Let's kick back this weekend and have an RK Beer!

...at Janet Oleszek's announcement party! :)

As I said in the earlier post by Josh about the apparent decline in national support for repubs: "...I think the rising generation will be less conservative as a whole, despite how carefully they were raised. Too many of them have gay friends, too many know a wounded but ignored veteran not to have questions, and it is up to the local Democratic committees to pick off the crumbling edges of the hard core constituencies voter by voter." 

That means, to my way of thinking, that the republican leadership in fading red states (like Ed Gillespie and Tom Davis here in Virginia) will exert themselves even more to smear and degrade any Democrat, and to improve their own efforts at both getting out their reliable core voters on election day, and at really rough voter suppression of any likely Democratic voters... up to and includig monkeying with voting machines. That's just the modus operandi of Rove-generation republican operatives. Cornered rats fight hardest and dirtiest, remember.  Now is no time to let up on the progressive grassroots efforts, or to naively expect the repubs to leave power easily, playing the game honorably.

(Then there is the undoubted power of gerrymandered districts in upholding incumbency. In other words, no Democratic win will come easily).

Forewarned is forearmed, I hope.

Is that the Republicans are losing voters and we're hardly gaining any.

The Democratic Party is still a party without a clear platform, agenda, or mission.

People don't know what we stand for and they're unhappy, but we're not necessarily locking them in.  We have an opporuntity and we should seize it.

We need a leader to bring the party together.

Yes, it is true that the we are not winning automatic votes from people leaving the Republican Party. But we must remember that for the last 20 years, the conservative noise machine has turn "Democrats" and "liberals" into curse words.  They describe us as horrible monsters that are out there to get them.

None of this is true, of course. But it is going to take a while for them to move away from their negative prejudices towards liberals and Democrats.

What we can do is to show how nice we really are when dealing with conservatives on a personal basis.

I agree: we cannot run a campaign or recruit new voters permanently without an overriding Democratic story (or philosophy) that provdes a viable alternative to that of the Republicans, rather than simply being anti-Bush or sneering at republican hypocrisy--- as I also wrote in response to Josh's post on this same Pew survey:

"...That means the successful presentation of a Democratic philosophy (or story) of governance and public life which counters the dominant Republican philosophy of jungle capitalism, social Darwinism, authoritarian leadership, and Life as a Struggle with the affluent being self-evidently beloved of God and obviously superior to the rest of humanity. That particular philosophy has been termed Hobbesian, and is comfortably historic so folks are used to it.  The Democrats (like our Founding Fathers) had a viewpoint based more on Locke than Hobbes, and it still, after 230 years, represents change and requires of people that they behave like adults, not children, in their political life."

It also means growing up beyond the militaristic credo and tradition of the South (without being pacifist), and dumping the closet bigotry melded into the republican world view (without surrendering our Western traditions).

we do well when the republicans are a healthy group with lots of kiil aid drinkers.

I suspect, as the G.O.P.  dies, we will die a little too.....

that graph...the Democratic line is above the Republican line for most of the time period but the Republicans (arguably) held much more power. 

Clinton was a two term president during that time which reflects accurately.

But what about the "Contract with America"?  And the fact that Republicans held national legislative power from 1994 until just recently?  And the first pseudo-election and re-election of Bush?

There's a disconnect between this survey data and the election results.  Perhaps many of those who provided their opinions for the surveys didn't vote?

What's not on the graph are the consistent 11-15% of people who identify with neither party.  This missing middle is the key to elections, since the self-identified Democrats and Republicans presumably vote with their party, but are not numerous enough to swing the election (unless they hit 51%).

...if you're looking at it as a diving rod to tell you what you WANT to believe rather than what is REAL.  I would strongly suggest that Iraq is the primary factor in this movement and reading more than that into it is extremely dangerous.

especially if Iraq is still a quagmire at that point.