Reviving the Democrats

...It will be even more pungent if Florida's Governor Jeb Bush is her opponent...

...Whatever hidden complexities inform the Clinton marriage, there can be no doubt that Bill serves as Hillary's full partner in the run up to her 2006 Senate campaign...

...But, to put it mildly, there is no consensus on how to get the donkey up and moving again...

...His rejection of the Kennedy withdrawal proposal notwithstanding, Bayh diminished his moderate luster by joining Kennedy, Kerry, Boxer, and nine other Democrats in voting against Rice's slam-dunk confirmation...

...Bayh might then find ways to pass muster with the electorate at large...

...a Marshall Planfor America...

...It can't take us that long...

...If Iraq turns into an unmitigated disaster—rather than the dicey proposition it has been until now—Bayh's vote against Rice could earn him backing in the primaries from Democrats for whom the Iraq war continues to be the paramount issue...

...That word— 'values'—has lately become a code word for appeasement of the Rightwing fringe," Dean proclaimed in a letter he sent out announcing his candidacy...

...The opposition party also remains ready to tie up the Senate should Bush nominate (or, in some cases, renominate) hardcore Right-wingers to the Federal bench...

...Her stance contrasts sharply with that of Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, long the leading proponent of withdrawal from Iraq on just about any basis...

...Ditto Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee...

...What is more, in such key states as Ohio and Florida, GOP registrants have tended to be more loyal in the polling booth than their Democratic counterparts...

...We have to surprise people by becoming an insurgent reform party again...

...Indeed, the one silver lining in defeat is that we're finally free to reform a status quo we neither condone nor control...

...Howard Dean—former Vermont Governor and failed maverick Presidential contender—chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC...

...Come the 2006 elections, offending Democrats can expect their harsh words fed back to them through the prism of Hispanic and African American voters—traditionally a vital part of their core constituency...

...Andrew J. Glass, a longtime NL contributor, is a veteran Washington observer...

...In the House a coterie of Democrats has sought the "immediate withdrawal" of all U.S...

...She's the big deal," says Delaware Senator Joseph Biden...

...When Bill pitched that theme to Kerry last year, he didn't swing for the fences...

...The Clintons supported Harold M. Ickes, a former White House aide, who ran the 1992 convention for Bill in New York City and will help run Hillary's 2006 re-election effort...

...But denial goes only so far among the legions of dispirited Democrats, and Kerry is no Stevenson...

...The American people can't afford to wait 40 years for us to put Washington back to work for them...

...A while back she showed her own support by visiting Iraq, in bipartisan symmetry with her Arizona Republican colleague, former war hero John McCain (who will be 72 in 2008 but could also run...

...But the reason we lost control is that we forgot why we were entrusted with control to begin with...

...Bayh remains a popular figure in Indiana—a Republican stronghold that in 2000 and 2004 gave Bush sizable majorities...

...Bush and his team of surrogates will undoubtedly revisit Reid's suggestion next year when they seek to retain their Capitol Hill majorities...

...Speaking in Albany, Hillary stirred an audience of family planning advocates by calling abortion "a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women...

...Asked about the President's Social Security thrust, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the amiable if somewhat colorless new minority leader who succeeded the defeated Tom Daschle of South Dakota, told me: "What we're saying is there is no crisis...

...Reid noted that of the 214 judicial nominees presented by Bush to the prior Congress, the Democrats blocked only 10 through actual or threatened filibusters...

...But he clearly does not see himself playing a limited role...

...For his part, Kerry refuses to back the Kennedy pullout plan...

...The Democratic Party," he went on to write, "will not win elections or build a lasting majority solely by changing its rhetoric, nor will we win by adopting the other side's positions...

...Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which Bill Clinton used as a springboard some 15 years ago to mount the last Democratic campaign that ousted a White House incumbent—George H.W Bush—believes the situation will not change until the party lines up behind a Presidential nominee for 2008...

...He proposed cutting the bureaucracy, linking college aid to national service, putting more police on the street, and ending welfare as we knew it...

...So-called open elections have their limits...

...Dean is likely to learn, though (or may even know by now), a carefully formulated, moderately aggressive regimen needs to be prescribed to get the job done...

...But those Big Ten dominated the headlines, and many of them may be back for consideration this year...

...He wants the President and a newly reconstituted Iraqi government to agree on a drawdown of forces...

...In the Bush I and Clinton years, Democratic registration remained flat and Republican registration dipped slightly, to about 27 per cent...

...Hillary has already inspired more Presidential buzz among the political and media cognoscenti than would normally be expected...

...Besides refraining from the Rice fray, Senator Clinton has not joined the chorus of Congressional Democrats opposed to the Iraq war...

...Republicans wandered around in the political wilderness for 40 years before they took back Congress," Dean said in his victory remarks...

...To GOP critics this wrongly implied a zero-sum choice between building democracy abroad and funding priorities at home...

...forces...

...Dean brushed aside the elected party leadership and launched his grassroots DNC drive by using the V-word, often quoted in postelection dissections of how Kerry had blundered...

...Thirty years ago, when Jimmy Carter sought the Presidency, some 40 per cent of Americans registered as Democrats and fewer than 20 per cent registered as Republicans...

...She is, you know, the elephant in the living room...

...So, yes, the Democratic Party can be resuscitated...

...The nitty-gritty facing the Democrats is more complicated than one might gather from Dean's challenge...

...By 1989 only 3 5 per cent of Americans were registered Democrats while 30 per cent were registered Republicans...

