Democrats seem to be joining Republicans in increasing numbers for no other purpose than to frustrate the will of the people as expressed in the last congressional election, in which the issues were war and malfeasance. Now that the election is over, the Democrats who took office on a pledge to end the war and call the malfeasors to account have turned their backs on the voters who put them there.

Just this week Democrats lent critical support to right-wing initiatives:

• Provoking Iran and facilitating a unilateral act of aggression by the president
• Decreeing the ethnic partitioning of Iraq
• Funding the war in Iraq
• Condemning an advertisement critical of the war and the warmakers

Conventional wisdom holds that these Democrats have acted to attract the votes of right-wingers in their districts to whoever emerges as their presidential candidate next year. Courage of conviction is out, with politics at center stage. As for the presidential candidates, three of them, Clinton, Edwards and Obama, refuse to guarantee an end to the war in Iraq before the end of their first term.

And that’s just in this week’s news. We can pretend that there are good Democrats we should stick with and bad Democrats we should repudiate, but if the good ones are tolerating the bad ones, even encouraging them, then they all deserve repudiation.

We keep receiving a ready supply of news, unfortunately. It’s embarassing to think that xDems would consider it a great victory if all the Democrats in Congress ever voted for something we believe in. We’re here because we know that’s impossible.