Sure, behind all the power and the scheming, Rove's a nerd and a Nazi (and let's be honest -- all Nazis were nerds, except for Goering, maybe, who was more of a buffoon). I know you said "Rove, of course, is no Nazi." -- but I think you're wrong, Mr. Cole; the only thing that kept Rove from being a Nazi was being born in the wrong time and the wrong country, versus any aversion to fascist politics on his part, or any American cultural immunity from the seductions of fascism.

And that's because evildoers in politics invariably rely on the same playbook, the same well-oiled bag of dirty tricks -- the banality of evil in methods, and in the users of those methods.

How evil they are seen by history depends on how deep they dig into the bag (and whether they win or lose), but it's still the same bag, handed down by generation upon generation of geeky political opportunists, who all pursue the same thing, no matter the time period they live -- hoodwink people into acting against their best interests, and hijack the nation for the benefit of the frauds and charlatans and their sponsors/clients.

Fascism has always been a political shell game, always an empty promise intended only to give those misfits and nerds a sense of power and to make things more favorable for their political investors -- despite his apparent fall from grace, Karl "Grendel" Rove admirably served the clients of Republican economic and political policy. At least the folks who first faced fascism had the benefit of not recognizing it when it appeared; what's our excuse?

Rove should stick with propaganda, versus literary analysis. Rove is the White Whale, and the Democrat-led Congress is Ahab? Nah, I think the War on Terror is Moby-Dick, and the GOP is Ahab. The majority of Democrats are Starbuck. I guess America's the Pequod, right? We're sunk.

If Rove's Grendel, well, he's still got both his arms, unless he was counting as the White House as one of his extremities -- but then who was Beowulf? I guess it was the American electorate -- at least the ones who weren't cheering Grendel's rampages!

Or maybe Rove is Iago, and the nation is Othello, and Desdemona was our country's international reputation prior to the reign of the Bush League, which they took care of in short order.

It's ludicrous to me that he's getting all literary and reflective on his place in history, even as he completely mistakes where he really belongs. Sorry, Rove, you're a villain, pure and simple. You're one of the bad guys; you don't get to be the hero, you don't get to wear the white hat.

Is Matt Bai a DLC fellow traveler? He likes Mark "Milquetoast" Warner, feels that Shoeless Joe Lieberman got a raw deal, kinda likes Bill Clinton, and digs Rahm Emanuel (who is a political pit-bull, no offense to pit bull terriers). Anyway, all of those folks are DLC favorites, so maybe that, and his hostility to the blogosphere is coloring "The Argument" he's trying to make.

There is an emerging Democratic majority; if it hadn't been for 9/11 short-circuiting the electorate during the reign of George II, I think that emerging majority would've made its presence known more gradually. Bush's maladministration, paradoxically, made a lot of fencesitters realize the stakes of the game, and got them on board the regime change train when they might have otherwise not become engaged. The decline in the quality of the majority of Americans' lives during the Bush League's tenure is also counting against the GOP.

Truly, the GOP's impermanent majority was largely a bunch of hot air and lies, depending on misinformation, a supine and/or complicit mass media, tightly-focused think tanking, ideological shock troops, and rampant interference with fair democratic practice (by way of incumbency leverage, voter suppression and intimidation, gerrymandering, and out-and-out fraud) -- rather than them representing a majority of Americans' hopes and desires for the country.

But while I think the GOP machine is sputtering, and the majority of Americans are in step with liberal ideas (whether they know that or not), the Democrats are not as yet willing or capable of truly leading, it would appear. That's the most frustrating thing about it. The country's ready for them, if they would only lead. The moment is theirs, if they are brave enough to take it; if they don't, then a third party may ultimate benefit from their ambivalence. But certainly the DLC are not the folks to come up with a proper way forward for the Democrats. They're part of the problem of the Democratic Party, not part of the solution.