You assume I am not thinking for myself and speaking MY OWN mind and heart. I am NOT speaking the party line. If I was, I would have a far easier time in local Brooklyn politics. What I speak is my OWN feelings and thoughts. And I do kind of resent your assuming otherwise...or perhaps my writing appears unthought out and dispassionate to you. In which case it is flaw in my writing.

Your point that Dems need to APPEAR to be doing more (as I point out, they ARE doing things) is a good marketing point and one that I agree with. And had you started with that point, again, we would have agreed. Dems aren't great at marketing, and that has to change. It is a pity that marketing is so important, but it really is. And I see this defect at all levels of the party, though there are exceptions. Republicans spend far more time on marketing and far less time on governing and that is why their policies are such failures (from Iraq to Katrina and everything in between) and yet why they keep winning.

Of course I spend much more time exploring the world of how people govern: what policies are actually happening, what the effect is, what it means to working and middle class Americans. Marketing has always been something I have not liked to worry about. I assume that good governance would be its own reward...but from Reagan on, Republicans have proven otherwise. And I now realize that marketing can turn any defect into an asset and any asset into a defect. So the hardest working Congress in my lifetime (literally...they are working longer hours, spending more time talking in person to constituents, taking fewer vacations and generating more legislation than any other Congressional session in recent history) is being seen as "do-nothing." Gotta say, it seems as surreal to me as the Our Children Left Behind Act and the Polluted Skies Initiative of the Republican Congress.