a dime for a dollar-----back to a dime for the Dems:

[rodeodance]

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/?hpid=news-col-blog
From 'Slow Bleed' to Larry Craig, a Capitol Year in Review

Barely a month into their newfound power, the House Democrats huddled together in the Kingsmill Resort in historic Williamsburg, Va., trying to chart their course for 2007. On the Friday night of that weekend they heard from the most preeminent Democrat in the land: former President Bill Clinton, who urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comrades to take a cautious approach, find compromises with President Bush and show voters they can govern effectively.

"If you can't get a dollar and you can get a dime, take a dime every time," Clinton told the lawmakers, according to one attendee who kept notes on the talk. "Make incremental progress if you can." In hindsight it was good advice, but the new Democratic leaders brushed it aside as they repeatedly tried to win "dollars" every time.

Only in the final, dreary weeks of the session did the Democrats settle for "dimes." But by then, the party had blown its opportunity to make good on the promises that had propelled it into power in the first place: namely, ending the war in Iraq, restoring fiscal discipline in Washington and trying to rein in the president's powers. As my colleague, Jonathan Weisman, and I noted in a story in Thursday's Washington Post, Democrats instead closed the first session of the 110th Congress with House votes that sent Bush $70 billion in war funding, with no strings attached, and a $50 billion alternative-minimum-tax measure that shattered their pledge not to add to the federal budget deficit."

Judging from the comments and e-mails to the story, the most ardent supporters of the new Democratic majority fell into two camps. One heavily blames Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republican leaders, whose tough procedural tactics forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) into attempting a record number of efforts to choke off GOP filibusters. But the other camp faults Reid and Pelosi (D-Calif.) for not doing more to beat President Bush, particularly on Iraq war funding issues................

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. The "Big Dog" and his DLC followers the "Blue Poodles".

From the same source:

· Polling peril. In mid-November a Gallup Poll revealed what many inside the Capitol had known for months: that the public's approval of the Congress was at historically low proportions. All sides of this argument can debate the causes for this low esteem - obstructionist Republicans, weak-kneed Democrats, Bush's veto-pen intransigence - but the facts are the facts. The public doesn't like what it saw this year.