Will they pull it of again? Will the Democratic Party manage to turn what should be an easy win into a last-minute loss, as they have done so with stunning consistency since 1998? Indeed, they have done so consistently since 1980, with the remarkable exception of Bill Clinton's election in 1992 and his re-election in 1996. Anyone who's studied a bit of American political history (or has just been alive long enough) knows that the Democrats troubles began when the Civil Rights movement forced a split between Southern Dixiecrats and Northern liberals. (Okay--Maybe this goes back to Reconstruction. Or Thomas Jefferson.) After Watergate, it seemed likely that the Republican Party might be washed up for good. The election of that humble, gentle, Southern intellectual, Jimmy Carter, seemed to usher in a new age. But we all know what happened to that. The words that stick in my mind from that era (I was just about to hit puberty) are "inflation" and "hostage crisis." So the Americans picked a tough-talking, flamboyant, charismatic cowboy with a dubious moral compass, and they have been doing so ever since. (One might argue that the same description could apply to Clinton. To both Clintons, in fact.) Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has been playing the role of the Keystone Cops. Is it because the Dixiecrat strain hasn't been removed from the Democrat genome? Most of the old Dixiecrats simply became Republicans, but many who still call themselves Democrats are still trying to get elected by behaving like Republicans, at least on some issues. Hillary has become the caricature of this "triangulating Democrat." They are like circus contortionists, trying to please the crowd. If the Democratic Party were a dictatorship (which the Republican Party essentially is, despite the grumblings of fundamentalist Christians on the one hand and Rockerfeller-style economic conservatives on the other), Howard Dean could declare loudly that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, that we never should have been there, and that we should get out immediately, because we can't do more harmnotbeing there than we are doing bebeingthere. But since he has to please both the Kennedys and the Clintons, he has to waffle. The triangulating, wannabe Republicrats have paralyzed the Democrat Party, preventing it from becoming a progressive alternative to Republican rule. True, the Republican Party has become a freakish tangle of contradictions, and has proven to be even more incompetent than even I could have imagined, they all pretty much toe the line, no matter how wildly drawn the line is (the Olympia Snowes notwithstanding). This very day, on CNN (which I watch only when BBC World is doing some annoying piece on Bollywood or cricket), some Thomas Clarence-type mouthpiece for the Republican Reich was emphasizing that "no matter what you think of the guy, Bush is consistent." This is true. Bush is consistently stupid and irresponsible. He is consistently incompetent and enslaved to the powers that pull his strings. And the whole Republican Party (the Olympia Snowes notwithstanding) follows his bizarre lead. It's like an old Loony Toons cartoon, in which the orchestra is struggling to follow the movements of a conductor who has a mouse running loose inside his tuxedo. The point being, the Republicans have a conductor (though he is controlled by a shadowy Darth-Sidious-type oligarchy). The Democrats have no conductor. Dean can never be one. God help us if Hillary becomes one. (Note: Someone will have to tell the Boy Scouts to rewrite their manual, since traditional rules dictate that an American flag may only be disposed of by burning.) So conditions are ripe! You've seen it before. You saw it in 2000, and in 2004. The score is Republicans 50, Democrats 49. There are five seconds left on the clock. And the Democrats have been awarded a free throw. What are the odds that they miss?

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Matt Thorn

Department of Comics Production

Kyoto Seika University