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If you're looking for an emotion-rousing insight, I hate to add more cold water. In my opinion you're going to need a deeper faith, a trust in things that aren't very visible to people at the moment- the intellectual-level reasons. If you need the palpable emotion you can definitely hop on one of the many roller coaster rides that people around here are on.
The most basic reason for optimism is that the culture has turned, that there is an evident and increasing majority for liberal/Democratic social policy positions. The political majority lags the cultural majority by a few percentage points, but if the trends of the '90s hold up (and there's no sign they have let up) we have reached the point where Democrats are due for a slight political majority if they can present themselves as sufficiently competent and unified. Check election percentages to verify this. The next Gore-level Democrat running for President should, according to trend, get between 49% and 53% while third parties have a firm hold on 2%. (Rove is doing some stuff to improve turnout on their end, that's a major uncertainty.)
The silver lining to holding minorities in Congress and other levels of government is that Democrats continue to shed the problem conservatives and pick up more solid liberals. We're still losing more in numbers than we gain, but we're close to majority in both chambers and I think quality is improving. That 1993-94 Democratic Congress, where conservative Democrats refused to go along with most Democratic initiatives (e.g. any of the national health care stuff) was atrocious. While just about everything Gingrich tried to do was very bad government, a lot of the humiliation and downfall of the conservative Democrats in November 1994 was well deserved- they valued their careers over the public service they were called upon to do, and the voters finally punished them.
As for the Supreme Court, the Lawrence vs Texas ruling fundamentally changes more about the society than anything else they've touched in many years, even their 2000 election decision. The conservative alliance on the Court has won almost all the battles but the ones they lost (Lawrence and Planned Parenthood vs Casey 1992) are deciding the war, and they know it.
Ok, that was boring but necessary. In the present: what the rest of the year holds is the overall breakdown of Bush's foreign policy. We all see the signs of it crumbling, and little saving it; it looks like Blair will the first major victim on the Bush team's side. Early next year Bush will still have (re?)election sort of numbers, but he will have retreated to touting his domestic social/cultural policies and such. But those aren't invulnerable to attack either- he'll get challenged on rights due homosexuals or something and soon beat another retreat, still remaining favored in November. The real bitter bloodletting and wavering in the polls will begin next spring or summer when the Bush fiscal policy becomes the third, last, and best-fortified line of defense. It's all drama and high emotion as various actors in the arena bite the political dust. Some Democratic attacks fail outright and others, while on target, seem to achieve no response, and a lull will take place. The nominee will also suffer problems from Democrats being slow to unite and fall significantly behind in the polls. Republicans will be full of glee. But their triumphalism in early October turns into a violent agony in early November as Democrats mount one last determined major attack, and voters who've put off the decision come around. And that is the long slow grinding down that I speak of.
And once/when the Presidency is won Congress should soon follow as Democrats equalize in fundraising and publicity, with the Bush/Lott/Frist/DeLay handiwork of scandals to expose. Over in the Supreme Court Rehnquist is presently waiting, hoping to step down and hand off the Justice position to another reactionary and Chief Justice powers to Scalia. That takes a Republican President with a Senate in which Democrats don't have filibuster strength in 2005. I think Rehnquist will find his hopes disappointed on the Presidential level next November and become impossible in the Senate in November 2006.
I find whining about the Democratic Party's present leaders and their behavior pointless. Maybe it helps calm the hysterical and neurotic among us. In the Niger uranium matter it's smartest to let the British scandal do some heavy lifting on the evidence (or lack thereof) and PR aspects first. The casualties and, soon, full scale guerilla warfare in Iraq are doing their politically effective talking through the military. On tax policy nothing works to explain it better than the math on April 14 and the office scuttlebut on who's getting a windfall and who's getting the financial shaft.
It really doesn't matter that much that Democrats aren't all over the airwaves at the moment. The swing voters don't care what Congress is doing at the moment or what the Democratic presidential candidates are up to. It's not 'national security' that concerns them, either. Bush gambled big on Iraq and they're watching whether he wins or loses his bet, that's far more satisfying drama. Victory over the infidels or military-political train wreck, Iraq's the spectacle of the times. A form of reality TV where Bush's fate is either the Big Bucks or a one way ticket into the alligator pen.
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