Snatching Defeat Out of the Jaws of VictoryDana Milbank, who writes
excellent columns like this every now and then, notes that the circular firing squad has formed on the Left:
The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds congressional Democrats in the best position they've held in 14 years, besting President Bush and Republican lawmakers on Iraq, the economy, health care, immigration, ethics and more.
All of which can mean only one thing: It is time for the Democrats to eat their own.
Right on cue, liberal activists including Cindy Sheehan and Ramsey Clark gathered yesterday at the Busboys & Poets restaurant and bookshop at 14th and V streets NW for what they billed as a forum on "The Impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." But the participants, while charging the administration with "crimes against humanity," a "war of aggression" and even "the supreme international crime," inevitably turned their wrath on congressional Democrats, whom they regarded as a bunch of wimps.
"Does the Democratic Party want to continue to exist or does it want to ignore what 85 percent of its supporters want?" demanded David Swanson, a labor union official who runs "Impeach PAC" and other efforts to remove Bush from office. Singling out Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.) for derision, Swanson said that Democrats who do the right thing "are exceptions."You know how it is, the intra-party fights are always the bloodiest and nastiest. Milbank himself strikes me as a liberal, but of course Cindy Sheehan and the ImpeachPAC crowd are from the whackjob Left, so there's no love lost there.
Another Left versus liberal fight is brewing over Chris Matthews. This time the claim is that Matthews said
Teddy Kennedy molested Judge Alito's wife. Of course, the reality is a little more complicated than that:
MATTHEWS: ...won't they say something up beat and (bucking up)... isn't she a great woman, didn't she stand up-and then they'll put the camera right on Ted Kennedy and show how he was the guy that molested her basically-that's the way they'll play it...
