Mr. Bowers serves up a mixed metaphor:

The $810 billion Wall Street Bailout is a loadstone [sic] hanging around the neck of the Democratic Party.

Of course, Mr. Bowers wrote "loadstone" when he meant "millstone."

Here's a definition of "loadstone" (or "lodestone"):

A lodestone or loadstone is a naturally magnetized piece of the mineral magnetite. They are naturally occurring magnets, and attract pieces of iron. Ancient people first discovered the property of magnetism in lodestone. Pieces of lodestone, suspended so they could turn, were the first magnetic compasses, and their importance to early navigation is indicated by the name lodestone, which in Middle English means 'course stone' or 'leading stone'.

But if Mr. Bowers wants to keep making his way in Obama's FKDP, he'd better get to know his bible better. The word Mr. Bowers wants is not loadstone, but millstone. Here's the reference (Luke 17:1-2):

1 Then said He unto His disciples, "It is impossible but that offenses will come, but woe unto him through whom they come! 2 It were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to fall.

Now, I think that what Bowers means -- metaphorically speaking -- is that the Dem leadership was the occasion of sin ["offenses "] in voters ["these little ones"], because by passing TARP, they caused people who might otherwise have been converted to the Democratic party to turn away from it (cf. Matthew 12:31-32 on the unforgivable sin). He writes:

The $810 billion Wall Street Bailout is a loadstone hanging around the neck of the Democratic Party. It thwarting what should have been a realigning moment in American electoral politics. Upon regaining control over the federal government following the 2008 elections, Democrats should have been able to cement their image as, in the words of Al Gore, "the people versus the powerful." Instead, we have become complicit in perpetuating a federal government that is more responsive to the wishes of powerful moneyed interests at the expense of the vast majority of Americans. And so, our chances at realignment are slipping away.

(Nobody could have predicted...)

But it's possible to put a millstone around somebody's neck, because a millstone has a hole in the middle (it's the Biblical equivalent of the South African necklace, I imagine). A loadstone has no hole in the middle, so it can't go around anyone's neck.

So what could Mr. Bowers have meant? I think his slip, like many such slips -- Will Doctor Freud please pick up the white courtesy phone? -- shows some of his unconscious fears. Because a loadstone is all about navigation, direction, "leading", it's a symbol of the direction that the Dem leadership has chosen: towards servicing Big Money 24/7. His post, intellectually, is all about this fear. What Bowers' slip shows, I think, is that the same fear lurks deep in his unconscious as well. An interesting data point. Incremental progress. The breaking down of denial. It's all good!