I cannot conclude but otherwise.

• Democrats in Congress refused to pass a budget this year.  Paul Ryan thinks that they’re doing this in order to justify passing a VAT: I think that they’re d0ing this because they don’t want to explain why they spend worse than drunken sailors*; these two opinions are not incompatible with each other.
• The White House plans to wait on trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill until after the elections, but before the 112th Congress takes office.  This is incompatible with the Democrats’ breezy assurances that they’re going to do well in November; and I agree with Jim Geraghty that Republican nominees need to get Democratic incumbents on the record as to how they feel about this policy.
• Immigration reform?  What’s that?  Aside from the White House signing off on telling Ecuador about upcoming litigation before it bothers to tell American citizens, of course.
• Congressional Democrats do not want to repeat the debacle of the health care summit – and, yes, it was a debacle for Congressional Democrats; they were expecting to be able to run on passing Obamacare, and now they’re hoping that it doesn’t hurt them too badly – on any of these subjects.

None of the above is my fault; or the fault of my political party; or the fault of my general ideology.  Cowardice is the absence of bravery and resolution, and I can’t just go and take either quality from people and thus make them weak.  This is a collective, yet personal failure on the part of the Democratic leadership, and while I will be no doubt actively hated for pointing all of this out… really, why should I care?

Moe Lane

*As many people have noted, drunken sailors stop spending when they run out of money.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.