- Reality Check -

Glenn Greenwald is correct to warn of the coming Democratic tsuanami:

Nonetheless, it's worth underscoring -- in fact, it's vital to keep in mind -- that the option of politically empowering Democrats is the opposite of a panacea. The Democratic Party structure in Washington, and particularly its leadership in Congress, is more corrupted and destructive than anything else there is -- with the exception of the right-wing faction that has been running the country for the last eight years. Contrary to the inane conventional Beltway wisdom that bipartisanship is oh-so-tragically scarce, Democrats as an entity have, over and over, passively acquiesced to, and frequently actively enabled and participated in, many of the worst abuses of the last eight years. Their leadership in Congress is corrupt and craven to the bone in many of the same ways the GOP leadership has been -- and they're about to be far more entrenched and their power far less checked.

Obama, who is basically a consensus centrist, will be vulnerable in such a situation, especially since he hasn't really articulated any broad principles of policy to which the rest of the Democratic leadership will need to conform.