I never thought I’d say this, but David Corn has what is a very reasonable and thoughtful column on the affair of former White House pool reporter Jeff Gannon. Gannon was first outed as a conservative, then left-wing outlets like Daily Kos and Atrios started finding out that Gannon has a sordid history of homosexual hanky-panky. What they found was disturbing, but hardly relevant to the issue at hand. As Corn notes:

But with the Gannon/Guckert case, I wonder if there was a touch of blog-hysteria. (Bloggers, don’t jump on me. I blog too. Click here. I’m only wondering, not accusing.) I am not suggesting, as I noted above, that the who-is-Gannon story was not appropriate grist for the blog-mill. But is it possible that significance of this odd tale was inflated during the red-hot pursuit of this fellow? I’ve met Gannon a few times. For some reason, he was eager to say hello to me when I last visited the White House press room and was handing out invitations to the party for my book, The Lies of George W. Bush. He struck me as mostly innocuous. At the White House daily briefings conducted by McClellan, Gannon/Guckert did ask ideologically loaded questions. But so do other reporters. Until he suffered a heart attack last month, radio commentator Les Kinsolving was known for posing long-winded questions that revealed a sharp rightwing bias. There is nothing wrong with a real journalist hurling at the press secretary–or the president–a pointed question with an ideological foundation. The heroic Helen Thomas does that often. Russell Mokhiber of the Corporate Crime Reporter often challenged Ari Fleischer in this fashion. Arguably, the Q&As at the White House could use more of this sort of questioning. I’d be delighted to see journalists from conservative publications press Bush on the administration’s lowball estimates of Medicare drug benefits. Gannon/Guckert’s pursuers ought to be careful and note that the problem with Gannon/Guckert was not that he was a reporter with an obvious political bent but that he had weak credentials and an iffy background.

Gannon/Guckert’s critics have portrayed him as a White House plant. That could be an overstatement. At the White House daily briefings, most of the journalists present tend to be called upon by McClellan. This is different from what happens at press conferences with Bush. During the briefings, reporters are able to ask multiple questions and return to issues after McClellan has not answered their queries and moved on to other journalists. It’s not a one-shot deal. So Gannon/Guckert was not much help to the McClellan at these briefings. If he asked McClellan an easy question, that would not change the course of the entire briefing and save McClellan from other reporters.

Of course, the left-wing attack dogs keep piling on, constantly retelling the most sordid aspects of the whole affair. Yes, it’s possible that Gannon/Guckert was a gay prostitute at some point in his life. The question is: A:) would that have shown up on the kind of background check performed on the White House press pool? and B:) what difference does it make? Yes, it’s sordid, but the constant attempts to smear this all over the Bush Administration are nearly as abhorrent. There’s absolutely no evidence which suggests that the White House knew about Gannon/Guckert’s past. If Guckert was joining the CIA, there might have been a thorough background check – for being a White House pool reporter I doubt that the Secret Service would be probing into domain registrations.

Furthermore, the idea that Gannon/Guckert was some kind of secret source in the outing of Valerie Plame holds no water. Gannon apparently did see a memo that apparently came from someone in Congress. Then again, sadly Congress leaks like a sieve, and what Gannon saw then had already been released. There’s nothing to that aspect of the scandal either — not that it will stop the left-wing attack dogs.

Last I checked, the left was supposed to be the side of “tolerance.” Instead, we’re getting the crudest of slurs — apparently many Kossacks seem to think that ho-mo-seck-shalls don’t belong anywhere near the White House. Instead it’s the same old story, attack, attack, attack.

Gannon/Guckert’s biggest crime in their eyes wasn’t being a homosexual, or a prostitute. It was representing a conservative viewpoint and throwing a softball question. Of course, if they really want to eliminate any reporter with a political bias from the White House press corps, Scott McClellan and the President can give their daily briefings to an empty room.

When even David Corn, an ardent Bush-basher himself is advising caution, you know you’ve gone over the cliff. Then again, the singular monomania of the left-wing blogosphere seems to know no bounds.

