That’s easy to say, but to really mean it, you have to become the party of leaner, meaner government. Gods know, the way things are going in the White House these days, that job is open. But how many Democrats are really willing to step up and fill it?

Also, the anti-tax-cut rhetoric is a shot in the foot. Sometimes a tax cut for the rich really does stimulate the economy — if there’s a new techonlogy opening up and starving for investment money, for instance. That’s why Reagan’s cuts worked so well. But that wasn’t the situation this time around.

Be a little smarter, Democrats. Don’t say “tax cuts are evil” and expect to win middle class votes.

Edwards is an attractive, intelligent and articulate candidate, to be sure. But I’m unfond of his “Two Worlds� approach. Apart from being oversimplistic, it renders politically homeless a large number of voting suburbanites- who are neither rich or poor but who are looking for some government aid in their lives.

I agree with this sentiment, as they would be of the “have not” world. That’s certainly a problem since those people probably don’t want to grouped alongside urban minorities who are traditionally the poorest groups in this country. A difficult communication problem to say the very least.

I don’t know if this is showing above, but I’m kinda in a snit right now, because I just read another indirect threat message from a Democrat.

The “pessimism about America’s history and its virtues” is a relic of the Civil Rights era and Vietnam, ironically, because that was a time when those virtues triumphed. But many of the leaders were either overtly religious leaders or else borrowed the emotional vocabulary of morality and religion, and that lead the discussion into an unending confession of sin. People have continued to indulge in this for two reasons. One is that we are raised to feel best about ourselves when we are maligning ourselves the worst. It is a form of moral exhibitionism. The other is that it reminds a certain generation of when they were cool and young and righteous, so they cling to it for the mst selfish reasons.