Help Me Understand

Their Senate minority leader denounces the President of the United States -- in wartime, mind you -- as a "liar" and a "loser." Their Senate minority whip equates American troops with Soviet Communists, the Khmer Rouge, and Nazis. Their minority leader in the House is a woman so vapid that she's given to uttering bon mots like the following (back in 2002): "Going to war would show our power, but not going to war would show our strength." One of their senior congressman steps forward to opine that the Iraq war "is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. ... This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed."

Rounding out the ranks of their luminaries is a failed presidential candidate who seems unable to be straightforward about anything -- from his war records to his grades to his political positions ("I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it"). Let's not forget their shamelessly self-promoting and perpetually triangulating presumptive nominee -- or their rising star, who steps forward this week to criticize Abraham Lincoln's "limited views on race."

Their party leader, Howard Dean, has a perpetual case of verbal dysentery, attacking Republicans as a "white Christian" party (as if that's a bad thing) and lagabouts.

And yet the Democrats are "alarmed" by the drop in their popularity. Given all the above, I think they're doing pretty well to be at 38%. So what's the problem?