...Reid and Pelosi backed former Indiana Representative Timothy J. Roemer, a member of the 9/11 Commission, who outlined to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News how he would bring new ideas to bear in an effort to change the Democrats' image as weak on national security...

...Since "Iraq is no closer to becoming a stable democracy than it was two years ago," it declared, the "losing effort" is not worth the life of another American service member...

...Responding to Bush's State of the Union address, Reid cited the U.S.-led rebuilding of Europe after World War II and said, "We need...

...The primary reason she predominates is that the Democrats have no war hero to rally around—à la Dwight D. Eisenhower, who put the Republicans over the top during the previous open election in 1952...

...When Kerry's defeat created a temporary political vacuum in the party hierarchy, Dean entered a crowded contest for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee...

...Their resolution, introduced by Representative Lynn C. Woolsey of California, gathered 24 cosponsors before stalling...

...All signs point to sustained Republican parity among registered voters in the coming years...

...Those numbers began to shift when Ronald Reagan occupied the White House...

...They are also a preoccupation of the party's rank and file, as was apparent when 400-odd delegates from around the country met here in February and named Dr...

...In the interim, the intramural Democratic political poker game features a fresh wild card: Howard Dean...

...As Dr...

...He sees those political crosscurrents as his early admission ticket into the top tier of the 2008 race...

...The last two campaigns have been short on such shock therapy...

...Under his plan, a minimum of 12,000 U.S...

...And their devoted acolytes, in turn, see that contest as a run up to the much anticipated "Glorious Revolution" of 2009...

...But David Brooks, the neoconservative Times columnist, is probably right in observing that the discredited Georgia Republican's "hyperpartisanship and ruthless oppositionalism" would only further alienate the middle class suburban voters they have to attract...

...The chief lesson that assorted Democratic candidates, consultants and commentators appear to have drawn from their recent record of defeats is that they need to play rough—not only on Social Security and on Bush's judicial choices, but across the political spectrum...

...Senator Evan Bayh, another 2008 Presidential hopeful, says, "I think to cut and run at this juncture would be a terrible mistake...

...If three years hence Hillary Rodham Clinton emerges as the Democratic standard bearer, the scent of a closed dynastic succession will again waft through the air...

...Prominent Congressional Democrats like Reid and Biden, however, despite private expressions of skepticism about the war, are reluctant to take on Bush directly for fear of being branded appeasers and defeatists by political foes...

...The DLC's Al From explains: "Clinton geared his entire 1992 campaign to surprising people by proving he was a different kind of Democrat from those they had been voting against for years...

...Biden dismisses talk of disengagement as premature...

...On both ends of Capitol Hill, where the Democrats have retained the ability to block major Bush initiatives, their approach is largely negative—or, as the Republicans delight in calling it, "obstructionist...

...Some take as their model the successful 1994 assault spearheaded by then House Speakerto-be Newt Gingrich...

...Kennedy has been arguing that Iraq never posed a threat to the United States and that Bush launched the conflict under false pretenses, thereby providing Al Qaeda with fresh recruits and the ability to plant more terrorist cells around the world...

...Bush may well use several looming Supreme Court vacancies to further brand the Democrats an obstructionist minority...

...It hasn't gone unnoticed either that Hillary did not join some of her Democratic Senate colleagues in attacking White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice after Bush nominated them to serve, respectively, as attorney general and secretary of state...

...In fact, his position has put him at odds not only with Bush but with the whole internationalist wing of the Democratic party, which includes the Clintons and is influenced by such nonconservative columnists as the New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman...

...The Democrats have the better argument and are likely to attract a sufficient number of Republicans to prevail...

...Bush supporters have pegged Senator Barbara Boxer's scathing assault on fellow Californian Rice before the Foreign Relations Committee as a textbook example of Democratic doublethink that can be exploited among African American voters susceptible to switching parties...

...Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California both have urged Bush to adopt an exit strategy without offering one of their own...

...A master of the sound bite himself, he is considering making another bid for the Presidency (he flamed out in 1988) from his perch as ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...

...troops would depart right away to ease what he terms "the pervasive sense of occupation...

...The next election will be a fair fight about the future, where ideas will matter more than opposition...

...Democratic Congressional leaders tend to dismiss Dean as a fund-raising tactician with a smattering of support from diehard Deaniacs...

...Variations of that question have become something of a media staple since President George W. Bush's re-election sweep last November...

...Although she is not widely identified as the most hawkish Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the nine clickable tabs on her Web site include one entitled "Support Our Troops"—nicely nestled between "News & Speeches" and "Useful Links...

...No one should doubt her support for the freedom to choose, she stressed, but at the same time she said the prochoice and antiabortion movements should seek common ground...

...More to the point, the Congressional and would-be Presidential poohbahs have no way of preventing him from having his say on the morning and evening news shows whenever the bookers beckon...

...The 2004 election was mostly about Bush," says From...

...They maintain that Democrats castigate criticism of liberal blacks and women as racist and sexist, yet portray blacks and women who take Right-wing or even centrist positions as inauthentic and unrepresentative...

...The New York Senator invites her constituents to sign "a virtual thank you card at the Defend America Web site," hosted by the Pentagon...

...The process seemed to be on display in January...

...This is a manufactured crisis...

...Of course John Kerry, last year's war hero turned war critic, could run again like Adlai Stevenson in 1956...

...Meanwhile, deep internal divisions over U. S. policy on Iraq and other key issues are likely to persist...