Melthough said it well, but I'll add something to it. Those of us who believe there's little difference between the parties are talking not about what they believe or what they say but about what would happen if they were in office. Look again at Greenwald's post today: a Democratic-led Congress just pass this this FISA "reform" that is not only apalling but utterly Republican in nature. Why work to put Democrats in power if they're going to do what Republicans would do?

I think it's quite possible that if Gore had become president, he would have invaded Iraq just as Bush did, not because he believed in it but because the Republican-led Congress (and the media) would have forced him to do it and he wouldn't want to appear weak. If Hillary Clinton gets elected in 2008, I'm not convinced that she won't invade Iran simply because the Republicans and the media will put pressure on her to do so, and she won't want to appear weak. If this sound crazy to you, look at the FISA bill Congress just passed!

This Congress has the opportunity to show us that they really are different from Republicans, rather than just saying so. I'm still waiting.

P.S. It's worth repeating what Kucinich said: "Why don't people vote? It's because they don't think there is much of a difference between the two parties." He's absolulety correct, and that's quite different from stating his own beliefs about the difference, and if this statement elicits boos and mockery from Democrats, then God help us.

Respectfully, this may be a pointless argument, and I'll grant that it's highly unlikely that Gore would have done such a thing, but I still think it's more than a little possible. You're giving too much credit to the Bush presidency alone for making the case for war on Iraq. Toppling Saddam, remaking the Middle East, lashing out at someone (anyone) else in response to 9/11--these were priorities among Republicans regardless of Bush's presidency. It's reasonable to expect that all these same players in the vast right-wing conspiracy would have been pushing the same agenda but in different roles, and a (dishonest) case would have been made for invading Iraq with as much intelligence as they could cherrypick and distort. And, much as I admire him now, Gore was not reknowned for his political backbone.

More to the point, wouldn't it also have been amazing for anyone last November to believe that the new Democratic majority in Congress would give Bush full funding to continue the war without any commitment for withdrawal? And that it would give him everything he wanted on FISA "reform?" You say "To me the best thing about this Congress is it doesn't rubberstamp everything Bush wants to do," but I consider the Iraq war and the expansion of executive branch power without oversight to be the biggest issues we face today, and congressional Democrats have rubberstamped Bush on both of them. (And how about that Military Commissions Act?) They did just what a Republican Congress would have done. That's not "no news" coming from Congress; it's bad news.

Finally, you say "Even if this Congress can't impeach Bush or force him out of Iraq, at least they are keeping him from making thing even worse." Well, they CAN impeach Bush and force him out of Iraq, they just refuse to do it, and in fact they're actively allowing him to make things even worse.

I can't speak for the others, but if I knew what to do about this mess I wouldn't be posting letters on Salon this afternoon. Whether or not we have a good plan of action has nothing to do with whether or not we're correct in our assessment of the differences between the two major parties, however. All I'm trying to accomplish is to get more people to see things as (I think) they really are and to be realistic about the Democratic party, because you can't even begin to fix a bad state of affairs until you recognize it as such. People who see it this way are a disctinct minority right now, though, so I don't know what else to do but keep shouting.

Rickey Henderson's 1406 career stolen bases. No other player has even reached 1,000, and that's what's so amazing: The gap between him and every other player ever is a whole career's worth of stolen bases for even an above-average leadoff hitter. I suppose that record will be broken someday, but I'd love to know how.

for career walks issued is a monster, too. Aside from different-era type records like Cy Young's 511 wins, the ones that seem the most daunting are these freakish ones where the distance between #1 and #2 is just astronomical.