4th and 35

It's fourth down, you need 35 yards for a first down to keep the drive alive. Not very likely, even against a bad defense. So what will you do? Punt.

Apparently, politics is football to the Democrat party. When I saw this yesterday I was flabbergasted:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq, calling the war a matter of individual conscience and saying differing positions within the caucus are a source of strength for the party.

Pelosi said Democrats will produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections but it will not include a position on Iraq. There is consensus within the party that President Bush has mismanaged the war and that a new course is needed, but House Democrats should be free to take individual positions, she sad.

"There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position," Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.

Took a double take to be sure what I was reading. The Democrats will have no official position on the single biggest issue of the day?

Just when I had begun to think they couldn't abdicate any more responsibility on the issue, we have this. 'Course there is a bright side I guess.

It's not going to matter what Howard Dean has to say on the subject, as his Congressional leader has done her best to make him irrelevant. That, in and of itself, may do more than anything else to improve their chances in '06!