One last chance to show me that Democrats are an opposition party

After reading about the theocratic resolution passed resoundingly by the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives which comes perilously close to declaring Christianity the national religion, it's difficult, if not impossible, to have any remaining hope that this Democratic Congress has any intention of acting in opposition to the American Christian authoritarian Mullahs currently dominating the other side of the aisle.

Yesterday's resolution makes me angrier than I can even express, not just because it seems clearly designed as an attempt to mollify the unmollifiable Bill O'Reilly in his rants about some kind of "War on Christmas", but because it flies right into the "Christian Nation" trap that the theocrats are trying to set. I don't know about you, but where I live, it's kind of hard to think anything BUT that Christmas is an important holiday. Between the traffic making it impossible to navigate Route 17 or any of the surrounding streets in Paramus any time after 8 AM on Saturdays, the relentless Christmas music on radio, and the garish displays of cheap inflatable plastic Santas on people's lawns who deflate every night until by daybreak they look like so many redsuited passed-out drunks, it is most definitely the Christmas season. So why on earth do we need a Congressional resolution to tell us what we already know? And why is THIS what Democrats are doing, along with censuring MoveOn.org, when there are still American kids getting killed in Iraq, Americans losing their homes, jobs moving overseas, and a Republican Party that seems bound and determined to get its attack on Iran if they have to have an "investigation" into the recent NIE report in order to get it?

The solution, as E.J. Dionne points out today, is very simple:

What's the alternative to internecine Democratic finger-pointing of the sort that made the front page of yesterday's Post? The party's congressional leaders need to do whatever they have to do to put this year behind them. Then they need to stop whining. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should put aside any ill feelings and use the Christmas break to come up with a joint program for 2008.

They could start with the best ideas from their presidential candidates in areas such as health care, education, cures for the ailing economy and poverty reduction. Agree to bring the same bills to a vote in both houses. Try one more time to change the direction of Iraq policy. If Bush and the Republicans block their efforts, bring all these issues into the campaign. Let the voters break the gridlock.

If Democrats don't make the 2008 election about the Do-Nothing Republicans, the GOP has its own ideas about whom to hold responsible for Washington's paralysis. And if House and Senate Democrats waste their time attacking each other, they will deserve any blame they get next fall.

The Democrats seem content to run out the clock, assuming that Democratic voters have noplace else to go, and that if they continue to let George Bush and Dick Cheney run amok, they'll win by default in 2008. But is that how you want to win? Isn't it better to win by offering a genuine alternative?

Given the FUBAR state of the country at the moment, even if we DO end up with a Democratic president in 2008, if the party can't line up behind a positive, definitive, progressive agenda, this ineffectual party is setting up said president for four years of accomplishing nothing; four years of Republican minority obstructionism, and four years of Clinton scandals, investigations into Barack Obama's childhood, or relentless snarking about John Edwards' hair, depending on which of the three front-runners finally emerges from this interminable primary season.

If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were TRYING to cripple the Democratic President they give lip service to wanting, they couldn't do it better.