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.