Writing in Newsweek, Kos urges Democrats to run against Bush's record of dismal failure:

Bush can boast of an unwinnable quagmire in Iraq, a decimated housing market, economic instability and a collapsing dollar, a dysfunctional health-care system, a still-devastated Gulf Coast, a wealth gap of a scope unseen since the Great Depression and a pervasive and disturbing image of America as a hapless, blundering giant, rather than a beacon of freedom and morality in the world.

But Kos wrongly blames Republican anti-government philosophy for these problems:

In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." While the quip has provided Republicans with a cheap slogan for two decades, the philosophy behind it is beginning to box them in. If they govern effectively, they invalidate their own antigovernment ideology. And when you elect people who believe that government won't work, you shouldn't be surprised when government stops working.

The monumental failures of the Bush era are not the result of Republican hatred of government-- they are the result of the systematic Republican plan to Rob America Blind.

When Bush stole the White House, he inherited a budget surplus that was projected to reach $5 trillion if he did nothing. Given the long-term problems facing Social Security and Medicare, Bush could have followed Al Gore's fiscally conservative plan to lock away that surplus. Instead he demanded - and Republicans passed, with the obscene and unforgivable blessing of Alan Greenspan - nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts for America's corporate and financial elite.

And that was just the start of the Bush-Republican plan to Rob America Blind.

For most Americans, the attack of 9/11 came as a psychological shock. But for Bush and Cheney, the attack created a previously unimaginable opportunity to enrich America's defense industries - first in Afghanistan and shortly afterwards in Iraq. (In fact Tony Blair had to struggle to keep Bush focused on Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 because Bush was so eager for a much bigger war against Iraq.)

Like Bush's tax cuts, Bush's wars have transferred massive amounts of tax dollars - $.5 trillion and counting - from wage-earning Americans (and their children and grandchilren) to the military-industrial complex, led by Cheney's cronies at Halliburton. And that's just the direct cost of the war; the indirect cost of Bush's Middle East catastrophe has been the massive increase in the global price of oil, which has massively enriched Bush and Cheney's cronies in the oil and gas industry.

And so it goes for virtually every item on Kos's list. Today's "decimated housing market" is the result of unregulated fraudulent mortagage practices that drove housing prices into the stratosphere and saddled unsophisticated home buyers with impossible debts. Banks, mortage brokers, and financial speculators got rich while wage-earning families got robbed. (The appalling 2005 bankruptcy bill was crucial to making it impossible for borrowers to re-negotiate their debts.)

The Gulf Coast is still devastated because insurance companies fraudulently refuse to compensate homeowners, and the Bush administration refuses to make them. So insurance companies are getting rich while wage-earning families are getting robbed.

The health care system is dysfunctional because insurance companies and for-profit hospitals and nursing homes are robbing both patients and providers at the same time, while the federal government does nothing to stop them. So once again insurance companies are getting rich while wage-earning families are getting robbed.

Thus what Kos calls the "wealth gap of a scope unseen since the Great Depression" is no accident or mere happenstance - it is the direct result of Republican policies that have deliberately transferred massive amounts of wealth from working families to the corporate and financial elite.

And these Republican policies won't leave Washington when Bush and Cheney go back to Texas. Every Republican candidate is running on a platform to continue the Bush-Cheney policies of permanent economic (and military) war on working families and permanent tax cuts for the financial elite.

So why aren't any of the Democratic presidential candidates - or even the blogs - hammering home the message that Republicans are Robbing America Blind?

Obama's failure to develop this message is particularly conspicuous, since African-Americans have been robbed the worst - whether they live on the devastated Gulf Coast or pay higher proportional taxes or suffer with unaffordable health care or send their children to die for Big Oil in Iraq. But Obama's silence can be simply explained by his fierce advocacy of non-confrontational politics.

If any candidate could - and should - adopt this message, it's John Edwards, whose core message has been denouncing both poverty and corruption. These two enormous problems are not separate and distinct - they are two of the three legs of the Republican triangle, the third of which is stolen wealth. Unfortunately Edwards has been trying to pin the corruption rap on Hillary Clinton for refusing to challenge Washington's K Street elite - rather than on George Bush and the Republicans, who gave the K Street elite absolute power over the entire federal government.

In their hearts, working Americans know Bush and the Republicans have been robbing them blind to enrich the corporate and financial elite - but they don't know this in their heads because no Democrat is making this clear.

If a Democratic Presidential candidate helps working Americans connect the dots, that candidate will win in a landslide.

Democrats, are you listening?

Update 1: Jane Hamsher highlights Bush's crony capitalism in her book chat with Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine:

In 2003, Klein reports that the Bush administration doled out $327 billion in private contracts, “nearly 40 cents of every discretionary dollar.” Given the fact that so many of these contracts have been awarded in non-competitive situations with incentives built in to spend as much as possible with virtually no penalties or oversight, those who want to chide Klein for not raising her pom-poms higher and acknowledging the benefits of free market capitalism would do better to note that none of the inherent checks and balances of a truly “free market” are in place here. Rigging the system to give as much money away to your buddies as possible — to the exclusion of those who could possibly do better for cheaper — would more accurately be described as “organized crime.”

While I find Klein's "Shock Theory" intriguing, she - like Kos - is emphasizing the role of ideology. While Kos cites Reagan's contempt for government, Klein cites Milton Friedman and the Chicago School's desire to exploit economic shocks. Exploiting shocks is one way to Rob America Blind, but it's hardly the only weapon in the Republican arsenal - as the $2 trillion tax giveaway in 2001 made abundantly clear.

Update 2: Robert Borosage is right to urge Democrats to propose bold economic policies:

Rather than reducing deficits, Democrats would be better advised to argue for a bold investment agenda — on conservation and alternative energy, and on rebuilding our decrepit infrastructure, from schools to bridges — that would create jobs here in America and kick-start the economy. Voters are looking for someone who will lead. It is bizarre that the presidential candidates essentially ducked, while Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed to get big mortgage brokers to delay interest rate resets on mortgages that threaten another million homeowners with foreclosure.

But the problem is the Corporate Media (and many voters) tune out predictable party rhetoric on economic policy, whether it is Republicans proposing tax cuts or Democrats proposing infrastructure investments. If Democrats want to get attention for their economic policies, they need to use heavy political artillery and attack Republicans for Robbing America Blind.