How hard can it be?

Are the Democrats really afraid to make an issue of warrantless spying? Robert Scheer just wrote in You've Got Jail! San Francisco Chronicle 01/25/06:

The bottom line is these guys in the Bush administration are obsessed voyeurs, poking their noses into everyone's business, whether the excuse is squelching pornography or preventing terrorism. They simply do not believe civil liberties and privacy are important. It is an executive branch power trip, and completely anti-democratic.

Is this really so hard a case to make? I mean, hardcore authoritarian-minded Republicans who need Dear Leader Bush to tell them what to do and what to think won't vote for Democrats anyway. But apart from them, why would anyone think expecting the President to obey the law when it comes to spying on Americans is somehow being "soft on terrorism"? When the feds are wasting their time sorting through mounds of useless data, they are taking away time from doing reasonably-focused work on people for whom there is probably cause to think they may be involved in illegal activity.

The President should obey the law. The government should follow the law when it spies on American citizens. How is that a problem for the Democrats to make that argument?