There seems to be a lot of gloating and salivating over the White House scandals, and if one believes the rumors, yes, it could be huge in scope and implications.

Bigger than Watergate? Could be.

But does this mean an automatic win for Democrats? There's a lot of hope and, frankly, wishful thinking about this.

The Class of '74, aka the Watergate Babies, didn't succeed in stamping out corruption, or in building a new sustainable majority for the Democratic Party. But they did permanently change how Congress is run...and for the better. They took on the entrenched power structure in Congress and they put a Democratic president in the White House two years later.

We are the kernel, or the nucleus of a new class: The class of '06. While the DLC putters around the fringes, polling on how to frame a national message that will sell in the heartland, we have been calling this Bush regime and their congressional goons a bunch of lawless thieves and transparent crooks. We've been exposing their lies every day for several years. And when the hammer comes down on this administration in the coming days, we will be vindicated, and it will be our mantra to clean up government that will have the high road. All this talk of 'framing' health care and women's rights for the common man will be irrelevant. It will be time for the progressives to once again stand up strong and begin the process of leading our party out of the hinterlands.

I look at 1974, and I don't see that as a big milestone for Democratic achievement. While Nixon crashed and burned, the Dems enjoyed a bubble, but the conservatives were waging their "war of ideas" ... and what came of it?

Jimmy Carter served one term.

Democratic control that had existed even then for decades started to slip.

The Republicans ended up with the lasting victory. Six years later, Reagan was elected in what was the beginning of "the conservative revolution." The Democratic hold on Congress was weakening, and then finally lost. The only Democrat president was Clinton, who got elected by only a plurality of voters after Ross Perot split the fiscal conservatives.

We're in 1973 and we're supposed to feel good about this?

So I would say the lesson of 1973 is to not avoid the war of ideas, not to avoid the values talk, not to avoid "'framing' health care and women's rights for the common man," because to play inside-the-beltway hardball without a game plan may win an inning or two, but will not win the ballgame.

I ask (again): What do the Democrats stand for?

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