It is important that Democrats learn to be more nationalistic. Raising concerns about foreign control of ports and lack of port security was a step in the right direction, but simply not enough. The perfect issue to destroy the Republicans would have been the failure to control illegal immigration but political correctness won out in Democratic circles.

By finding a way to extricate the U.S. from its imperial entanglements in the Middle East and by transferring resources from the war of chose so that we can defend against the attacks in a war we did not choose: by improving port security, first responder capabilities, and multilateral police investigative capacities to uncover terrorist cells here and abroad.

In other words by getting serious about the real threat posed by terrorists and by making the case that our security interests are undermined by un-American grandiose buccaneering schemes that have been the hallmark of the hardline right since at least since the days of Iran/Contra.