DEMS AT SEA – AT 8:26 A.M. ET:  It seems that Team Democrat in Congress can't get its signals straight.  The players don't know exactly what the objective of the game is.  From The Politico:

Democrats in Congress are grappling with a question as they negotiate a spending deal: Who's in charge?

The top two Democratic leaders in the House have twice split on whether to approve short-term government funding bills that cut billions from federal accounts. Senate Democrats haven’t put forward a long-term spending plan that can move through their chamber, and Democrats on both sides of the Capitol say they have no idea where the White House stands or who’s running the show.

The result is a rank and file that is confused about its direction and unhappy with the leadership — or lack of it — on when to go along with the Republican-controlled House on budget matters and when to stand and fight.

“The sum and substance of our strategy can’t be waiting for the other side to [mess] up,” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) told bloggers Wednesday.

But for many Democrats, that’s exactly what their leaders’ short-term strategy amounts to.

COMMENT:  Oh joy, oh joy.  Certain stories place us in ecstasy.  The Democratic Congress has been a train wreck all along, and even the results of the last election haven't chastened the leadership.  Of course, it's hard to think of anything that would chasten Nancy Pelosi, who lives in her alternative universe in one of the better sections of San Francisco.

The party is simply too far left for the tastes of the American people, but its left wing has an adolescent brattiness.  They won't grow up, they won't grow up, they don't want to go to school.  And they have made it virtually impossible for their party to come up with coherent proposals that have any chance of exciting the American people.  Obama has "solved" the problem by posing as a centrist, but the pose is all but shattered, as are his approval numbers.

But still, don't be overconfident.  Republicans should run in 2012 as if they're 20 points behind. 

March 17, 2011