Between Howard "Quagmire" Dean being elected DNC chair, Ted "Pull Out Now" Kennedy, and Barbara "Bush / Condi Lied" Boxer, I've lost a LOT of faith in the Democrats over the past few years.   The looney Michael Moore wing of the party really feels like they're ruling the roost lock, stock & barrel.  Previous Democrat moderates like my personal fav - Joe Lieberman - are just no where to be seen / heard.

But a couple of recent statements from... of all people... Hillary Clinton are surprisingly moderate.  Against lefty conventional wisdom, here Mrs. Clinton practically sounds like a cheerleader for the new Iraq -

BAGHDAD, Iraq Feb 19, 2005 — As 55 people died in Iraq on Saturday, the holiest day on the Shiite Muslim religious calendar, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said that much of Iraq was "functioning quite well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was failing.

.."The concerted effort to disrupt the elections was an abject failure. Not one polling place was shut down or overrun," Clinton told reporters inside the U.S.-protected Green Zone, a sprawling complex of sandbagged buildings surrounded by blast walls and tanks.

..."The fact that you have these suicide bombers now, wreaking such hatred and violence while people pray, is to me, an indication of their failure," Clinton said.

..."It's regrettable that the security needs have increased so much. On the other hand, I think you can look at the country as a whole and see that there are many parts of Iraq that are functioning quite well," Clinton said.

Pretty amazing given John Kerry's talking points.  Or how about here where she flatly contradicts a scion of her party, Ted Kennedy -

WASHINGTON -- Parting company with some members of her own party, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said yesterday that setting a timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq would only give a "green light" to terrorists and undermine the country's nascent democratic government.

Speaking with reporters by telephone from Baghdad, Clinton said there were "grounds for cautious optimism" about Iraq's direction after last month's successful national elections, which she called an "important milestone" because so many voted in the face of terrorist threats.

Now, I'll freely admit that the same churn of the gut that so many of my colleagues feel when they hear "George Bush" is how I react to the name "Hillary Clinton."    There's a non-trivial chance that she's calculating / pandering towards a world view that increases her odds of getting the nod in '08 (many accuse her surprisingly vocal support of Faith based initiatives to be such a ploy).  

But you know what, I'll take it.   By hook or by crook, the Dems need more voices like this.  Whether she means it or not, her statements at least begin to recognize that the cheap & caustic rhetoric about withdrawals, failures, and the like create a valuable asset for the terrorists.