It would take five pages to dissect his speech in its entirety, sentence by sentence. Suffice it to say, his entire political future rests on the hope that no one will look too closely at it. Of course, hoping that no one will actually think about Democratic policies is the core of the entire party today.

A few quick and scattered observations, based on the speech (I don't have the details of the Secret Plan To End The Recession):

- Apparently the tax cuts are to blame for our current economic situation. Of course, what Daschle is desperately hoping no one notices is that THE TAX CUTS HAVEN'T HAPPENED YET. Aside from the rebate checks (about $40 billion as I recall), very little of the tax cuts proposed for the next ten years have even taken effect. The man is wide open on this, and he knows it.

Notice that nowhere in the speech does he propose eliminating the tax cuts, or increasing taxes. Interesting, no? He is trying to create a mental pretzel-twist in the audience that condemns the Republicans for tax cuts, but does not make the Democrats appear to be actually against them, or for tax increases. This of course requires that his audience have cowpies for brains, but this is probably not a problem for his core constituency.

- Adding to the benefits of those who are unemployed, which does nothing for the economy (putting them back to work does), but swells the unemployment statistics. This works in favor of the Democrats (who are hoping to God that the economy does not appear to recover before November.)

- The theory that the economy is driven primarily by consumers, apart from their dual role as producers, is ridiculous. If this were true, I could drop fifty thousand people into the Sahara Desert with $100,000 each and produce a thriving economy.

Ah, spending increases. Most of the speech is a long, involved list of dozens and dozens of taxpayer-funded goodies.

Have you ever noticed that tax cuts always threaten the mythical Social Security surplus, but that spending increases never do?