Red State has another sign of how far the Democrats have fallen in Roll Call‘s “Heard On The Hill”:

Sick and tired of losing, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seems to have adopted a new and very basic recruiting tactic for the 2006 elections: Simply call the Republican Member you are hoping to beat and ask him who the best candidate would be to run against him.

Think we’re joking?

Just ask Glenn Rushing, the DCCC’s national field director, who last week left an ill-advised message for Mike Brady, the chief of staff to National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.).

“Congressman [Rahm] Emanuel asked me to give your boss a call to see if he knew of any potential candidates in New York 26,” says Rushing, according to a tape of the voicemail obtained by HOH.

Sick and tired of losing? One would think they’d be acclimated to it by now…

As expected, Howard Dean has become the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dr. Dean is promising to reach out to red states, but in his very first speech he demonstrates why that isn’t going to happen:

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean claimed the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) by acclamation today and used his opening speech to attack President Bush and the Republicans for “fiscal recklessness,” saying the administration’s new budget brings “Enron-style accounting to our nation’s capital.”

Now, I’m not one to defend the fiscal profligacy of the Bush Administration, but the DNC criticizing the Republicans for spending too much is the very definition of the pot calling the kettle black. The Democrats are the party of big government and always have been — Dean tried attacking Bush on this basis along with the other Democrats and it was a massive flop.

If Dean were smart, he’d make “Bush” a four-letter word figuratively as well as literally. The Democrats cling to Bush-bashing as a kneejerk reaction — they can hardly help themselves from making every single statement some sort of implicit or explicit criticism of George W. Bush.

The problem with this monomania is that it makes the Democrats look petty and reactionary. Negativity doesn’t win elections in this country. John Kerry lost precisely because beyond vague allusions to having a “plan” for everything he was completely and utterly unable to provide voters with anything even resembling an alternative. When your whole ideology is “we’ll do whatever the opposite of Bush happens to be” you’re on such shaky ground that you might as well sit the next four years out.

Howard Dean may try to reach out to red state voters, but he doesn’t even speak their language. Howard Dean may be a moderate by Vermont standards, but he’s already synonymous with being a liberal nutjob in every state that isn’t bluer than Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s blood. He has net negative ratings, and while he may be a good fundraiser, he got his money by appealing to a portion of the electorate that couldn’t even put him over the top in the Democratic primaries.

The Democrats have put themselves in the position of embracing a losing set of political propositions, proving once again that they haven’t the faintest clue how to run a 50-state race. We all remember how Dean said he’d reach out to moderates a year ago, and we all remember how well that turned out for him.

Part of me wants to rejoice that the Democrats are practically handing the Republicans big victories in the coming years. However, our political system needs an equilibrium. A smart, responsible, Democratic Party would ensure that the GOP can’t get complacent. While the Democrats’ political suicide may appeal to the partisan in me, it is hardly a positive development for democracy in America.

The Democrats are demanding that the “misleader-in chief” who “lied” us into an “unnecessary and foolish” war in Iraq and was “AWOL” from the National Guard and who is a “cokehead,” a “wingnut,” an “extremist,” etc., etc, stop his “personal attacks” on Sen. Harry Reid.

Sometimes you have to wonder if they even realize the irony of it all…

UPDATE: Red State quotes Denis Leary:

I was reading an interview with Keith Richards in a magazine and in the interview Keith Richards intimated that kids should not do drugs. Keith Richards! Says that kids should not do drugs! Keith, we can’t do any more drugs because you already f****** did them all, alright! There’s none left! We have to wait ’till you die and smoke your ashes! J**** C****! Talk about the pot and the f****** kettle.

Heh. Indeed.

Thomas Friedman has an excellent piece in The New York Times on why the Democrats’ negativity towards the Iraqi elections ignores the reality of the situation:

I think there is much to criticize about how the war in Iraq has been conducted, and the outcome is still uncertain. But those who suggest that the Iraqi election is just beanbag, and that all we are doing is making the war on terrorism worse as a result of Iraq, are speaking nonsense.

Here’s the truth: There is no single action we could undertake anywhere in the world to reduce the threat of terrorism that would have a bigger impact today than a decent outcome in Iraq. It is that important. And precisely because it is so important, it should not be left to Donald Rumsfeld.

