The Democrats have to try and get the subject off of foreign policy and back on to the issues that might give them a better chance at the polls. The economy issue doesn't stand up to close examination--few Democratic issues do. The tax cuts haven't even occurred yet, so it seems a little bizarre to be blaming them for current job rates and other present economic indicators. You could see the Democrats cringing when Greenspan, who was supposed to blame the tax cuts for economic problems, instead said the problem was spending. This concept does not mesh well with the Democrats' current favorite subject, universal prescription drug coverage, which like Medicare is guaranteed to balloon into a massive unlimited entitlement sinkhole that will lay yet another permanent lead weight on the economy.

Entitlements to the elderly--making the most reliable voters in America basically indentured servants to the government--currently occupy approximately half the entire Federal Budget of the United States, which can't be what the Founders had in mind as the primary function of the Federal Government. This has long ago gotten completely out of control, and now the Democrats want to increase this load, and many Republicans are going along with it.

The way you can tell the real motivation of prescription drug coverage is that the Democrats insist on its being universal, and not means-tested. The latter would be reasonable for a program intended to try and help the poor afford drugs, but since the elderly poor are a relatively small fraction of all the elderly, that wouldn't accomplish the real goal of trapping a huge number of voters in a dependence trap. Oh, well. Why bother fighting it? It's inevitable, since we have all accepted--Democrat and Republican--that questioning the morality, never mind the effectiveness, of massive forced wealth redistribution makes you a minion of Satan.

Attempts to nail Bush on things like Enron didn't work either, although I'm sure they've got a couple of other arrows in that quiver. Remember the last minute DUI revelation just before the 2000 election?

Daschle is the Unelected Majority Leader, and he likes it. He like it A LOT. He wants the Democrats to hold the Senate at all costs, and as the election grows nearer, I'm betting he's going to pull something desperate that will really backfire on him. You heard it here first.