Those biennial optimists, known collectively as the Democratic Party, are daring to think they can win back control of Congress this year. Having wandered in the wilderness of minority status since 1994, when Newt Gingrich and Co. shunted them from the House that Sam Rayburn and Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. built, they are watching the Republican occupiers implode from within and making plans to reclaim their promised land. They believe their time has come.

Right. Like they’ve got a snowball’s chance in July to pull that one off. It’s going to be hard enough to overcome the advantages of incumbency, money and redistricting that favor the GOP in both the House and Senate again this year. But then there’s the political savvy of the Democrats — or should I say lack thereof. If they miss many more shots like the one President Bush left open the other night, they might as well concede the contest now.

Not until the next-to-last page of his nationally televised State of the Union address to Congress did Bush and his wordsmiths find a way to mention the near-complete loss of a major metropolitan area in the nation’s worst natural disaster ever. And even then, only 161 words out of 5,361 in his speech were devoted to the sinking of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

It was quite a contrast to the floodlighted backdrop in New Orleans’ Jackson Square last Sept. 15, when the president used another prime time moment to promise, “We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes” to rebuild the Crescent City.

Sadly for the city, neither party today seems to see any political advantage in championing its cause for recovery. Lawmakers are no longer getting much pressure from voters around the country to worry about it. So naturally Bush kept his comments to a minimum.

But the administration’s bungling of Katrina’s immediate devastation — and it’s ham-handed, half-hearted recovery program — should be a winning issue for Democrats. You would think the short shrift Bush gave it in his annual call to arms could have been an ideal moment to blast the president and his party as insensitive to domestic problems and uncaring of a city in such dire straits.

Bush’s generic, afterthought mention of the Gulf region’s plight came on the heels of the White House pulling the plug on a Louisiana congressional delegation plan for homeowner relief, and just a day before the Government Accountability Office released a report savaging the Homeland Security Department’s handling of Katrina’s devastation. The combination was ready-made ammunition to bombard the “governing” party of Washington.

But Democrats had even less to say about New Orleans as they paraded to the Statuary Hall microphones and TV talk shows in the days following the president’s speech.

NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams, one of the few mainstream journalists to notice Bush’s cursory hurricane treatment on the night of his speech, served up a truck-sized opening for counterattack while interviewing the Democrats’ rising star, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Noting that the president offered a mere “six sentences” about rebuilding the Gulf, Williams turned the mike over to Obama, who ducked and changed the subject to his preset talking points on other topics.

“I was surprised, frankly, at the reluctance to take on the subject,” Williams told me afterward.

What could national Democrats have done differently to capitalize on this obvious political opportunity?

For starters, why not have a Louisiana Democrat give the party’s televised response to Bush’s speech? Even if doing so would have tipped off the White House to beef up the President’s Katrina word count, Democrats would still have been able to spotlight the debate over the administration’s lack of a plan for homeowners.

They could easily have anticipated how Bush would step around the issue. Other than rushing him in and out of the region on occasion for earnest-looking photo sessions, the White House has struggled to keep its distance from the details of the recovery debate. For weeks the president played hide and seek with Louisiana lawmakers, and a week before the State of the Union address the White House finally voiced opposition to a homeowner relief package devised by GOP Rep. Richard H. Baker of Baton Rouge.

If nothing else, Democrats could have seized on it afterward, blasting Bush for talking so much about rebuilding Iraq while almost ignoring the effective disappearance of a great American city.

Slumbering at the switch on this one night might not threaten the Democratic Party’s prospects in November, but it suggests a pattern of dim-wittedness that is good news for Republicans.

Of course, the biggest loser is New Orleans. If both parties in Washington prefer to give it the silent treatment, this once-great city might be gone forever.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.