Here's a fantasy scenario that I wouldn't bet on but doesn't seem impossible. Al Gore and Howard Dean should simply declare war on the Democratic Establishment: the Pelosis and Reids and Schumers and Clintons and Obamas who have utterly failed us. He should announce the formation of a Progressive Union that will meet in conjunction with Yearly KOS.

There we would issue a new Port Huron Statement or some kind of Democratic version of the Contract With America agreed upon by all the netroots and other progressives and as many congressional officeholders as we can muster. The essential message of that statement: Enough is enough. We've had it.

That statement would air our specific grievances with the current leadership and threaten to go on strike and cripple the party if our demands are not met. The statement could be in the form of a petition seeking signers who will commit to work together collectively to force the Leadership to do their duty.

Ultimately, we might be able to start a protest movement within the party that gets tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of signatures of the people whose time, money, and votes the Leadership need to stay in the majority. If we had hundreds of thousands of what used to be solid Democratic supporters threatening to go on a general strike, the leadership would have to listen, if for no other reason than to keep their fancy jobs and titles. The triangulators and DLCers will have decide which side they're on.

I am not talking about a counterproductive Ralph Nader effort here. Nader's decision to sink Al Gore was idiotic in the extreme. If Gore had been president and the last 7 years had never happened, I would be perfectly content to stay in my job helping get Democrats elected. In 2000, a Nader movement meant getting Bush instead of Gore -- a difference of monumental proportions.

But at this point in 2007, we have far less to lose. We have seen that a Democratic Congress under the current Leadership makes very little difference. Electing a triangulator like Hillary or Obama as president would obviously be better than a Giuliani or a Romney but will accomplish little, at best simply postponing futher disaster until the next Republican Caesar comes along and exploits all the precedents the current Democratic Leadership have allowed them to create.

Now that's a movement that I would be willing to lose my cushy job for.

A little over one year after the American people took the Congress out of the hands of the Republicans, we find out the party given the responsibility to check the authoritarian rule of the Former Cheerleader and his Gang of War Criminals, is in fact: The Vichy Democrats.

Time to drain the fetid Congressional swamp and rid ourselves of these quislings.

GG,

The question is: How do we deal with it as democrats?

And frankly speaking there does not seem to be an answer.

Not to vote for the democrats is one answer.

It does punish those wimpy democrats, and there are many of them who deserve to be punished.

But it also leads to republican victories.

At the end of the day no matter how one looks at it, we are screwed, period.

Again, how do we deal with this?

If we stay away from voting for democrats, we lose and the republicans win.

What is the solution?

Worry about ideological purity afterwards.

In the light there is darkness.

In the darkness there is light.

In each of there is guilt and innocence.

Perhaps, even in me, there is some GOP.

Thanks Glenn. You've nailed it once again. I grew up in West Virginia and was proud to cast my first vote for Sen. Rockefeller, whom I saw as a strong progressive who, if he were from any other state, would likely be president some day. What a disappointment he has proved to be. He had accomplished basically nothing in the Senate until CheneyBush came to power and since has distinguished himself as their biggest enabler. You neglected to mention he also supports granting telecoms immunity for spying on Americans. I suppose since West Virginia has swung far to the right in recent years, he is merely pandering in order to stay in power, but you would think someone with his personal fortune would be above such craven pandering. This is why it's imperative that Barack Obama, John Edwards or, less likely, Dennis Kucinich be the Democratic nominee for president. HRC is just like Rockefeller and the other establishment Dems. It's time they for them to pack their bags and head home for the good of the nation. Thanks again.

I wish I weren't so time constrained. The online comments to the WaPo article by Warrick and Eggen is nearing 400. When I think about Anon's (11:22) Potential Solution I wonder about whether there is sufficient public support. Formal polls put people in the position of expressing an opinion on something they may (or, may not) be informed about, and even if informed, something they may not have given much thought to. And, the way the questions are themselves phrased often generate a bias (intentional or not) on their own. The comments at WaPo, while suffering from a self-selection bias, at least are generated by people who had the interest to generate an opinion on their own. Looking at them superficially (I've only scanned a page or two), I see an array of themes emerging. There are several people offering multiple comments, and some sub-thread conversations/arguments occurring among a few. It would be interesting to get those comments as a "data-dump" without any more information than the comment and the user's screen name to sort the individuals and do a text analysis. Fantasy mine.

Anon (11:22), thanks for taking the time to submit your thoughts and your ideas. As I read your comment(s) I thought about the comments being generated at the WaPo. I don't know how to find out the degree to which the dismay at the Democrats we express here penetrates the greater population of voters. Nader and Perot's campaigns suggest there is untapped energy in the population. Whether there is a critical mass, amenable to organization and action along the lines you imagine, is less clear to me. Something I need to think about some more.

Glenn, thanks for your tireless efforts to parse, peel, organize, and inform. It is tempting to dissolve into the inconsolable child's response. You're correct to lose patience with those of us who succumb. I have a feeling there's lots more where this came from. I have no urge to land in a puddle to wail and weep, or throw up my hands... but I do acknowledge an occasional desire to simply throw up.