The Left Strike Back.

The Democratic candidates find out there’s more to the party than the DLC at the Take Back America conference. Good to see an uprising against the Lieberman Republicrats, and that the rest of the Dem field now – thanks in part to Howard Dean – has to take progressive discontent seriously.

Deficit, Schmeficit.

Cheney breaks the tie as the Senate GOP pass the third-largest tax cut in history, one that includes a three-year moratorium on dividend taxes. Dems Zell Miller and Ben Nelson (and eventually Evan Bayh) joined the Republicans in passing the cut. (Republicans McCain, Chafee, and Snowe were opposed.) Of course, this tax giveaway for the rich does nothing to address the largest budget deficit in history…but that’s a problem for Dubya’s successors, isn’t it? And children don’t vote anyway.

“New” Dems, Old Insults.

If you can judge a man by his enemies, then Howard Dean picked up a key endorsement last week. Via Scully by e-mail, Al From’s Democratic Leadership Council – one of Al Gore‘s main water-carriers in 2000 and an organization which counts Joe Lieberman and Bob Graham among its members – decides to attack Howard Dean as an “elitist.” What garbage…The DLC is going to have find a better way of dealing with their left flank than simply casting old GOP insults their way. It’s exactly this type of Republican-lite thinking endlessly promoted by From’s organization that made Ralph Nader the spoiler in 2000. Don’t think it couldn’t happen again. Update: Perhaps Clinton will straighten ’em out, although it sounds like he’s just reading from the Lieberman-Graham playbook instead. Update 2: Independent James Jeffords criticizes the DLC remarks, calling it “incredible to hear such charges coming from Democrats.” Not as incredible as it once was, I’m afraid.