The private insurers are changing their practices, particularly in the area of underwriting, because they know what's coming. Not the weather, the financial consequences of the climate. We don't know where or when the next "big one' will hit, or what form it will take, we just know that something big is over the horizon.

And private insurers are in business to make money - particularly, to generate pools of investment capital. Payouts for the aftermath of disasters have a rather pronounced effect on that. Insurers are predatory, they are greedy, they are the sort of bookies who encourage you to bet that something terrible will in fact happen and then hope against hope that you lose that bet. Stupid, not so much.

The federal programs, driven "from the top" as they are, as everything to do with the federal government is in this "special case" federal government, are being pushed into an uncomfortable corner. The boss says climate change isn't a problem. Their actuaries tell them it is, and will only get worse. (And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, if ever it does!) They are not being allowed to adapt. And we're going to end up with the tab. And what a tab that will be...

Rock, meet hard place, hard place, this is rock. You guys never met before?

We've got to stop meeting like this...

Worst news of 2007 is that his former manager is now working for John Edwards.

This has nothing to do with Emanuel's failure. Like the Bush machine, his first rule is to give everyone a medal and proclaim victory. Then announce it to the hometown press.

Well, the worst news for Edwards, anyway.

And trumpeting victories (which 2006 most assuredly was!) is never a bad idea. When people work as hard as the Democratic Party's rank and file did last fall, hell yes, give them medals. Fistfuls of them. And all the noise and trumpeting they either want or can stand. We took back Congress, and even if we don't have the votes - right now - to take Congressional control, we are applying some much-needed stopping power. That is a fact well worth celebrating, and frankly, we've needed reasons to celebrate for several long years now.

My point was, and is, we need them both, in their respective positions. Their styles are quite different. Their duties are as well. Let each of them do what they do best. Rahm Emanuel was and is a money machine for the DCCC and the party. And he brings a much needed mean streak back to the Dems. We do need to kick a few Republicans when they're down. They need it, too, to remind them they're vulnerable and that there is a heavy price to pay for being as vile and corrupt as they have been. And as they would still be were they still in the majority. We do need those with a killer instinct, and he's got it.

We need them both, as I said above.

First the good news. Rahm Emanuel, for all the supposed questions about him, knows how to win. And in politics, it's far easier to advance your agenda once you've won the election. That's something the left seems to disdain, and it's frankly political suicide. The reality of the world is, sometimes you need a streetfighter or two on your side. And Rahm Emanuel is good at that sort of thing.

And more good news. Howard Dean's 50-state strategy was a very wise move, as well. In many of the states Dean put money and people into, the Democratic Party had little if any infrastructure. In order to make a district, and then a state, competitive, we need a party infrastructure, and money spent wisely there has given us great benefits. Howard Dean is doing a bang-up job as DNC chair - he knows we can't just hope to squeak out narrow White House wins in swing states. He recognizes - as does Emanuel - that we heed the Congress, and the state legislatures, and the county boards, and the city councils, and the school boards. That infrastructure had been allowed to decay to an unconscionable degree under Terry McAuliffe.

Now, the bad news. Being a streetfighter does alienate some people. Apparently a lot of them here. I understand that - Chicago ward politics is not for the faint of heart, nor the delicate of sensibility. Much in the same way that many Nebraskans would feel out of place in Chicago, and the Chicagoans would likewise feel out of place there. Horses for courses, folks...

And now, the really bad. Had the Democrats gone with Howard Dean in 2004, we'd be looking back in longing at the 1972 McGovern 49-state shellacking, and thinking of that as "the good old days". Running the party Dean does well, running for president he did abysmally. His crowds of opinionated youngsters did more to turn voters off than inspire them. He burned through money like there was no tomorrow.

I know I'm going to annoy the hell out of a lot of Salon readers with that, and I don't care. It's true. Howard Dean is far, far better for the Democratic Party, and for America, as DNC chair, than he ever was as a presidential candidate. And I will not speculate on what sort of president he'd make, because it never would have happened.

I, for one am OK with that - I like him right where he is.