No, E.J., the Dems know how to fight -- against anyone who tries to get them to stand up for principles

With titans of legislation like John Kerry and the Holiest Joe unable to sell even a crappy energy bill to their even more craven fellow Dems, word is that now New Mexico's Jeff "No, I Didn't Say Anything, Wasn't Me" Bingaman is the Senate's point man on energy.

"[N]one of this is about the legislative merits. Kerry is being criticized for caring too much about an issue and not thinking enough about an election -- for being insufficiently opportunistic and unprincipled."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column today,

"Have Obama and the Democrats forgotten how to fight?"

by Ken

Once again I have to say that this is why I love E. J. Dionne Jr. Here he is today, acting as if -- against all the accumulated evidence -- the bulk of D.C. Dems aren't useless, sniveling Rahm-like worms. I mean, he's absolutely right, but how many of us even pause to notice evidence of snivelingness like this:

One of the strangest lead sentences I have ever encountered appeared in Politico last week. It read: "John Kerry has been the most aggressive advocate of climate change legislation in the Senate this year -- so aggressive that it's rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong way."

The story went on to say that Kerry's "zeal" is "making some swing-vote Democrats cringe at the thought of negotiating with someone they fear is tone-deaf to the political realities of their respective states -- particularly in a difficult midterm elections year."

So there you have it: Once criticized for being too aloof and patrician, Kerry is now being assailed for daring to have passion for the cause of reducing the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere.

Yes, it's come to this: If you go looking for a D.C. Dem fighting for supposed Democratic principles, about the best you can do is John Kerry.

And not surprisingly, far from being some sort of crazed climate crusader, Kerry is working the room like Trader John, dealing with anyone who'll talk to him -- and undoubtedly making deals that would make most DWT readers cringe, or sob. But still he's way too far out front of his Rahm-ified colleagues.

Kerry . . . in a talk with me made no apologies for his eagerness to get an energy bill. What's striking is that he has negotiated with every industry and trade group imaginable to find a deal. If he's passionate about this, he's also been relentlessly practical.

And he notes that many business groups would prefer that Congress deal with the carbon question. "They see it coming from the EPA and regulation, and they would rather have us legislate," he said. Kerry's persistence is one reason the Senate leadership and a White House with which he's been working closely are still trying to push an energy bill through.

It's not that E.J. is unaware of or unsympathetic to the electoral difficulties of, for example, coal-state representatives contemplating legislation that may in the short term cause their constituents grief, or to those who "hear most from voters who are talking -- make that yelling -- about big spending, big deficits, big government. Some of their constituents even think of Obama as the Manchurian candidate." At the same time,

Democrats wonder why the polls find an "enthusiasm gap" that suggests their supporters will sit around grumpily in November while Republicans flood the polling places.

It might help if voters saw President Obama and his party in Congress fighting for something going into these elections (including their record on health care and financial reform) rather than reacting, retrenching and retreating. Kerry's attitude is not the problem. It's part of the solution.

But of course if representatives and senators don't come to Washington free of principle-oriented gumption -- and people like Master Rahm do everything in their power to make sure that congressional newbies are gumption-free -- they will soon have it drummed out of them. Remember, Master Rahm doesn't consider just progressives his enemies within the Democratic Party; he considers all those weak-kneed whiners he butts heads with in the White House dangerously reckless idealists. (If only!)

However, even from the most crassly "pragmatic" standpoint, do Democrats have the luxury of being wannabe "Boehner boys"?

If the unemployment rate were hovering around 5 percent instead of above 9 percent, and if Republicans were not intent on using the Senate to stop just about everything Democrats are trying to do, the public's mood about Washington and how it works would be less lethal.

In the face of these core problems, there is increasing grumbling among congressional Democrats about the Obama administration's habits. Some wonder whether Obama is indifferent to their fate. Others sense that the president is far more solicitous to those who oppose him than to those who bleed for him. And many are questioning whether Obama's lieutenants have figured out that they have not been the messaging geniuses in the White House that they seemed to be in the 2008 campaign.

On the current course, even a Republican Party whose leaders say the most outlandish and extreme things -- and whose own congressional rank and file worry about their lack of a coherent program -- could take back the House and make deep inroads in the Senate.

Gutlessness certainly isn't confined to Democrats. E.J. points to proclaimed moderates like Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins: "Both prize their moderate images, but neither has been willing to break with the GOP leadership," preferring to stand by and watch as states slash programs and raise taxes. But in the end --

[E]ither Obama and the Democrats really believe that giving the economy another shot in the arm now is essential or they don't. If they put no punch behind their argument, voters will have no idea that some state cutbacks or tax hikes they are worried about could be avoided if Congress were willing to act.

The Obama of 2008 understood how to define the stakes and how to rouse the faithful with both reason and passion. What happened to that guy?

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