No Recounts Here

The Bush administration and Congress have no intention of having a recount (or even a count, for that matter) of the casualties in Iraq. This comes as no surprise, since counting bodies of the collaterally damaged can't help the administration. It's a little surprising that Democrats aren't making any noise about this, but then Democrats have gotten awfully good at being the Silent Minority pver the past month. Honestly, the last time I remember the Congressional Democrats doing anything, it was jumping feverishly onto the Trent Lott-flogging bandwagon. Before that? Post-election loss platitudes, perhaps?

Now I'm trying to find something to post about the Democratic candidates for president. Washington Post has nothing new on them since Saturday. NYTimes has nothing on them since April 3rd, nor does Boston.com. I almost feel bad for the Dems - they'd have to run naked down Broadway to make page two! Either that or commit political suicide by coming out and lambasting the war...

The war has done something that I think is quite positive: delaying the election. I personally think that a two-year election process is too long, and that parties should impose limits on themselves, not beginning campaigning until a month before the Iowa straw poll, for instance. Sure, Howard Dean needed lots of time to build name recognition. But Gephardt and Kerry? What are they going to do for two years? Hopefully this damaging disinterest will hurt the earlybirds enough that future election cycles will begin a little later. Of course, the real remedy is to move the primaries back, beginning perhaps in April of election year, building slowly to a crescendo in mid-May, before people leave for summer vacations.