"...a questionable concept with the Hispanic vote increasingly up for grabs."

uhh, they probably shouldn't take the "Black bloc" for granted anymore, either... Young black voters are supposedly moving to "independent"...

I don't think the consultants are going to convince Miss Havisham she has a problem.

That list of Democrat election myths is woefully incomplete. Here are a few more:

- Al Gore won Florida

- John Kerry won Ohio

- Griping in 2005 about Florida and Ohio will somehow change the past or affect the future

- It's okay for a Democrat governor in Washington state to cheat, because we know the Republicans would have done it, if they had the chance

- It's okay to exchange crack for votes

- It's okay to shoot at Republican Party headquarters in order to get Dems elected

- It's okay to slash the tires of a Republican "get out the vote" van

- Using terms like "right to marry" instead of "gay marriage" will fool the yokels into voting for you

- Regardless of the outcome of elections, Democrats deserve a wishy-washy coin-flipper in Sandra Day O'Connor's seat, because everyone knows John Kerry would have nominated a moderate

- Elections are okay for white people, but Arabs prefer brutal totalitarianism. It's part of the culture gap that redneck conservatives wouldn't understand

And remember in BLEAK HOUSE how MR KROOK went up in a puff of smoke POOF he was nothing

I have a couple of other myths the Democrats need to unlearn:

1. Bush stole the 2000 election away from Al Gore.
1a SCOTUS helped him do this.

2. Bush managed to steal the 2004 election, also.
2a. Exit polls are 100% accurate, all the time.

Myth 1 is a lot more persistent than myth 2...

The belief Democrats can succeed politically if they simply learn to talk more effectively about their positions.

When?

Immediately following the 2004 election, the morons in the DNC, DLC, etc., announced their plan to make the public aware that the Democrats were the real "Moral Values" party (they announced this many times publicly, as if they were sure people would praise them for trying to come up with a "plan" to capture the whole "moral values" demographic). They would do it soon, they just needed to come up with a strategy - you know, some way to verbalize it, like, uh, maybe, uh, let's see..."Oh, I know! We could say that now wanting people to be poor is a moral value."

It's been almost a year since they began working on this, and what does Howard Dean say on Hardball yesterday?

No, not what he said about "Hiding the salami"!

He said,"We need to talk about the moral values of making sure that kids don‘t go to bed hungry or cold at night."

I guess they never really got that message hammered out.

"Iraq is a quagmire"

Michael Yon's latest dispatch(Soldiers, Spies, and Sheep) indicates otherwise.

The dems are stuck on 8 months ago. The dominos are falling like crazy now.

That idiot Friedman at the NYT is writing positive stuff now in his latest column. All he had to whine about in the last paragraph was that Bush said it would be easier than it is.

Point one on the myth list is a good lesson too for those republicans who are throwing a fit because Bush didn't nominate a known right-wing gunslinger for SCOTUS. "Rallying the base" is demo-speak for "let's be so partisan that no one outside of the progressive anti-war movemenet will vote for us."

It works both ways guys. Staying in power means walking a thin line between appeasing the rabid true believers and convincing the great undecided center that you aren't going to push the big red button durring a mood swing. Rigth now, the left is doing a very good job of convincing the center that they can't govern and have no reasonable ideas to counter the neocons. The republican "base" needs to shut the fuck up and continue to let the left hang themselves.

Bush is the best thing to come along since Reagan. He doesn't have to win any more elections either, but there are a lot of senators and congressmen and a future republican presidential candidate who badly need Bush to not alienate the center with a lot of hardball conservatism.

Scot, you're probably going to get flamed, but you are definitely speaking truth to power here.

I feel dirty just typing that phrase.

Give up the narrative that Bush stole the 2000 AND 2004 elections?

Give up their illusion that "Everyone would agree with us if only they weren't so stupid and deceived by Karl Rove and Fox"?

Start taking national security more seriously?

These messages will not go over well with Democrats. Not one little bit. Mainly because they're smart, insightful, and correct.

The startegies and advice offered, that is. Not Democrats.

I agree with scot and knemon. I am not wild about the nomination of Miers, but it's not the end of the world either. Let's not play monkey see monkey do with the dums as they shrivel, wither and die most tragicomically. Yes, have an opinion. Yes, post it and vent a bit if you feel the need. But please don't do the gobsmacking heartache routine - we're better than that. We're better than them!! Carry on.

Scot isn't speaking truth to power so much as he is speaking truth about power. I've said much the same thing. A conservative with those great legal writings that would comfort evryone on the right is not going to get through the Senate without a fight. There would be a filibuster and the GOP cannot break one.

Bush would end up losing that fight and the Dems would then do that to every thing he proposed over the next three years. What a wonderful vision that would be, utter gridlock in the Senate and the Dems claiming that they are merely trying to prevent the known extremist Bush from pushing his extremist agenda that is clearly out of step with the mood of the country.

Yeah, let's have that fight! I want to lose gloriously in one shining Banzai charge of rage! I want to have all of this broadcast nightly so that the spin can go out that democrats are thoughtful pragmatists trying to protect the Republic from the depraved conservative hosts of Bushzilla the Hun. I'm sure the GOP Senators would want that.

(Not that such a scenario doesn't happen, but do we need more of it?)

And as it began in another CHARLES DICKENS book MARLEY WAS DEAD TO BEGIN WITH