Although (for reasons Hesiod explains clearly) it’s too soon to throw a victory party, I sincerely believe that if the Dems can’t beat Dubya in the Social Security war, they might as well concede the whole dadblamed country to the Republicans and retire.

Mike Allen and Charles Babington report in the Washington Post that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is making noises about delaying the Social Security vote until 2006. I agree with Hesiod that Karl Rove does not want to do this; if the White House is going to fail, it had better not fail in an election year. Don’t be surprised if Frist retracts this opinion sometime in the next few hours.

Republican legislators and the White House are at odds. Yesterday, the White House told Capitol Hill it had six weeks to overcome opposition to the President’s plan. Bush is still going all-out to sell the privatization plan. But today the San Francisco Chronicle reports that

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Senate Finance Committee chairman who is in charge of writing any Social Security overhaul, warned that Bush has about three weeks to turn public opinion his way or he fears it will be too late to turn around public sentiment.

Grassley said he held 18 town hall meetings over the recess and the public has little understanding either of how Social Security works or how private accounts would change it. Grassley, who supports the accounts, said he would like to see some movement in public opinion over the next two to three weeks “or you might have some question about the president succeeding.”

Seems to me that Frist’s statement was a signal to the White House that the Senate Republicans do not want to fight this fight now, and maybe not ever. But Bush is not backing down; Josh Marshall reports the Bush Bamboozlepalooza Tour is rolling on to Alabama, Louisiana, and New Jersey. And the House Republicans are still fighting. The Hill reports that whipping will commence tomorrow. For this reason, I believe I had better keyboard faster if I’m going to get this post posted before the Frist retraction hits CNN.

Were it not for this apparent character disorder, George Bush would be a very discouraged man now. His European tour was not exactly a love-fest. Nor was his recent meeting with the National Governor’s Association, according to Dan Froomkin at WaPo. Bush told the governors he was “coming to your states” to debate Social Security. But the governors, including Republican governors, are more concerned with cuts Bush is making to programs that their states need, like Medicaid. Further, the Bush Social Security scheme is losing ground in public opinion polls.

But Bush is brilliant at making 180-degree turns and then claiming that whatever policy he had been fighting lo those many months had been his idea all along. And this is the Dems’ vulnerability. If they make any concessions at all, Bush could use that to claim victory, even if he has to abandon the privatization scheme. I can already see the photos of the Social Security Reform Act signing ceremony, with Joe Lieberman smiling in the background.