Social security, whats the plan?  European countrirs are already at the point that more people are retiring than are being born.  Just fast forward that and what do you get?  The need to tax the the young even more to pay for promises to the elderly voter.  Taxing away the means to bring forth the next generation is a societal suicide pill.

There is something that no one seems willing to touch. The use of the swift-boat veterans to slime and tear down character from Kerry and Murtha and Sheehan and Dean, continuing the Clinton attacks earlier. Certainly Dems are not immune to using character attacks, and the attacks on Bush's service did draw some blood, but nobody does it better than a party so devoted to getting and maintaining power that no barrier between them and their goal is respected. If you descend into the mudpile, you had better be willing, ready and organized to show that you are willing and able to dish out the character attacks as well as the other side. I am reminded about 6 or 8 years ago we had a very "moral" candidate for Governor of Minnesota by the name of John Marty, who refused to engage in any negative campaigning; to no one's great surprise, he lost by an extremely large margin having left the negative campaigning to his opponents. He did not mind losing; he took the high road; spare me such candidates. Of course, Kerry's campaign also refused to force the swift-boat veterans back and he basically lost the election at that point. So the ugly question remains: are the candidates we choose determined to win or at least not lose by throwing around the same mud that's thrown at them; are they willing in fact to build up an arsenal of dirt.

The prominence of party leaders like Biden and Clinton, and of a slew of other potential prowar candidates who support the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, presents the Democrats with an odd dilemma: At a time when the American people are turning against the Iraq War and favor a withdrawal of US troops, and British and American leaders are publicly discussing a partial pullback, the leading Democratic presidential candidates for '08 are unapologetic war hawks. Nearly 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war, according to recent polling. Sixty-three percent want US troops brought home within the next year. Yet a recent National Journal "insiders poll" found that a similar margin of Democratic members of Congress reject setting any timetable. The possibility that America's military presence in Iraq may be doing more harm than good is considered beyond the pale of "sophisticated" debate.

The continued high standing of the hawks has been made possible by their enablers in the strategic class--the foreign policy advisers, think-tank specialists and pundits. Their presumed expertise gives the strategic class a unique license to speak for the party on national security issues. This group has always been quietly influential, but since 9/11 it has risen in prominence, egging on and underpinning elected officials, crowding out dissenters within its own ranks and becoming increasingly ideologically monolithic. So far its members remain unchallenged. It's more than a little ironic that the people who got Iraq so wrong continue to tell the Democrats how to get it right.

The Strategic Class of the Democratic Party

Biden is trying to connect our security (read "national") to individual security (read "raid on social security").  I think that this could be a successful strategy for resonating with the American people. And I completely agree that Democrats need to make clear that they would hold the Bush administration accountable if they were in power in Congress; this would help because the Bush administration is increasingly being perceived as an unchecked power, and Democrats would be able to keep the focus on post-war Iraq and corruption allegations, a winning combination.

I keep reading how the Democrats need to this and the Democrats need to do that. Well most of it is good advice. But before the Democrats do anything else they need to realize that the republicans have made politics in America a team sport. Those guys consistently play the game as team. You can see it every day in how they are all out there saying the same thing drumming their message consistently in every place possible. I never see the Dems doing this. They need to get organized and work together and put out a consistent message, only without the lies and misrepresentations. As part of this they need to start coming up with concise labels for the republicans and EVERYONE needs to use them over and over. For example. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a Democrat use the phrase "Culture of Corruption". Only once have heard anyone say "Republican Culture of Corruption". This is a prime example of why the Dems are losing. None of them should should ever utter those three words without preceeding them with "Republican" and they should have people monitoring everyone and reminding them when they fail to do so. The republicans seem to be successfully painting the corruption as bipartisan because the democrats are simply allowing them to do so.

Its a team sport Democarts. Get yourself some good coaches and start playing as a team. And for goodness sake can't we get a progressive to start or buy a network? George Soros? Somebody, the corporate owned media is killing this country. 

The Nation is great on the issues, but politically they have a tin ear. They think it's more important to be right than to win. Charles Sumner, Robert LaFollette, and Paul Wellstone were all giants, but none of them could conceivably have been elected president (America's loss more than theirs, obviously).

As to the merits of their article: it's simply unjustifiable to consider the Democrat enablers of the war in Iraq, wrong as they were, as equally culpable with Bush and Cheney and the people who actively foisted this war upon us. Had even Joe Biden or Joe Lieberman been President, we probably would not have invaded Iraq when the inspectors were on the verge of declaring them WMD-free, and definitely would have treated the international community with respect.

Reed, I'm all for cleaning up corruption in Washington but I haven't forgotten Terry McAuliffe's "amazing" investment in Global Crossings. There's not a Democrat around who doesn't beleive that McAulffe was bribed with Global Crossing stock. I assume that he was paid off for helping get the Telecom bill through.

I'm from New York and when I read that McAuliffe and Al D'Amato were both in on the Telergy deal, D'Amato was disgusted. Telergy was set up to siphon cash from two energy companies to politicians. The books were so cooked, a public offering had to be aborted. Then McAuliffe had the balls to consider running for governor of New York.

For four years, I have never been able to get an adequate answer as to how Charlie Gargano, Robert Molinari, Sam Gejdenson, Meyer Berman and Gary Ackerman all managed to be financially linked to Eagle Building Technologies, a phony penny stock company linked to organized crime.

To me, it seems the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is that for every dollar a Democrat stole, a Republican stole ten.