Will the indignation of so many Americans over the sullied election of 2000 be matched in the new Congress by the emergence of a bold opposition to the usurpers of the presidency? Or will it turn out that the anger over the uncounted ballots will melt down into friendly bipartisanship, as Democrats, with just a few mutterings of annoyance, accept the new Establishment?

The answer emerged with troubling clarity as Democratic senators, asked to confirm as Attorney General the most fierce defender of right-wing Republican policies, John Ashcroft, shrank into silence, one by one, showing some twitches of discomfort, but ready to endorse.

We are reminded of what happened after the disputed election of 1876. This was much in the news during the argument over the Florida votes. But all we were told was that the man who lost the popular votes, Rutherford Hayes, became president by the margin of one electoral vote. The usual superficial history.

What the public did not learn was that behind the victory of Hayes was a deal between Democrats and Republicans. Once the election was over there was no outrage over violation of the democratic process. Both parties agreed that the freed slaves would no longer get military protection of the federal government to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, that the troops withdrawn from the South could be used in the North to crush the strikes of working people, and in the West against the Indians.

Without the crassness of a deal made in a hotel room, as happened in 1877, we are facing a similar post-election situation, with a bitter contest over a presidential election fading into bipartisanship. The Democratic Party declares disagreement with the ideas of John Ashcroft and other Bush appointees. But it will not fight.

The Democrats assert their differences: opposing tax reform that benefits the wealthy; using the unprecedented budget surplus to help people in need. But the signs÷and the history of the Clinton-Gore years÷show a faintness of heart, a rush to compromise, to celebrate "bipartisanshipä at the expense of the citizenry.

It seems that it is left to ordinary Americans to do what the politicians won't do, to maintain a persistent opposition to appointments that are retrograde, to policies that leave children behind and are cold to the needs of women and minorities, that maintain the great and growing gap between rich and poor.

I suppose we should not be surprised that it is up to all of us to keep alive the spirit of democracy.

Howard Zin is a world War II combat veteran and a (recently retired) professor of American history, mostly at Boston University, where the president tried to fire him because of his support of students against the war in Vietnam. Zinn's book, People's History of the United States (first published in 1980), is a perennial best seller and still very much in print. This piece originally appeared online at www.TomPaine.com