OK, I have a question for Democratic voters. In 2004, you folks lost control of the Senate and didn’t win the House, and you vowed to reverse that. In 2006, you folks got majorities in both houses of Congress. This year, you folks are making efforts to increase your majorities in both.

I ask you, in all seriousness: why are you bothering?

Democratic Congress May Adjourn, Leave Crisis to Fed, Treasury

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn’t equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can’t agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.

Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments — Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven’t ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.

Your own Senate Majority Leader is running around telling people that nobody knows what to do – and, partisan that I am, if I saw Senator Barack Obama winding up to kick Senator Reid in the testicles for making that statement in public I’d suddenly become fascinated by the view outside my window – your Speaker of the House thinks that promising to recall Congress if “if there is a need to do so” is a cognent, or indeed, sane response to the current crisis, and your Presidential/Vice Presidential team is busily avoiding the fact that they’re personally up to their eyeballs in this mess by pointing fingers at the guy who tried to address this problem three years ago. All of this would be funny, except that I happen to live in this country, thank you very much. While watching the Democrats flail about on reneging on all their ’06 campaign promises was entertaining, I still expect them to do their jobs. And, before any of you comment: staying at one’s post and to projecting confidence and calm is in fact part of their job. The Democratic leadership is failing to do even that.

So, to paraphrase a fairly famous Republican: if you’re not planning to use the legislative branch, would it be OK if we could borrow it for a while?

Moe Lane