The Democrats have a majority, but by the slimmest of margins.  Certainly nothing that will garner a veto by Bush is going to get done by this Congress.

Then pass the legislation that should be passed and let it be vetoed. At that point, refuse to give Bush what he wants. Then they can blame Bush and say "Well, we TRIED but he kept vetoing it." Isn't that a lot better than "Well, we shouldn't propose stuff because he'll just veto it so we'll talk about how important Christmas is?" or "Well, he veto'd it so we better just give him what he wants. It's better that way."

Screw that. The Democrats are mortgaging their parties future by letting themselves be walked all over. They have the power to play hardball and shut off funding. Use it. Maybe then Bush et al will be willing to negotiate in good faith. Don't play the whole "Well, the legislative branch is not very powerful so just vote for us next year." Come on. I hope the American people are smarter than that. If not the Americans as a whole, at least the base you just disillusioned is.

There is no such thing as the Democratic party.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

If you have the gavel you can exercise a lot of control over what actually comes up for a vote, and you can keep a lot of legislation you don't like from being passed, but when it comes to passing legislation, you have to actually have the votes to do it.  And, since the Democratic Caucus has a much larger diversity of views than the Republican Caucus, and is much less likely to obey party discipline, the Democrats need something like 55% in the House and in the Senate in order to regularly pass their own bills.

In order to get anything passed without significant Republican support, you need to get the support of Joe Lieberman on those issues where he is conservative, and the support of someone else conservative on other issues.

Despite the futility, I really think that the Democrats need to be bringing up legislation with a vision for the future, even if they can't pass it.  At least that way we can see their vision for the future.  As it is now, they don't seem to have one.

What is it that we expect them to accomplish?  I can't help thinking that the biggest thing the Democrats in congress were elected to do was to not get us into another war, and they (with help from Hillary) were rolling along towards a war with Iran until a CIA whistleblower leaked the national intelligence estimate.

Getting us out of Iraq immediately only has the support of about 2/3 of Democratic congressmen, and though it has support from more than half of Americans, the median opinion is nearly neutral, so it wouldn't win them that much approval even if they accomplished it, and they'd still be blamed for things going wrong after they left.

Everybody knows that health care is badly broken.  Even if you have insurance, you don't really have insurance, due to insurance group rolling.  If you ever really need insurance, you will have a preexisting condition and won't be able to get it from anyone but the company you already have it from.  The people left in any pool get steadily sicker and sicker.   This makes rates go up, so the people left in the pool will be sicker, so rates will go up again, and so on until you can't pay the premium and have to drop your income enough to get on Medicaid to stay alive.  We don't train enough doctors in this country, and rely on importing doctors from India (and other places, but I see a whole lot from India) with poorer skills.  Medical care costs far too much, and doctors pay far too much in malpractice insurance to settle far too many far to expensive lawsuits.  And we spend almost as much time and money arguing about who pays for care as we do actually treating people.

Yet people know that any move to any different system could go very badly wrong, and there isn't a whole lot of public pressure on the issue, and any movement by the congress would have to lead public opinion, and be accepted later, and it couldn't override a veto anyhow.

Democrats are now less in favor of pork barrel spending than Republicans, but because Republicans have gotten worse and not because they have gotten any better.

I can't see what impeachment is for if you have a government that routinely refuses to obey the law and never force them to, and which uses the prosecutorial power as an instrument of partisan politics.

Energy supply and global warming are never considered as linked problems.  We need to do what we can do now, since it's already too late.  The proposals are a few dollars for battery research and a tax on carbon.  The problem is that a carbon tax pushes electric generation towards using natural gas which could be used for transportation easily, and ends up making our energy supply problem even worse.

Immigration reform is problematic for the Democrats, and I can see why they don't want to talk about it, because support for their traditional position has disintegrated.

I know the Democrats don't have the votes to get anything significant passed, but instead of arguing amongst themselves, agreeing on solutions to problems and then trying to convince the country of them, the Democrats are sitting around holding their fingers to the wind and waiting for the political wind to blow their way.

