The Democratic Party has never served its supporters well except when it was pressured. That's how political parties work -- it's nothing special about the Democrats.

Why do the Blue Dogs, who defy Obama, get their asses kissed while the liberals supporting get sneered at? They get their asses kissed because they defy Obama. Not "even though" they defy Obama.

In politics you have to be combative when necessary, and too many Democrats are incapable of that. I think it's because too many Democrats are mugwumps from nice families where conflict is repressed, and too many of them have spent their lives in universities and other bureaucratic organizations where overt conflict is taboo.

Rahm Emmanuel is highly combative, but like the rest of the DLC, he's only effective against fellow Democrats.

I was astonished by Todd's responses to Greenwald as posted on this site. Often when media people are caught red-handed they either refuse to respond or else hem and haw, and fudge, and make excuses, and change the subject, but Todd basically stood totally behind what he had done.

I think that it's usually wrong to blame media misbehavior on incompetence, laziness, or stupidity. The groupthink explanation ("Heathers", "The Village") is a little closer to the truth, but the pure silliness would come to a quick stop if management wanted it to. Cowardice, subservience, and corruption explain the feebleness of some of the weak liberals and ex-liberals, and some people in the media (Judith Miller, George Will, Bob Novak) are conscious political agents.

As far as I know, none of these explanations cover Todd. He devoutly believes that the wonky, neutral, stenographic, process-oriented, establishment journalism he practices is a high and noble professional ideal -- and in fact something like this is what is taught in journalism school. Professionalization is not always a good thing.

To me Todd is more frightening than any of the others, because he's completely committed to a journalistic ideal which, if generally followed, effectively cripple democracy. A lot of the others are just opportiunists, but Todd is a true believer.

He owes his position to a semen stain on Monica Lewinsky's dreaa.

It seems that every Texas politician there is got his name in the news afterwards -- Perry, Hutcheson, and a couple of others. The state doesn't have jurisdiction over Fort Hood and most of the people there are only briefly state residents, so that's just media hog showboating.