Let's talk Daou's iron triangle for a second. According to Peter Daou, probably the foremost student of how media, blogs and politics work together, for a story to get traction, it needs to close the triangle - all three groups need to be pushing a story out. Of the three the blogs are the least important, but blogs and politicians together can often take a story and push it into the media, closing the triangle and creating something that gets out there. (Path to 9/11 is a good example of what this looks like when it works.)

Now Senate Democrats are scared to filibuster the act that makes torture legal and provides retroactive protection to torturers, because they know Rove will come out with ads featuring 9/11 widows accusing them of being soft on national security. But that's not wise, since it's easy to counter their 9/11 families with pro-Democratic anti-torture 9/11 families - Republicans don't have a monopoly on 9/11 (the fact that Democrats act as if they do is a whole other problem, for another day.)

What is required for us to close our part of the triangle is for Democratic politicians to stand up and condemn torture as anti-American.

I am not convinced the media is pro-torture anymore. I am not convinced a dramatic filibuster threat based on "Torture is UnAmerican" won't get enough positive coverage to allow us to close Daou's iron triangle to jump from blogs and politicians into the media. Americans think of themselves as good. This is a chance to spill contempt on Republicans as UnAmerican and to flatter Americans with positive messages about how we know they will do the right thing. "Do the right thing, Vote Against Torture, Vote for American Values, Vote Democratic". Think that motto can be sold? I sure as hell do.

The Welsh family motto is "an optimist and a damn fool are the same thing", but we have become so pessimistic that we have the equivalent of "learned helplessness" going on.

This is a triangle that can be closed, this is a fight that can be won. This is an opportunity, viewed in the right light.

Finally - this is a chance for Democrats to become the opposition party. It is a chance to take the mantle of principled opposition away from people like McCain. And that is a necessary step, not just for 2006, but to help whoever the candidate is for the Presidency in 2008.