Digby
Democrats have been demonized as being weak and ineffectual for so long that Independent voters naturally figure that they can't or won't do anything to stop the Republicans. Democratic partisans may believe, but in order to get a robust turnout throughout the country, even many of them still need to be convinced that their party leadership will follow through. Democrats must make the case in no uncertain terms that they are prepared to hold Republicans accountable --- which means that they must be willing to talk about the lack of oversight and they must promise to hold hearings into specific issues.
The Republicans will scream like banshees, but that actually plays into the Democrats' hands if they have the nerve to just stare them down and tell them to bring it. Rove's tried to innoculate against this with his little "omg! they're going to act just like we did and impeach the president!" message but its primary purpose was to get Democrats to back off. He knew that if Democrats ran on holding his boy accountable they would win. Now we have the data to back that up.
This isn't just right for 2006 -- it's right for 2008. One of the many elephants in the room of American politics is: how will the country come to terms with the excesses of the Bush years? All this talk of "unity" is premature. Unity without accountability is a free pass, and anyone who thinks that in 2009 we're just going to pick back up where we left off in 1999, as though we hadn't just endured nearly a decade of lying and looting and torturing, is absolutely out of their mind.
