The third option is not a palatable one, because the news media will attempt to portray it as "the Democrats blinked" (the news media's not very good with nuance and grey areas). But it is really the only politically viable strategy at this point. President Bush is, sadly, going to get his escalation.

On the positive side, you have already forced all of Washington into a consensus on a very important point, without even having to vote on it: September is the deadline for the "surge." Democrats, Republicans, and the news media are all in agreement on this one crucial milestone: if there is no marked progress as a result of the surge by September, the troops are going to start coming home.

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My prediction is that some version of this will be on many Republican candidates' lips this fall. The only question is whether it will be enough to force Bush to face reality, and to finally begin to end the war in Iraq. Democrats need 17 or 18 Republicans in the Senate, and around 60 or so in the House, in order to put together a veto-proof majority. These are the numbers to watch, as only they will end the war in Iraq.

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So, today, with both prominent liberals and conservatives now calling for Alberto Gonzales to resign, and with his numbers dropping in the polls, and when the entire Bush administration is being soundly ridiculed in the pages of the Washington Post, the question remains: what do "experts agree" about Gonzales?

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. . . Did anyone else out there see the irony in America condemning Iran for the way they treated the captured British soldiers and sailors? It's kind of hard to get worked up over the Iranians' behavior when the CIA is doing worse things to prisoners in the name of the American people. In other words, it's hard for us to get on our high horse when we've abandoned the moral high road ourselves.

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Whatever happens, some folks will be happy with the results, and others will not. That's a certainty. What may come out of these experiments is a push afterwards to lessen the chaos by instituting some intelligent presidential election reforms. There are many good proposals to do this, but two of the most sensible directly address the primary calendar problems.

The first I have previously written about. It was proposed by Jimmy Carter and James Baker in their blue-ribbon commission report on elections. It essentially says: let the early states continue to go first; but instead of having one national primary, divide the country into four regions. All the states in each region would vote on the same day, and each region would vote about a month apart. Whichever region goes first in each election would rotate to the back of the line for the next election, cycling all the regions into first place (once every four elections).

The second idea would be to just give up and have a national primary.

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I have limited this article to examining declared non-frontrunners in the Democratic race, as you will have noticed. I refuse to take the bait from prominent Democrats toying with the media by playing the "will he or won't he run" game (paging Al Gore...). Tom Vilsack was briefly a candidate, but then pulled out when he realized that "favorite son of Iowa" wasn't going to raise him enough money. And Senator Russ Feingold has already disappointed me (he was my favorite) by announcing that he is not going to run. So I have examined the field as it stands. If the field changes, perhaps I'll revisit the issue.

In conclusion, I hope I have done what I can at this point to help make this a true race of ideas and positions, instead of just the usual beauty contest and money race. I think it's a shame the way elections are run in this country for our most important job, and I wish it were different (I'm a personal advocate of free television ads for all as a way to remove the influence of money from campaign politics). But in the world we live in, and with the soapbox I have here at Huffington Post, I'd like to think I have done what I could to help the "underdog" candidates (like many Americans, I'm a sucker for underdogs) get some valuable free media exposure and, by doing so, get their message out to the voters.

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So, in the hopes that their names don't completely disappear from the media's radar, I hereby present a rundown of the "second tier" of Democratic presidential candidates. The way I figure it (barring any huge surprises), this may be the last time any of these candidates are taken seriously by anybody, before they slowly disappear from the American voter's consciousness.

I think it's a shame (in general) that campaigns aren't run about ideas, but about money. So I am doing what I can to counteract that by examining ALL the Democratic candidates that the mainstream media are ignoring in the race. Of course, I have limited resources, so I have to rely on media reports and the candidates' own web pages in order to do so. I have tried to be fair, and present the campaigns as I see them after spending a bit of time looking at each one.

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