“So all we can do is hold our breath and hope no Democrat says anything more stupid than any Republican, and hope that we can keep our crazy aunts in lockdown until November 5, '08. Is that too much to ask?”

The Repugs have been in power because they play to fear and make the untrue seem real. Playing it safe could work although it is a risky course even if the Dem candidates don’t screw up. Screwing up is not actually screwing up. It is doing something that will attract the attention of the MSM who want the election to be a bloody spectator sport and they have simply found something insignificant to play with.

We can plot and strategize and fear we aren’t strong enough to defeat the Repugs all we want, but it is not the way to get what we want. In this election the American people who are not trapped in fear or living in unreality, want one thing more than anything else. They want AUTHENTICITY.

Experience will make a difference because 75% of Americans are tired of an oaf president who screws up everything he touches. Hope of change is strong because it gives the voter hope that things will stop getting worse and money will stop buying our government. When a candidate convinces us that he or she is authentic, really cares about us and will bring about real change, that candidate will win. I grant you proving authenticity will not be easy in today’s political world.

The candidate that achieves that deserves to be our president.

“Re positive v. negative messages: Republicans' messages have succeeded because they are so extremely simplistic. That's possible because they benefit a small, homogenous group. Democrats' messages have to cover a broad, complex group of beneficiaries, and so can't stoop to boilerplate slogans. It's not positive v. negative, it's simplistic (simple-minded?) v. complex (attentive).”

“Now we find ourselves between elections and all those liberals who last November thrilled to the prospect of a Democratic congressional majority are apoplectic because their heroes are once again proving that they differ very little from their Republican betters (i.e. better in the sense of more politically effective). It's a highwire act - balancing the reality of their politics with the appearance of providing a real alternative to radical conservatism. I don't envy them the task.”

Our Dems do have a much tougher job than Repugs when my party is truly inclusive and wants to do so much and entertain complex problems with no simple solutions. Those who believed that winning a scarce majority in the senate would gain our party the power to dramatically to reverse all the Rovian/Cheney/RWA/neocon obscenities can count themselves as just as a simplistic a thinker as the Repugs they rightly condemn.

Both parties are required to work within a system that has been built over the last 231 years. Like our present justice system, an adversarial system, even with checks and balances, gets out off kilter from time to time. It has been up to us, American citizens, to right the ship of state when that happens, instead of blaming the people working within the system like the majority of our M$M wants us to do.

Our real problem currently is a system that rewards fear mongering, character assassination, divisiveness, bigotry, misuse of corporate and military power and most of all buying votes with money. Glenn Greenwald has had so much success because he exposes weaknesses in our system and those who perpetuate it who proclaim to be helping America and the world.

Our Democratic presidential candidates said in the last debate in Iowa that they support federal funding of elections. That might just be political rhetoric, but it is advocating a crucial system change, one that many posters and myself believe lies at the true fix to most of the problems being aired in this post and around the Internet. When money influence is greatly reduced, our representatives can return to truly representing the people with their varied needs and complex problems in a very troubled world.

When we repair systems, we change “woe is me, what the hell can I do” thinking to “here’s what I think.”