So this month has been ridiculously busy, and I've been sitting on a bunch of Toadies clips from late July that hopefully will be coming out imminently. But right now I'm watching Unity Night at the DNC, and for fuck's sake, I'm seeing another opportunity get pissed away by party leaders that simply refuse to understand the reality before them. This night at the convention is being billed as all about Hillary Clinton's speech, but the unity that's really being sold by the likes of Mark Warner, Deval Patrick and Brian Schweitzer is much darker.

There are two words that are not being used nearly enough by any of tonight's speakers. The first is "Democrats" and the second is "Republicans." Speaker after speaker is going hard after McCain as an individual, and tying him to George Bush, and talking about "those folks in the White House" -- and hey, did you hear that McCain has a lot of houses or something? -- without even alluding to the fact that these people represent an entire party that holds the same or worse views on all the issues being discussed tonight. Without mentioning that a vote for a reasonable Republican House candidate is a vote for John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Without mentioning that the Senate remains the biggest hurdle to making real, effective change -- in fact, the closest to any such mention was Barbara Boxer telling us that "60 is the new 50," though that's only true as long as Harry Reid feels that Republicans don't need to actually do their filibusters.

Right now Schweitzer is telling various delegations to "stand up," which I think is meant to be a big, dramatic moment, and he's just made one of the night's few (and fairly oblique) references to Iraq, but the message of this night and the convention so far is this: Obama is change, and he apparently doesn't need any help. But the fact is, your national GOP will keep on keepin' on whether Obama or McCain becomes president in January. Bipartisanship, particularly on the campaign trail, is simply not a luxury one party can afford when the other isn't on board. Seeing this happen, again, now, is like a slow-motion daydream: We did this in 1992. To be honest, the results that were borne out in Bill Clinton's first term were probably my most important formative experience with politics, but it was hardly the only example of the modern Democratic Party getting played and torn apart.

Hillary just came out and announced herself as a "proud Democrat"; her second paragraph warned against allowing "another Republican" into the White House. It'd be great if some of her people could take the DNCC people aside and tell them about what happens when you don't party-build.