Thanks for the nice comments. It's people like you and Jim Webb (I come from a military background too) who'll pull us out of this. As you say, there are thousands of activists and millions of people all over the country who are working passionately to put things right, and every defeat just makes the big victory more important. Hundreds in Congress today have voted against these bills. We need to give them some help, and not by supporting unelectable candidates.

If you who are reading this haven't seen them (if not first or last, letters get buried in the hard to access middle) please check my previous postings today for links to Progressive Democratic (not Democratic Party) organizations who are working to change Congress. They'll put you in touch with people in your area who think as you do. Together we can still do it. We have no other choice.

I'll add one more group that may seem pretty light, but has turned out to be a great social organizing tool: Drinking Liberally. There are 260 Drinking Liberally chapters in all 50 states and around the world, and they now have several spinoff organizations under the umbrella name livingliberally. They provide a great chance to meet, talk, relax and socialize with like-minded people and a catalyst for putting the ideas you've discussed into action. The more fun you have, the smarter you work, the more gets done. Drinking Liberally is at

http://livingliberally.org/drinking/

Your list appears incomplete -- I see some progressive Dems who should be on there and aren't. But rather than talk about a four month old vote that was more about strategy than commitment, we have today's results from CQ Politics. As expected the FISA bill passed, 293 - 129. 188 Republicans and 105 Democrats voted for it, so assuming that all Republicans supported it, a safe guess, a solid majority of Democrats voted AGAINST it. Considering the electorate's opinion of the Republican Party these days, this is very good news for the future. As adnoto says, all we need to do is elect more, and especially better, Democrats.

RPM, Cheers! Confusion to the enemy!

According to Traister's pretty accurate interpretation of the author, women don't want to resolve anything, they merely want to be listened to respectfully without argument, contradiction or the ghost of another point of view.

The adjective usually attached to conduct like this is "domineering," not coincidentally one that fits the majority of Clinton supporters cited in Traister's article. No fair hearing? We've had to listen to Taylor Marsh, Harriet Christian, and Walsh and Traister themselves, haven't we?

It seems not to have occurred to them that many people, including me, simply didn't want another Clinton in office after the failures of the 90s and the "election" of Bush II. She seemed too much like Bill in a Hillary mask. Or maybe it was Hillary in a Bill mask all along.

Doesn't matter. They treated what Howard Dean calls the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party miserably, and now they object to treatment that's kinder than they deserve.

If there's anything sexist about this, seems to me it's on the other side.

I came to this thread hoping to find criticism of the malevolent, unmanageable offal-slinging going on over Traister's article, and, initially, found it. I thought I didn't have too much to add to Brunhilde's second letter, but then this thread degenerated faster and more bizarrely than Traister's.

What is nostbakken talking about? He doesn't like screen names? So What? Am I in a Time Warp? Buy a calendar. I want to talk about a documentary I saw somewhere, don't know who did it but I think I liked it except for the parts I didn't. Wha? Is there no control at all over this stuff? I strongly favor free speech, but have just as strong an aversion to having my intelligence insulted.

On the political end, much of the troll-nourishing comes from the initial staff postings, particularly the Hillary acolytes like Traister who simply won't give up and have attracted fans from wacko sites like Taylor Marsh and PUMA, joined by professional water-muddiers from the McCain campaign. These last people are paid by the hour, so they have plenty of time to generate fertilizer.

So part of the problem apparently stems from positive and negative reactions to the ongoing attempt to reorient the site to be more Second Wave friendly, part from attempts by various groups to game the site, the rest comes simply from lack of attention to what's being posted, and the overall effect is that what once was the most intelligent site on the web now resembles a junior high on class break.

We have a historic candidate, we've had one since March, and expending all possible effort to tear him down doesn't help the country or make the race more interesting. The alternative, continuing the same policies with an increasingly unstable government, is unthinkable. What Salon can do to help the country, and itself, is to increase the intelligence quotient of its political and cultural articles. That will take a staff overhaul. Thomas Schaller, Mike Madden (intermittently), Andrew Leonard and Laura Miller are all worthy additions to the site. They could use some help.

I find I've omitted Greenwald, but I guess his quality, overwrite though he does, goes without saying. His work on FISA has been a national service. Speaking of which, you wouldn't regret runnning an interview with Chris Dodd.