The tea-baggers are eager to tell anyone who will listen that they are fighting the Federal government and the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress. They scream themselves red in the face — or even weep publicly — about how much they “want their country back.”

“Back” from whom?

Hearing them talk, one could be forgiven for overlooking the sole reason Obama is president and the Dems control Congress — a majority of the American electorate voted for them. The real enemy is not the government, but the voters behind it. Cocooned in their closed-loop media, the tea-baggers still see themselves as the majority, which they have not been for some time.

Between the “backlash” of the mid 60′s and the late 80′s, the Republicans had a series of presidential blow-outs — 1972, 1984, 1988 — in which they swept the electoral map. That hasn’t happened since. Since 1988 there have been five presidential elections; the Dems have won three, they got a popular-vote majority in a fourth, and the fifth saw a narrow Republican victory — IF there was an honest count in that one.

The truth, of course, is that the country is changing around them. The world before the social and cultural changes commonly associated with “the Sixties” — inaccurately, but that’s another story — is slipping farther and farther out of reach. The forces of backlash will never be the majority again.

That’s why we’re hearing the other side cast about for a basis of legitimacy — the F—ing Fathers or the Bible — that would justify ignoring the will of the majority. That’s also why they use so much imagery of violence and armed resistance. And we should expect much more egregious vote-suppression efforts. They can’t win honestly anymore.

When they are a spent force, when the project of rolling back the late Twentieth Century withers and dies, then we’ll finally be able to confront corporate power directly. Then we’ll finally have achance for a decent society. But first we have to win the next few election cycles.

So keep pushing.