They are perfectly positioned to be corporate America's most-favored lobbyist-whores, should the Congress and WH change hands in 2006/2008.

I think their 1994 loss scarred them. They went into office in 1993 with high ideals and then felt betrayed and abandoned by the people they were trying to help. So after 1994 they became cynical and bitter Republicans at heart who look only at the political bottom line -- and their own bank accounts.

Great quote, I forget who said it.

The 4 stages of Washington careers:
1 Idealism
2 Pragmatism
3 Ambition
4 Corruption

http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2006/05/s teady_state_an.html

It's pretty simple. The old anti-thesis is being challenged. It must be, and it must be overthrown, if we're to build a new thesis, a new majority that can last for a generation.

Based on open source politics.

What's going on here? 3 + 3 words can answer that:

Democrats (who) Love Corporate (money & power)

Business as usual?

Their profession is political hack. So that's the field in which they're employed.

If they were surgeons, architects, engineers - well, perhaps, with a bit of retraining, they might have been able to go back to their former professions.

But these guys are hacks. So they do hackery.

What were they supposed to have done post-Clinton? Gone into monasteries?

Which administration gave Rahm his start again...

There are 2 political parties in America. One is completely owned by the corporate sector, and the corporate boys always hold an option on the other one if the knuckle-draggers in the GOP start to scare the crap out the citizenry.  

that's right - primary challenges to these guys are so important even if it gets the left progressives in the party into hot water for dividing up the Dems when they stand on the threshold of taking things back. I don't think Dean is a liberal nor Gore nor Feingold nor Lamont, but I do think - if only by having reasons to be disenchanted with the DLC and DLC fellow travellers - they are the only real opening we have to challenge multinationals option to reopen their 1992 to 2000 lease on the Democratic Party.

  ...we need to stand behind Howard Dean, even when he occasionally says and does things we might not like.

  He's the netroots presence in the Democratic Party. If he's gone, the Hillary faction takes over. The Democratic Party becomes a clone of the Republicans, and America is over.

  It's funny how Al Gore, who has the MOST reason to be bitter and cynical about the political process, is one of the Clinton alumni who DOES understand what needs to be done.