Getting Desperate

Considering they control both the House and the Senate, and the conventional wisdom holds that the '08 election is theirs to lose, the Democrats sure don't look like they've got the political world in the palm of their hand. Consider the following things:
1) Last Thursday, Democrats had to do some underhanded parliamentary actions to prevent a voting outcome they didn't like. Republicans had brought a measure forward that would cut from the new farm bill language that would have allowed giving tax money to subsidize illegal immigrants. The measure was looking to win, 215 to 213, and the Democrats, showing how much they really care about the issue of illegal immigration, vacated the vote to prevent this from passing. This happened in the late hours of the night. Steny Hoyer has since admitted that it was a mistake on their part, but Nancy Pelosi denies that it was. The group in power shouldn't have to pull such pranks.
2) With all of the hot air Democrats blew around about how horrible Bush's domestic surveillance program was, they just passed a bill that Bush signed into law that lets him do exactly what they didn't want him to do. True, the bill didn't go nearly as far as he would have liked, and did add a few more restrictions, but ultimately they handed him a bill that allows him to wiretap and listen in on conversations with known terrorists and terrorist groups, even if one end of the conversation is in the U.S., without a warrant. Way to stay strong, Dems!
3) For whatever reason you choose to believe, it is quite obvious that Democrats have tied their hopes and dreams for increasing their hold in Washington in '08 on Iraq going badly. Last year, that didn't seem like such a losing bet for them. However, despite what Russ Feingold and Harry Reid tell you, conventional wisdom seems to be shifting to suggest that there is a wind of change blowing in Iraq now that Petraeus and his "surge" are in full swing. So much that even two scholars from the liberal Brookings Institute are now calling it a war we "just might win." Now, to be fair, these two were proponents of the original invasion of Iraq, and were opposed to the withdraw now crowd, but they had definitely fallen solidly in the camp of those who saw Iraq as a no win situation last year. While their new findings will no doubt be rejected by the hardcore anti-war crowd on the left, saner minds seem to be taking what they say, along with other reports coming in, that things are changing in Iraq. A new poll has just shown that those who believe we can win in Iraq has jumped up 9 points, while those who think we can't dropped by 10. Now those who think we can't win are still in the majority by a 20-point margin, but this definitely suggests a shift in the perception of how things are going in Iraq. And this does not bode well for the Democrats, or for their presidential wannabes who are all solidly for getting out of Iraq.
4) I usually think that politicians are horrible at cracking jokes (with Reagan being a welcomed exception), and think that most of their jokes fall short. But I did get quite a kick about Mitt Romney's comments about Obama. First he appeared confused that Obama in the previous week had basically admitted that he would sit down with our enemies and invade our allies. But his winning line was that in such a short time, Obama had gone from "Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove." Right now Obama seems to be looking a lot like Howard Dean in the 2004 primaries. A lot of grassroots excitement and lots of supporters, but ultimately it was discovered that the emperor was, in fact, wearing no clothes. The more this guy talks, the more he tries to lay out what an Obama presidency would entail, the more it becomes evident that this guy is all form and no substance. So other than the "great speech" that he gave at the Democrat national convention, what other reason does this guy have for running for president, other than the novelty of being the lone African-American?

So while there is much talk about how fractured the Republican party, and conservatives, seems to be, why is it that the Democrats look more like the Keystone Kops?