The Miserable Failure Of The Democrat Surge

CAN it really be only one year and two months since Tony Bennett sat with a notebook in the gallery of the US House of Representatives to sketch the pageantry marking the triumphal return of the Democratic Party to preeminence in the Congress? The first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, took time that day - between celebrating herself as honoured-at-last incarnation of oppressed American everywoman and making assertions, now completely dated, about the Iraq War - to offer "a new vision, a new America." Her hometown journal of record, the San Francisco Chronicle, reported her vow to "lower the partisan temperature." Now, as her party brawls its way towards a presidential election, the much touted moral vindication of those 2006 midterms is already in ruins. Mark Foley and Jack Abramoff ? Now the talk is of Elliot Spitzer (D), racism (D), and religious wackos (D).

With Bill Clinton's and Geraldine Ferraro's torn and frayed race cards shuffled for the time being to the back of Hillary Clinton's deck, today's big news is Barack Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright. Like an "old uncle", the Malcolm X version of Billy Graham blames 9/11 and AIDS on an America he believes is wicked and damned. Obama has chosen the slightly unhinged liberal forum, The Huffington Post, to tell, voters he did not have contextual relations with that man. Not a single time. Hail Ms Pelosi's "new vision."

Yesterday, when not trying to reassure Jews (this in the early twenty-first century US), Obama tried to allay fears of inexperience stoked by Senator Clinton's Red Phone. The Illinois frontrunner appeared with a supportive line-up of retired generals and admirals, one of whom - Merrill McPeak - gave him a new nickname that was snicker-worthy in a matter of hours: "No Drama Obama". For Weathervane Hussein to go from that kind of utterly bravura chutzpah to The Huffington Post - to convince folks the 3 a.m. call to his White House won't be from Louis Farrakhan - is a turn-around whose rapidity reflects something of his party's moral collapse. The sparring and haggling over the primary in the Sunshine State - of all places - completes the picture, as well as the story arc. Tony Bennett famously left his heart in San Francisco. The Democrats left their reason on the shard-covered floors of Florida.