November 3, 2010 - It is Wednesday morning, the day after Election Day 2010.  The Republican Party will control the House of Representatives when it convenes in January.  Harry Reid will still be the Majority Leader of the Senate although his party will enjoy only a bare majority.  The Tea Party movement has proved its muscle in the Senate races of Kentucky and Florida but its candidate lost historically to a write in campaign in Alaska, undoing the Tea Party’s ouster of Senator Lisa Murkowski in the primary.  In Delaware the house fell on the Witch of November and in Nevada the voters told Sharron Angle that they certainly knew the difference between Latinos and Asians.  In Washington and Colorado incumbent Democrat Senators hold on to razor thin margins in races that remain too close to call. How much of the Republican gain is due to the activism of the Tea Party movement and how much is the result of the newly discovered 5-4 First Amendment Constitutional right of corporations to free spending speech is anybody’s guess.

Whether the 2010 election has converted the Party of NO into the Party of HELL NO will be played out in both chambers of Congress in the coming months.  Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says it is the mission of the Senate Republicans to ensure that President Obama serves only one term.   Speaker-in-waiting Boehner said that it is not the time for Republicans to compromise; that it is President Obama who needs to compromise with the Republican agenda.   The future of America seems apparent in the tea leaves left in the bottom of the Tea Party cup.

The message to Democrats is plain – it is time for America to wake up and smell the coffee.  It is time to take our government from the privileged few whose wealth and tax cuts have insulated them from the Great Recession and give it back to the 98% of Americans who together receive less than half of the income.   It is not the time for the President and his party to cave into the corporate interests; to abandon the working families and Middle Americans who are the strength of our nation.   It is time to stop drinking the tepid tea the Republicans are serving up and pour out mugs of strong coffee and stick to the task of cleaning up what the Fat Cats left in the litter box – and that job starts in earnest this morning.