McAuliffe must go. It's time for a new Democratic party.

We have been taught a painful lesson: this corporate identity is a losing one. We'll never dislodge the Rethugs by trying to be like them. Clintonism is done, a relic of a stock market bubble era that is never coming back.

The Democratic Party has one future that's meaningful: progressivism.

Enough "war heroes." Enough tax breaks for corporations. Now we know: they're losing propositions. Even with a scary guy like Bush, the nation will embrace *real* GOP policies rather than GOP-lite.

So we need to clean house. Out with McAuliffe. Don't give the time of day to any of the DLC fuckers. Let us move toward a progressive future led by the democratic wing of the party. Liberalism and progressivism will provide the answers to the disaster awaiting America under four more years of Bush.

Don't think the Red States--the "mainstream"--will go for it? Oh, they will. They will when they're on their knees from war and joblessness. As in the '30s, the answer to our deepening crises will be a benevolent government, and only progressives will know how to administer the medicine.

I agree 100%. I've always sympathized with Nader because I wished we would head in his direction. American's think, why vote for Kerry when you get practically the same thing with Bush?

But think back to the pre-election speeches. Kerry was NOTHING like Bush.

I could see this argument in 2000, and 2002. But what amazed me this election was that Kerry REALLY distinguised himself from Bush, on the economy, taxes, education, environment, war and peace, on just about every issue.

Now Kerry could have been a bit more progressive, but in reality one can not truly say this election Kerry was too much like Bush.

Take your Kerry = Bush shit elsewhere.

That's the last thing I want to hear from people now.

Kerry ran rightwards as the election approached. I presume he had a good reason. Nader isn't exactly stealing votes from the Dem this time, and he didn't take all that many last time (yeah, it was enough, but still). The left was energized and was ready to get out there and vote for Kerry. How would going leftwards help? Seems like successful Dems--Clinton in particular--have to head right to get the votes.

with Howard Dean as head of DLC?

on the down side, we still have the likes of Blanche Lincoln in the Senate.

if you think a more liberal candidate could have won this.

This election was decided by two factors:

FEAR

and

BIGOTRY.

Fear obviously worked well to a large extent. However, bigotry did even better. EVERY SINGLE GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT PASSED. EVEN IN OREGON.

That's 11 out of 11.

This did a great job in dragging out the fundies.

The gays are coming. The gays! Hide your children.

I don't think anyone (any other dem) could have won this election. When "moral values" are supposedly the greatest factor on people's minds, even the war was meaningless to many. Also, all but one competetive Senate seat seems to have been lost. Salazaar seems to be the only win and I'm not even sure because the last I saw anything about that was hours ago.

We as a nation have some dark times ahead of us.

Many Democrats felt Kerry was too conservative during the primaries, but then Bush called him the most liberal of all.

I cannot see how Democrats can move any more to the center and not become Republicans!

In this last campaign, we were practically moderate repubs.

Of course, if the repubs are stealing votes, it doesn't make any difference what platform we Democrats run on.

It's time for the party to embrace its progressive roots and remember what it was that made us the dominant party for over 40 years.

The Roosevelt revolution wasn't the result of FDR running on slightly modified Hoover ideas.

FDR built the New Deal coalition by totally shaking things up, and introducing populist ideas like: Social Security, Social Welfare, Labor Laws, Minimum Wage Laws, etc.

Dems have been moving too far to the center for too many years. Don't know, at this point, whether it matter much to mainstream dems but I've had enough.

They can either DEFINE what a democrat really is or go drink the kool aide with the rest of the meathead republicans.

I don't blame DNC more than I blame the repuke POD PEOPLE, but if Kerry doesn't pull this out of the fire in a few days...I'm changing parties for next time around. ENOUGH mamby pamby butt kissing democrats for me.

Jesus H Christ!

When the first flip-flop charges were leveled, no response was fired back. The Bush VETO of that $87 billion bill was NEVER brought up! NEVER!!

And, "moral/values" seems to have been what was key in winning this election. There's no denying this country is strongly Christian and won't be changing until the baby boomers are all pushing up daisies.

The DNC needs to either energize its base or look more toward the growing asian and hispanic populations and focus on their needs, as well.

We need to be rid of our primary system allowing Iowa and New Hampshire to dictate our candidates. We need all Democratic primaries on ONE date. Then we need to get rid of the electoral college.

I live in a "fly-over" "red" state. I never got any junk mail nor any phone calls. I have a friend in Wisconsin who averaged 4 phone calls EVERY evening for weeks. We should have candidates in ALL states, not just camp out in swing states. Maybe if Kerry had talked to some folks in the "red" states they could have been turned "blue"!