The American Spectator

Terry McAuliffe , badly burned by his 2004 Democratic primary plan to compress the election calendar, thereby narrowing a window by which the Democratic electorate could get to know the party’s candidates, is once again forming a commission to re-evaluate the nominating calendar for 2008. /p>

McAuliffe, according to DNC sources, has selected the members of the group and will announce them on Friday. The announcement is yet another embarrassing chapter in one of the darkest periods for the Democratic National Committee.

McAuliffe touted the 2004 plan as the best way for Democrats to select the strongest candidate in the least amount of time, ensuring that the winner would emerge with plenty of time to fundraise and perhaps with the makings of a war chest already in hand due to the short primary calendar.

Instead, they ended up with a flawed candidate who won the primary based less on his own campaign’s successes than on the failings of his competitors and the fickleness of the mainstream media.

McAuliffe, who spent months ridiculing the unemployment figures of the Bush Administration, now faces going down as one of the worst electoral leaders in DNC history, having created countless new jobs for Republicans. Under his watch Republicans regained full majority control of the Senate by a 10-seat margin, widened their majority in the House, and won the White House twice. All of it nice work Democrats couldn’t get.

p> QUITE CONTRARY br> U.S. Civil Rights Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry continues to insist that her term runs through January 2005. The White House, and just about every other sensible person in Washington, believes that the term expired on Sunday, December 5. /p>

At press time, Berry was refusing to leave her post at the civil rights offices, sending out Democratic House member John Conyers to crib from talking points Berry supporters had provided his office.

Conyers apparently knows so little about the situation that CNN caught him on camera on Tuesday fiddling with his glasses while trying to read the talking points on air.