Democrats play hardball

Kos gives us the back story, via the Louisiana Fax Weekly, of Rep. Rodney Alexander's flirtation last week with the idea of switching parties. The short and simple of it is that the Democratic leadership threatened him with a big stick while holding out a nice carrot and Alexander took the carrot. The encouraging thing about this story is that it demonstrates that Democrats are learning that they can play hardball when they need to.

Also, Kos has the story on how Pelosi and the DSCC are planning to run against moderate Republicans by painting them with the extremism of Tom DeLay. I agree with Kos' question why it took them so long to figure this out. Better late than never of course.