I'm not normally much of an opera person, but I have a thing for the crazy, the indulgent, and the vulgar, which is a pretentious way of saying, despite his HORRIFYING flaws as a human being, I'm a fan of the art of Richard Wagner.

Wagner's greatest work is a tetralogy of operas about gods, kings, and heroes and a magic ring that stands for power (yeah, Tolkien apparently ripped him off, but I never smoked enough pot to get into him). The epic Ring Cycle ends with the burning of Valhalla, when the gods, kings, and heroes have so thoroughly debased the heavens with their mad power-grabbing, that the only way they can preserve the halls of power is to have a good, gigantic, all-encompassing, CLEANSING FIRE.

Must be a bitch to stage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tterd%C3%A4mmerung

I believe Wagner's opera has something to teach us about the current situation in Philly politics.

So what's that burning smell?
I've stayed out of the conversation here about lifting spending limits in the middle of a citywide election for two reasons:

1) there's only one logical, intellectually-justified response, and it's already been well-articulated here. NO FUCKING WAY.

2) I couldn't figure out why Ye Olde Partie Machine, the Brady/Fumo partnership that's reigned so cleverly for two decades, would so overreact. Do Bob Brady's supporters really need to debase themselves, to flame out so violently and self-destructively, just because one poll shows Tom "The Other White Meat" Knox, in second place.

(Sure, Knox is formidable in a Wild Card kind of way, and has some good ideas…but after two decades in power, it doesn't make sense that Brady's camp was so shocked that Knox's TV ads improved his poll numbers. That's what TV ads often do.)

Then I read the news today…oh boy. The Inky's top story seems to explain EVERYTHING:

"The four-year investigation of State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo is coming to an end, and lawyers familiar with the case expect him to be indicted soon, possibly as early as Tuesday."

Suddenly that burning smell--Jim Kenney's histrionic legislation--makes sense.

Last week wasn't just a very bad week for Brady (last place in the polls). It was a very bad week for Fumo too. It was in fact a very, very bad week for the whole Brady/Fumo Machine.

So it's not so surprising that the Machine is starting to smoke. With one gigantic, very likely self-destructive, piece of legislation (read: conflagration), it may unwittingly be setting the stages for its own Final Curtain.

Welcome to The Twilight of the Gods, Philly-Style

Bob Brady's Immolation Scene is now being staged by Vince Fumo. Our onetime hero Jim Kenney is showing both his loyalty and his limitations by falling on his sword with his ultimately self-destructive Campaign Finance Legislation.

Look: last week's poll doesn't mean it's so likely Tom Knox will be the next mayor. He's just had the airwaves to himself for awhile, a luxury he won't have in April or May. But it DOES mean, if you follow these things closely, that it's likely Bob Brady will NOT be the next mayor. The party chairman, for all his economic resources and ward leaders, must rely very heavily on a dwindling white ethnic voter base that he can ill-afford to share with another white candidate, particularly one he cannot buy or bargain out of the race as he may have done with others (cough, cough, Jon Saidel...cough, cough John Dougherty).

Just days before, Bob Brady staged a much-ballyhooed Announcement that made the Last Place Candidate look like the Great White Hope. But then the Daily News poll brought him crashing back to earth like a Hindenburg-sized Icarus. Maybe he should NOT have risked his unsullied electoral record on a race that common sense said he was poorly positioned to win.

And now Vince Fumo, the scheming Gunther who probably talked Bob into the mayoral campaign (and those burning wings) in the first place, is poised to crash to earth too.

No wonder their followers are histrionic.

So what should we progressives do?

STEP BACK, SMILE, AND SEE HOW HIGH THE FLAMES GO!!!

Destiny, the REAL machine (behind Wagner's operas and all elections), seems finally to be turning away from The Brady/Fumo Machine and towards Change. This is really just evolution. The Old Machine still has money, and ward leaders, but it does not represent the number of voters it used to. Many of those voters have moved out of the city. Many have just moved out of the realm of the living. This is how a machine dies.

I'm advising Damon Roberts, and I'm smiling today because Damon's opponent is an incumbent attached to that same smoking Machine.

All challengers running against Brady/Fumo Machine incumbents are about to watch their opponents get singed. Hold steady, fellow challengers! That machine is going to make some noise and throw some sparks before it dies, but make no mistake: it's not just battling us now. It's battling time. And, in the end, nobody wins that fight.

What should progressives do about the proposed legislation?

With all due respect to my friend Marc Stier, whose At-Large button will be the first I push in May, we DON'T need to look for some compromise that will specifically harm Tom Knox and specifically help Bob Brady.

If Bob can't buy or bargain Tom out of the race, we don't need to help Ye Olde Partie Machine legislate him out of the race.

I don't like millionaires buying themselves electoral legitimacy anymore than Marc does. But the First Amendment won't let us stop Tom from spending his own money, so let's NOT make voters more cynical about Philadelphia's elections by cutting some ill-timed and ill-advised deal.

If Jim Kenney wants to write Public Financing legislation that will apply to FUTURE elections, GREAT! Maybe he even can tie it to raised spending limits too… so long as they apply to FUTURE elections also.

Otherwise, I say, no deal. Let Philadelphia voters know that Philadelphia progressives oppose changing the rules to benefit any one candidate, let alone a candidate who so obviously represents, in so many ways, the status quo.

So yes, let's voice our opposition to Kenney's legislation.

Then let's step back and enjoy The Twilight of the Gods.

My advice is to heed the words of another musical epic:

THE ROOF, THE ROOF, THE ROOF IS ON FI-IRE!!!

WE DON'T NEED NO WATER…