Does anybody believe…

…that the Move On ad, or the boorish behavior of the Code Pink crowd or the serial self-martyrdom of St. Cindy will bring the war to an end one day sooner, one death sooner?

What a waste of time, cash and talent.

Completely predictable…

…which is why I predicted it. Steve Holland hacks out your basic "D's in disarray" piece for Reuters and throws in the obligatory comparison to the President's popularity...

WASHINGTON - These are tough times for the Democratic-led U.S. Congress, where partisan battles have led to little progress on big issues and have made lawmakers collectively less popular than President George W. Bush.

Of course, "lawmakers collectively" is an artificial construct. They don't run collectively. They don't have a common constituency. For the most part, they tailor their campaigns to local interests and priorities, not collective ones. It's a comparison that's about as meaningful as declaring that unicorns can fly higher than horses. Then there's the fact that Democrats poll differently - and higher - than Republicans, and that Bush has had over six years to make his impression on the public consciousness while the current Congress has had about six months, and, well, you get the point.

None of those notions seemed to fit in Holland's story. He managed to squeeze this in, though...

The Iraq situation has so infuriated the Democratic left that Cindy Sheehan, the California liberal who began a long protest against Bush after her soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq, is talking about running against Pelosi in 2008.

I'm not really sure what or who the "Democratic left" might be, but since Cindy Sheehan is a self-proclaimed independent, she's clearly not it. I'm not sure I'd even call her a liberal these days.

Maybe she can get that meeting with Bush now, though. He might like to say thanks for the help...

Sheehan jumps the shark.

CRAWFORD, Texas -- Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, said Sunday that she plans to seek House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat unless she introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.

Like thousands of other American parents, Cindy Sheehan has paid an awful price for America's involvement in Iraq. She once played a valuable role in demonstrating the administration's callousness regarding the lives of America's fallen soldiers and the families they leave behind. As an activist, though, her best, if short-lived, impulse was to retire from the public stage. This, her latest offering, is a solid demonstration that she has nothing left to offer. Rational observers are left wondering what she could be thinking. Well, she's happy to share...

"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership. We hired them to bring an end to the war. I'm not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn't be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money."

Sorry, Cindy, but you're wrong on more counts than the those three sentences should permit. First of all, I'm a Democrat and you're not, so don't presume to speak for me and my fellow partisans. Since we're also Americans, you're disqualified as a universal spokesman there, too. There may be some Democrats and some Americans who feel "betrayed" by the leadership. I suspect they're a minority of the voters in Speaker Pelosi's district, though.

Who was hired by who to do what is another question, but you've got another wrong answer. No one hires 'the Congress,' and the 435 separate districts which elect the 435 members of the House vary widely in what they want from their Representatives. While polling may reflect dissatisfaction with the work of Congress, most of those individual electorates are more satisfied with the work of their own Representatives. In many of those districts, the location of the new Federal Building or the fate of the Farm Bill is a bigger issue to lots of folks than the war. Maybe that's not how things 'should' be, but, again, 'should' is a lie. Heck, I'm unhappy that our Democratic majorities are often stymied by obstructionism in the Senate and the White House, but I'm typically delighted with my own personal Congressman. It's a silly thing to say, for many of the same reasons that comparisons of Presidential and Congressional performance polls are silly.

Oh, and that move? Although you won't reveal which of the four Sacramento area Congressional Districts you live in (not sure you can manage that trick through a whole campaign, though), the most cursory study of California election law would quickly inform you that there is no requirement to reside in a the district you run in. Surely if you've thought seriously about challenging the Speaker, you've studied deeply enough to know that. You can stay right there in your own personal undisclosed location as long as you want.

You'd be better off in the long run, really. Moving is stressful, and the idea that you'll give the Speaker "a run for her money" is beyond silly. It's downright delusional. All you will do is provide the wingnuts and the Beltway punditocracy new fodder for the "Democrats in disarray" and "Democrats in thrall of the looney left" templates they keep on their hard drives.

Sorry again, Cindy, but doing the wrong thing in the wrong place for the wrong reasons just isn't an effective strategy for getting the right results.

Respectfully, re-retire.