There's an opening to tag Republicans with responsibility for the S&P downgrade, and national Democrats clearly sense this. Today I've received two nearly identical press releases, both building off S&P's explanation that it lowered the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ in part because of the "the majority of Republicans in Congress [who] continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues."

Hence, according to one of the Democratic releases, "Representative Dave Reichert was one of those Republicans unwilling to end subsidies for Big Oil or tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires in order get our fiscal house in order. The Reichert-Boehner downgrade of American credit could raise interest rates for consumers—raising costs of credit cards, car loans, and mortgages."

And, according to another, "Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler’s reckless protection of tax breaks for Big Oil and billionaires cost our nation it’s AAA credit rating and could hit the American people with higher interest rates."

But, for those keeping score at home, we now have the Tea Party / Reichert / Herrera / Boehner Downgrade.

You see what I'm getting at. This label is getting a bit long and unwieldy. Sure, maybe there's a value to the buckshot approach to blame-casting. And maybe national Dems would say the press releases I'm getting don't reflect a buckshot approach, but a rather micro-targeted approach that hits every Republican in the district he or she represents.

Still, it would be much more powerful—especially at a time when everyone's fretting about whether Dems can find a useful villain—for Dems to find just one useful villain (hint: Herrera and Reichert are probably too small potatoes) and then, all at once, use that villain, loudly.