In the words of Britain’s once-towering symbol of disaffection and anarchy, “Ever feel like you’ve been cheated?”

The Sex Pistol’s final show in San Francisco was a glorious mess that very publicly popped the bubble of whatever it was they had once represented. Whatever they had symbolized up to that point, however powerfully they had crystallized the disaffection of youth and the seething pulse of anarchy vibrating just below the surface of an outmoded and ineffective political system, the show ended up a spectacular turd floating in the punch bowl of their brief career.

Taking the stage as The Sneering White Hope, they revealed themselves to be a shambles, a band no longer banded together, a fumbling, clumsy unit ultimately less than the sum of its parts. What they had always lacked in musicianship they had often made up for in verve; this absent, the Winterland audience was treated to a halting, awkward set which offered little evidence of their previous ability to incite passion or inspire venom (or play decent rock music, for that matter). In the parlance of rock musicianship, they sucked. It was over. Lydon’s middle-finger question to his audience seemed to encapsulate the generational anti-climax of the evening.

“What did you think we were?” he seemed to be asking. “The answer to your yelps of frustration and rage? Hell, we’re not even a good band anymore! Piss off.”

Call me whacky, but I’m starting to feel like its 1978 and I’m watching the Sex Pistols disintegrate their way through a ramshackle, un-inspired set. I feel as if I’m watching a once-dynamic front-man who is neither being adequately supported by his backing band nor offering evidence that he can carry the performance on his own.

The only difference is, the Sex Pistols were never nice. If they perhaps let their audience down, they never liked their audience anyways, and were always more than happy to tell their fans or devotees to take a long walk off a short stage. Their career was a grand exercise in irony and posing, and derived much of its force from antagonizing everyone and everything in its path. Concession and favor-courting were decidedly not their style; you either liked them or you didn’t, and either way you could and should go f*@k yourself.

The Dems, of course, can’t strike that nihilistic of a pose. They could, however, reassure me that they are still a group that can make powerful music together. They could also learn a bit from Lydon and Co.’s willingness to take a dramatic stance and weather the fallout, indeed, to use the fallout to their advantage.

Where the hell have the Democrats been vis a vis McCain’s confusion over the number of houses he owns? Where the hell have they been regarding Rush Limbaugh’s 2004 accusations that John Kerry was a kept man with a billionaire wife, an argument they could easily turn around and focus like a laser beam on McCain? Where the hell have they been? They could use a dash of the middle finger that Lydon used so well.

As it now stands, I feel as if this election has already got by us, that we have let it slip through our fingers like so many grains of sand. And once this show is over, we may get no opportunity for an encore.