<This is as close as she has gotten to commenting on the 2002 elections since the Republicans mopped the floor with the Democrats. I was beginning to think she had gone into some kind of political catatonia. She discusses Bill Clinton's speech for the Democratic Leadership Council:

He [Clinton] said that the Bush administration had missed 9/11 clues: "There are a couple of thousand flight schools in America. It wouldn't have been that hard to check them all." One of the men who flew an airplane into the World Trade Center had 30 credit cards and a quarter-million-dollar debt, he said, and Mohamed Atta had 12 addresses. Those were signs they were "up to no good."

Of course Bill Clinton is counting on the drooling pinheads that pass for journalists to fail to note the fact that the hijackers signed up at the flight schools in the spring of 2000. So where was Bill?

Then the Democratic Leadership Council, conservative for Democrats, spoke up to Dowd's disgust:

"Close the cultural gap that, left unchecked, will give Republicans back a virtual lock on the Electoral College . . .," Mr. From and Mr. Reed exhorted. "Half that battle is simply respecting the values of mainstream America in the first place. We will never be the party that loves guns most, but we can respect law-abiding citizens' rights to own them. We will never be the pro-life party, but we can show that we want abortion to be rare as well as legal."



Why not push for Clarence Thomas as chief justice and declare global warming a hoax?



Why not indeed? The D.L.C. has a very good point. Dowd, on the other hand, like other Democrats who came to the conclusion that the 2002 elections meant the country really wants more socialism and cultural destruction, is still waiting for a clue to land.