Lost In The Wilderness

The Democrats are in an interesting situation right now. After attacking the president over Iraq for well over a year, they put all their political capital on the possibility that things wouldn't go well there, that elections would fail and Americans would hold the president and Republicans responsible for committing the country to a quagmire. If things did fail in Iraq, than the president's domestic agenda would be doomed for failure, for minimal public support for the president would give little incentive for congress to sign on to his agenda. With low approval and a disenchanted public, the Democrats would than have had all the justification they needed to block the president's agenda.

However all of this blew up in the Democrats' faces when the Iraqi election went far better than the media establishment and punditry had predicted. Democrats now look foolish for all the doom and gloom rhetoric they engaged in, especially Ted Kennedy's ill-timed claim that Iraq is a "quagmire", delivered just days before the election. President Bush wasn't looking at Iraq through rose-colored glasses after all, and Democrats will now have to answer for the fact that their views and predictions of Iraq were completely wrong, not the president's or Republicans'.

The successful elections in Iraq have given the president momentum, and Democrats know it. Looking to take some of the wind out of the president's sails, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi spoke before the National Press Club yesterday, engaging in what they called a "prebuttal" to the president's State of the Union tomorrow.

Now, anytime a party feels they have to do a "prebuttal" to a State of the Union makes it pretty obvious that that party is not in great shape. With the party's numbers shrinking with each election, and a president whose actions were vindicated by events on the ground, the Democrats are in a tough spot. Somehow they are going to have to find some way to take the momentum away from the president, or else they are going to have a tough time going through with their trademark obstruction without further retribution from the voters.

How they're going to do this is anybodies guess, for they have no agenda of their own and all their predictions have proven false. President Bush and Congressional Republicans need to take this opportunity and aggressively push their legislative agenda, for the nation is going to be much more receptive to our views after the successful election. The Democrats are lost in the wilderness, and Republicans have a chance to bring about some much needed reform. I suggest they take advantage of it.