After giving George W. Bush far too easy a ride in his first term, the Democratic leadership in Congress promised that the second term was going to be different. "This is not a dictatorship," announced Senate minority leader Harry Reid. The new head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel, declared, "The President neither has the mandate he thinks he has nor a majority to make policy." But three months of watching the Democrats' stumbling, often incoherent responses to Administration appointments and initiatives shows clearly that the party is making the same mistakes that cost it so dearly in the 2002 and 2004 elections.

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