Democrats need to start thinking seriously about Iraq – the way Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton have. If France – the mother of all blue states – can do it, so, too, can the Democrats. Otherwise, they will be absenting themselves from the most important foreign policy issue of our day.

The problem is that the Democratic Party is totally and completely focused on George W. Bush. Iraq is only a side issue, something that can be used as a political wedge when things go bad. The Democratic Party has become the party of a million Ahabs, with Bush playing the role of the great White Whale. It’s this kind of myopia that prevents the Democrats from becoming an effective opposition party. The official position of the Democrats has become “whatever Bush does, we do the opposite.” Now that the radicals have taken over the party and put Howlin’ Howard Dean in charge, the situation is likely to get worse, not better.

The Democrats had not been an opposition party in both Congress and the White House between 1954-2000. They’ve never had to formulate a strategy based on political weakness, and it’s become quite clear that they don’t know how. Howard Dean, despite his supposed moderate roots, has become a symbol of the angry anti-Bush left.

If the Democrats were smart, they would have tacked to the center on the Iraq war and not embraced the Kennedy position of immediate withdrawl. They would have ended the specious and irrelevant comparisons to Vietnam. They would have taken the Lieberman/Gephardt line of supporting the war but showing a concrete plan for how to fight the war more effectively. Instead the Democrats pursued a schitzophrenic foreign policy consisting of Kerry’s vague claims to “have a plan” to deal with the issue and the left wing pushing for an immediate and unconditional withdrawl.

The Democrats have missed their chance to show how they can be a relevant opposition party, and until they grow up they will remain a minority party. Friedman gives them some very good ideas for how to get on the right side of history, but it seems that the majority of the Democratic Party would never consider standing with the President, even if it means standing on the wrong side of history.

First we have Chairman Howard “Howlin'” Dean heading up the DNC.

Now, Al Franken is set to announce a run for the US Senate.

Sometimes you just have admire the way in which the Democratic Party can shoot itself in the foot so many times…

UPDATE: Franken has said that he will not run in 2006.

Mark Dayton, the “Senator” from Minnesota has announced that he is not running for reelection in 2006. Dayton has done little other than take up space in the Senate and occasionally make some embarrasing bloviation, so his loss won’t mean much to the state of Minnesota. After his embarrassing incident of closing his Washington offices out of supposed concern for “terrorism” all one can say is “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

It’s looking more and more likely that the Republicans are going to get both Senate seats in Minnesota. The Minnesota GOP has a host of strong candidates from Rep. Mark Kennedy to Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer and others who have the ability to put that seat in GOP hands.

Howard Dean is now unopposed in his run for head of the DNC. Tim Roemer, one of the few Democrats who actually understands how the Democrats might be able to run a winning campaign has dropped out.

“If there’s one reason Senator Kerry lost the presidential race, it was because he failed to make the American people feel safer,” Roemer said, adding that he also wanted to encourage talk within the party about developing a stronger position on values.

Roemer understands the political climate and why the Democrats have to understand why 2004 was realigning election. Instead, the radicals who have no concept of running a 50-state campaign have taken control of the party.

Unless the Democrats start learning to speak to middle America, they will go the way of the Whigs — and Howard Dean is the last person to lead them in that direction.

Jonathan Chait has a deliciously vicious evisceration of Howard Dean in the LA Times. Just a sample of it:

The conventional rap against Dean as DNC chairman is essentially the same as the conventional rap against him as presidential candidate a year ago. Namely, he reinforces all the party’s weaknesses. Democrats need to appeal to culturally traditional voters in the Midwest and border states who worry about the party’s commitment to national security. Dean, with his intense secularism, arrogant style, throngs of high-profile counterculture supporters and association with the peace movement, is the precise opposite of the image Democrats want to send out.

The conventional rap is completely right. But, in a way, Dean is even less suited to run the DNC than he is to run for president.

Oh please, Democrats, please let Howard Dean and the Kossacks run your party! Please alienate every potential Blue Dog Democrat so that the nuts of the party drive it into the ground.

At this rate, the Democrats are alienating moderates like Joe Lieberman in such a way that the Senate’s going to end up 55 Republicans, 43 Democrats, 1 “Independent,” 1 Likud before long…