You're forgetting - this cheerleading for the likudnik version of Israel by hawkish folks of all stripes in America was the blueprint for chickenhawkishness viz. Irak.

Here's how they work:

"Support for Israel on the US taxpayer's dime? Yes! Undermine US interests in the middle east by pushing the diplomatic balance in the region off kilter? Yes! Fund the emprisonment of Palestinians in the occupied territories? That too!

But expect me to go over there once the impact of my prior advocacy starts sinking in? Hell no...it's too dangerous!"

And watch the steady trickle of educated Israelis out of Israel, mostly to the US. It's in full swing, and something of a cause for concern among many Israelis. Security, while not the primary concern for many emigrants, is becoming an increasing factor.

That picture of Weinstein, look at it closely. That's not an American flag his standing before.

Picture says a lot.

I for one am offended Hubert Humphrey's image is used in this way. Perphaps someone can get Skip or Buck to sue.

atheist raised atheist with both catholic and jewish background.

Wonder what Nancy will say about this.

He's gotta go. He's gotta be kicked outta the caucus. Letter sent to my congresswoman, all I can do, but he's gotta go and he has to be stripped of his seniority, his committees and, of course, he's gotta be investigated.

Holy f-in' spit. Are any of these bastards not corrupt?

This one's got a double political whammy effect on it too. 57% of US Voters, not generally as up on foreign affairs as most others in the West, think military action against Iran is a good idea is they keep pursuing nukes.

Problem is, Iran isn't going to stop. They may not actually make those nukes (there's a strong argument which says possessing such arms is actually un-Islamic) but they sure are going to pursue the technological know-how to be able to make them if need be. And this is pure geopolitics, and would be the case if Iran were an ally just as it is the case with Iran as a foe.

And problem is, you're always going to have the high risk of an American leadership which starts banging the drum on Iran's nukes regardless of how Iran's ambitions actually play out. After all, America doesn't do nuance.

So you're right. The American public will indeed rally around the flag yet again, as it always does. And this will be good, initially, for the President and the GOP.

And what's more, we can be pretty sure blue-state Democrats like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman (who's still around), Chuck Schumer,  Diane Feinstein, Barack Obama and the rest will get on the bus with the President, just like they did in '02. Which will deflate what's left of the left wing of the Democratic party and depress turnout for the Dems.

In the short term, it's a win-win for Dubya. Problem is what comes next. And Duffy does a good job laying out the unfolding disaster which would ensue, as does Gilliard. Of course, Dubya only wants to keep the GOP in charge on the Hill so as he can avoid getting subpoenas over the next 2 years and ride out the rest of his term safely, and his indiferrence to the disaster which is next door in Irak demonstrates he doesn't give a shit about much more than that.

Is Singer right about this thing wiping out the GOP? I dunno. It might. But then again, if the Dem leadership goes along with it like they have in the past, the Dems go down with the GOP's ship. And they'll always have their faith-based foreign and economic policy backers, and rich dudes who want to pass the buck. Personally, I see more risk to the Dems than to the GOP on this. It'll take some guts on their part to avoid what could be pretty damaging, and with the present crop in DC today, outside of Feingold, I'm not seeing it.

I'm personally crossing my fingers there's nothing to this story. But my gut is feeling a lot like it did in late summer of 2002.

Most Naderites are really lefties; very few, if any, are "Marxist".

You really should get out more; your admonition to "go and read up on history" shows you to be quite callow.

I thought highly of Cegelis, wasn't a fan of Duckworth, but I'm not sure what's wrong with this flyer.

In this era of neo-liberal domination of US socio-economic life, more than a few lefties are wary of unfettered immigration. Being against amnesty is not necessarily a right wing position - it depends on quite a lot more of what a given thinker or candidate believes about trade, economic fairness and social justice. When a Pat Buchanan or a Lou Dobbs formulates it, you're seeing more likely than not some bigotry. But when a Sego Royal talks about it, ideology becomes less obvious, and in any event I would think the Tom Friedman wing of the party wouldn't approve of this tack Duckworth is taking, so it's hard to describe this as being "DLC-influenced".

I'd be curious to see what Duckworth is being hit with by her opponent. But we know what the GOP does, we saw what they did with Cleland, and if anything remotely similar to that is happening to Duckworth, I can see this as being a good response. It shows her in "Fighting Dem mode, and it calls bullshit on her opponent's hypocricy via the immigration issue, via her service, and esp. via the personal-injury lawyer characterization.

It might not be effective, but then again who knows what's going on in Chicago-land with respect to immigration, and issue which is not purely an issue which cuts across ideological lines. Plus it's most likely a counter-attack, so different rules apply.

I still don't care for what Emanuel did in this district, but I don't find too much fault with this flyer. If you want to see real DLC milquetoast stuff, just take a look at Amy Klobuchar's (MN-Sen) lit.
In any event, Duckworth  

Yours is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is generally meant when a lefty invokes the "things will get worse before they get better" mantra.

