A tale of two posts

Things aren't going very well of late in Democrat-land, and I think these two sequential posts from Daily Kos are a good illustration of the problem.

First, there's the Dodd filibuster of the telecom immunity bill. As Joe wrote earler today, the Democrats are planning to give Bush and the Republicans a huge victory this week by granting companies like AT&T and Verizon retroactive immunity for having helped the Bush administration illegally spy on innocent American citizens.

As I wrote the other day, in terms of why the Dems are caving (again), there's more than enough blame to go around. I like Harry Reid (and Nancy Pelosi), but he's our leader. And the same rule we apply to Bush applies to Reid (and Pelosi on other issues): At some point the leader has to take responsibility for our failures. Then there are the Dems in Congress overall. I like them a lot less than I like Reid and Pelosi. Far too many of them are scared of their own shadows and/or closet Republicans (or in the case of Joe Lieberman, out-of-the-closet Republicans).

Then there's the Democratic consulting class. As Joe and I are both members of that class, neither of us thinks they're all bad. Some of our best friends are Democratic consultants. But, someone is giving the Democrats bad advice (though it's entirely possible that the Dems are getting good advice and not listening). And finally there's the non-profit class in town. Our multi-million dollar advocacy groups. Where are they? Where have they been? And what do they have to show for their efforts other than the dismantling of most of our rights and most of what we stand for as a party, a movement, and a country over the past 7 years?

There's a reason that Harry Reid, once beloved by the blogosphere, is at a 4% approval rating in the Netroots. People are fed up with losing, and fed up with excuses from our leaders, our members of Congress, and our non-profit advocates. We all give a lot of time and money to these people. If all we're going to do is lose, we can do that for free without lifting a finger.