I guess this means that we don’t get to vote.

More and more, it looks like we’ll be stuck with whomever the bumbling state and national Democratic leadership picks for us to take President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat.

Dick Durbin and his gaunt buddy, Harry Reid, are the nation’s two most powerful U.S. senators. But they’ve come out looking like a couple of Tasmanian Devils from the Looney Tunes cartoons, bouncing all over the landscape while trying to figure out how to keep a loser, Roland Burris, from taking the seat. Letting the voters take a crack at picking the replacement isn’t even a part of their rhetoric.

Back in Illinois, House Majority Leader Michael Madigan and in-coming Sen. President John Cullerton don’t bother to credibly explain why we shouldn’t hold a special election to fill the seat. We’re supposed to believe that they’re taking care of business only by impeaching and trying Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Maybe they figure if we’re distracted enough, we’ll forget how they are frigging us by selecting our senator all by themselves, as if we’re a bunch of serfs. And it may be working. Fatigue already seems to be setting in as many of us get tired of the whole mess. Just swear in that jamoke and be done with it.

Except that few people want Burris, who day by day is turning himself into an ever bigger yutz. The latest example is his non-responsive interview with the Chicago Tribune, in which the reporter had the insolence to ask his positions on various issues.

As the story said: “Burris maintained it was unfair to seek substantive answers from him about his goals because he hadn’t taken the oath of office—even though he was interested in the Senate appointment since last summer.” According to this logic, no candidate would ever have to explain what he stands for until after the election.

Burris tried to explain: “I want to get my Senate legs under me and make sure I get down all the rules and regulations. In the meantime, I will begin to assess the various national issues that are out there in general and the Illinois issues in particular.”

Which is to say that Burris will vote as he is told, and he hasn’t been told yet, so for now he’s treading water.

Is there any doubt that Burris’ presence in the Senate will continue the state’s “national embarrassment?” Is there any doubt that Illinois electors, despite their dismal track record of electing the Democratic jerks that run this state, could do better than Burris? If anything is clear, it is that no one wants Burris to represent us, except perhaps for racist African Americans like Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who odiously suggested that opposing Burris would be akin to lynching a black man.

Clearly, Durbin and Reid don’t want him because Burris, if an incumbent in the next election, would be a likely loser, but that it would be difficult to dump him from the ballot because he’s “the only African American in the Senate. Even in Illinois, many Democrats don’t want him because by so shamefully coveting the appointment, Burris covered himself with Gov. Skunk’s stink, in effect, smelling up the entire party and its ticket.

Yes, the man won statewide elections for attorney general and comptroller, and I used to be able to play full-court basketball, but no more. His weakness was well demonstrated by three failed runs for the Democratic nomination for governor and a loss in the Chicago mayoral race. Only Blagojevich exceeds Burris in his knack for self-delusion.

Close behind in the self-delusion department are Democrats in the Illinois House, who have positioned themselves as knights of the holy grail. They could have avoided this entire mess by the timely passage of legislation stripping Blagojevich of his appointive powers and setting a special election. But Speaker Madigan didn’t even bother pretending that he would entertain such a subversive act, and why should he because the sheep in his district would never think of depriving the rest of us of our joy of having him run half the state.

Nor did House Democrats, in calling for an end to the “national embarrassment” of Blagojevich even come close to the realization that they had turned themselves into the College of Clowns by faking outrage over acts that are part of their own play book. A “freak show” one harrumphed in self-righteousness during the Blagojevich impeachment “debate;” it was a condemnation that could have applied equally well to the undistinguished House. “We stand here today because of the perfidy of one man, Rod Blagojevich,” intoned Democratic Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, blithely ignoring the mote in her own party’s eye.

Take a close look at the articles of impeachment, and half of them relate to how Blagojevich stiffed the Legislature, ignoring or infringing on its powers—a good reason for impeachment and conviction. Yet, the Legislature did nothing, as Blagojevich flushed the state down the toilet. Only the Blagojevich arrest stiffened the House spine.

How ridiculous that the same Democrats who put this elephant in the parade, now are crabbing how they’re the ones who have had to man the brooms to clean up this mess. Take Madigan, who served as co-chairman of Blagojevich’s re-election campaign. He explains it now by saying he didn’t know then the depths of the governor’s unsuitability, which rings as true as the sound of a brick thrown into a manure pile.

The only way to recover any credibility is to allow Illinois voters to elect Obama’s replacement, and I’m not sure how that can now be done, considering the legal morass Democrats have created. Perhaps our only real alternative will come at the next election, the next time we have a chance to toss the bums out. As I write this, there are 386 days, 19 hours, 31 minutes and 33 seconds until the Feb. 2, 2010 primary election.

Set your timers and let the countdown begin.

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Dennis Byrne is a member of the Chicago Daily Observer Editorial Board