MORE ON THE FUTURE

I guarantee that if, say, a centerist such as Evan Bayh is the Democratic nominee in '08, he will be called a liberal and a flip-flopper, tarred with the same brush Kerry was. Whether that dog will hunt in West Virginia and Missouri, I don't know, but I am not optimistic. We need a counterattack, some sort of "they're so right they're wrong" rhetoric to paint the entire party as wild-eyed radicals bent on enriching their buddies and killing our kids in a way that will cause the old guard fiscal conservatives, small-government advocates, and a lot of the jus' folks to worry about the fate of the nation in this party's hands the way almost half the country does. Things will get worse for most people in this nation, but if they don't hold the Republican party accountable, nothing will change.

I didn't vote for Dean this year, but I love the idea of him as DNC chair, where he can use his invective to keep the Republicans on the defensive...and build grassroots efforts the way his Democracy For America organization has tried in the months since he left the presidential race. He's taking plays out of the playbook the Republicans developed fifteen years ago, and that helped them take the House and a lot of state legislatures...we're overdue to get the pendulum swinging back.