Not to mention the fact that, managing the State Department's public diplomacy efforts, she's going to be in charge of the U.S. government's efforts to improve the image of the U.S. in the Arab/Islamic world -- not exactly a minor portfolio in an era when fighting terrorism is one of our top foreign policy priorities.

Here's the committe Dems....I am writing to Boxer (my Sen.) right now to demand an explanation.  I'd rather have her in D.C. holding the liars' feet to the fire than back in Marin County on a Friday afternoon.:

Sarbanes (MD)
Dodd (CT)
Kerry (MA)
Feingold (WI)
Boxer (CA)
Bill Nelson (FL)
Obama (IL)

Im all for motivating the party to get tough on the Republicans and Im happy to see a small but dedicated effort by some Dems.

Instead of going fishing I think this occurance of a missed opportunity should convince us all of our role in the goings on in DC, that of political activists. I have often written here about my activisim in the hopes of opening a debate on activism and what role TPM Cafe'rs can play.

Hopefully Josh you'll agree that we can play a role and that he will broaden this blog's role to include activism. Preaching to the choir is good for the soul but we need to open the doors of this "church" and spread the word. How about creating a table dedicated to debating activisim and the role this blog can play in the political scene.

The grassroots should move the party and not wait for nothing to happen from party leaders then complain about it. 

I felt the same way yesterday when I read about the Senate Commerce Subcommittee meeting to hear testimony on global warming.

The new president of the National Academy of Sciences testified that there is now almost universal agreement that global warming is happening at an accelerated pace and that the cause is mostly related to human activity.

This was an important moment in the global warming debate, but I went on to read ... "Just three senators -- David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana; Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey; and Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska -- were at the hearing. All three shared concerns about coastlines disappearing."--AP

3 out of 100 on perhaps the greatest threat to Mankind in our time!

Look, most Beltway Dems care about one thing and one thing only: raising enough money from their corporate masters to continue getting elected. If their individual seats are safe, they ain't worried about trivial things like the future of American democracy.

People, the Democrats aren't our friends. They're our "friends" only because they are the only other game in town. But the game is rigged.

It's time to either take back the Democratic Party and make it a true party of the people or let it die and set up something else.

<p>When I see flameouts like this on the part of employees I immediately suspect a morale problem.&nbsp; This happens for a variety of reasons, but my guess is that the individuals of the &quot;team&quot; don't see themselves as a team at all, plus they are working to different objectives and strategies. </p><p>So although I am always happy to see a Bush co-conspirator grilled on high roast, I can also understand that it might not be the best strategy for the Dems to follow, given how desparate the Repubs are to cast the Rove scandal as a partisan attack.&nbsp; I would forgo the pleasure of seeing Hughes squirm in favor of denying the Republicans one more talking point that gets traction with their brain-damaged but numerous base.&nbsp;</p>

I can see your point, but the purpose of the whole Plamegate affair is not to "get Rove" but to show the American people that the Bush administration used fixed intelligence and phony reasons to take us to war illegally. Having several Democratic Senators grill Karen Hughes about her participation in the runup to war was a good opportunbity to drive home the perfidy of the Bush Iraq War machine.

You wrote ... "We have Howard Dean installed as a leader of the party now."

Correction. The DNC elected Howard Dean installed as DNC Chair. That does not make him leader of the party.

Democrats, whether they know/like it or not, are in a fight for their national relevance.  If they let fear of handing the Republicans another talking point stop them from pressing a matter in which they clearly possess the high ground, what on earth are they good for?  Also, the Republicans will gin up talking points regardless of what the Democrats do.  The Democrats must do the hard work of putting these talking points down.
This administration owes its existence to the notion that it has integrity; Rove's behavior in the Plame matter - including his present coordination of his own defense from behind the scenes while Scottie and Dubya stonewall - gives the lie to that myth.  Republican talking points in his defense are absurd, and if someone would take up the challenge of demonstrating this by constant, clear, fact-based  rebuttal, the public at large would be able to see it.  Finally, even if Karen Hughes did not have a tie to the whole Plame matter, the position she is about to assume is significant.  Why don't our Senators give enough of a damn to show up and do their jobs? 

I belong to a party that is adrift that with no leadership or focussd  message that is reasonable to mainstreet America.

Ever since the start of the second term, the Demo's have been handed opportunity after opportunity to start building a foundation for a rational alternative voice. Instead we have gotten ocassional bombastic statements  serving no purpose other than to make the party look like a group of half-whacks with resentments.

Despite the election results, I really think the Democrats came out of the election in fairly good shape ..just  dust ourselves off, be vigiliant in exposing the GOP'er games, and work on a vision for America's  future. To this point, we have blown it. People are tired of Bush, but we sure haven't provided the alternative.

