Dear Dems -- really -- get a clue

I guess I don't have to read anything but Avedon today. She points to this knockout Molly Ivins piece. Molly has a few choice words for the Democratic Party. Molly actually makes a case for reading the polls, like the ones that say a majority of Americans are crying out for change, not the same old GOP tricks, only better because Dems are pulling them.

Oh come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. ...

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this -- that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

I have nothing to add to that except perhaps to note that I've been predicting for some time now that if the Dems don't get, (as they like to say here in the South), their shit in one sock, 08 for sure and possibly 06 will be the year of third party candidates.