Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail are getting hammered by the playground bully Republicans. At this point, though, the bully is toothless, scab-covered, disease-riddled, ruptured, bald, fat, gimpy-kneed, gasping for breath and nearly unanimously despised. One swift blow would end his reign of terror on the playground. And when it is delivered, the whole world will jump for joy, just as they did when Dorothy poured the bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West.

And yet.

The widely-seen photograph of Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and George W. Bush surveying the smoky rubble in southern California was another case in point. She was HOLDING ON TO HIS ARM! Mark my words. This photograph will be the new Lieberman Smooch Image to be endlessly shown on the network news as proof that the Democrats are now "reaching out" to Republicans and are "moving on" and "getting over their anger" and "moderating their message," and blah blah blah. No image that I have seen has ever captured the complete gelding of the Democratic Party. And, it is a ready-made and perfectly appropriate image for GOP propaganda ministers.

In my column this week for the Advocate http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=3741 I mentioned how Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) have raised their profile on the Internet by going after the bully.

Will someone please remind the rest of the members of Congress that, to defy this bully, is a winning strategy. Will someone tell Sen. Feinstein that this is the man who started a needless, and illegal, war in order to protect and preserve his and his friends' stake in Iraq oil futures. This is the man who sent all of the able-bodied National Guardsmen who should have been in California (or New Orleans or Minnesota or...) to help Americans HERE AT HOME. This is the man who turned his back on your state during the Great Enron Price Gouging Bubble. And so on.

If you can't hit the Republican Party bully with the one blow that will finish him off, at least hammer him with the following series of punches for:

* Destroying our economy.
* Looting the U.S. Treasury.
* Ignoring the climate crisis.
* Spying on American citizens.
* Torturing.
* Killing our children in Iraq.
* Denying our children health insurance here at home.
* Turning America into a rogue nation in the eyes of the rest of the world.
* Flouting international treaties.
* Shooting old men in the face while hunting drunk.
* Taking a wide stance in men's rooms stalls all over the nation (Sen. Craig).
* Buggering teenage interns in Washington D.C. (Rep. Foley).
* Whoring (Sen. Vitter)
* Snorting crystal meth (Ted Haggard)
* Shoplifting (Bush aide Claude Allen)
* Race-baiting (George Allen)
* Troop-hating (Limbaugh).
* Hating, inc. (Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Malkin, etc.) (the list is, literally, endless).
* Senile (Fred Thompson).

In short, the vast majority of Americans are just waiting for the Democratic Party to run the bully off the playground.