Please don't hand Michael the keys to the Chevy again, the devolution of this blog was rapid, vapid and painful to your regular readers.

The Senate doesn't represent the public on the war, as Salon shows, but lack of representation goes into many others.

Polls show the public would pay more in taxes to improve public schools, but even under Clinton with both houses of Congress under Democratic control, an effort to substantially increase school funding failed.

Polls show a majority of Americans - by wide margins - favor some form of a single-payer healthcare system, but such a program is anathema to all but maybe 3 or 4 senators (sure, close to a majority courageously support "universal" healthcare - yet to be defined).

But what's most revealing is what the public doesn't ask for that the Senate manages to do with ease.

The war is one example (no one voted in 2000 on the hopes of war with Iraq). But how about the bankruptcy bill, which sailed through with the support of the Democratic leader in the Senate. Where were the protests demanding this legislation (outside corporate boardrooms)? What group of voters flocked to the polls to ensure a Senate that would pass this?

Or what about bipartisan votes for Medicare drug coverage, which was designed to benefit drug companies - did you attend the march on Washington in support of Pfizer? Did you sign the petition asking that Merck get more of the nation's pie?

Or what about the estate tax repeal, which is a "movement" consisting mainly of 18 super rich families and the "think tanks" they influence. True, rollback/repeal hasn't come to pass yet, but it could happen this week with some Democratic support. At least 18 families have representation in the US Senate.

It seems the people don't get what they are looking for, but if they're lucky they might approve of what the Senate was going to do in any event.

D-AR, son of former senator David Pryor

Every poll confirms it, we all feeel it, yet somehow Democrats are afraid to take the right position and say that they support ending this war.

The only explaination is fear, not fear of voters, but fear of the media. The Kove political machine, time and time again, has given the media the script they need to explain away shady elections where republicans continue to win under remarkable circumstances. We read in newspapers and on the internet about and see TV reports on the new 'morals' voter who is more concerned with drawing back gay and abortion rights than with an on-going debacle that is the Iraq war that needed uncountable lies to justify. Those of us on the left are scratching our heads and wondering how they can get away with it over and over again. Now we know. Most journalist have no integrity and refuse to write about the elephant in the room: our elections are rigged and the mainstream media has been wholely compromised.

Wow, what a tremendous surprise that the Nelsons, Landrieu and Lieberman all voted with the Republicans. I am just stunned.

Why don't we just change their party affiliation for them, so as to get a better sense of the true Democratic minority in the Senate?

I would like to see someone in the Senate propose a draft on the grounds that we need more troops in Iraq to get the mission accomplished properly. Universal, compulsory military service. Hell, we could even take on Iran and North Korea if we had that! So how 'bout it? Where's the leadership on this?

That's what we need to do for illegal immigration. Just like the Roman army of yore, let them fight for us and then give them citizenship.

.....between what people want and what their representatives are willing to vote for, or even consider, is of course partly explained by our system for financing campaigns: Senators and reps focus on matters of importance to the people they need money from (hence the bankruptcy bill and other atrocities that Reality-based Liberal mentions). What they hope is that there won't be TOO great a gap between what those financiers want and what the people at large want, or at least will tolerate. But there's another factor too: Every vote has to be calculated for its possible use in opponents' future attack ads. Unfortunately, voters have been dupes for arguments like "Senator X voted against supporting our troops. Challenger Z will stand up for America." Apparently, even some of those who don't like the Iraq venture in the abstract, and who would tell pollsters they favor a pullout, must think something like, "Well, gosh, I'm for standing up for America, so I guess I'd better vote for Challenger Z." (Of course, Challenger Z also hasn't bothered to mention that his real priority is eliminating the estate tax.) LIkewise, some subset of voters must fall for the claim that Senator X's vote shows s/he lacks "character" traits, like "toughness," which people generally value in elected officials -- even if the evidence for this supposed character flaw is a vote they actually agree with, or would if they knew what it really was.

As long as political campaigning is based largely on paid TV ads, this problem will persist. That's why most other democracies have rejected our system and, not coincidentally, have governments that better reflect their electorates' antiwar, pro-education, pro-health-care wishes.

...how fed up I am with the current crop of Senate Democrats? When are they going to take their heads out of the sand and actually act on what their constituents want?

And yet they wonder why, when they call during their beg-a-thon, I say I won't give them a dime til they grow some b*lls...Maybe we should ship 'em all to Iraq, make them attend soldiers' funerals, make them spend a day cleaning bedpans at the naval hospitals,

And, in terms of healthcare coverage, give them $20,000 to live on and force them to pay the bills when all they have is catastrophic (in more ways than one) coverage that carries a $7,000 deductible.

How sad. Those used to be things I'd want Republicans to do since they were/are so out of touch.