Very good news today, coming from the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Mr. Cleaver is concerned about the tone of politics these days, and since it’s unfair for the Republicans to charge the President with waging a war on religion — because he isn’t — it’s only fair that Democrats stop claiming the Tea-Party GOP is waging a war against women — even though they are.

Welcome to a parallel universe. A casual onlooker might mistake it for our own. The same people run their Congress and their Democratic National Committee. The same election results toss out half the Republicans in 2006 and the rest in 2008. But in our universe, those events were recorded as the triumphs of smart folks like Rahm Emanuel and David Plouffe, winning despite the ruinous work of the DNC. In Herding Donkeys, Ari Berman reports from a place where Howard Dean deserves the credit.

The inconclusive results of Super Tuesday, and the flat unwillingness of any of the lesser Republican candidates to vacate the field, have left us in a situation that would have been unthinkable even six months ago: Republican gasbags have grudgingly begun admitting that they don’t expect to achieve Mitch McConnell’s only goal, winning “back” the Presidency in 2012.

Some bad news out of Maine: Chellie Pingree, the progressive member of Congress who considered running for Senate after Olympia Snowe retired, backed out of the race today. The presence of independent former Governor Angus King in the race was enough to get her to drop her plans. That leaves progressive-leaning Dems without a candidate in a state they might have won.

Dennis Kucinich, the eight-term Congressman from Cleveland, lost his bid for re-election last night in a primary to fellow Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Ohio lost two seats after the 2010 reapportionment and eliminated a seat in the Cleveland region, giving Kucinich few options. He decided to try to defeat Kaptur largely on her turf, and came up well short, 56-40. Kaptur is a reliably liberal and even populist vote on economic issues, but she’s also anti-choice and was a major thorn in the party’s side on the Stupak amendment.

Concerning membership and sustaining progressive support, the Democracy Alliance’s decision to pull funding from may progressive groups is an example of the corruption of that process, and how worthiness of support can get conflated with how well you regurgitate the Party’s talking points. The money is being drained from progressive organizations that do good work, and it’s being channeled almost wholly to party-building organizations or groups that support that objective or the Administration.

If we see military action in Iran in the next several months, you can trace part of the reason back to a redistricting quirk in the San Fernando Valley and a debate between Democratic House Representatives Howard Berman and Brad Sherman, redrawn into the same district. They spend most of the night trying to be the most belligerent to Iran and most solicitous to whatever Israel wants.

The Senate map for 2012 is just inherently awful for Democrats. They have to defend incumbents in 23 states, while the Republicans only need to defend 10. Even if there is a relatively strong national Democratic turnout in 2012, the party will likely still have a net loss of Senate seats. With that factored in, though, the prospects for the Democrats at least narrowly holding on to the chamber have been improving.

On the front of Politico is an article about how the big bipartisan deals that used to be relatively common in Congress now appear to be a thing of the past. Good bye and good riddance. At their core these bipartisan deals were and are about destroying basic democratic accountability.

Politicians and pundits blather about ideological divides. How can that be when the Democrats have no ideology, unless you count “We suck less”.