David Broder, a longtime writer and columnist for the Washington Post, passed away today due to complications from diabetes.

David Broder, seemingly the songwriter behind that awful Kid Rock tune yesterday, comes up today with his prescription to save Barack Obama’s presidency: a third war with a Muslim country.

The Washington Post’s dwindling readership — and young journalists who look up to Broder — would do well to keep in mind that Broder’s views may not be his own. They may be purchased by a recent lobby shop, as a speaking fee.

Very Serious Journalists, like James Risen, may look down their noses at bloggers, imagining us at our keyboards in our pajamas. They can laugh, but the kind of journalism practiced by FDL is running rings around them. “He said/she said” may work for the Village media, but FDL aims to sort out who’s right and why, and then tries to make things better. If FDL’s version of journalism appeals to you, we could use a little financial support to make things even better down the road.

For many months, the Washington Post has been running as “news” front page editorials and propaganda fed by Pete Peterson deficit hawks/vultures attempting to terrorize the Beltway over the federal deficit. But the Post’s David Broder seems unaware of this misinformation when he lectures Democrats, but not Blue Dogs and Republicans, about not funding school teachers.

The Dean of the Village has spoken, and it is about what you would expect.

As I told Rick Klein and David Chalian on TopLine yesterday, if you don’t think the endangered Freshmen and Sophomores in the House are driving the car right now, think again. Remember that magic number of 39 Democratic votes needed to join with the Republican for a majority? Well, that’s how many Freshmen and Sophomores were willing to ban together in the “oust Rangel” effort — rather than have the issue hung around their necks as a millstone in 2010:

Joe Crowley, an ally of Rangel who has also played a leadership role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is leading the whip count efforts on Rangel, acting as a go-between between the vulnerable freshman and sophomore Democrats, on the one hand, and Rangel and Democratic leadership on the other.

They were willing to buck leadership to oust the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to keep their seats.

Think about that.

It is reassuring to learn that the President is both listening to serious policy advisers while taking advantage of experienced, successful political advisers to get those policies enacted. So they must be succeeding, right?

After 9-11, columnists from across the political spectrum were writing defenses of torture, calls for reducing liberty to achieve security and exhortations for the bombing of any number of Muslim nations. Today, a few of those still crop up every now and again. But reliable establishment weathervane David Brooks offers something different in the wake of the failed underpants bombing, shocking in its reasonableness, that could represent a shift away from the hysteria and bedwetting that often reveals itself during any discussion of terrorism.

David Broder just cannot understand how Democrats cannot be as unquestioning as Republicans.