Beginning only a day or two after November’s national election, I started to have songs recur on my wee shuffle that I hardly listened to at all before then. Each and every one of them imprinted itself on my brain complete with an image connecting it with the incoming Congress, and I haven’t been able to shake the associations since. I keep meaning to burn this mix to actual CDs and send them to my friends, but barring that unlikely eventuality, I’m going to just go ahead and spread the love.

All Hail the 110th Congress : props to the voters, from the near-burbs of the hotbed

1. Believe — Yellowcard. Issue I : September 11th. It didn’t take long for our optimistic queries of ‘how bad can it be?’ to be answered after the 2000 election. I need not revisit the disastrous lost opportunities of the aftermath of September 11th. Some memories are longer than others. This song is my favorite one referencing that day.
2. 99 Red Balloons — Nena. Issue II : Iraq. I can’t hear this song, with its reference to ‘super high tech jet fighters’ without thinking of the first Iraq war, the celebration of those videotaped bombings, and the expectation that this would be ‘our’ version. The totally fubar situation we’ve created is another point I need not belabor; it was clearly on a lot of minds in November.
3. Shop for America — Bratmobile. Issue III : The Economy. Despite all assurances to the contrary, most of us are looking around and seeing a lot of people out of work, struggling, and tightening their belts. I didn’t run out and spend my hard-earned dollars on duct tape and plastic (sorry, 3M), and I’m not planning to run out and buy travel sizes of all my toiletries, either (sorry, Johnson & Johnson). I plan to continue to do my patriotic duty by shopping organic, taking public transportation, and investing in my responsibly-investing IRA, thankyouverymuch.
4. George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People — The Legendary K.O. Issue IV : Hurricane Katrina. Few things brought home the reality of life in the U.S. of A. to all the non-sociologists out there in the way that the flooding of New Orleans and the thousands of related preventable deaths did. We actually played this in our house on election night, with our fingers crossed.
5. No More Bullshit — Camper Van Beethoven. Issue V : Corruption. Man, if we thought the Reagan era was bad, this decade is giving the 80s a run for its money. There’s a limit to what people will forgive in their elected representatives, and I have to believe we’re approaching it.
6. I’ve Done Everything For You — Rick Springfield. Election Night : Republicans see the light and desert the ship. I have to hand it to republican voters: they have been loyal like kicked dogs these past 20 years. Enough is enough, though, and I’m sure the democrats are happy to welcome them into the fold.
7. Few and Far Between — 10,000 Maniacs. Election Night : Democrats clean up their act. We’re finally starting to see democrats talking frankly about cleaning up their own party. Voters appeared to be willing to give them another chance, but I hope it’s clear that the ‘better than nothing’ vote was a big factor, and hardly a ringing endorsement of past failures of spine.
8. All or Nothing — Cher. Election Night : Voters line up. In some parts of our state, voters didn’t finish voting until nearly 11pm, three hours after the polls officially closed. This was true all over the country, and local videos documenting the lines were moving. Clearly people saw this past election as the time to put up or shut up, and they came out in force.
9. Loser — Beck. Santorum. Rick, in the world of chimpanzees you truly are a monkey. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
10. Karma Chameleon — Culture Club. Lieberman. Well, Joe, you snaked your way in again. I will personally throw a party the day this republicrat is out of office for good. Say what you will, voters of Connecticut, but for all the big talk, you chose not to elect an actual democrat, and I, for one, noticed.
11. Napoleon — Ani Difranco. Delay. I’m not sure Tom realizes that he lost. I’m not sure Tom realizes that laws apply to him. I’m not sure Tom realizes that he’s not a hero to his party. But who can tell.
12. All I Need Is a Miracle — Mike + the Mechanics. Foley. It’s one thing to have a dead guy on the ballot; apparently it’s a completely different thing to have a perv. Take heart, Mr. Foley: maybe in the noble tradition of defeated incumbents like John and Spence, a place will be found for you in Executive service.
