So listless is the body politic, apparently, that falling asleep during this morning’s Stephanopoulis edition was more of a danger than choking on my outrage. Or at least the right side of that body; the center left is anything but listless, but the SCLM is inured to influence from actual liberals.

Joe Biden was the featured guest, there to do battle against the latest model of Republican attack on Democrats - as Nazi appeasers. George Stephanopoulis offered three samples for Biden to react to, from Cheney, Bush himself, and Condi Rice.

Biden did just fine, with a minimum of his usual “me, myself, and I” tendencies.

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Our Senator started by rejecting the notion George drew from Republican rhetoric that we face a world-wide, unified threat from the likes of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, et al, that compares in seriousness to that of Nazi Germany in the thirties.

If there weren’t a single Jihadi left anywhere in the world, Biden pointed out, we would still have major problems with North Korea, Iran, etc., and no, Biden doesn’t view all of the named movements as a unified threat.

Asked about Rumsfeld use of the “A as in Neville Chamberlain” word, Biden treated the whole discussion as just plain silly; asked what lessons from World Wars 1 and 2 should we apply to our current conflict, Biden found only one comparison of note - that quite soon the current unpleasantness in Iraq will have lasted as long as the Second World War.

Biden pointed out that Rumsfeld had once asked the right questions, in one of his “snowflake” memos directed to his staff, written early in the occupation - was the occupation creating more jihadis around the world than were being taken out in Iraq; was Iraq making it harder to win a psychological intellectual struggle against Islamic fundamentalism - but having asked those key questions, Rumsfeld has remained oblivious to the clear answers - no, and yes.

Biden managed, despite the emphasis in George’s questions on politics over policy, to enunciate a clear Democratic message on Iraq; leaving rhetoric aside, where is this President’s plan to win in Iraq? No one believes that what is going wrong there can be solved militarily - the problems are political in nature, and require political solutions. Where is Bush’s plan for getting the Sunni’s to buy into a genuine political settlement, to decommission the sectarian militias, to establish some kind of minimum daily security for the people of Iraq, and to give any of them a sense that they have a future.

Biden didn’t get an opportunity to present any specific plan of his own, but he gave the strong impression that there were policy options that had a chance to work, if the Bush administration could get beyond “staying the course” which has got us into this mess.

Biden also made the connection effectively between having run out of ideas and Rumsfeld’s speech in front of the American legion. And yes, the Secretary of Defense knew exactly what he was doing, he was trying to divide the American people. Not going to work, not this time, Biden assured George. Why not? Because Americans aren’t dumb. And yes, Biden will undoubtedly vote for Boxer’s no confidence resolution if it gets to the Senate floor, but Biden was under no illusions that such a resolution would solve anything on the ground in Iraq.

Biden put a bit too emphasis on Rumsfeld’s responsibility for our non-policy policies in Iraq; does anyone believe that Bush will choose someone who will challenge the current policies; is there anyone in this administration who would know how to implement policies that aren’t military in nature, especially in view of the way they’ve managed to undermine a military structure far more professional and clued in than they are?

Still, when Biden concentrates on our place in the world and what kind of relationships we want to have with other countries, how we ought to want to be thought of by our enemies as much as our friends, he’s a compelling voice. Yes, he agreed, we face a world-wide challenge, in the sense that how nations around the world fare affects us, but that challenge is not primarily a military one, and we are failing to meet it, because we are less trusted by our allies and less respected by just about everyone. We’ve become reactive, we’re letting “the terrorists” set our agenda, as if they were 20 feet high. They aren’t. Our policies toward the world, hemmed in by ideology, are almost entirely rhetorical, except where we’ve acted and created catastrophe.

Biden’s strongest moment - using the example of Lebanon, where we failed to take advantage of Syria being driven out by the Cedar revolution, which anyone should have been able to predict would leave a vacuum - and what did we do, other than the Bush administration trying to link our presence in Iraq to the spread of democracy in Lebanon? Precisely nothing. What do we see now? Hizbullah becoming the savior of Lebanon, and not only among the Shia.

In case you were wondering - yes, Biden is in the hunt for the Democratic nomination for President; in his discussion of his 40 trips to Iowa, he made one interesting observation and one disheartening one. Let’s start with the latter:

Biden insisted that in dealing with national security, attacking Bush isn’t what people want to hear, they want to hear what Democrats will do. Hey, Joe, why the hell can’t we do both, Joe? The interesting one - his meetings were with activist socially-aware Democrats, but Joe didn’t get one single question about domestic policy; all anyone wanted to talk about was national security and out place, as a nation, in the world.