Bottom line is I am a loyal Democrat, and hell, I don't buy the party these days....so why should others.

Is there a Senate recess going on? If so, who schedules a confirmation hearing during a recess.  If not, why are none of these Dems in Washington and doing their job?

I think the Dems chose to boycott her hearing, and for a couple of good reasons:

1) They weren't going to get anything out of her.  The GOP controls the gavel, so she can stonewall Dem questions.  Sure, the Dems could use her as a pinata, and Karen Hughes is not cut out to play the mistreated damsel.  But it would still not yield much.  And more to the point:

2) Never interfere with your enemy when he has been invited downtown for a chat with the prosecutor. 

The WH and the Republicans want to cast this whole thing as just one more partisan food fight.  That won't make any difference to criminal prosecutions, but there's always the pardon power, and meanwhile they have to fight a political fight as well as a legal fight.

High-profile overt Dem involvement would make it easier to cry "politics," while on the other hand the independent liberal infrastructure - notably including the blogosphere - is proving quite effective at keeping the story visible.

What is the simplest possible reason that none of the Dem Senators showed up for an incredibly important Friday confirmation hearing?  Is it that our Senators demonstrated their true colors:  they can't be expected to actually work on a Friday!

I will have nightmares until we hear their real reason.  And it better be good.  Otherwise, I will have no choice but to believe that they are all as worthless as the Republicans say they are.

Can't wait to hear the good news that something, anything was more important. 

Give them a break.... Perhaps they were busy working on their campaigns for the 08 nomination :-|.

Paging Mr Biden.....

From Today's Washington Post:

John Harwood (subscription required) writes in the Wall Street Journal that Democratic strategists have concluded that Bush's nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court "may be unstoppable, and look to maintain earlier momentum from CIA leak case and other issues. . . .

" 'Our strategy now is to essentially let Roberts go . . . then get back on Rove, Social Security and the Iraq war,' says a senior Congressional aide."

Harwood adds: "Democrats plan to grill Bush confidant Karen Hughes about leak-case in her confirmation hearing for State Department public diplomacy post."

There were only two Republicans that showed up, Voinovich and Lugar, and I gather that the committee will meet on Tuesday when the hearings will begin for real.

So it might not be quite as bad as it looks.

The hearings don't start in earnest until Tuesday. All they did today was exchange howdy-dos.

If you want a lot of people to watch, it's better to start the show on Tuesday rather than Friday, when people are spending the night out or maybe even going out of town for the weekend.

Everybody is so quick to bash the Democrats that they don't even bother to find out what's going on.

 How can so many senators be so oblivious to what really could be the most important issue of our times?

Not oblivious - that implies they aren't intelligent. Let's at least give them the beneifit of the doubt on that. They must have a different set of priorities. Something to do with dividends, campaign contributions, protecting the status qou? I'm glad to hear people - especially Josh - begin to question whether Dems are our ally anymore.

Our system is jury rigged to be two party.  The *only* other times third parties have succeeded in becoming important is during times of severe civil disruption, a la the civil war and the Republican party.

 You want to form another party that will win?  First start a civil war.

The Dems lack the killer instinct. They are constitutionally unprepared for hand to hand combat.

They need a DeLay or Rove type, without the criminality, to discipline them.

Paging Rahm Emanuel... 

I think that you greatly overestimate the strength of hte Republican party in hte 00's.  They achieved narrow presidential and congressional victories in '02 and '04 by skillfully eploiting 9/11 and by completing the transition of the south from a Dem stronghold to a Repub stronghold.

The analogy I prefer is to the Dems in the 60's. The combination of Viet Nam and social unrest ended the Dem era of dominence and a combination of the Iraq war, overreach by the Christian Right, and a mediocre economy vs. the Clinton years give us an opportunity to bring the end to the era of Repub dominence.

Actually, Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld, etc. seem to be doing a pretty good job of attempting to start one.

Not only did no Democrat bother showing up at the first hearing session, one of our "leaders", Senator Biden, actually sent a "love letter" endorsing Hughes for the job.  Way to go Joe!!  Please, do go.

"I think that you greatly overestimate the strength of hte Republican party in hte 00's.  They achieved narrow presidential and congressional victories in '02 and '04 by skillfully eploiting 9/11 and by completing the transition of the south from a Dem stronghold to a Repub stronghold."

1) The threat of Islamist terrorism isn't going away, and is not abstract the way that the cold war was. We could withdrawal from Iraq (although we probably won't; see point 2) but the threat will still be present. Of course we shouldn't underestimate the psychological impact on conservatives and moderates of losing the war in Vietnam (it was no small part of the reason Reagan was elected) but at the same time Reaganism and endless cocked up Vietnam revenge fantasy films is a whole lot less sinisister than what the Bush cons are doing to this country.

