Billmon is Optimistic. We're screwed.

I don't know. But if Jim Webb and I are now on the roughly same side on the big issues of the day -- the war, globalization, corporate power, economic fairness, social justice -- it tells you something has fundamentally changed in American politics. It may not be a realignment (a political system this polluted and decrepit may not be capable of such a thing) but when Senators from Virginia start talking like Walter Reuther, it sure the hell isn't business as usual.

This is the guy who generally gives US Democracy a 50/50 chance of surviving the year.

As Billmon writes this has "left me with a profound case of political vertigo."