Give George S. credit; someone in the national media finally paid some attention to the Rhode Island Republican primary for Senator, which, Senator Chafee may well lose to Steve Laffey, a rock-rib rightwing Republican mayor.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the segment was the way in which George did not treat the race in the way everyone in the national media treated Lamont’s defeat of Lieberman. Yes, George did point out that despite Chafee’s moderate-to-the-point-of-being-a-Democrat voting record, the national Republican party is campaigning for him, and against Laffey, whom the pros think can’t win a general election in R.I.

There was no discussion, however, of the ways in which this grassroots candidate of the right is maintaining the radical rightward drift of the Republican party; I guess it’s an understandable corollary of the fact that the mainstream Republican party has already moved so far right. Still, it might have been nice if George had managed to note that if Chafee is a centrist, then so is Ned Lamont, and hmmm, what might that make Lieberman?

I know, silly me.

As to Laffey, he is a dynamo, verbally quick, shades of Newt Gingrich, without the professorial tinge, and a bit more grounded in an actual community, having been a mayor; he’s clearly running a rightwing populist campaign. And you know what? Not only do I think he might well win the primary; I’m not sure he can’t win the general.

The round table was more like a triangle - George Will, David Brooks, and E.J. Dionne; well, it’s still summertime in D.C.

Both Will and Dionne thought the administration’s attempts to portray themselves of Chruchillian and the Democrats as appeasers was going nowhere. Brooks tried a straddle; yes, such rhetoric, if used to deflect criticism of actual policies of the administration, is bad, but when you switch perspectives to a longer one, that defines the nature of the enemy, the administration is right. Just one more example of David Brooks place among the most dedicated ideologues of the American right. And Brooks held out for the possibility that the administration’s new national security offensive against the Democrats might yet work a third time. As to Rumsfeld, Brooks thought that the more attacks on him there are, the safer he is.

Brooks just can’t help making excuses for this administration. He can’t deny there are problems in Iraq, not to mention the rest of the world, but its not because Bush et al don’t know what they are doing, no, it’s because they haven’t had time, having to deal with the day to day emergencies, to take the kind of step back that “Arnold” took in California, and then to change what needed to be changed.

So, what about those November elections? Will the Democrats blow it? No, question, the polls show Democrats riding a wave of wanted change.

Will was skeptical; institutional limitations wrought by gerrymandering might stop Democrats, which would be their fault, since they’ve participated in gerrymandering to protect incumbents. Brooks noted that all the energy in the Democratic party is on the left, which he identified as the defeatist wing, and that might make them unsuccessful in November, or if not, then unsuccessful after having won, because no one will like what they do. Or some such observation.

E.J. was pretty good, immediately pouncing on Brook’s ’leftist’ labeling. The energy among Democrats isn’t leftist, it’s partisan, an active desire to defeat the current definition of the Republican party by seeing Democrats win.

George S. delighted in hearing what the two righties thought Democrats might do wrong. Brooks brought up running against Wallmart, and George W. was delighted to join in the fun. What nonsense! What a perfect example of liberal elitism. People love Wallmart. Gerorge S showed a visual of a poll in which Wallmart scored a 60 percent approval rating.

E.J. tried to point out that what Democrats were trying to frame as an issue goes way beyond Wallmart, and that is the health of an economy and a society in which a majority of workers can no longer make a middle class living, and are being told they better get used to it, along with not having any medical coverage, maybe never owning their own home, and what about college for the kids?

Brooks and George W. were deaf to this argument. What was interesting was their assumption that even low-income American are alienated from such arguments, and will continue to be. True, if Brooks and Will have their way - which is to emphasize that when Democrats bring up such issues, they are actually demeaning their fellow low-end of the income pole Americans. I was dying for E.J. to ask if Brooks or either of the Georges feel demeaned when their agents and lawyers negotiate for even higher paying contracts with better benefits?

George W. had a telling incident to relate, although it said something of which he was determined to remain unaware. In Chicago this week, George went to a newly opened Wallmart servicing the south side, minorities such-like folks, and Wallmart, the all-time creator of jobs in the history of the universe, noted Mr. Will, was taking applications for 300 jobs, for which 25,000 people applied.

E.J. got it immediately; hey, George, that’s because of a lousy economy for everyone but the top ten percent of earners. Why do they apply for low-paying jobs with no benefits? Yes, that’s the key question isn’t it. Brooks contented himself with noting that people understand this is a global economy - he didn’t quite say, “get used to it,” but that’s what he meant.

I think Democrats and Ezra Klein are absolutely right about the importance of Wallmart as an issue, but based on this morning’s discussion, we have a way to go to clarify what we mean, in the most specific terms, when we complain about Wallmart.