Have to Be More Than the Other Guy

Good analysis of Tuesday's election results nationally here. I got elected to a school board once, primarily because the incumbent had aggravated too many people to get chosen again. IOW, all I had to do in the campaign was make clear that I wasn't worse than he was. That's the way elections are. Usually, they're judgments of the incumbents, not endorsements of the challengers. We knew all along that the Dems weren't putting forth a new view of themselves in this campaign, just saying "We're not Bush." Okay, it was enough. But now they're already arguing over what "we're not Bush" means. Why? Because they don't know who they are themselves. And, as this article makes clear, that's the difference between being a long-term viable party and just the default position when the Repubs get too extreme and overreaching in their don't-think-it's-over quest for total domination of our political system. They're weakened right now, so the Dems have a chance to develop a strong counter of responsibility and effectiveness while clarifying everything wrong about the Repubs. Or, they can immediately start cutting each other up, like that moron Carville is trying to do with his idiotic suggestion to dump Dean (can we finally admit that Carville is a third-rate Rove whose 1992 claim to fame was the last Repub implosion, not some genius result of his making??), and not get the right things done to offset the Busheviks and restore us to our historical path. (Demosthenes has the definitive tribute to Dean here.) The fate of the American Legacy is literally in their hands. Was this just a bump in the fall of our republic or an actual turnaround? The tools are there for the turnaround. The blame will be theirs if they fail.