I can't put it much better than Keith Olbermann, who lays out the Democrats for lacking the spine to stand up to a discredited president with a 32% approval rating. Here it is, if you care to watch. It's about seven minutes, and worth watching.
I really have nothing to say that has not been said by others. Politics is not like sports. If you're a Red Sox fan, you support the Sox because you want to see your team (i.e., the guys who happen to be wearing your favorite team's uniform) beat the other team.
With politics, you support the candidates on your team because, one supposes, you actually believe that when an important moment comes, they will do the right thing, or at least come closer to doing the right thing than the other team. That is why I was so irritated after 9/11 when I heard someone -- a rabid Bush hater -- say that she hoped that Bush would "really screw this up." Her reasoning was that if Bush screwed things up, the Republicans would suffer in future elections and more members of the Blue Team would get elected.
That misses the whole point. We wanted Gore to be elected in 2000 because we believed (correctly) that, when it mattered, Gore would do a better job than Bush. But the end goal, or the ultimate hope, was that we would have someone in the White House who would handle the situation wisely and well. Gore did not win, so we got Bush, and from my standpoint, I hoped for the best.
Obviously, Bush has been a disaster. People finally came around to recognizing this in November 2006, voting the Republicans out and sending the Democrats to do one thing: end the war. I worked the polls as a volunteer lawyer in Cleveland to help make sure voters were not disenfranchised. Lots of folks did as well, and helped in many other ways. But part of the deal was that the Democrats, if put in power, would give their best effort to stop the war.
The Democrats, under the weak and deplorable leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, seem to be afraid of their own shadows. They are terrified that if they stand up and actually do what they were sent to do, they will lose some popularity. Well guess what? Game day is today, not tomorrow. If you lose popularity, so be it. After all, what did you spend all these years building popularity for, if not to spend it when it matters?
That's not a rhetorical question, because I believe that among many Democrats, the answer to that question is not all that obvious. One problem with Democrats is that they tend to be more public-sector oriented, which means that you see fewer Democratic politicians who feel they have viable rewarding options outside the warm embrace of public life. That makes the Democrats particularly terrified of losing an election (and losing the best job they'll ever have). Thus, unlike Republicans, who are more likely to have other non-government options if they lose an election, Democrats tend to be more panicky and more risk averse.
There are plenty of left-leaning people out there who have succeeded in other walks of life, and who could run for Congress, serve, and actually contemplate a meaningful life even if defeated in the next election. Democrats need to recruit more of them. For now, I'm sick of these cowardly Democratic hacks who consider a lost election to be the end of the world.