Very few will argue that the Bush years haven't been a disaster. The nation is weaker in every way; militarily, economically and morally. Our international influence has waned and we are at odds with practically everyone. The national frustration level is surging. That anger is being directed at the usual suspects.

It's our fellow Americans' fault for not voting or being too stupid, superstitious or lazy to vote their own interests. It's the fault of the GOP for crossing the line between criminality and politics as usual and for their cultish adherence to outmoded ideology. It's the Project for a New American Century neocons, egged on by AIPAC, that have dragged the country into senseless wars that suck the treasury dry. The plutocrats are despised for their pathological greed. Lobbyists are blamed for polluting the political process and slanting the playing field toward the narrow, dissolute interests of their employers. The corporate media are blamed for bundling the sacking of America into deceptive sound bites and entertaining lies.

But even a cabal as muscular as this might find it difficult to install an unpopular, felonious administration and implement an agenda that hundreds of millions of people reject. It takes a great deal to overwhelm the fundamental decency of most Americans.

Enter the Democratic Party leadership and senior Congressional Democrats. The devolutionary right wing owe their success to these unlikely allies. The Bush administration, if it would have existed at all, would not have been successful without their unflagging help and support. It's a matter of public record starting with the 2000 election.

Can anyone imagine the GOP or any reasonably robust political party walking away from a presidential election they won? Can you imagine them silencing their own membership to enable the theft? Twice? Do you think a real political party would stress over looking like "sore losers"? Can you imagine the GOP voting for legislation that gave control of vote tabulation to Democratic partisans? Can you imagine another political party not acting to remove the imposter when their victory was confirmed? The Democrats could not have been more helpful toward the GOP if they were working for them.

When Bush came out of hiding after 9-11, the Democrats failed to ask any of the important questions. Why did all four agencies charged with our defense stand down? Where were our jets and why? Since when do Vice Presidents play war games and issue orders to shoot down passenger jets? The Democratic Senate even agreed not to have an independent investigation!

When pressure from concerned citizens and survivors became impossible to ignore, the Democrats allowed the Bush White House, a target of the investigation, to help select the panel, limit the scope of the investigation, withhold information and testify off the record. The complete report, such as it is, has yet to be released. The actions of the Democrats have shielded the White House from the consequences of the bloodiest screw up in our history, allowing them to remain in office and do their worst. The Democrats are continuing to shield them to this day by refusing to impeach, not only for the criminal neglect of 9-11 or worse but for the crimes and gross abuse of power committed in the wake of 9-11.

The Democrats just can't do enough for the Bush White House. They enabled unconstitutional legislation that legalizes the criminality of the administration and their supporters. At the same time they are issuing get out of jail free cards to confessed felons, they are working to restrict our civil liberties in an unprecedented way. The Dems vote en masse for the fascist Patriot Acts, and the Democratic-controlled House thinks it should be a crime to think bad thoughts about your government, effectively criminalizing most of the nation.

The GOP could never have ratified torture and extraordinary rendition, suspended Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus or ripped half of the Bill of Rights out of the Constitution unless the Congressional Democrats helped them. The Democrats didn't have to give away the Supreme Court to corporate interests and religious zealots. They promised not to, but they did it anyway.

It took about a year for the deception of the rationales for the invasion of Iraq to be fully exposed. Did the Democrats do as the Geneva Conventions and domestic law require? Do everything in their power to end the illegal war? Did they filibuster, call up The Hague, take their case to the people, vote no in protest? Nope. They shielded the perpetrators in the White House and put the war on steroids. They voted for every appropriation that bloated the Pentagon's budget and lined the pockets of war profiteers, cheats, and mercenaries. The only criticism leveled at the GOP is that Bush/Cheney and their assorted generals have failed to secure Iraq and steal their resources quickly enough and inexpensively enough.

Since the Democrats have taken over both Houses of Congress there has been no investigation into criminal acts that pushed the country into war and no real effort to stop the bloodshed. It's a monstrous betrayal.

The Democrats didn't stop at ceding elections and helping the GOP to establish an imperial presidency and launch imperialist wars. They joined the GOP in everything from reviving the worst polluters on the planet, the nuclear power and oily carbon crowd, to rescuing the feared military industrial complex from well deserved extinction. They gave corporations with bigger budgets than many countries more wealth in subsidies and tax relief. They gave them more rights than the people they exploit and poison. They participated wholeheartedly in the drunken fiscal irresponsibility of Bush, eclipsing the worst abuses of the Reagan years. They helped offshore your job when even the robotic GOP declined to do so. Sometimes they all jumped in like on the AUMF, the Patriot Act and Medicare D (a huge subsidy to big pharma). Sometimes small rotating cadres of Democrats pushed the steaming pile of legislation across the finish line. CAFTA, the draconian bankruptcy bill, and the worst of Bush's nominees fall in that category.

Don't buy the election rhetoric that feeds on manufactured nostalgia for the prosperous Clinton era. Don't believe that our troubles will be over if we put a Democrat in the White House and put more Democrats in Congress. Many of the worst transgressions of the Bushies had their inception in the Clinton White House, while the new Democratic Congress hasn't been worth the powder to blow it up.

We don't need any more Democrats like Lieberman, Landrieu, Emmanuel, Pelosi or turncoats like John Conyers. We certainly don't need a president who is in bed with the military industrial complex or who thinks his or her Congressional oath to uphold the Constitution doesn't matter. We don't need a president who thinks corporations will solve global warming or that white-collar crooks don't really harm anyone.

This year voters must step nimbly over old party loyalties and reject the well-funded corporate darlings. Rather than vote for a Party, voters must be highly selective. A candidate who doesn't walk the talk, who hasn't demonstrated he or she is willing to stand up for what's right does not deserve your vote, no matter who the opponent is. Unless we make it very clear to Party leadership that we refuse to help them be the instruments of our destruction, they are going to keep on playing us for suckers.

The Constitution made no provision for political parties. Right now all they do is stand between us and the candidates we want and government we deserve. Political parties are not part of the government. They are private businesses that have monopolized elections and left us out in the cold. I think we'd be better off without them. Across the board public funding would do more for us than anyone with a donkey or an elephant on their lapel ever did.