I cannot tell you how much I want Armando to be right about the Democrats and Reid. I want there to be secret strategy, a military maneuver of sorts, a canny retreat wherein the R's rush forward into the breach and are crushed by a sudden pincer movement from the sides.
But are the sides there? Will the Black Caucus and the Brian Baird's stand? Or, are they lying against a tree, civil war battle warriors, nursing or making up their wounds on the way to or from Chancellorville?
I've been reading "What's the Matter with Kansas." Many of you read it months ago, so it's old news. I couldn't bear to read it so close to November. So I'm reading it in the midst of the wingnut's assault on Terri Schiavo and the Republic. Thomas Franks says "[T]he leaders of the backlash...have chosen to wage cultural battles where victory is impossible, where their follower's feelings of powerlessness will be dramatized and their alienation aggravated." In the midst of women swooning in grief in front of the cameras, children breaking police lines to take the lethal Eucharist to Terri, and motorcades of horizontal crucifixes, the ultimate impossibility of their cause is obvious, especially compared against polls showing 82 of the public disagrees with them. But still the swoons and T-shirts and broken down crucifixes come. Delay's hand moves on.
I'm afraid our warriors are lying against trees. Maybe a little patience will turnout to be a good thing, as Armando counsels. But I think we have to learn how match their passion with our own. I don't know how to use this moment to engage the public, but I think we must.