We don't train enough doctors in this country, and rely on importing doctors from India (and other places, but I see a whole lot from India) with poorer skills.  Medical care costs far too much, and doctors pay far too much in malpractice insurance to settle far too many far to expensive lawsuits.  And we spend almost as much time and money arguing about who pays for care as we do actually treating people.

Blame the AMA. They have a major problem with qualified non-physicians providing basic primary care or specialty care. They also restrict the number of new doctors trained which keeps the supply down. If you have a sore throat or need your immunizations updated before a trip abroad do you really need to see a board certified MD for this if a nurse practitioner or PA is just as competent to handle the minor things?

The thing with India is that most of their doctors just came straight from college. Being a "Doctor" is actually a college level degree program there, ~5 years. According to a few of my friends from that part of the world it is also not that uncommon for average students with parents who have even the most modest of incomes to buy a spot in lower ranked schools for their children. To me, this is similar to the exact type of situation Abraham Flexner tried to stop in this county a hundred years ago.

It is a sad commentary on this country when arming a despot and starting another proxy war between two regional powers would have created less of a mess than the shenanigans we have caused to date.

The most inexpensive foreign policy would be isolationism; is that what you would advocate?

I don't advocate isolationism. I think the best basic foreign policy change would be simply to end the Bush Administration's (and more broadly, the neo-conservative's) belligerence. It doesn't cost anything to talk nicely about folks from other countries, and it's not really hard to do - even if you disagree with those people. (Bush's basic philosophy sometimes seems sort of like Teddy Roosevelt's, except he forgot the "speak softly" part.)

Perhaps a more important, though arguably tricker, change would be to end the irregular way the US has been treating terrorism suspects. I wouldn't want to go back to the Clinton-era tactic of treating international terrorism as merely a law enforcement problem, but I think it's pretty clear that holding prisoners (such as in Guantanamo) for whom we have little or no evidence is counterproductive as a foreign policy matter.

Above you mentioned that it's not realistic to expect miracles from the Democrats, and that's true. But it's also true that there are certain things that cannot be done easily (or in this case, undone easily). Still I don't see any other way to restore the reputation of the US in the rest of the civilized world, i.e., among the citizens of western liberal democracies. The only way is to set a good example and do so consistently for a long time.

when a new President (and probably a Democratic President) takes office.

As much as I wish I shared your optimism I fear we have another 4 years of a republican president when they put Bush out to pasture.  This is going to be the meanest and dirtiest election ever...and when it comes to dirty and mean, the GOP is hard to beat.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

It is ridiculous that people base personal characteristics on who they vote for, but it happens all the time. One commentator this weekend from MSNBC was talking about Huckabee campaigning in Iowa. The reporter said almost everybody who meets him ends up committing to vote for him because he is such a "down to earth guy" and "easy to talk to."

What. The. Hell?

I don't want a president I can go have a beer with or hang out with on the front lawn and talk about football. If their policies suck, then I will not vote for that person. Why is the office of President turning into such a nationwide popularity contest?

Cynical too, but here it is....

We pick our presidents the way we pick our toilet paper...the way we would pick any consumer good.  Marketing is everything.  Sure, this toilet paper is soft, strong, and gives good value for the money...but that other brand has a cute baby on the wrapping.  Cute baby!  

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

The polls show that President Bush has an extremely low popularity, so I think that the American public has indeed noticed the many terrible failures of the Bush administration.  And as for the Republican party in general, it has had an absolutely amazing series of sex scandals, failures, resignations and criminal prosecutions.  If this is not enough for the voters to desire a change of government, then America can officially be declared brain dead, and taken off life support.

If you go on the premise that Hillary is the most polarizing candidate out there right now, then it's little surprise that Standard Democratic Candidate (in the name of Barrack Obama), does better--significantly better--against all Republican candidates. Or do Republicans actually prefer Obama's positions?

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Well it is interesting that there is a poll showing Hillary losing to McCain in a hypothetical election, so I guess it is a bit early for me to regard a Democratic victory in 2008 as a foregone conclusion.  And I do agree that Hillary is the most polarizing candidate.  But I would also note that the past 7 years of the Bush Presidency have already polarized the country to a far greater extent than Hillary Clinton has.  In a certain sense, Hillary is just the focal point for the polarization that already exists.