2) A draft is more likely than a withdrawal from Iraq, and if you don't think the American people will accept it go read that post over at Kevin Drum's shack about how New Yorkers are responding to random searches. Also, go get yourself a copy of Millenials Rising or the Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. The millenials are not the boomers, and will go submissively to the slaughterhouse.

3) Bush is already well on his way to stacking the courts, so in the unlikely event that a Democrat is elected president in 08 it will be too late to prevent a multi-decade legacy of Bush.

4) If you don't like the 1930s and 1940s analogy of one-party dominance, try the 1860s and 1870s instead. The GOP had a much smaller majority than the Democrats did in the FDR/Truman years (remember Tilden v Hayes?), but it was still essentially a one-party government, and the Republicans still succeeded in remaking the country in their image for a number of decades to come.

The Democrats are always able to scrape up a rational explanation for their failures. We will see on Tuesday.

Not a chance.

1) The threat of Islamist terrorism isn't going away, and is not abstract the way that the cold war was.

Picky point -- I don't think you can correctly characterize the cold war as 'abstract.'  The cold war was not just an exercise in rhetoric, there were real troops on real alerts and real nukes pointed at real people.  The cold war may not have had a lot of conventional combat (though it had its share using surrogates like the Afghanis), but it was hardly abstract.

It's my understanding, from speaking with my Senator's office yesterday, that the Senate Dems decided to not go to the Friday meeting because it was basically an introductory meeting. That nothing of significance was to happen. However, they will be well represented when the hearings resume on Tuesday.

Let's face it, a Friday afternoon hearing at the end of July isn't going to generate that much press. It was a short, scheduled meeting & they decided to wait until Tuesday to get it on.

I am surprised about the global warming hearings, though. I didn't ask about that because I was unaware of it yesterday when I called.

"Personally, I'm no more worried about an act of terrorism directly effecting me than I was about Soviet missiles."

I wasn't particularly worried about a first strike by the Soviet Union (although my mother wouldn't allow my sister and I to watch "the Day After" so that may have something to do with it), nor am I particularly worried about further terrorist attacks. One has a greater chance of being mauled to death by escaped zoo animals than dying in a terrorist attack.

But you and I are liberals, and those in the center of the political spectrum (or perhaps more precisely slightly more than half of those in the center of the political spectrum) and those on the right feel differently, which is why Bush won last year.

The crap John, is ignoring the simple fact that the democrats are outnumbered in the house and senate. That there are issues that are as, as well as those that are more important than what Josh posted about. Don't get me wrong, I am a long time fan and reader of TPM, but this trash the democrats at every opportunity crap (and yes, that is CRAP) is not only pathetic, it's only goal will be in helping Bush.<p>

Not too long back, alot of faux lefties were attacking democrats in the house because back in 2000 when the CBC held their walkout, that white democratic representatives didn't join them. The facts those who attacked democrats for that couldn't be bothered to have paid any attention to what was actually going on during that walkout.. or perhaps their income level left them feeling that the issues that were on the house floor (under repubilcan control) weren't going to affect them in any way?? The house republican majority were attacking federal funding for public education, and aid to higher education, and those democrats who were slandered for remaining on the floor, were actually holding the fort to fight against the gutting of funding for education.  Perhaps the faux lefties can afford to feel cavalier about gutting aid to education... but the people who would have been harmed by that, poor to middle class, the loss of a decent public education, and the lessening of their ability to attain higher education has horrible implications for them, their children, for a lifetime. Perhaps you feel, like your right wing brothers John that somebody else always has to make a sacrifice for your ideology.. not yourself? The right wing are content to send the poor and middle class to die in Iraq, and people like you would have the poor and middle classes served up as some blood sacrifice because they aren't important enough to matter? So much for social justice in the neo-progressive movement... I mean, back in 2000, in Los Angeles during the lead up to the Democratic National Convention, the coalition of homeless people asked that there be no violence as they wished to use the convention to draw attention to the plight of the homeless in the US. Rage Against the Machine found that very inconvenient, and decided to fly in to perform a free concert/hold and impromptu Nader rally, thereby drawing in thousands of jack booted "leftists" who threw clots of mud, commited acts of violence and destruction of property. Not much coverage of the homeless rally when you have the affluent, well fed, angry white males that comprised the Nader movement throwing tantrums about how drug legalization is needed now....

Get over yourself, and frankly, progressive is as progressive does.. and the fact that you find the truth inconvenient only serves to illustrate how weak your commitment is to the ethics and values that are what true progressiveism actually is supposed to be about. So you John, cut the crap.