Democrats in Congress End Year with a Whimper

The first Democratic congress in a dozen years has just gone home after ending the first year of a two-year session, with polls showing a historic low in public esteem. What about all those promises during the 2006 campaign? In the past year, congress passed the first increase in fuel-efficiency standards in a generation and the first minimum-wage increase in a decade. But what about earmarks? What about bipartisanship? What about ending the war in Iraq? Chris Lehmann is editor at Congressional Quarterly and Washington correspondent for the New York Observer.