Apropos of Bowers' dead-on, ongoing rant about apologizing while under attack, I want to know this: Why on earth are "The Corner", Mickey Kaus and Sullivan the source of harsher commentary on Rove's enormously offensive attack on work and the people who do it than Democratic campaigns. Why on earth is the Edwards campaign not getting

This is what he said, folks: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."   

And: "Now frankly," Rove said during a riff on the temporary worker part of President Bush's immigration reform plan, "I don't want my kid digging ditches. I don't want my kid slinging tar. But I know somebody's got to do it. And we ought to have a system that allows people who want to come here to work to do jobs for which Americans are not lining up."

This insults work. Period. It also insults the people who do work. It is the worst kind of class warfare. There's nothing more fundamental to what Democrats are supposed to be.

It also insults everyone affiliated in anyway on any side with the immigration debate. It was spoken by THE focal point of Republican political strategy. There is no figure of comparable stature on the Democratic side. The reason that the MSM hasn't seized on this is that no Democrat feels strongly enough about it to make it an issue and keep making it an issue until it reaches an audience, a la the Edwards bloggers and Kerry's joke.

Bowers is right that Dems can be attacked with impunity, but that's as much the fault of Dems without the stomach for legitimate political battle as it is a lazy and cowed media. I assure you that if Hillary Clinton decided to use her platform to make this an issue - if she called on Pres. Bush to fire Rove, repeatedly. This would become an issue. It's Doau's triangle. Good God, almighty.