ReZoom

The Democratic Party took over Congress this past year with great expectations. Chief among them was bringing the war in Iraq to an end. Or at the very least, the beginning of an end.

By that standard, grade the party leadership House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with an F. On every vote on any issue relating to Iraq, the President got the best of the 101st Congress.

The military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, remains open. Bush's warrantless surveillance program was actually codified and expanded on the Democrats' watch. Lawmakers were unable to eliminate the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA. And at the end of the year, Congress handed the President a blank check in the amount of $70 billion to further fund the war.

Oh, give the party some credit. Chiefly the first increase in fuel-efficiency standards in a very long time.

Some progress was made on an issue of growing importance to ReZoomers. The growth of the Alternative Minimum Tax has been put on hold, sparing more than 20 million middle-income taxpayers from the AMT. But the fix was no fix at all. Merely a one-year patch.

Many Democrats were upset that there was no offset and so the Federal deficit was accordingly increased. Fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats voted against the measure because the Senate did not offset the bill's cost with tax increases on hedge-fund and private-equity managers.

The 101st Congress came to an end. And now the election season begins in earnest. Democrats blaming Republicans of being obstructionists. And Republicans blaming the Democrats for failure to lead. A theme, ironically, echoed by many Democrats.