Don't forget that the "culture of corruption" was pretty much DOA even before the William Jefferson freezer fiasco.
It's pretty easy to diagnose the Democrats' problem: they are all stuck in the 1970s. They think Iraq is Vietnam, Bush is Nixon, and the economy stinks because General Motors is in trouble. That era was the high-water mark for liberals and they have been pining away for it ever since. The liberal media echo chamber continues to spout the antiwar, corrupt-government, class-warfare rhetoric of the 70s. But we aren't in the 70s anymore. Listening to them is like listening to a 45 record in the era of the iPod.