It's over. Now 7 pm in the East. Day started at 7am at the IAFF - AFL/CIO Headquarters of the Firefighters down here in Palm Beach. Phone banks set up in their exec offices allowed a rag tag rainbow coalition of campaign workers to ring up lists of registered democrats.The names were in descending order of age. I swear. It started off with a dozen or more people listed at 105 and went down to 104, 103, 102, 101, etc. I called one 93 year old who was being wheeled in his wheel chair to vote for Kerry as we spoke. Another 94 year old "didn't remember if she voted, but if she did, she voted for Kerry. Our "War Room" was staffed with a half dozen people - mostly from the holistic healing world. One guy was an acupuncturist, another was a "upper body therapist", there was even a new age nurse.

More later.....

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Guest round up by Blue Gal. Send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail.

(h/t TPM)

Glowing in the news of a resurgence of his approval rating, President Obama tried to pass some of that popularity onto his party and tried to remind supporters that the upcoming midterm elections do have consequences. Frustration at the incumbency shouldn't mean giving Republicans the wheel again:

After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No. You can't drive. We don't want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.

Damn straight, we can't afford to go into that ditch again.

I completely understand the level of frustration; I feel it too. But I also know that the choice to sit this election out or to go to third party candidates (and I say this as a registered third-party voter) is to hand the keys of the car back to the same guys who drove us into that ditch.

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Arianna Huffington debated Hugh Hewitt over Beck's lunatic rantings when he and Roger Ailes lied about his usage of the word "slaughtered" with Howard Kurtz. We exposed that lie here already, but then we were treated to Hewitt's buffoonery about Andy Stern and the same old conservative line being used to defend psycho word talk by conservatives and that was entertaining by itself if you can stand it.

Hewie: If you talk for thirty hours a week, you're going to use the word slaughter and you're going to use it sometimes without knowing it and I don't think we outta focus on it.

No need to respond to that idiocy. But he does try to change the subject and ask why FOX is so popular. Because they have catered to conservatives their entire existence.

Kurtz: let me come back to this question of whether you apply the same standards. Rahm Emanuel, the WH chief of staff said at a private meeting some months ago and used the word "retarded," talking about a democratic idea..."blanking retarded"...he's nbow apologized. You were asked on MSNBC, you said this is political correctness, let's not talk about it. Why not apply the same standards to Rahm?

C&L has commented on the Rahm situation and although what he said was disgusting, it still was behind closed doors and not for public consumption.

What Beck does is totally different and Howard knows this.

In trying to find a comparable situation (which happens all the time by the media,) Kurtz used Rahm's behind closed doors slur. Glenn Beck said it to millions of people and continues to say crazed things on a daily basis to millions of people publicly. Rahm is not a public speaker or a radio or TV talk show host. Do we really have to discuss Glenn Beck or Limbaugh or O'Reilly in this silly way? Please stop it.

Arianna did a great job on the debate, but it needs to be expanded to the entire FOX News network. Beck is but one cog in their wheel. Yes, it's a very twisted wheel, but the debate should center around Roger Ailes and their entire network in the end.

Don't know if you've seen this yet. It's an anonymous letter from a Hill staffer to Josh Marshall and it pretty much confirms our worst suspicions: They're "relieved" that they don't have to deliver on health care reform.

A wave election hit us in 2008 where we not only had overwhelming majorities of 59 seats in the Senate (once Republicans finally got around to letting us seat Franken) and 257 seats in the House (returning us to the same power level as when we ruled the House with inpugnity in 1992-3) but, most importantly, a President who was explicitly elected on an agenda of "change." It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to wrench the wheel away from the abyss and really deliver on our promises. It was disheartening when it seemed that Reid was allowing McConnell's disingenuous narrative of "it's always taken 60 votes to get anything done" to take hold, but we were later even saved from that when Specter switched. But it seems we've spent the entire year moving our own goalposts farther away. Things have gotten so bad that in roaming the halls today it feels exactly as if we lost the Majority last night.

The worst is that I can't help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They're afraid to actually implement them and face the judgment of the voters. That's the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

I believe President Clinton provided some crucial insight when he said, "people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right." It's not that people are uninterested in who's right or wrong, it's that people will only follow leaders who seem to actually believe in what they are doing. Democrats have missed this essential fact.

The stimulus bill in the spring showed us what was coming. In the face of a historic economic crisis, Democrats negotiated against themselves at the outset and subsequently yielded to absurd demands from self-described "moderates" to trim the package to a clearly inadequate level. No one made any rational argument about why a lower level was better. It would have been trivial to write "claw-back" provisions if the stimulus turned out to be too much or we could have done a rescission this year to give these moderates their victory, but none of this was on the table. We essentially looked like we didn't know what the right answer was so we just kinda went for what we could get. This formula was repeated in spades in both the Climate and Health Care debacles.

This is my life and I simply can't answer the fundamental question: "what do Democrats stand for?" Voters don't know, and we can't make the case, so they're reacting exactly as you'd expect (just as they did in 1994, 2000, and 2004). We either find the voice to answer that question and exercise the strongest majority and voter mandate we've had since Watergate, or we suffer a bloodbath in November. History shows we're likely to choose the latter.

Although I realize this is far too long to publish, if you do decide to use any of it, please keep my anonymity. Just in case I'm wrong and there is more good to do yet.

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John has the latest. I say let's rumble if Bush so chooses and you know he will. He owes too much to the extreme religious right to disappoint them with this pick. With Bush's agenda and approval ratings in the tank I guess they will try the old-obstructionist routine. Wheel out Ken Mehlman and let him blather on. (I'm almost done selecting my Ken Mehlman Talking Points Action figure photo by the way)