If you need any clues about where democrats will be attacked for the next year, the whole game plan is laid out before us now.

Budget busting and budget paralysis. Tax increases. Failure to support the troops. Weakness against Iran. Divisiveness. Failure on energy, healthcare, mortgage crisis, immigration reform, education, judicial nominations, lifting trade barriers,. Failure to govern or lead.

Actually, this sounds like a flotilla of trial balloons, but it demonstrates more how weak the GOP is. There’s no big issues they can win on. They need the flotilla to attempt the death of Democrats by a thousand cuts.

It’s true that Congressional ratings are at historic lows, but it’s also true the old Republican majority led them there and bears the brunt of the blame. Unfortunately, Democratic legislators and their leadership has demonstrated a meekness beyond the obvious limits of their thin majorities.

Rove is wrong, as usual. Congressional leaders are planning a counterattack, specifically on funding for the Iraq War. The trouble with that strategy is it can be quickly undercut when Bush announces troop withdrawals. If that’s their ace in the hole, they’ve waited too long to play it.

Already, the gOP is spinning the line of progress in Iraq, though violence has only fallen to where it was when the surge began. Bush is likely planning the tactic once advanced to Nixon: declare victory - even if it’s non-existent - and begin withdrawal. The rhetoric doesn’t sound like Bush plans to wait for April to do it. We’re more likely to see it before the Christmas recess.

That way, both party primaries will have to hinge on other issues. And where does that leave the Pelosi-Reid strategy to display some little-used backbone?

Don’t misunderstand, I certainly don’t buy 90% of what Rove’s selling. I’m just agreeing that the Democratic leadership still lacks the killer instinct needed to lead. Democrats still should be able to win the White House, no matter who wins the primaries. But the odds for Congressional gains remains 50-50 so long as they keep getting outmaneuvered by a second-rate intellect like Rove.

And where Rove is dead wrong - misleading deliberately - is in claiming the party has erred by being “Beholden to MoveOn.org and other left-wing groups”. In fact, it was the slightly left of center Howard Dean who led the way by being right about the war beforehand and every step of the way. He energized liberals and the party by dragging the latter back from the right to the real center of the country, that hadn’t been seen in the Democratic national leadership in two decades. He followed that with a 50 state funding and organizing strategy that made inroads possible in states where victories were unthinkable by DLC leaders in 2004. Coupled with some of the late-inning funding strategies fostered by people like Chris Bowers at MyDD, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party pulled off the unforeseen upset that returned it to the majority by the thinnest of margins in 2006.

That took innovation and gutsiness. And in the afterglow, the Beltway Democrats were quick to thank…. Rahm Emmanuel of the DLC.

As a result, Blue Dog Dems quickly turned on them whut brung them to the dance and the national party fell back to old DLC habits that have gained nothing for the country and nothing for the party for two decades. Well, almost nothing. The only group in the country that have benefited from DLC strategies have been the Clintons. Simply because they mastered an aggressive campaign style that worked well with the DLC platform. No one else has used it successfully, not Dukakis, not Gore, not Kerry. Which begs the question: was it DLC policy that gave Clinton his wins or was it his aggressive campaigning that gave the DLC policies credibility?

Remember, too, that it took Ross Perot siphoning votes from Bush 41 for Clinton to eke out his first victory. A technology revolution fuelled a soaring economy and coupled with a desultory campaign effort by Dole, he cruised to victory in ‘96, yet still carried less than a 50% popular vote.

Certainly an aggressive campaign style is critical and both of the Clinton’s retain broad support for that, but what if that campaign moxie was married to a more liberal candidate? The Dems almost went there with Dean in 2004, but late in the game, fear drove voters back after the capture of Saddam, to the hawkishness Kerry was touting, and they regrouped behind him after perceiving him as the most electable.

The majority of Dems backed off from the gamble of backing an antiwar candidate who had been more accurate in his positions and strategies other than one misstep that Kerry pounced on and reversed the momentum of the guy nobody gave a chance at the outset.

No, Dean wasn’t perfect but neither was Kerry. Dean’s campaign staff was raw enough that they lacked some of the skills necessary to hold back the powers of conventional Beltway insiders to sway the media narrative.

But now, with greater capacity to impact the media narrative and fresh off the innovations the Left utilized to secure the 2006 wins, the same battle within the party is continuing to take place. And the DLC policies of caution and fear have created a Congressional paralysis that plays back into the hands of Republicans.

If the Democratic Party is ever going to wield a strong majority with greater popular support, Democratic voters are going to have to stop buying the DLC wisdom that only the Clintons can win, only foreign policy hawkishness can win and only by shunning the strengths of liberalism can it win.

That should be a glaringly large clue.