13. Howard Dean’s Crazy Train — the internets. We ride the wave in the House. In 2004, I made a CD of all the Dean yell mashups from the internets and gave it to a guy I barely knew, who had been working on Howard Dean‘s campaign up until that point. He probably didn’t take it as a very friendly gesture, but it was meant as an honor to Dr. Dean (really, Tristan, it was!). Someone who can garner such acclaim and derision, all in the somewhat unique genre of the internet remix, is someone to be taken seriously. Despite not being a democrat, I have always kind of loved Howard Dean. And holy god was watching the election returns come in like being on a crazy train! It was like waking up on November 8th, 2000, except in reverse. I’m willing to give some of that credit to Dr. Dean, and learn how to love while forgetting how to hate.
14. What a Feeling — Irene Cara. 1:30am, November 7th, 2006. So, it’s nearly midnight. We’re still watching network TV and refreshing the Virginia Commonwealth website every few minutes, trying to get the final regional results so we’ll be informed for the morning. We’re not really expecting much, since over 90% of the precincts have reported, and Fairfax County can’t be that big. Can it? And then it’s 95% reporting and somehow the gap is closing, in more than the trickles it was showing earlier. And then it’s just after 1am, 98% reporting, and suddenly the democrat is ahead. Which means that, against all reason, it’s become entirely possible — at 1:30 in the morning — that the American voters have booted the republicans out of both houses of Congress. Un-believable.
15. 1999 — Prince. It almost feels like the 20th century. Remember when we were hopeful about our elected officials? When we expected them to vote in our interests? Yes, we had pretty much realized that wasn’t going to happen without long drawn out ugly mud-slinging matches by 1999. Having spent most of the decade waiting for 1999 to get here, I find myself nostalgic for it after its passing. And after the disappointment that was 2000, this is kind of like the party we were planning to have then. An actual agenda seems possible: a living wage, universal health care, an end to corporate welfare, campaign finance reform, and investigations into the invasion of Iraq.
16. Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now — McFadden & Whitehead. Wake up and do ‘The Math,’ Mr. Rove The incumbents concede. There are no drawn-out recounts or court battles. The efforts of republicans in Maryland to get democrats to vote for them because their candidate is black fail. I could go on and on, but we all know how to add 202 and 31 to get 233. If I were a person who thrived on petty satisfactions, this would have been a season of abundance. But since I’m not, I wasn’t gleefully jumping around the room all night long shouting out things in the vein of ‘put that in your ‘we will keep both houses’ pipe and smoke it, you smug [your favorite male gendered expletive here]!’ Really, I wasn’t. Ok, maybe I was gloating just a little. But no shouting, and that’s the truth.
17. Dancing With Myself — Billy Idol. No war but the class war! For the first time, we have a true blue — or should I say red? — socialist in the Senate. Don’t be a patsy, Bernie: they need you more than you need them. Not that you ever were a patsy, Mr. Kicking Butt And Taking Names in Vermont. If Barbara Lee voted for me in 2001, I now pass that flag to you to bear in the Senate. I’m sure you won’t let me down.
18. Short Skirt Long Jacket — Cake. Welcome, Madam Speaker! What more can I say? She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack / She’s touring the facility and picking up slack. The first woman Speaker of the House, and a California leftie at that. This is one song that got stuck in my head and wouldn’t leave. Every time I saw Nancy on the front page of the paper, or on the nightly news, I kept thinking, She uses a machete to cut through red tape. Let’s hope so.
19. Love Train — The O’Jays. Spread the love. It’s never too late to get on board.
Bonus track: I’ll Take Your Man — Salt N Pepa. Pelosi : 1, Bush : 0. The election’s over, and it just keeps getting better and better. I barely had time to integrate the shift of both chambers of Congress a mere 10 hours prior, and what to my wondering eyes does appear, but Rumsfeld getting the boot. This has always been one of my favorite songs, but its fit in this situation kept me laughing for days. I could pick many choice lines as illustration, but the best one would have to be: Before I got on the stage you wished me good luck / Turned around and told your friends I suck / Well look at you now, you ain’t got nobody / Searching for love in a fifth of Bacardi. As an epilogue to this sad tale of loss, I give you Bolton: Don’t make me prove to you that I can / Either give him up, or get slammed. Let’s make that Pelosi : 2, then, shall we? Booyah.

Bonus video: ‘Freedom’ Because you can never have too many reminders of what’s at stake.