Someone who's a strong believer in the 2nd Amendment is probably also a strong believer in the 4th Amendment as well.

I only wish. But as one who has spent decades in the trenches trying to get such people to understand that the drug "war" has been eviscerating the 4th Am and militarizing the police, I know better. Average Joe and Jane Sixpack hear "drugs" and at least until THEIR house has been raided by a SWAT team, they figure "whatever it takes" to get those nasty drug users and dealers.

With a lot of them, it is the same thing about "terrorists."

Guns and abortion touch these kinds of people directly (as they do everyone) and are easily demagogued. They are pretty simple issues, while the whole FISA thing is very obscure to them.

I'm a daughter of the Midwest, and outside of the major metropolitan areas, you may find populists, but you are not going to find lots of "progressives." Or even libertarians like me.

No I will not lighten up.

Nor will I stop until my freedom to converse privatley with anyone I want through any medium is restored.

I will continue until kids stop being shredded to bits for nothing more than some rich guy's pleasure and profit.

I will persist until things are restored to some semblence of sanity...

Only then will I sit down and shut up...

I WILL...

Montana is hardly San Franscisco or the upper west side, yet Tester is hardly an Ellsworth clone. Clearly, such voters are quite willing to support a progressive if they hold the core beliefs that the majority of them do.

Montana, Colorado, Arizona etc. are characterized by a strong libertarian streak in their populations; Tester is pro-gun and appeals to the "leave me alone" ethos that is popular there (and which I wish we had more of here in the Midwest).

Indiana is a horse of an entirely different color. (So are huge swathes of Michigan and Ohio.) There was a cross-burning in Northern Indiana only some five years ago, and the Klan almost completely ran the state legislature in the 20s. Evan Bayh is about as good as you are going to get, and he voted for the FISA amendments.

Montana, Colorado, Arizona etc. are characterized by a strong libertarian streak in their populations; Tester is pro-gun and appeals to the "leave me alone" ethos that is popular there (and which I wish we had more of here in the Midwest).

Indiana is a horse of an entirely different color. (So are huge swathes of Michigan and Ohio.) There was a cross-burning in Northern Indiana only some five years ago, and the Klan almost completely ran the state legislature in the 20s. Evan Bayh is about as good as you are going to get, and he voted for the FISA amendments.

You're talking here about a difference between principles and partisanship/bigotry. I'm quite sure Indiana and quite a few other "red" states will be singing a different tune about government surveillance once a no-good Democrat is in the White House.

Not that I'm saying you disagree.

I don't doubt that to the extent that we can replace Repubs in many non-urban areas, it will likely only be with the likes of Ellsworth & Co.--Montana is more libertarian than Indiana, which tends to be more traditionally conservative, which is why a Tester is more likely to do well in the former than the latter type of state. But I don't believe that it's impossible to elect someone more progressive than Ellsworth.

Replace enough of them, as well as Repubs and blue state corporatists, with progressives, and it will become progressively easier (heh) for Dems to pass progressive legislation. And there is more than one way to do that, with going after red state DINOs being just one of them.

This is not a war that will be won on just one front with just one approach. I'm just pointing out one of them, which is perhaps not the most promising one at present, but hardly the only one--and, long term, not necessarily as futile as you assert. People, like the country, do change over time, especially if conditions prompt them to. And they are clearly doing so.

If I misunderstood you, I apologize. But there simply are places where if Democrats want to win -- and thus secure and retain Pelosi as Speaker -- you can't run a Pelosi. It is rather like a Republican such as Rudy could become mayor of NYC, while a Santorum wouldn't be given a first look.

I didn't miss your message, and I agree. Labor's treated like the Democrats. The social platform Amir Peretz ran on was axed when he decided to play Defense Minister and predictably failed, but it's part of a larger picture.

The 1996 neo-con tract, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," opens with this paragraph:

Israel has a large problem. Labor Zionism, which for 70 years has dominated the Zionist movement, has generated a stalled and shackled economy. Efforts to salvage Israel’s socialist institutions—which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, "New Middle East"—undermine the legitimacy of the nation and lead Israel into strategic paralysis and the previous government’s "peace process." That peace process obscured the evidence of eroding national critical mass— including a palpable sense of national exhaustion—and forfeited strategic initiative. The loss of national critical mass was illustrated best by Israel’s efforts to draw in the United States to sell unpopular policies domestically, to agree to negotiate sovereignty over its capital, and to respond with resignation to a spate of terror so intense and tragic that it deterred Israelis from engaging in normal daily functions, such as commuting to work in buses.

Here, social progressives are called liberal Democrats, there, they are Labor Zionists. Each shackles the nation's economy and bows to terror. It was no accident that Netanyahu was Finance Minister. He did wonders on the job!

Those on the left who think in terms of Jewish dogs wagging American tails have seen enough here to see the same there and outgrow their Elders of Zion fantasies. The Israel/Palestine conflict and all it fuels make it unlikely that just one of these nations will come out from under the neocon, neoliberal thumb, which links social welfare to a weak will.