In the meantime, I'm very grateful for a moderate Dem like Harry Reid who stands up to the uber-right wingnuts currently running the country.

Judging by the slew of eMails I receive weekly from his office, his '08 campaign has already begun.

"Seizing the middle" on Soc Sec will not be appreciated by millions of Americans who depend/are counting on Social security.

It will instead be seen by all as the usual cynical positioning by a party looking to regain control instead of doing the people's work.

If these guys go limp on Social security, it's just OVER.

Now if we can get a House Minority leader with a spine and a presidential candidate with the will to fight back (Neither Gore or Kerry was that person) we can not only win back the WH and Congress, but can grow our majority for the next few generations.  

Otherwise folks might confuse you with folks like me who have a whole litanny of reality-based objections to the way Kerry ran his campaign, his abandonment of the Ohio voters, etc.  The next time someone accuses me of Kerry-bashing, I'll have to remember to keep a link to this handy, so I can tell them:

See, this is what real Kerry-bashing looks like, and I think the guy is a fruitcake.

Calling John Edwards "Dan Quayle's little brother", I mean, how do you even begin to respond to such a monumentl non sequiter?

Like I said, thanks for letting us know just how clueless you truly are.  

Do you think his role in the BCCI and Iran-Contra investigations was some kind of put on?

I just can't understand how Biden, Kerry and Lieberman can all be so politically tone deaf. It defies credulity.

Does anybody have a sturdy 2 X 4 handy?

But Carville is stuck back in the '90s.  He can;t see that what worked for Clinton in another time won't work now, after 9/11, five years more to the Right and in light of the Bush Grand Plan to remake the US economny and the World in his own dismal image.  Get with the times!

We need a bold vision on our side, not more "triangulation" and small things.  We don't need a "plan" on Social Security.  Everyone knows what the deal is IF what we are after is truly saving a social insurance program.  We need a "plan" to reknit American society, to get the generations to care about each other again, to get the rich to pay their fair share, and to offer people a greater vision of life than more cheap Chinese goods at Wal-Mart.

Once someone makes that case, the rest will follow.

Which I'm glad he did say. Reid is fighting hard now than Kerry was the week before the election. And presenting a plan before Bush on Social Security would be political malpractice.

But this was my favority paragraph:

I'm just glad that this ended up in the Post so every Democrat in Washington knows that Ried, not Kerry, is in control. That is a good thing.

It's not about the plan.  It's about the pleasing noise that it allows Bush to generate.  Will it motivate the radical Republicans to go to the polls in 2006?  Given that the Republicans don't seem to have been substantially harmed by his rhetoric, the answer appears to be yes.

The question is how the Democrats plan to combat that.

I've got to train a co-worker, so I'm gone for now.

I can't imagine why the Democrats would want to step in with a Democratic plan that would unify the Republican party in opposition.

Let's see. Bush and the Republicans are drowning in their own disagreement. The Democratic plan? Throw them a life preserver. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

You want to believe that Bush's Social Security rhetoric will hurt him?  You believe that.  Honestly, I don't think it will.

Bush can say anything and everything on an issue, and rather than think he's speaking with a forked tongue, Republicans think he's speaking the truth when he says what they want to hear.  The rest, they dismiss.  Thus when Bush speaks on Social Security, the Republicans who want it destroyed hear that he will destroy it.  The Republicans who want it reformed hear that he will reform it.  The Republicans who want it the same might be divided, but will they vote against him?  Will it be enough to counter the ones who are even more energized to vote for him?

For that reason, I don't think his Social Security rhetoric will hurt him a damn bit.  In fact, I suspect it will help him, because the faithful will look upon him as their savior, no matter what their position, and do what is necessary to protect him and his Republican cronies in 2006.

Bush's "base" isn't monolithic.  The SS privatization plan appeals to the worshipers of Mammon, but not the religious right.  It certainly doesn't resonate with the old.  

It is designed to appeal to people in their '20s and '30s who THINK that they can get a better "return" on their own than Social Security, because they think the "return" they  will get from SS is somehow equivalent to the T-bond rate.  It isn't.  A worker gets a replacement income from Social security that is only loosely corelated to what they paid in, and is based on formulas the gov't uses to supply average workers with a suitable replacement income.  The less you earned, the higher the percentage your SS benefit is relative to your final earnings.  It takes into account the inflation in wages over your wqorking life, and it goes up each year with inflation, something no private investment vehicle can do.  As a MINIMUM income level in retirement it is hard to beat, but it can never provide more than a minimum floor, because that would be too expensive.  

But the more young people understand that the cost of private accounts is a significant benefiot cut, the less they support this plan.  

It is bombing with all segments except the financial services industry and the rich, who want to see their stock portfolios swelled by all this new money coming in.

Strange as it may seem to newcomers here, they both have a very solid track record at MyDD.