Dean,

First off, let me observe that both of us are up waaaay too late....

Secondly, you've placed your finger entirely upon the Democrats problem - by process of elimination, they've recused themselves from being in favor of rational policies and thus must resort to entirely irrational things just to have something to say.

A smart Democrat would be calling for deeper tax cuts and demanding a full audit of government activities to find out where the waste, fraud and abuse all is (my rule of thumb theory is that any department, rationally run by genuine public servants, could do with 50% of its current budget - only the military, this being wartime, getting a pass these days). We can certainly "pay" for the tax cuts (using the Democrats own absurd rhetorical tools) by finding the at least $250 billion per year which is just wasted (wasted meaning actually stolen - given to people who aren't supposed to get it; this doesn't even get into whether or not a particular program is worthwhile).

Smart Democrats would be demanding an explanation for why we are dawdling on Iran ("out-warring" the President on the war).

Smart Democrats would be demanding stiffer border controls while also calling for a regularised guest worker program (helping national defense while pandering for hispanic voters at the same time - and calling attention to an area the President has been curiously weak on).

Smart Democrats would be all over the spy scandal at Gitmo like white on rice.

But, outside of you, we don't have any smart Democrats. Can't call for a tax cut (save for some totally useless "targeted" cut for people who mostly don't pay taxes anyway) because tax cuts, as we all know, favor "the rich". Can't call for stiffer border controls because of that dratted Democratic constituency (which donates a lot of money) that doesn't like the very idea of national borders. Can't call for sterner war measures because war never solved anything (if you leave out trifling matters like Hitler). Can't very well call attention to spies at Gitmo when there is still a very vocal Democratic constituency which thinks the Rosenberg's were innocent....on and on it goes.

Uhm, I'm not a Democrat.

I'm not a Republican either.

I did vote for Bush because I agreed with him on three or four specific items on his agenda, and Gore repelled me in several specific areas. I had left the Democratic Party, back in the early '90s, and Gore personified for me why I'd left.

But I'm not a Republican. At this point I'd say I've voted for as many Republicans as Democrats. I guess you'd say I'm a Republican "leaner" now, because Democrats strike me as utterly insane at the moment.

Count me in as up way too late too. :-)

The problem that the democrats have is that to get rid of an incumbant, there needs to be some reason to do so. Human beings are naturally cautious about going with the devil that they don't know, especially when they mostly approve of the devil that they do know.

If the democrats are to win, they have to convince people that Bush is too terrible to have in office that they must get rid of him when they can still have him and go for something else. The sane path (i.e. similar to Bush, but fixing some relatively minor issues like steel tariffs and neutering all of the palestinians so that the israel-palestine conflict is guaranteed to finally be over in about 40 years) is all about minor things. Nuances in when we turn on the Saudis, fixing relatively unknown tariffs, and things like are hardly compelling reasons to get rid of the guy who might well fix these things on his own, and even if he doesn't, won't cause any substantial damage with them.

The democrats are facing the worst possible position — an incumbent with reasonable, very middle-of-the-road policies who's generally done a reasonable job in what looks to be reasonable economic circumstances. You only risk a new guy when you have good reason to. If the old guy is horrible or unavailable, or alternatively if times are great and the election doesn't matter at all (See Clinton, William Jefferson). None of those are the case.

About the only hope that the democrats have is to drum something up, or hope to shift everyone's attention away from all of the current — important — issues.

Thus all of the "scandals" we see, plus Howard Dean. Try desperately to make Bush look bad, and try to bring in something so new that people might get interested.

What else can they do to get the American people to take a big risk on an unknown?

Remember: scissors cuts paper, and rock smashes scissors, but paper covers rock. Sometimes the only way to win is to be thoroughly irrational.

In the real world, rock would smash paper, too. But sometimes, just sometimes, perception is reality. ;-)

Ironic that you placed the headline "New Criticism" directly above an entry about a poet.

New Criticism was a mid-20th Century school of literary theory based on close reading, i.e., detailed textual analysis of a poem.

Ok, back to the topic now.

I never thought of myself as an arch right-winger, but it seems to me that all of my dissatisfaction with Bush is coming from the right on economic matters. When reading about the good economic news, my first reaction was "Now just imagine if he hadn't enacted those steel tariffs and if Cancun didn't collapse." No, I don't blame Cancun squarely on Bush, but he certainly didn't help matters.

Yet another reason to wish for a credible opposition party - somebody has to hold the Republicans accountable for their mistakes.

Dean,

You're not a Democrat? I thought you still were....you're almost there; finish your journey over to the Dark Side :o)

Bush has to start to cut spending *before* democrats start to really complain about fiscal discipline, otherwise it's too late. But he has through the primary before he has to deal with it, and at least until they come up with fiscal plans that don't involve spending everything they get back by removing tax cuts on new ways to waste my money.