I can't plow through 11 pages of comments, and suppose that this point has already been expressed.

By the time the Democrats punted during the supplemental Iraq funding bill debacle, my true disaffected, skeptical, freethinking, progressive Independent self regained full consciousness and snatched off the Democrat Goggles. Though the leadership-- and at least 29% or so of the membership-- of the Republic Party is amoral, predatory, rapacious, and utterly reprehensible, it has become starkly and tragically obvious the the Democratic political elite have no superior claim to virtue and principle.

While the complaint that the Dems are spineless, timid, or inept is superficially plausible, I subscribe to the view that beneath the partisan sparring, bluster, and campaign rhetoric, the parties are linked in a continuum defined by the DC nucleus and outliers of the political/military/corporate/media domain.

Beneath the surface camouflage, the parties are mutually reinforcing. And both have devolved to amoral apparatuses obsessed with gaining and keeping power (including wealth).

This unpleasant and pessimistic assessment arose, in part, from constant exposure to blog comment nastygrams from avowed lesser-evilists, partisan Democratic technocrats who erupt in condescending geysers of piss and vinegar to icily or furiously explain that the only possible escape route from President Unitard's imperialistic oligarchy is to support the Democratic Party and its candidates. I noticed that the loyalists, consistent with their mantra of Not Letting the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good, take for granted that the Democratic political elite wish and intend to do good, and (compared to the alternative) will do good once they acquire the necessary power.

(Haven't any of these people read "Lord of the Rings?)

Just the other day, some blockhead in "Common Dreams" spluttered the usual dreck that the abundant "Democrat-haters" present were obviously paid Republican trolls, etc. When I demurred, he reverted to the backup slander that OK, if I wasn't a Republican plant, I was a de facto Republican supporter by virtue of my rejection of the doctrine of Democratic salvation. I paraphrase.

The question of whether Democrats are personally more humane, kinder, gentler, and honestly committed to reversing the social depredations of the current criminal regime is beside the point. My point is that the Democrat's pathological performance this year, trenchantly summarized as usual by Glenn, reveals to Your Humble Narrator that it's all about the political process and the acquisition of power as an end in itself. Whatever good intentions Democratic incumbents and/or candidates may have, their foremost priority is doing business as usual. It's all about the legislative agenda, such as it is.

It can't be proved, of course, but my sentimental belief is that although the Founders were also disposed to go about the routine business of government, the sausage-making of compromises and deals, they also took seriously their responsibilities as stewards and guardians of the Constitution upon which government itself is founded. Unlike today, I doubt that they would view, say, impeachment as exclusively a troublesome question of political expediency; I believe that they would soberly and correctly see it as a necessity, not something to decide to do only if the political winds and climate made it a foregone conclusion!

After reading Barney Frank's dismissive comments about the necessity for impeachment, and the usual intimation that it would be a pernicious and perilous task that would divert attention and the accomplishment of vital and constructive legislation, it hit me with a jolt that even the good guys seem to regard high principle-- e.g., Constitutional duties-- as quaint, ceremonial, superfluous, and effectively obsolete.

To me, since the 2006 election, the overall conduct of the Democratic Party is exactly like the classic paranoid spy thriller or science-fiction plot device: a Hitchcock film or "Twilight Zone" episode in which a desperate and endangered protagonist is apparently rescued by an ally-- who turns out to be one of Them.

I was just thinking something along the lines of what A Hermit wrote, i.e. "The political class does it too." Especially when publicly pressed to clarify their position on problematic and controversial issues like, oh, impeachment.

In such circumstances, defensive politicians will reflexively assert a broader understanding and implicit calculus of the territory to justify inaction. Thus, they will blithely and knowingly assert that We the People will, or won't, stand for it-- "it" meaning anything from impeachment to a speedy and comprehensive withdrawal of military forces from Iraq.

It's as instinctive and universal among politicians as changing color according to the territory or the task is to chameleon and cuttlefish.

I don't feel like trolling Google at the moment to dredge up specific quotes, but I'm certain we've all heard Democratic politicians on yak shows baldly claim that We the People didn't elect them to get bogged down in dubious adversarial (fool's) errands and a protracted war of political attrition; We the People really want Congress to address a number of quotidian problems and pass much constructive reform legislation.

(BTW, even in the off-chance that some pollster does ask whomever they ask in these alleged polls, "Do you want your elected representatives to take all the time they need to pass constructive reform legislation?", what is the hapless Everyman going to say-- "no"?)

So both the pundits and the pols make self-serving claims about We the People's will, out of cynical manipulation-- to create a self-validating buzz or drumbeat in hopes that it will catch on as a settled factoid and become a retroactively vindicating virtual truth.

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Although the masters make the rules

For the wise men and the fools

I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.