Glenn, I have followed your writing since well before you joined Salon. You hit a lot of issues spot on.....this is one.

In the comments, CarolynC invokes the classic Charlie Brown and Lucy interaction. Used to be that this happened with the Republican Party and the serious Democratic centrists. Luckily, the left now gets to experience this with the Democratic centrists that the Davids Broder and Brooks love to point to. In posting on FDL, I've taken to calling them/us the Lucy-Crats.

For instance:

++Pelosi felt the most important element of a Democratic Congress would be subpoena power. But does it really qualify as power if people can ignore it with impunity?

++Reid promised that he'd be bringing up the war again and again to make Republicans show that they really don't support the troops. So what has the Senate passed of any note recently? mega-FISA and official Condemnation of MoveOn. Which flavor would you like? Cornyn or Boxer? Feingold is the only one to say "neither, thank you"??

The tactic is simple: make the right noises and fill in the appropriate talking point, but when it comes time to kick the ball through the uprights, they pull the ball away. It's a variant on the boiled frog or the big lie.

I think the Davids Brrrr deceit is similar (and very much along the lines of the "compasionate conservative" idea). Use the standard format and trimmings of a well placed column, use calm bi-partisan language, extol comity...then fill in your lie du jour. It's a perverse Ad-Lib we've seen repeated ad nauseum.

Glenn,

After the ellipsis in the MTP comment you added in your update, HRC muddies the water quite a bit in her commitment to get out of Iraq:

"...And so, on occasion after occasion, I have made it clear that if the president does not begin to extricate us from Iraq before he leaves office, which apparently, based on what he himself has said, he will not, when I am president, I will immediately ask my secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my security advisers, to tell me exactly what the state of play is. I don’t believe we even know everything we need to know about what the plans for withdrawal are, how best to implement that. And I will end our involvement at the level that we’ve seen that has not proven to be successful."

Contrary to the not one more penny, that position seems to involve a significant remaining set of pennies and lives to be flushed down the toilet via Iraq.

Immediately ask is not the same thing as immediately withdraw.

End our involvement at the level which has proven unsuccessful is not the same as completely withdraw.

I guess it is indeed progress from her prior comments about the irresponsibility of advocating withdrawal or the wisdom of authorizing invasion in the first place...but its still a far cry from a clear statement that our involvement and presence must end. Full stop.

Glenn, I'm actually amazed you wrote the piece without even an aside about the Bush clan. That is self-discipline. I couldn't have done it.

As for bringing Hillary and Bill under the nepotism lens. Absolutely Hillary would not be where she is without Bill, and yes they did it together...but, correct me if I'm wrong, the Senate was Hillary's first run for office in a state they only recently moved to. Not too many folks get a shot at doing that. It's certainly insiderism (and very unsettling), though different from the parent-child nepotistic arrangement the Kagans, Kristols and Pods have going.

Lucidity: I hesitate to point out that whether Jr was elected is still the subject of debate in many circles...I recall the Supreme Court short circuiting the counting of votes in FL. How did Jr get started in politics again? (How did Jeb?)

Yes, Hillary got the most votes in NY, but I'd challenge you to find a better recent example of venue shopping. She picked us, not the other way around...and her status as First Lady enabled her to make that venue selection.

The politicization of previously ring-fenced aspects of the executive branch is a clear extension of what I first saw spelled out by Krugman in 2000. In the intro to The Great Unravelling he notes that the Republican party is not operating according prior practice. And they gain great advantage because their opponents think they will.

In a strange way this is just like asset stripping from a company. The republicans go in to an agency of government and use the accumulated good will (not in the accounting sense) of that agency as a front to gain what they want. People grant that they are "fairminded" and that the agency is apolitical until its too late. Then move on to the next agency...

...or individual: Colin Powell, Petraeus, even Armitage, even traditional fiscal conservatives.

The point is that it is a one time stripping of accumulated trust for a quick boost.

Clearly, the point was to muddy the issue by claiming that you are putting up a biased view...let a 1000 inaccurate memes bloom.

If Dread could comprehend enough of your post to know that he could write you and ask for the text, he also could comprehend enough that you had posted the full text already.

I believe this is called pounding the table.