Duncan confuses Democrats with Republicans

In your editorial “Elite idealists” you make an ineffectual case for the Democrats losing the election in 2008, saying that it will be a repeat of 2004. Unfortunately, you left out one relevant point, which is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room. That point is that Democrats will be running against the seven-year record of the current Republican administration. \nYou commented that Democrats: “are too enamored with their own rhetoric to know how the American people will actually vote.” This is actually more applicable to the Republicans. In the face of a disastrous war in Iraq, a skyrocketing national debt, Republican scandals from Foley to Vitter to Craig and the shredding of the Constitution, just to name a few, the American people have had their fill of anything Republican. As of now, Republicans numbering nine in the House and five in the Senate are retiring. Even the Republican leadership is admitting that the prospects for holding those seats are meager. Not just White House staffers are jumping ship.\nWhile the American public is disgusted with Congress as a whole, the Republican pundits continue to point to the Democrats’ ratings being almost as low as the Republicans’. By some twisted logic they believe that the American people are unhappy that the Democrats are not supporting Bush as opposed to the truth that they are disgusted because they have not stopped him.\nI will agree with you that “what this country needs right now is a level-headed, pragmatic leader and not a group of crusading idealists.” We’ve had a group of crusading idealists in power for the last seven years and I have little doubt that the American people will vote to end this Republican debacle no matter who is on the Democratic ticket.