In actuality, Congress exists — as a vital enabling arm of the most extreme abuses of the Bush administration. Could anyone wishing to dispute that depressing fact muster any evidence at all in service of their argument? I don't believe so.

Well, the facts are as they are, but I'm willing to dispute the contention that it's the White House in particular of which Congressional leaders are craven lackeys. It's increasingly clear (from research encouraged by discussions in this forum) that these Democratic politicians remain popular with their core constituents, and where their electability at home is threatened (as is the case with Reid, for example) it seems to be due to the perception that they're too liberal or too partisan.

It's an age-old truism in American politics that everyone wants to throw the bums in Congress out, but nobody wants to throw their own bum out. The paradox probably never occurs to most people, until, eventually, it sort of burbles up from under the pot lid as a vaguely generalized anti-incument feeling. And for the most part, the best one can reach people like that is on a visceral, emotional level. They aren't reachable by facts — or at least not by facts alone.

So we have the Congress that we (in the statistical sense) want. I get that it's not a popular thing to say around here, but it's the truth, and saying it isn't doesn't do a damn bit of good.

If we want Diane Feinstein (still popular at home despite all of her shenanigans, though that is finally starting to change) to vote differently, we have to change California. If we want Harry Reid to lead or retire, we need to get Nevadans to make him.

If Californians or Nevadans or anyone else wanted to hear the message that "Unclaimed Territory" is broadcasting loud and clear, nothing is stopping them. But for whatever reason, these people choose to get their news from USA Today instead. They don't know better, or they did but forgot, or they just plain don't process facts that don't fit with their worldview.

And who can blame them? Just the other day I had a conversation with a progressive activist and dedicated Bush critic who had no idea that the United States had apprehended Qaeda terrorists who were trying to hijack airplanes to use as missiles four years before the September 11 attacks. (I knew because I read about it at the time from an arcane source — the New York Times.) Most people think that Jesse Helms' public threats to have then-president Clinton killed are a myth — even the ones who were alive at the time when it was all over the news. We forget, and the echo-chamber version of history takes over.

... which makes it all the more important to keep driving wedges into the engines of cultural perception and hammer away. It's not just the DC Beltway press corps, though heaven knows life inside 495 is its own special kind of bizarre. Making us read something we don't want to is one of the hardest things to get Americans to do.

More than anything else, that's what makes the work here so important — I don't believe it will directly change politicians' minds much, but it can change (and has already done so) the way the popular perception of events is formed. And when it comes that's a transformation that will last.

Personally, I will vote for anyone to the right of Castro who can beat the Republicans in 2008, and I will be glad to do so. (I'll be freaking ecstatic if it's someone who can actually run the country well, but I will settle for failing to suck.)

Tom Tomorrow's comic this week reminded me, though, of something that a Kerry staffer wrote in her blog after his concession speech. To paraphrase, she wrote that as Kerry was saying something like "... and I want to thank all of you volunteers, who never stopped fighting for what this campaign was all about," she realized that she and the entire rest of the crowd had fallen into expectant silence. They were all — still, on election night — waiting to hear what Kerry really stood for.

Let it never be said that a US Senator has no skeletons in their closet, but why look for an elaborate explanation for Reid's behavior when a simple one suffices?

Reid has been sent to the Senate by a Republican-dominated electorate for a long time. Over the past year he's become hated by every Republican in the state of Nevada — literally, the number of Republicans who say they don't disapprove of him is less than the margin of error of most polls. His crime? Being too liberal.

His only remaining base of support is his Democratic constituency — and these are not the most liberal Democrats you will ever see, either.

Nevada is a purple state trending toward blue, so Reid has a prayer of keeping his seat in 2010 if there are enough Nevada Democrats by then to offset the Republicans who have abandoned him owing to his "liberal" leadership in the Senate. But if the Republicans beat him, a solidy Democratic seat in the Senate will flip for the first time in 30 years.

So while Reid may not be the epitome of a liberal Democrat, and has shown a profound lack of courage and vision over FISA, it would be well to keep in mind that his ass is hanging out to dry right now in the only place that counts to a guy like him — his home constituency — and merely by standing up to Bush as much as he has he may already have sealed his fate.

So good for him. Better late than never. If everyone keeps the pressure up, this sort of reversal might start becoming common.