Have the Democrats learned to be an opposition party?

It's Wednesday, aka, Gene Lyons' column day. This week he's discussing the topic of an article by Amy Sullivan about how the Democrats have shown more fighting spirit than liberal bloggers sometimes give them credit for: Not as Lame as You Think: Democrats learn the art of opposition Washington Monthly May 2006.

Lyons writes in his column, Democrats divided? Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 05/03/06:

Actually, Democratic fecklessness is partly a myth embedded in the socalled liberal press by GOP propaganda. For a party that controls neither house of Congress and gets treated with open contempt by an increasingly authoritarian president, Democrats have actually had a pretty good couple of years. President Bush spent most of 2005 traveling the countryside like a patentmedicine salesman, cajoling handpicked audiences about his Social Security "privatization" program, basically a trillion-dollar shell game. Democrats, however, held firm and the scheme went nowhere.

Likewise, pundits were puzzled when Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Vietnam veteran and one-time hawk, called for a tactical withdrawal from Iraq. Why didn’t party leadership rally behind him ? Basically, reports Amy Sullivan in Washington Monthly, because House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who helped persuade Murtha to make his misgivings public, realized that the ramrod-straight ex-Marine made a far better spokesman than she did.

Lyons also praises Michael Tomasky's lead story for the current edition of The American Prospect: Party in Search of a Notion 05/04/06 issue.

Lyons notes that he omits specific discussion of the Democratic approach on national security. But, he say, "Even so, he’s made an excellent start." All three pices (Lyons', Sullivan's and Tomasky's) are worth checking out.

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