I know you hate the gloom and doom, but here's something else that disturbs me -- the Rasmussen poll:

Monday October 31, 2005--Forty-five percent (45%) of American adults now approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That's up five points since Harriet Miers withdrew from consideration as a Supreme Court nominee. It's also the President's highest level of Approval in two weeks.

Overall, 54% of Americans Disapprove of the President's performance including 39% strongly disapprove.

The President's Approval rating is at 78% among Republicans, 18% among Democrats, and 35% among those not affiliated with either major party....

Let's look at that another way: it's up five since Fitzmas. (Bush was at 40% on Friday.)

And if Bush is only at 78% among Republicans in this morning's results, before the Alito announcement, I think he's going to be around 90% with members of his party in post-announcement polling. (Right-wingers are just beside themselves right now, are they're slavering in anticipation of a huge fight.) And if I'm right about that and other polls show similar results, that becomes the story: Bush polling at about 50% again -- Bush, in other words, bouncing back.

The problem is, nothing from the Democratic Party, or from outside the party among liberals, seized the public's imagination in the weeks of Katrina/the 2000th fatality/Miers. If I seem gloomy, it's because I'm frustrated: It's not enough to wait for Patrick Fitzgerald to save us, or for Bush and the GOP far right to destroy themselves -- someone on our side actually has to do something. In this bad period for Bush, what did we get besides Democrats furrowing their brows over a new slogan: Should it be "Together, We Can Do Better" or "Together, America Can Do Better"? If there was any substance, any new agenda, I missed it.

American politics is not going to change until there's something for it to change to. If we think it's going to just happen, if we think the American public will just spontaneously discover its inner leftist out of sheer disgust, then we're living in a dream world, rather than the real world, in which liberal ideas and the word "liberal" have been demonized for decades. Nothing's going to change until that demonization gets some pushback.