A few days ago, I thought we had 'em. The credit card/bankrupcy bill and ANWR oil drilling passed the Senate and the House was sinking ever lower into the gurgling ethics scandal that has been brewing there ever since Tom Delay and his cohort started enacting procedural changes to cement the dominance of their 1994 "Contract With America," which was itself driven in large part by perceved ethical weakness on the opposite side of the isle.

I thought we had 'em. A wedge issue; a clear rallying point for the political base; a high-road means of attacking some of the most powerful figures in the GOP machine... and then they trotted out a (literally, not pejoratively) brain-dead woman from Florida, and everyone forgot about all that other shit.

This is a classic move, and politically very shrewd. Here's an issue that few Democrats have a solid opposition stance to (hint: it's here and here, folks), and which splits their caucus. Here's an issue that provides ready TV images, with the heightened emotional charge of "a life hanging in the balance."

Yes. You can see the logic. Here's something to take everyone's mind off the fact that there's solid proof that Tom Delay is crooked. Pay no attention to the fact that our Senate just voted to let unrestrained usury be business as usual in the credit card industry. Forget that as part of the overall budgeting process, Senate republicans have succeeded in opening up one of the last pristine stretches of American territory to petrochemical companies in the vain delusion that this will somehow make up for our lack of a coherant energy problem. Let's get back to the real issue, one vegitative woman in Florida and the lack of a solid moral message from the Democratic party.

Oh yeah; and it's the two year anneversary of the war. That's still happening, remeber?

The Republican Noise Machine is a powerful entity. The good guys won a round on Social Security, and I like to think I had a little part in that, but the volly has now been returned with plenty of topspin. How the Democrats handle what comes next is important. Once the pressure is off, if the GOP is able to build any momentum it will be hard to get it back. Someone on the left is going to need to go on the offensive pretty soon, or else driving at all the real issues is going to be more difficult.

A week ago, I thought we had 'em, and in the Long Game we very well might. But the ease with which everything was shifted is alarming. If the Democrats want to recapture the House (and they can) they need a strategy for a full-court-press. It's not fucking complecated; just a lot of work. I'll have more on this later.