Whenever I've heard it or invoked it myself, what is meant is that neither major party, Republican or Democrat, represents working-class people, and therefore that the choice is not between folks who would improve our lot and folks who are actively undermining. Rather, the choice is between folks who actively undermine it quickly (the GOP) and those who do so less directly and less obnoxiously (the DLC/Tom Friedman/Nafta wing of the Democratic party).

In the 90's, with a decade of Al From/Bill Clinton/Terry McAulliffe party under our belts, you didn't have to be a Marxist, just a decent lefty, for the phrase to be seductive.

PS, I understand when I see right-wingnuts red-bait, but it is rather unbecoming, on a putatively progressive forum, to see folks gratuitously engage in that sort of behavior. Socialism is a major part of the soul of what made the Democratic party strong in the 1930's and beyond, and to see folks who claim to be Democrats not only turn their back on that heritage, but further, to insult it and to discredit it, is pretty sad. With so many voices similar to yours in today's party establishment, I suppose its small wonder that the left wing of the party, systematically marginalized the past few decades, is less loyal to your party than you and your lot might like.  

Nor do I.

Dems grow balls and redistrict?

Hah!

I'm skeptical of the prospects of getting the caucus to move to the left once we've gotten a majority. Especially if we get thin majorities bankrolled by the type of revenue streams the Rahms of the party bring to the plate, and those very same folks take credit. We'll get more of what we saw in the '90's, and let's face it, the leadership of the party came to power in the '90's.

I'm also skeptical of the Dems, once they take power with a thin majority, enacting much of anything of use to working-class folks, judging from the timidity, to date, of the campaign, to address bread & butter issues. We hear much of the same Clintonian incrementalism with respect to Health Care and other core economic issues, (read on Rahm's recent magnus opus on the subject), and we hear about Paygo, which is not exactly a working class issue. Iraq? Avoid the subject.

Worst case scenario for me? A do-nothing Democratic-held House and Senate between Jan 2007 and November 2008, severe economic weakness and joblessness starting in 2007 and worsening in '08 with Dems finding it harder and harder to blame on the GOP, troops still in Iraq despite a significant portion of the Democratic party in power bleating about how it's Dubya's fault even though they've not been able to effectively hold him accountable for 2 years, and a Buchananite insurgent GOP campaign in November '08. You think Bush was bad? Wait till you see a 7-2 Supreme Court.

This kind of strategy, the one we're seeing, is a one-step forward, three steps backward strategy. We've seen it in action since the early nineties, as we've seen the Dems lose three out of four federal elections. By the time Dean starts using Statehouse control to redistrict into Democratic favor for 2012, the game could be over. The time to set the goalposts to the left and get a mandate is now, not later. Problem is that the DC Dem establishment is centre-right, so they are temperamentally ill-suited to moving those goalposts, Rahm being a particularly obnoxious example.

I'm waiting to be surprised at this point, but given whose running the election, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

I don't disagree.

This being said, if we cannot withhold support from those in the party closest to our values who do not reflect those values in order to improve that party, we're going to go nowhere fast.

Rahm represents the same Dem playbook which got us permanent minority status. We've seen this losing strategy before, so we have to end-run around him and give to Dean, to individual candidates via ActBlue and direct contributions, and to Moveon. Rahm dislikes this, and rails against all of this.

He also plays as if his part of the caucus (the corporate wing) still controls the hearts and minds of the rank and file both of the Democratic party and of its constituent bases. He's wrong about this as well.

As with Lieberman, getting rid of the Rahms of the party is perhaps even more important than ensuring we win an extra seat or two here or there.

Why? Because with an Emanuel or a Lieberman in place at the helm of the Dem party, we as progressives are certain that our views will not be represented, because neither party will voice them. We know that the GOP won't. And we've seen, over the better part of the past two decades, that the Democrats, under the tutelage of their corporate wing, won't either.

OTOH, get rid of these clowns, and while we may stay in the minority for another election or two, our views will be represented, and we will get far more permanent mandates in future than the nickel-and-dime triangulation these clowns represent.

One can only stand for "lesser of two evils" for so long. After awhile, we need to improve the evil nearest us. Got any other solutions than what was just done to Lieberman?

Matt nails it here imho. Which includes withholding support for Emanuel's power base as well.

Remains to be seen.

Many of us were less than impressed by what the Rahms of the world were able to "accomplish" in 1993-2001.

Better than what's happen since? Sure. But comparing an organic shit sandwich to a radioactive shit sandwich doesn't change the basic, underlying fact that we are talking about shit sandwiches either way.

Gawd he sucks.

Only quibble: you say "he will be a huge problem for progressives moving forward."

He already is a problem, and has been for some time now. Duckworth/Cegelis anyone?

In fairness to Jewish folks worldwide, I think the divergence of Jewish money and Jewish votes is a good sign, a sign that we are truly becoming more integrated.

Think about it Matt - Goy money and Goy votes diverged a long long time ago. Now the same thing obtains for Jewish folks.

Rich folks send there money to catamites who will do their bidding, whether they are Jewish or not.

It's a class thing.