Sacred cows in a rat race

I love a good animal cliche:

Martha Coakley: A Democratic Canary in a Coalmine?

Political operatives say the Senate race in Massachusetts between Democratic state attorney general Martha Coakley and Republican state senator Scott Brown is too close to call. But the fact that President Obama felt the need to fly to the Bay State to campaign for a Democrat in one of the most Democratic states in the nation speaks volumes about the ugly climate for Democratic candidates.

But, come on. We can do a lot better than that.

Health care reform is the 800 pound gorilla in the room and the albatross around the Democratic Party's neck. President Obama is all bark and no bite when he whines about Republicans "taking advantage of Americans' anger," and he may seem as angry as a bull, but he's just backing the wrong horse and moving at a snail's pace in acknowledging it. Martha Coakley is too used to being a big fish in a little pond, and now she's acting like a bull in a china shop; if she weren't as blind as a bat, she'd be busy as a bee in trying to figure out how to re-close that can of worms. I know you probably want me to call the dogs off about now (come on, speak out, cat got your tongue?), but I've been railing about this awful reform package for a coon's age, and I'm not about to change horses in midstream. What ABC meant to say in this piece is that health care reform is a dead duck, which leaves poor Martha caught like a deer in the headlights. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there in politics, and Democrats should not have been counting their chickens before they hatched. That's why they're starting to drop like flies, and why Republicanss, if they're eager little beavers, can feather their own nests and come out being fat cats again. Even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while. Catch you later -- I've got other fish to fry.

A little coal-mining lore for y'all, by the way.  The purpose of the canary in the coal mine was not, as many people seem to assume, primarily to detect (by dying) levels of gas that would kill the miners if breathed by them. The chief gas produced in a coal mine is methane, which is combustible if it is as low as 5 percent of the air. If the canary died, it meant methane levels were not at the 1 or 2 percent considered safe, so miners would leave to avoid getting blown up.