Alone on the stage

How to describe the way I feel after this past week? I feel like the bewildered Italian grandfather in "Moonstruck," who, sitting in a room electric with tension, mutters, "Somebody tell a joke."

As reprehensible as the behavior of certain republicans has been, voices can still be heard to complain, "Where are the democrats?"

Whether it's been a strategy by design or simply a confluence of events and Easter week, I do not know. But leaving the stage empty so this sick passion play can proceed through its own inexorable plotline has worked out well for the quiet democrats. The message of Bill Frist and Tom DeLay has been communicated to the public with extraordinary clarity, though it's not the message they were hoping to deliver.

Against the backdrop of an issue on which the American people turn out to be unusually united, and absent the normal distraction of point/counterpoint, right wing republicans are overreaching. They are grasping deep inside the private lives of ordinary people. For the first time in a long time, Americans are understanding the right wing agenda, and they do not like what they see.

The democrats don't need to say a thing.