Let me finish tonight with the Democrats' dilemma on taxes.
It's that people in this country are conflicted about wealth. We're not the old British Labour party that hates the rich because they never expect to "be" rich.
We're not like that. Americans, a lot of us, have it in our DNA, our birthright that we can make it, too, or our kids can. Unlike the Brits we don't think the obstacles to getting ahead, the old class divides, are walls we can't climb.
So this "soak the rich!" line isn't hitting a homer with the great majority of the American people who aren't rich.
Proof: a new USA TODAY - Gallup Poll asks people whether they want the Bush tax cuts extended for everyone - including the top brackets - or just people making up $250,000 a year?
It came out 40 percent said keep the cuts for everybody, 44 percent said just keep 'em for people making below a quarter million.
That's no homer, more like a bunt.
So why didn't the Dems do something far more gutsy? Why didn't they say the Bush tax cuts were temporary, were sold that way, and should have stayed that way for the simple reason we can't afford to let the national debt keep hemorrhaging? That we can't afford the $4 trillion dollars this is going to add to the national debt.
Had the Democrats held the line on not increasing the debt - instead of trying to make their fight on class lines, which averts only a fraction of the increased debt, they would have at least come off as serious about not passing on trillions of more debt to our kids.
They would have won the argument if not the fight. This way, playing class politics, the old British Labour Party way, they're going to lose both.