Same as goddam fucking forever.

 Again, little to engage, embolden, energise the base.  They, the Democratic establishment, always want it gifted to them, as some reverse Hail Mary pass, from the White Supremacist Party.   

You can see it in their faces, surely if the nation is on the skids we will win!   

We did not land on the skids from Republicans alone.

 Yes, George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress are weaker than they have been since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. But many analysts wonder whether the Democrats are ready to take advantage of the openings that Bush’s imperial style and administrative ineptitude have created.

Have Democratic Party leaders learned to fight with sincere passion and to articulate a clear national message that connects with voters?

Have they moved beyond a sum-of-the-parts, laundry-list message that clangs over the airwaves as nothing more than bullet points aimed at disparate Democratic constituencies?

For many observers, the answer is: Not even close.

              

And having been, in the final analysis, good children over everything, from hardly complaining about Abu Ghraib, to mere whispers about the horror of this war, to confusion as to how to handle the gifts Murtha brought (and still brings), to SCOTUS noms to NSA law breaking on wiretapping to, by now, they would likely be so confused over how best to serve their masters that they'd vote for the NEXT god damned war!, and all of that means what? 

…that the Republicans will somehow, from the goodness of their hearts, GIFT THEM WITH SOME GODDAM SEATS?  

I am sorry for yelling (no I am not, not really), it is muggy in earthquake country, we await a couple days of late in the season rain and it is years since the Democrats had a fucking clue:

…a scene in spring 1994 when a guest at a White House social event asks Bill Clinton why his administration didn’t pursue unresolved scandals from the Reagan-Bush era, such as the Iraqgate secret support for Saddam Hussein’s government and clandestine arms shipments to Iran.

[yesss, with a majority, the Dems, from the squishy pro Republican Center of Clinton/DLC triangulation-strangle, declined to investigate 1980 October surprise – among other things…]

 Clinton responds to the questions from the guest, documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, by saying, in effect, that those historical questions had to take a back seat to Clinton’s domestic agenda and his desire for greater bipartisanship with the Republicans.

    

Clinton “didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people,” Sender told me in an interview. “He was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships.”

Clinton’s relatively low regard for the value of truth and accountability is relevant again today because other centrist Democrats are urging their party to give George W. Bush’s administration a similar pass if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress.

 You know it is one thing to be irritated by, angry with the DC Democrats, the party… I never spared them.  It is quite another to be thoroughly disgusted.

 And just to ram it home, another snip from Parry's piece on how the Democrats defer to the Republicans:

 After winning Election 1992, Clinton also rebuffed appeals from members of the U.S. intelligence community to reverse the Reagan-Bush “politicization” of the CIA’s analytical division by rebuilding the ethos of objective analysis even when it goes against a President’s desires. [See Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Instead, in another accommodating gesture, Clinton gave the CIA director’s job to right-wing Democrat, James Woolsey, who had close ties to the Reagan-Bush administration and especially to its neoconservatives.

One senior Democrat told me Clinton picked Woolsey as a reward to the neocon-leaning editors of the New Republic for backing Clinton in Election 1992.

“I told [Clinton’s national security team] that the New Republic hadn’t brought them enough votes to win a single precinct,” the senior Democrat said.

“But they kept saying that they owed this to the editors of the New Republic.”

During his tenure at the CIA, Woolsey did next to nothing to address the CIA’s “politicization” issue, intelligence analysts said. Woolsey also never gained Clinton’s confidence and – after several CIA scandals – was out of the job by January 1995.

At the time of that White House chat with Stuart Sender, Clinton thought that his see-no-evil approach toward the Reagan-Bush era would give him an edge in fulfilling his campaign promise to “focus like a laser beam” on the economy.

[…]

So for Clinton, learning the truth about controversial deals between the Reagan-Bush crowd and the autocratic governments of Iraq and Iran just wasn’t on the White House radar screen.

Clinton also wanted to grant President George H.W. Bush a gracious exit.

“I wanted the country to be more united, not more divided,” Clinton explained in his 2004 memoir, My Life.

“President Bush had given decades of service to our country, and I thought we should allow him to retire in peace, leaving the (Iran-Contra) matter between him and his conscience.”

              

Really, it is to laugh.  GHW Bush purposefully left Clinton with Somalia.  What fun.  Not the first time, nor the last, that starvation and war in Africa is mere diversion.  It still is.  I don't see Democrats getting arrested over Katrina issues, which are international human rights issues….  Right here at home.

 Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms, both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously – at just being TOLD they are going to win (read that charlatan, Ruy Teixeira, in the closing days of October '04, read it slightly tipsy, out loud with a friend, may as well scream, with laughter). 

Being told they can win is enough for them to relax, take a break.  It never fails.

 I remember in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it.  Could not.  You could smell it, they would screw the deal.  And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here.  By the end, that was a passing political story.  Chuck it on the heap.

 It, the leadership, is absolutely gut wrenching to observe.  It negates the simple fact, the old fact, the intransigent fact, that power must be seized.

 The Democrats always expose their neck, roll and expose their belly.  There is never that white hot need that makes the break.

 Honestly, they just flat out disgust me. That is a hard spot from which to read the following:

Kerry's been written off before and is rising from the political graveyard yet again.

"What does he have to lose now?"

says Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley. "He might as well go for broke."

As long as they start out fatigued dissemblers (he never addressed his NAFTA vote much less the War – vote or otherwise), affect early retreat as strategy and then 2 years later profess to get something, and it is still not clear what he "gets"… as long as the likes of Kerry are or reflect the party, the Republicans are in fair to good shape.

Upshot?  The Republicans make it thru.  They hold on.