It's raining.

Let my enemies devour each other.
Salvador Dali

As I predicted, these are glorious days for a progressive democrat. I get to watch Malkin, Rove, Hannity, Palin and O'Donnell, et al engage in an internecine, texas style, caged death match as the conservatives tear themselves apart. Last night's primary supplanted quite a few establishment Republicans and replaced them with wacked out tea baggers. Now the fur is really starting to fly.

The problem with the Tea Party is that it is an amorphous conglomeration currently without a platform. It is a Rorschach party that stands for whatever you want it to stand for. The devil, as they say, is in the details. It is one thing to be a party of anti-incumbency and small government but my guess is that the American people will demand that they fill in a few blanks. Are we going to privatize all the federal land and do away with Medicare and Social Security as some of the tea baggers advocate? Outlaw abortion and masturbation? Outlaw the teaching of unfounded and godless concepts like evolution? Repeal the 14th amendment?

The republican fringe ticket will hopefully make centrism more popular in November but all indicators are quite glum at the moment. The conservatives have a winning formula, nominate attractive candidates with nice racks and most people will pretty much steer around all of that policy stuff.

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Of course there is always the chance that the Palin's and Bachmann's of the world can get elected to higher office, especially when the popularity of the democratic incumbent is in the dumper. That is a prospect that is truly frightening. But it has happened before and I would approach it like I would approach a long prison sentence. Keep my mouth shut and don't bump anyone's tray in the chow line.

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Robert Scheer has a new book out called “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street,” that places the blame for our economic decline squarely on the shoulders of the man I think is most responsible, Ronald Reagan, who was then aided and abetted by his successor, Bill Clinton. Reagan's love of the free market helped destroy my family fortune, specifically when he deregulated the savings and loan industry.

My bank, Home Federal Savings and Loan, was taken over while I was building a small subdivision, after a string of very profitable ventures. There was no way to get a new loan from a new bank and my company collapsed. Savings and Loans had not been able to make certain loans prior to Reagan and all of the money that they were pushing helped create a very risky environment that ultimately fell apart like a house of cards.

According to Scheer, Clinton made his own contribution to the economic collapse when he pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which opened the floodgates to the toxic mortgage-backed derivatives. He hired people like Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who carried the water for the financial titans. Congress did its own part in repealing the Glass-Steagall act.

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It is tough for me to monday morning quarterback this president. Our economic morass was a long time in the making. And no one knows how bad things would have become if we had chosen a different course in the crazy days after the meltdown. But it seems to me that Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner were running willy nilly from the seat of their pants, picking winners and losers, and making side deals that will probably never come to light. You have to ask yourself if this is any way to run a democracy?

Of course, my conservative friends are happy to lay all of our problems at the feet of Franklin Raines, Barney Frank, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, individuals and institutions that were perhaps a little too successful at selling the notion of the american dream.

It's the same old story, when things are going bad, we think that they are even worse than they are, when the economy is heating up, people think that they have the midas touch and can do no wrong. We have remarkably short memories. Several months ago I read an interview with Paul Volcker where he stated that we were in what I believe he called a transcendent recession, the type that takes about fifteen years to recover from. A long slow burn. I believe that the last similar downturn started in the late sixties and lasted through the early eighties.

The reality is that there is little that this President can actually do. He has tried to pump stimulus money in to little avail. The republicans want to make tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, increasing our already huge deficit. We are in for a long, painful slog. Here's to survival.