Let's see. First Charles Krauthammer, and now David Broder gets the urge to downplay the attorney-purge scandal (which still needs a snappy nickname, no?):
But a word of caution is in order. There is little here that suggests voters' opinion of Democrats is much higher than it was when they lost Congress in 1994. It seems doubtful that Democrats can help themselves a great deal just by tearing down an already discredited Republican administration with more investigations such as the current attack on the Justice Department and White House over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
Indeed. If it doesn't help the Democratic Party on election day, why bother looking into gross abuses of power within the Bush administration? Polls are all that really count. It's the high-minded Broder way! As an alternative, read Josh Marshall's post on why the attorney scandal actually matters: "What we seem to see are repeated cases in which US Attorneys were fired for not pursuing bogus prosecutions of persons of the opposite party." It's a big deal, no matter what the Pew polls seem to be telling Broder.
--Bradford Plumer