Political Strategy

Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias and others are right when they say, as Kevin did in this piece:

... although Democrats would like the 2006 election to be about Jack Abramoff and Republican corruption, the White House still has something to say about that. George Bush is going to do his best to keep national security front and center, and Democrats had better have a more crowd-pleasing answer on this subject than they did in 2002 and 2004.

However, I don't think that means the Dems should ignore the issues of illegal surveillance or Bush's claims to be all-powerful. I think those can be powerful arguments -- particularly if we could get some in the press to see these as the egregious power grabs that they are. [I note that Tweety Matthews apparently said the president's job was to break the law today on CNN]. We just need to articulate the issue clearly -- it's the law breaking that's at issue, not the surveillance per se. I don't think that has to be a subtle, nuanced argument. Hell, he's BREAKING THE LAW. Just say that over and over and over again. There are all kinds of ways he could have done this legally. He CHOSE TO BREAK THE LAW!

Meanwhile, the Dems are not likely to get any traction running on the kinds of things they chose to run on in 2004. They need to confront the key issues head on. One of the key issues is that Bush and the Republicans are destroying this country. They have screwed up everything they touch. It's like Midas in reverse.