Eating their own

Progressives -- the current euphemism for those on the far left who cringe at the word "socialist" -- gathered in Washington over the weekend to express some dismay at the slow pace at which their hand-picked president, Barack Obama, has been advancing their hyper-liberal agenda.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country in San Francisco, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was being shouted down by leftists upset at Democrats who they believe have been too timid and too willing to compromise.

Activists threatened to take out congressional incumbents, citing Arkansas, where the Progressive Congressional Campaign Committee spent $250,000 on Lt. Gov. Bill Halter's bid against Sen. Blanche Lincoln, perceived as too conservative. Big Labor poured in $10 million on behalf of Mr. Halter. That race was decided in a runoff Tuesday. The collectivists lost.

Progressives said they would rather have "good Democrats" -- in the words of DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas -- than moderates who don't advance their radical agenda.

But the effort to pass nationalized health care -- even the watered-down, incremental version the White House settled for and the leftists complain about -- reduced the president's approval ratings near the break-even point, and has fomented a revolution in primary congressional voting which has not only Democrats but also many go-along Republicans hanging onto their horses' manes, wondering just how deep the water is going to get by November.

America was tired of George W. Bush. But the increasingly frequent missteps of the Obama administration start to indicate the problem may in fact be a vast and unwieldy federal bureaucracy over which no one man has substantial control.

If the leftists took voter rejection of Sen. John McCain as Mr. Bush's chosen successor as a mandate for the pipe-dream agenda of left-wing academics and government employee unions, they were simply wrong.

Vast carbon taxes designed to get Americans out of their cars and simultaneously reduce our standard of living? Windmill farms to fight "global warming?" "Card check" to allow a handful of strong-arm men to unionize a workplace despite the opposition of a majority of workers? Amnesty for 12 million illegals -- with an engraved invitation for their extended families to move here, too, further swamping public schools and hospital emergency rooms funded by already bankrupt taxpayers?

And paying for all this by levying crippling taxes on small businesses already afraid to make new hires?

This far-left agenda is not popular. Attempting to ram any more of it down the throats of America between now and November may or may not be the kind of electoral suicide pact most Democratic lawmakers welcome. We'll see.