While i agree that congressional re-districting and somwtime questionable voting tallies have hurt the dems in the recent past, i'm not so sure that the party needs a wave or even a coherent message in 2006. The facts of the Abramoff scandal, Hurricane Katrina, Scooter Libby, the deficit, gas prices, widiening gap between the haves and have nots, race relations, medicare, social security, global warming, wiretapping, and oh yeah, Iraq may prove to be enough to gain a majority for the Dems. Then again, it may not. After all, we still hae a mainstream press that insists on parrotting GOP talking points. Take Coretta Scott King's funeral for example. Press reports of inappropriate Dem remarks overshadow that fact that most of the people there seemed to be just fine with them.

So, almost no letters about what Democrats can do to convince the American public to vote for them (it's not hard, folks - facts help here!), and a slew about how the evil Republicans have rigged the voting machines. I'm a fan of open source voting machines too, but let's face it: Bush is in the White House because he won (or more accurately, John Kerry LOST) the last election.

I always find this dichotomy amazing: the Bush administration is thought to be both grossly incompetent on one hand, and capable of pulling off the most diabolical plots, on the other. Look at NOLA/FEMA - these guys couldn't rig an election for hall monitor.

Otherwise many Americans will truly begin to mimic George Bush and take the law into their own hands.

50,000 purged voters in Florida

100,000 lost or blocked ballots in Ohio.

60% disapproval

A continuance of Republican control would truly demonstrate voting in America had gone the way of Soviet Russia.

The Repugs already know what they're doing this year, and 2008, while the clueless Dems are still wondering if they need to do anything. The deer-in-the-headlights effect still hasn't cleared from the Dems. They're still wondering how they got to where they are, and in their heart-of-hearts know the voters will come to their senses and return them to power.

Part of the Repug scheme will no doubt be to use Florida and Ohio-like techniques in all the tight races. My suspicion has been that the Daschle race in '04 was the harbinger. They probably have the resources and organization to massage any election anywhere these days.

Thus the gloss of democracy remains, but they remain in power. I doubt the Dems will take either house this year. Only a hugely larger turnout of voters than expected will give the Dems any sort of advantage, and maybe not even then. After all the numbers were up in 2004, and the election was still stolen in Ohio and Florida. Mid-term elections draw notoriously low numbers, so go figure.

The democratic party needs a rallying call.

And this is what it should be: "Peace and Prosperity." That’s it. It’s easy. You get to begin to change the debate and it could be easily contrasted against the republicans "Fear and Recklessness.”

For instance, you can put Healthcare, deficit reduction, and jobs under Prosperity, and terrorism, international cooperation, and wining Iraq under Peace. The Repubs will try to be against peace and prosperity, and that will just be hysterical.

Whoever reads this is already going crazy about how it will make dems look weak. But that’s not the case. They’ve already branded dems as weak on security and you’re not going to fix that by being a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Trying to be as mean as bush and Cheney is impossible. It just comes off as sounding silly and weak.

Don’t try to beat the repubs at their own game. Make new rules. I think you can make peace again into the eventual goal, and thereby voice a plan to win that peace. Turn the war on terror into a question of law enforcement and you’ll be on the right track.

The goal of WWII wasn’t to kill all the Nazis, but instead, the goal was to win, which is very different.

I doubt you’ll ever read this note, because it’s the kind of thing that gets lost in the fuzz of millions of e-mails, but I think that whatever staffer of yours does read the first couple lines should take it very seriously. If you do read it, please e-mail me. Avery@empireempire.org

This posting is typical of the kind of reasoning that keeps the status quo in place. Or at least has in the past. The past, though, is not going to be much of a guide to future realities unless we look at different historical phenomena.

The cart does not pull the horse, and though the tail, at least metaphorically, can wag the dog, the dog is about to resume doing the wagging.

Political entities - legislative, executive, judicial, propaganda outlets - can become self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating cancerous growths on the society, but their true purpose, the one they pretend to serve, must be pursued eventually. We are now in a situation where the ruling party has achieved complete corruption and sociopathic criminality. They are a cancer upon the entire planet. This is at a time when real problems that have to be solved are instead denied, ignored, deflected, and thereby worsened.

We have to solve the problems of climate change, environmental degradation, starvation, disease, overpopulation, economic unsustainability, war mongering,and kleptocracy. Instead, we have the Bush crime family, a war mongering kleptocracy itself.

As Hurricane Katrina showed us last year, pretending problems don't exist can have dire consequences. Since we are doing nothing about climate change, nothing about environmental degradation, nothing about economic unsustainability, and nothing about a host of other serious problems, they will all get worse. Whether it is Democrats or Republicans holding power, if the nature of governance does not change, then we are lost. By this I mean lost as a species.

Therefore, at some point we will have to choose not to be lost as a species, or we will cease to be. I'd like to see the spreadsheet program that can overcome this reality. Maybe, through the magic of gerrymandering and Diebold election flipping, a Shangri-la can be brought into being. In such a Shangri-la, toads can fly and idiots become kings. We're halfway there.