There are just too many things going on for them to sit on the sidelines while people wonder where the Dems are. They need to start framing the issues and lay down the framework for 2006.
There is all of this going on:
CIA Leak Case
Delay
Iraq War
Frist
Abu Gharib Photos/Videos
Coingate
Duke Cunningham
Schwartzenegger
No-Bid Contracts
Abramoff
Blunt's links to lobbyists
FEMA disaster
the Downing Street minutes
...and what ever happened to the second part of that Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq that will detail "the White House’s pressure and manipulation of evidence"
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/05/23/downing-street-memo-gathers-more-steam/Meet the Press - April 10, 2005:
MR. RUSSERT: But as you well know, when your report came out there were many people who said that you were not going forward with phase two about exaggerations and shaping because you didn't want to involve yourself, influence the election. You made a firm commitment to do just that.
SEN. ROBERTS: Yeah, we're going to do that, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: The United States went to war...
SEN. ROBERTS: Tim, we're going to do that. I will bring it here. We'll have the 50 statements. We'll have the intelligence. We can match it up and you can do it with members of Congress, who are very, very critical, who made the same things, and you can say, "OK," and you'll say "Well, Pat, it just looks to me that the intelligence was wrong and that's exactly why they said what they said." Now, I don't know what that accomplishes over the long term. I'm perfectly willing to do it, and that's what we agreed to do, and that door is still open. And I don't want to quarrel with Jay, because we both agreed that we would get it done. But we do have--we have Ambassador Negroponte next week, we have General Mike Hayden next week. We have other hot-spot hearings or other things going on that are very important. So we will get it done, but it seems to me that we ought to put it in some priority of order, and after we do get it done I think everybody's going to scratch their head and say, "OK, well, that's fine. You know, let's go to the real issue."
MR. RUSSERT: Will it be done?
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I hope so. Pat and I have agreed to do it. We've shaken hands on it, and we agreed to do it after the elections so it wouldn't be any sort of sense of a political attack. I mean that was my view; it shouldn't be viewed that way. I view use of intelligence, as I said at the beginning of this section, as absolutely critical. I don't care how good or bad an intelligence product you have. If policy-makers are going to misuse or shape or hype or change or try to pressure that intelligence into being something different, they're the ones who decide, the policy-makers, whether we'll go to war or not, not the intelligence community. This is at the core of what we have to be prepared for, to do correctly for the next 30 or 40 years during the war on terrorism.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7452510/