Amy Sullivan has a piece in the Washington Monthly about the little-sung successes of the Democrats.

Apparently, there is some strategy and coordination going on in the Democratic leadership, despite what the press might lead you to believe. The Dubai ports deal blew up because Schumer kept calling press conferences about it, though Schumer has hardly been credited with lobbing the grenade. Murtha was not left out in the cold by Pelosi and other Dems; it was a deliberate strategy to prevent him being labeled as a token hawk. And the Dems managed to kill Bush's privatization of Social Security, by disciplined attacks on Bush's "risky" proposal. Their not offering a counterproposal was deliberate: it meant that they couldn't be pressured into working with the Republicans to form a compromise.

The press have written little about this, and that's the real problem.

On a related note, here's a post about what the Democrats would do if they regain control of the House of Representatives:

• Raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997;

• Fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel on homeland security after the 9/11 attacks;

• Reinstate the lapsed rules that require increases in spending to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases, to prevent the deficit from growing further;

• A real security plan.