Wonder why Al Gore and John Kerry lost to an charismatic incompetent like George W.
Bush? They got this kind of advice from Bob Shrum, offered today to Hillary Clinton in advance of the Democratic debate:

She needs to have a script, that takes her a little off script, that makes here look a little spontaneous. That gives a little energy and life to her presentation. She could say something off-beat, for example…. It would make her look less programmed.

Scripted spontaneity! That’s the ticket.

Jesus. Is it any wonder Democrats come off like Robocrats?

It’s hardly just begun, but let’s review for a second the rather stunning impact of the Democratic congressional takeover. Not all of these advances have been won through legislation, but it’s safe to say none of them would have happened without the ballance provided by a Democratic House and Senate.

• Rumsfeld’s gone.
• Bush has backtracked on his warantless domestic spying, placing the extra-legal NSA program under the watchful eye of the FISA courts.
• You can now apply to be removed from the government’s No-Fly list.
• Chuck Hagel is openly clashing with Condi Rice on the war, in Senate hearings demanded by Democrats.
• Legislation to address the climate crisis is on the docket.
• The House has increased the Minimum Wage, decreased costs of Rx drugs bought by the government, sliced the interest on student loans, beefed up air-cargo security, implemented new ethics rules, and is about to revoke corporate welfare to the oil companies.

Not bad for three months after election day.

What else am I overlooking?

Tony Coelho thinks so:

“As long as she does a decent job, and I think she will,” Coelho told me last week. “Nancy Pelosi sets the stage for a woman to take over.”

[UPDATE: Welcome Atrios, C&L readers.]

Over the weekend, I caught a snippet of CSPAN’s coverage of the McCain/Lieberman “surge” party at the American Enterprise Institute. It was after all the speeches, with the Senators kibitzing with reporters as the hour ran down.

In words that should trouble any Democrats counting Lieberman in their camp, Lieberman was praising Bush as a “great leader” for bucking American opinion, as expressed in the 2006 election, in his determination to double down in Iraq. Lieberman then said something incredible:

Even those opposed to the surge, he said, “ought to at least let us try it.”

“The worst that could happen,” he continued, is that this policy could become another partisan flashpoint in Washington.

Ahem. I believe, senator, that the “worst that could happen” is that a significant number of the 20,000-30,000 troops we send to police the hornets’ nest of Baghdad could come home in body bags.

Listen, I wish as much as anyone that there were a military strategy to win this thing. The consequences of failure in Iraq are as terrible for America’s interests as they are for peace-loving Iraqis.

But it’s clear that this surge strategy is just so much grasping at straws. This isn’t a strategy for victory, it’s a last ditch effort to delay defeat. The chances for anything recognizable as “success” are beyond remote.

Meaning that the inevitable American deaths that come from this offensive will be even more tragic than the ones’ whose sacrifice the surge is meant to redeem.

The worst that can happen, Senator Lieberman, is that 2,000 more Americans die just to prove that this war was irredeemably lost a year ago.

Over at The Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum sees the seeds of a sea change in the universal health care debate. Following Mitt Romney’s lead in creating a universal health care system for Massachussetts, Ahnold has put forth a proposal to insure all California children, as part of a broader shift to insure every person in the state.

Democrats should understand what this means: (a) universal healthcare is no longer some lefty fringe notion, and (b) the plans from Schwarzenegger and Massachussetts’ Mitt Romney are now the starting point for any serious healthcare proposal. Any proposal coming out of a Democratic policy shop should be, at a minimum, considerably more ambitious than what’s on offer from these two Republicans.

I don’t hold out much hope for the 110th congress, but the fact that John Edwards has made universal healthcare a centerpiece of his campaign suggests that the ghosts of “Hillarycare” no longer seem so scary compared to our current, monstrous healthcare debacle.

Raising an interesting question. Would a President HR Clinton still be too snakebit from 1993 to push for universal coverage in 2009?

Whew.

The last of Rolling Stone’s top-ten congressional races has finally been decided. Republican incumbent Deborah Pryce will be returning to the House on the strength of a 1062 vote margin.

Can someone please explain to me how hurricane devastated New Orleans was able to conduct and count an election and a run-off in the time it took Columbus to simply verify the vote-count from November 7? That’s just not right.
PREVIOUSLY: The Pryce of Loyalty

What’s a cold, hard $90,000 between friends?

The comically corrupt “Dollar” Bill Jefferson — who was filmed taking bribe money by the FBI and later found with most of that money in his Frigidaire — has been reelected in a runoff, garnering 52 percent of the vote.

It’s really hard to find fault in the fecklessness of the House Ethics Committee — which whitewashed the Foley coverup on Friday — when it’s clear the public just doesn’t fucking care.

Seriously. Elections, as president Bush has said, truly are “accountability moments.” And when voters give obviously crooked pols a free pass, can we be surprised when they do the same for themselves? Why should the Ethics Committee impose real consequences on fellow House members, when, as long as the pork keeps coming home, vile men like Jefferson can escape consequences with the voting public.

Jesus. One month later and they’re still recounting in the Columbus Ohio race between  Deborah Pryce and challenger Mary Jo Kilroy.

Bush/Gore didn’t drag out this long! What’s the problem people? Too many sleepless nights worrying about the BCS fortunes of Ohio State?