravy train for ten years. The money (so to speak) quote of the Taibbi piece comes from a half joking Charlie Rangel.

While congressional Democrats have undoubtedly indulged mightily in the earmark revolution, it's hard to find their fingerprints on the worst abuses of the past decade for the simple reason that the Republicans have done such an incredible job of dominating the legislative process. They have not been targets of corruption because Tom Delay and co. have literally left them with nothing to sell.

"Seriously, one of the reasons you're not seeing Democrats getting indicted in corruption scandals is that we've been out of the loop," says Rangel, laughing but not joking.

Most Dems running for congress this fall have avoided campaigning on the substantive issues of war, economy, constitutional protection, and instead focused on the hypocrisy and corruption of the party in power as their central theme. This is not the product of "triangulation" or clever strategy. It is this way because, most Democrats, in fact, simply lack substance. While Republicans still hold a better than even money chance at maintaining power, the alternative result of these elections will yield little or no difference in governance.