Bill Clinton is one smart fish.

He refused to take the bait. The Single Issue bait.

The former President recently commented, "We ought to be whipped if we allow our differences over what to do now over Iraq divide us."

Such a comment incited old school Democrats to blog disbelief. How could Clinton even suggest that the war in Iraq be so unceremoniously dismissed?

To borrow from Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan regardng the economy, "It's the Single Issues, Stupid."

The media casts the single issue hook as expertly as L.L. Bean. And the old school Dems bite down HARD. The Republicans love to reach inside the old creel for the best lure, usually a high maintenance Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Gloria Steinem lure, and lovingly, almost reverently, bait the single issue....hook, line, and sinker. The media, the GOP, lean back, push their favorite fishing hat down over their eyes, and wait for a tug on the line.

That's how politically predictable the Democrats have become.

The Republicans paint the Democratic party as a school of blowfish that can't immobolize past the single issues that draw the party together as representatives of the people. On the other hand, the Republicans themselves have harnessed their own single issues so well, Americans have become confused about the Bush administration's tendency to act "unRepublicanlike".

What's up with that?

The American voting public has become witness to a most disturbing political phenomenon-the Reps had single issues all along! When in the minority, the GOP circled their wagons and harnessed the issues dividing their party in order to regain the majority. Now back in power for a few years, heady with majority leadership. those issues, so very tightly Rep reined, are loose and running wild....right to life, privacy rights, spying on regular Americans, economic class warfare, etc. etc, etc.

The Dems have to get a grip.

Stop jumping at the shiny nightcrawler. The current administration's track record speaks for itself. Stop reacting. Dare I say? Stop TALKING. The beltway media wants one thing. A great story. Stop caving to these guys. STOP.

Concentrate on the message that the outside just needs a chance to get inside. And that means every talking Democratic pundit that the public associates with left to the left to the left has to collectively concentrate. It can be done.

To continue to be reactive, instead of proactive, places the party in one bad position. Defense.

As a lifelong Democrat, I have my own single issues. But after years of watching the tired game be played, I know in order to address those issues, we as a party, must play the game differently.

Otherwise, as Lewis Black so eloquently states, we are "Red, White, and Screwed."

Just another smashed frog.