The Feingold essay, published at huffingtonpost.com, elicited cheers and thank you's, amid pleas for Feingold to change his mind about deciding not to run for the 2008 presidential nomination.  The applause was peppered with the usual finger-wagging from Dems near the center, cautioning Feingold to think of 2008 and let the moderates in the party do the leading.

And there was Feingold again last week, introducing “tri-partisan” legislation to extend the life of the Iraq reconstruction inspector-general.  Standing next to Feingold at the press conference was Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat defeated in his own primary but sent to Washington as an Independent by Republican voters (hence Feingold’s “tri-partisan” quip).  Lieberman will be chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.  Feingold himself was left on the sideline as the Senate Dem leadership handed out by seniority the 2007-08 committee chairmanships.

Then came a heap of exit poll data and a spin from Washington analysts at Time Magazine about 2006 being “an issueless election.”

Issueless election?  In the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (California) tried to make an anti-war statement by backing Iraq war critic John Murtha (Penn.) for House Majority Leader, bucking Steny Hoyer (Maryland), the Dems' current House whip.  Hoyer did prevail, after some hand wringing from conventional wisdom Washington insiders that Pelosi – in trying to take a stand on Iraq – was driving the bus of the Democratic victory over a cliff.

By the end of last week – still the first Washington week after the election – that bastion of New Democrat wisdom, The New Republic, reported on a plot to oust Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.  Apparently, Clinton strategist James Carville thinks Dean’s 50-state strategy ran counter to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s more targeted strategy.  Carville thinks that the Dems could have cherry-picked a dozen more seats if Dean hadn’t seeded money all over the country.  But what Carville’s Blue Dog Democrats, the Democratic Leadership Council centrists led by Hillary Clinton, are really concerned about is that Dean may prevent them from triangulating (oozing) toward the soft middle of American politics.

In Wisconsin, where months of unity and hard work by state Democrats won the Green Bay-Fox Valley 8th Congressional District for Dr. Steve Kagen, where health care reform played a major role in state Senate races, and where women didn’t want Mark Green involved in their health care decisions, we realize that much of what happens in Washington doesn’t have much to do with us.

But what has happened in our nation’s capitol is this: As soon as Republican George Allen conceded to Democrat Jim Webb in a neck-and-neck race Virginia, giving Dems a 51-49 majority in the US Senate, the Blue Dogs-New D-DLC began laying claim to the Nov. 7 victory.  Yes, the "Southern Strategy" we’ve all heard so much about finally worked in Virginia (third time’s the charm) and the late result of Webb's victory tipped full control of Congress to the Democrats.  Now the progressives who built the populist wave that toppled the Republicans are being asked to sit at the back of the bus and let the Blue Dog-New D-DLC moderates drive.

In response to these developments, we at Watchdog Milwaukee hereby propose a new handle for progressive Democrats who stand strong and refuse to ignore the will of the American people: Swiss Cheese Democrats.  The inspiration, of course, is Russ Feingold, who, in deciding not to run for president, issued the following statement:

“While I've certainly enjoyed the repeated comments or buttons saying, ‘Run Russ Run’, or ‘Russ in '08’, I often felt that if a piece of Wisconsin swiss cheese had taken the same positions I've taken, it would have elicited the same standing ovations. This is because the hunger for progressive change we feel is obviously not about me but about the desire for a genuinely different Democratic Party that is ready to begin to reverse the 25 years of growing extremism we have endured.”

The machinations of the past week have revealed again how easily the Blue Dog-New D-DLC Washingtonians can, in Feingold’s words, “suck the populism out of the party.”

Russ Feingold simply cannot run for president under these conditions.  If he leaves Washington for more than a day or two, the Democratic Party he returns to just might be as formless, malleable and hole-pocked as that piece of Wisconsin swiss cheese.  Without the Swiss Cheese-D ovations.

Watchdog Extra:  Feingold discussed the DLC and its “kingmaker” role in Democratic presidential politics in an interview I published a couple of years ago after he voted against the USA Patriot Act. The interview – “Patriot Games” – is filled with candid observations from Feingold, including the above comment on Democratic Party populism.  Read all about it here at Watchdog Milwaukee.