Completely predictable…

…which is why I predicted it. Steve Holland hacks out your basic "D's in disarray" piece for Reuters and throws in the obligatory comparison to the President's popularity...

WASHINGTON - These are tough times for the Democratic-led U.S. Congress, where partisan battles have led to little progress on big issues and have made lawmakers collectively less popular than President George W. Bush.

Of course, "lawmakers collectively" is an artificial construct. They don't run collectively. They don't have a common constituency. For the most part, they tailor their campaigns to local interests and priorities, not collective ones. It's a comparison that's about as meaningful as declaring that unicorns can fly higher than horses. Then there's the fact that Democrats poll differently - and higher - than Republicans, and that Bush has had over six years to make his impression on the public consciousness while the current Congress has had about six months, and, well, you get the point.

None of those notions seemed to fit in Holland's story. He managed to squeeze this in, though...

The Iraq situation has so infuriated the Democratic left that Cindy Sheehan, the California liberal who began a long protest against Bush after her soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq, is talking about running against Pelosi in 2008.

I'm not really sure what or who the "Democratic left" might be, but since Cindy Sheehan is a self-proclaimed independent, she's clearly not it. I'm not sure I'd even call her a liberal these days.

Maybe she can get that meeting with Bush now, though. He might like to say thanks for the help...