A great way to have the majority of both houses.

Can we assume that the population in the United States can be represented by a bell-shaped normal curve (in their political beliefs)? Maybe or maybe not. But let's not argue that point and assume that it is that way. Let's even assume that it's shaped a little toward the democratic side, and that's good.

What we want to talk about in this thread is: How can we capture votes to have the majority in both houses? It takes some thought. We did great during the last election in the House. How can we do something like that in the Senate? We have to know the voters, and make a plan to convince them to vote in our favor. Great Idea - but how can we do that in reality? That's what we want to talk about.

First a comment about the normal curve. It has the shape of a bell. You may have seen it in a commercial that shows a phone with the prices people have paid for cars in your neighborhood. Anyway, statisticians use normal curves because natural distributions are that way. "Mother Nature knows best!"

So, if voter's political association generally follow this normal distribution, there will always be a good number of people voting democratic. But there will also be right-wingers voting republican. Let's not forget that. The normal distribution says that about 10% of the population are die-hard right wing extremists (they call themselves "Conservatives&quot , and 10% on the other side are die-hard left wing extremists. (Don't shout at me, that's what the normal distribution curve says.) And that is good to have fresh input from a party members from all walks of life. We need professors, we need plumbers, we need doctors and garbage collectors.

Don't anybody pooh the work of a garbage collector. It is a rough job, almost like a steel worker or a miner. I am old enough to remember a strike of garbage collectors somewhere in a petropolitan area (I forgot where, maybe New York?). It was summer and people needed to get rid of their garbage somehow. I read that some gift-wrapped their garbage and left it in the car; parked it in the street with the window left open.

Coming back to the normal curve, there are about 80 percent of people in the United States, maybe they favor the right side for whatever reason, maybe they favor our left side for good reasons or because they have become afraid of the right wirng extremism we have been exposed to over the past two years. In any case, to become well situated not only in our Federal Government, but also in State legislatures, as a party we must address the needs of most of these 80% of our population and douse their fears of our government.

I believe these 80%, whether they call themselves republicans, independents, conservatives, liberals or others, they really want something that was said in a quote by a writer and historian who lived into the middle of the last century, James Truslow Adams. He apparently said“The freedom now desired by many is not freedom to do and dare but freedom from care and worry.” (I believe, I belong to that 80% group, now that I think about it.)

So lets discuss, contructively, what we need to do. We must avoid extremism, or something that could be construed as being unrealistic and therefor considered extrem or burdensome.

The government needs to make changes and must be able to operate without ever-increasing deficits. Taxes must exist to support operations but must not make the people slaves to the government. The most recent tax law needs to be changed and we need two-thirds of both Houses to override a veto by the executive branch.

We must expose the attrocities that may have been committed against the constitution in the more recent past and convince the 80% that we will fight to stop that.

What if there is a Democratic Platform, not with general principles but with detailed descriptions of programs that might bring order to our country, and each democratic candidate commits to this platform in writing. If it is printed on a single sheet and handed to people, that could be an election with a favorable outcome.

You might say, what if the people don't like what's on that sheet? If we are fair in assessing what we need, and realistic, and we believe in our political principles, then we should have the guts to shout them out in no uncertain terms. Now I am waiting for replies and then we can see where the discussion thread will lead us.