"Do you believe in magic, like I believe? Do you believe in magic?"--The Loving Spoonful

Two years from now, we will look back upon these dark days, and we will wonder: how did we ever let this happen?

The vast majority of Americans will be thrilled with "Omnicare," our new universal single-payer health care system. Sure, some conservatives will still whine that it's big government run amok etc., etc.--but they'll live longer. And those unfortunate wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a distant memory, troop withdrawals having been one of the first orders of business in President Obama's new administration. A flood of oil on the market from our new trading partner Iran will have reversed the spiraling gas and food prices of the bad old days of 2008. And while President Obama's message of healing and reconciliation will prevent him from ordering the trial of George W. Bush and his accomplices for their numerous violations of domestic law, he will, in fact, defer when prosecutors from the International Court of Justice arrest Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice and whisk them off to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity--Obama noting, sadly but accurately, that honoring international treaties and law is the highest law of our land, and that world leaders have a particular responsibility to honor the trust of all the world's citizens. The trials will be set to begin shortly after the mid-point of Obama’s initial term as president.

Okay, okay, so you noticed: it’s April Fool's Day, and this is an April Fool's article. But one important thing that the Democrats, and particularly the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, have reminded us of, is that it's good to hope. We want to hope. We need to hope. And while cynics will deride the Democrats' campaigns of hope and self-affirmation as so much empty posturing, completely unsupported by anything any leading Democrat has ever actually said or done, even they, in their heart of hearts, want it to be true.

And so do you. Admit it.

It is this unavoidable twist of the human psyche, this inevitability of hope, that makes the Democrats so much superior to the Republicans, even when (as is usually the case) they pursue exactly the same policies of war, greed, empire, outsourcing, and environmental rampage. With the Republicans, we know we're getting screwed. They brag about it, revel in it. Democrats make you think they'd really like to be doing something different. And we need that magical thinking. We need to believe, as the new agers say, that we create our own reality. We also crave somebody waving a wand and making it all better.

(TV programmers know this. That's why the networks are now flooded with shows about heroes with super powers, and before that the big rage was guardian angels. As Fox Mulder taught us, we want to believe. It makes us ever so much more receptive to the commercials. So who better to lead us than another creation of the media?)

And that's exactly what the Democrats offer, especially this year: that it's not our fault (or theirs), but that we can make things better. We can make change. Yes we can. And they will lead us. That. Is. So. Cool.

So, Democrats, please accept this TTS! apology for all the mean things we've said about you in the past. When, for example, in a front page article on Oct. 3, 2006, we called Sen. Maria Cantwell a "toxic, pus-infested spawn of Satan," we didn't really mean it. [Ed. note: Actually, independent studies have shown that Cantwell is a toxic, pus-infested spawn of Satan. It's just that the Republicans are so much worse.] When we referred to Mayor Greg Nickels as an "egomaniacal, two-bit, tin-pot Mussolini," what we were trying to convey was that we admired his firmness and resolve. And when we slagged Hillary Clinton as an "eager tool of the international conspiracy to turn us all into mindless, blood-sucking vampire zombies," well, actually we meant every word. But we neglected to add that for 35 years, from the Rose Law Firm to the board of Wal-Mart, she's been fighting for us little people.

And that last part is the most important. The Democrats are not a party of fat cats. Instead, they are a collection of rotund felines that fight for us all. Sure, they usually lose that fight, and then seem startlingly content with that outcome. But in fighting for us at all, they give us hope. And hope, as we are learning all over again this year, is everything.

Because when large numbers of desperate but hopeful people see those hopes cruelly snatched away, that's when revolutions happen.

So long as it doesn't conflict with the new season of American Idol.