The Vegetative State

If you've been able to keep your gorge down long enough to follow the miserable voting record of the Senate and House Democrats, you're probably as fed up as I am at the complete absence of guts, spine, balls, and any other structural losses displayed by the "opposition party" in the last few months of voting. Check out The Nation, which is likewise dismayed:

"After giving George W. Bush far too easy a ride in his first term, the Democratic leadership in Congress promised that the second term was going to be different. "This is not a dictatorship," announced Senate minority leader Harry Reid. The new head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel, declared, "The President neither has the mandate he thinks he has nor a majority to make policy." But three months of watching the Democrats' stumbling, often incoherent responses to Administration appointments and initiatives shows clearly that the party is making the same mistakes that cost it so dearly in the 2002 and 2004 elections."

It goes on to enumerate the many incidents of political S&M going down on Capitol Hill---the ANWR mess, the bankruptcy sell-out, tort "reform", the disgraceful capitulations on each of Bush's recent political nominations, most especially Gonzales. You know the drill.

But good old Lefty offers this helpful development:

"Perhaps being shamed publicly, and being pressured by the grassroots, will help Congressional Democrats get their act together. Toward that end, we've initiated a biweekly "Minority/Majority" feature that identifies--by name--Democrats who give succor to the GOP. (It also praises those who've helped the cause of Democrats becoming the majority party again.) If Democrats don't define themselves as an effective opposition soon, they could end up being an ineffective one for a long time to come."

Ineffective would be one, more tactful, way of putting it.

Go read it now, and keep an eye on it later. Remember: l'etat, c'est vous.