With all due respect, I don’t think the case was made in either the post or the Politico article that “Democrats” are “salivating” at what might go down in the 2008 or the 2010 elections. There may very well be a lot of gleeful unborn chick-counting and handrubbing going on but I don’t think the quotes by Baker, now an academic at Rutgers, represent strong evidence of that. IMHO this type of “analysis” isn’t constructive. No offense intended.

Nan – No offense taken (obviously). I certainly don’t want to mislead. But I didn’t say they were “salivating” only that they some were “really excited” and I think that is a fair representation. The problem with looking that far in the distance is that it makes such huge assumptions about so many things. And, thinking in those terms confuses the role of true political leadership – it thinks only in gamesmanship (win/lose) and not in leadership. Of course maybe I should have put that in the post. Thanks always for your thoughts.

Your mathematics are pretty good. The optimism is one of many ways the new Democratic majority isn’t as different as I’d have thought from the former Republican majority. The difference between the two in tolerance for an executive branch acting outside the law, the constitution and without oversight is less than can be explained by coming from a different party.
I get tired of the Democrats standing Bush up as a straw man for attack, but to have subpoenaed the heck out the administration and start impeaching people who didn’t comply would have suited me right down to the ground. Their failure to do that is why I’m not supporting them. They’re just like him and he’s their Osama Bin Laden. Someone horrible they can’t live without.

The other way of looking at it is that Republicans are so utterly expended and aging out, it’s basically just a culling of the unable, the unwilling, and the unadaptable from the herd.
Thing is, since March the Republican Party proper is a substantially lesser challenge/problem to Democratic power than what might be called the Beltway “war establishment”- lots of aging Cold Warriors of various stripes and varieties. It has taken some time for leading Democrats to understand this, and to adjust and reconfigure to fight it. But basically events/facts in Iraq determine things- it will take collapse of the Maliki regime to put an end to most of the fictions and begin the withdrawal. Furthermore, it takes a supermajority to begin a war, and it takes a supermajority to end one.
To Doug…I think most Democrats have tuned out Bush. At this point he’s treated as the figurehead (which he is/was) of the Texas crew that did such a number on the country and their own Party. About the impeachment bit…it’s politically more efficacious, more of a deterrent to politicians and lesson to The People, to let the various rotten fruit hang on the tree as long as it likes. Once their deeds are fully exposed, Bush Administration officials do tend to resign after a few months of petulant or insulting defiance.
Democrats are not really mirror images of Republicans. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment fundamentally divides the Parties, so crude majoritarianism is generally out for Democrats. Majoritarian decisionmaking tends to backfire quite often, anyway- the Schiavo affair, Medicare D, the Bush 2004 election were all major things jammed through unwisely, with the consequences proving the opposite of what they were promised to do.

Jillian, no need to convince me that the Republican majority was rotten to the core and deserved to be left hanging from trees (your fruit metaphor, I’m not advocating lynching. barely.) I’m a little shocked that this far into the term I’m still waiting for the Democrats to do something different. Speaking on camera about the horribleness of the President doesn;t count, in my book, as doing something.

We are all waiting for the Dems to do something different.
However – I have discovered that we must also wait for the Republicans to do something different. Something isnt’ working for the country and for the party and they put their heads down and keep on doing it. The public humiliation and scapegoating of Bill Clinton was in many ways a pay back for Nixon. That’s a long time to hold a grudge. Bill was guilty of much, but – was he as guilty as the venomous response indicated. Bush is guilty of even more – is he as guilty as the hatred that swirls would indicate. The something different that both parties must do is stop the ideological crap that keeps us divided and righteous and start speaking to one another and to the rest of the world with civility and integrity. The habits of speaking of one another as enemy must be broken. It makes no difference if either party is in power right now. The dynamics are destructive.
We must change – all of us.

Very true, Doug. They have spent too much time talking about what is foolish, and not enough about what is wise. Let alone doing the latter.
What I’ve heard from my Congressman (a quiet but excellent man, and a Democrat) is that he and his staff were buried in oversight committee work for a long time. They had to start from scratch in January. Now that’s far enough along that he can start dealing with other things- Iraq- more fully.
I think I’m seeing signs that Senate Democrats are hardening up again on defunding Iraq. Let’s see how it goes.
Thinker, the story of two sides with irreconcilable differences is long bitterness and attempts to conquer each other. Finally one weakens, eventually breaks down internally, and seems to almost fade away. But its victorious opponent cannot stand fully alone in victory- it doesn’t contain quite enough truth to do so. And it then turns to and absorbs the defeated side, accepts the truths (but not the untruths) of the defeated position into itself. Hegel termed the process and outcome ‘synthesis’….
I truly wish the “can’t we all just get along?” approach worked. And every few years we get uniter-not-a-divider rhetoric from Presidential candidates, who propose that we can all just split the difference and live happily ever after. At times we can. But there is some historical and spiritual earnest to our battles, and more often than not it seems to win out.