The damage done...

David Sirota's got a scorecard of his own, tracking the looting of America's middle class in recent weeks...

Congress restricted consumers ability to seek legal redress against abusive corporations

The Senate rejected efforts to raise the minimum wage from its near 50-year low

The U.S. House voted to eliminate the estate tax - effectively giving billions of dollars away to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans at a time of war and deficits.

Congress passed a credit card industry-written banruptcy bill making it harder for consumers to get legal protections when skyrocketing medical costs put them into unsurmountable debt

President Bush proposed slashing funding for things like food stamps, child care, and health care.

Yes, I know there have been Democrats on the wrong side of some of these votes. The fact is, though, that a Democratic leadership would never have moved the bills in question to the floor in the form the Republicans offered. We're going to have bad law till we get a new Congress, and we'll doubtless need a fair number of those wayward Democrats to form that new Congress. That's why I don't get too involved of calling for the head of every member who strays from the blogosphere approved line on every vote.

The damage isn't done by Democrats who, for reasons ranging from local politics to personal venality, vote for Republican proposals. It's that the Republican proposals are considered in the first place, and will pass anyway. That's not a problem we can only solve by taking them down, not by tearing ourselves up.

Meanwhile, the damage piles up and the need for reform grows more pressing. It's all about '06.