Ain’t that a shame: Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell hate each other.

We’re all really broken up about this, sure:

…it was another ugly yet routine day in the dysfunctional United States Senate. Reid and McConnell can barely stand each other.

Their feud echoes America’s political mood: Polarized. Angry. Untrusting. And it’s a key reason Congress doesn’t work.

But it’s not really a key reason.  Even if Harry Reid was sufficiently neurotypical to try to work with Mitch McConnell more (or, indeed, at all) nothing in Congress would still get done, because the actual key reason why ‘Congress doesn’t work’ is because the House of Representatives refuses to enable Barack Obama’s dysfunctional ideas of what constitutes responsible government.  Which is why we have a bicameral legislature: our government was designed by some of the smartest functional paranoids the world has ever seen.  Our current situation, in other words, is not a failure of the system: it is a defense mechanism of the system.

And one that will not be in place next January, presuming that the Senate flips (which pretty much everybody concedes that it will at this point*). Does Barack Obama think that he’s put-upon now?  …Oh, my.  Oh, oh, my.  The man has no idea about how many no-win scenarios Obama’s avoided because Harry Reid has quietly quashed problematic (in partisan terms) bill after bill after bill. Once the new way of things is in place, Obama doesn’t get that luxury anymore – and, remember: if it’s true that McConnell hates Reid now then we’re all about to see that nobody can do spite like a US Senator determined to get some of his or her own back.

I know, I know.  Heck of a way to run a railroad.  Still, it all somehow manages to work without the application of automatic weapons fire, which is really the important thing here.  Let’s not get too spoiled by the ridiculously comprehensive success of our political system, OK?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*What’s that, lurker? You’re not going to listen to me, and write that check to the DSCC anyway?  Go right ahead!  Yeah, that’ll show me, it will.